Members phkrause Posted March 24 Author Members Posted March 24 March 23, 2025 Good morning. Today you’ll hear from our theater reporter, Michael Paulson, about the rising cost of hot Broadway tickets. We’re also covering the Democratic Party, Elon Musk and a scammer’s manual. At the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York. Amir Hamja for The New York Times Put money in thy purse By Michael Paulson I am The Times’s theater reporter. There’s a starry production of “Othello” opening on Broadway tonight. And if you’re among the many people who really, really want to see Denzel Washington as a jealous general, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as a scheming Iago, it’s going to cost you: Most of the center orchestra seats, as well as a few rows in the mezzanine, are being sold for $921 apiece. The high prices for this Shakespeare classic are setting records. During its second week of previews, “Othello” grossed more at the box office than any other nonmusical play had ever grossed on Broadway. Tickets for the hottest Broadway shows are now out of reach for many. And the same is true for other sought-after live events, such as pop concerts (which now cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per ticket) and big sports games. (A few weeks before the Super Bowl, the cheapest available tickets were reselling for more than the average monthly mortgage payment.) In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how Broadway seats became so eye-poppingly pricey. Trying to break even Producing Broadway shows has become more expensive since the pandemic, and a vast majority of them lose money. So producers have been staging more short runs of plays with stars in lead roles — the stars attract ticket buyers, and the short runs allow those stars to more quickly return to filmmaking, which pays better than Broadway. Limited runs also seem to incentivize potential ticket buyers, because people find the now-or-never aspect motivating. There is, of course, a tension between profitability and accessibility. These prices are preventing some potential theatergoers from seeing high-profile productions of important work. Investors who spend money to bring shows to Broadway embrace high ticket prices because they want at least a shot at recouping their expenses. But many theater lovers, as they reminded me in a rollicking comments thread on the story I wrote about this subject last week, find these prices upsetting, because they want to see the shows they want to see at price points they consider reasonable. Atop the Booth Theater in New York. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times “Othello,” with an average ticket price last week of $338.83, is the most expensive show on Broadway right now, but it’s not the only costly ticket. A stage adaptation of “Good Night, and Good Luck” starring George Clooney had an average ticket price of $303.75 last week, and a revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross” featuring Bill Burr, Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk had an average price of $207.40. It’s important to be aware that most shows cost far less. The overall average ticket price on Broadway last week was $134.96. There were nine shows selling seats for under $50, including Tony-winning productions of “Chicago” and “Hadestown” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” Bargain hunters can often get even better deals by purchasing discounted tickets at a TKTS booth, entering an online lottery, lining up for rush tickets, finding a promo code or just sitting in seats that aren’t quite as close to the stage. Supply and demand Some people don’t like it when I say this, but ticket prices are set to reflect market demand. Tickets cost more for shows that have high demand and limited supply (there are 1,042 seats in the theater where “Othello” is playing); prices are higher for performances at the most desirable times and for seats in the most desirable locations. And if you wait until the last minute to look for tickets to a buzzy show, you’re probably going to pay more. Broadway producers hire consultants to advise them on pricing strategy, and some engage in dynamic pricing, adjusting prices to reflect shifting demand in real time. Producers often remind me that if they underprice tickets, those tickets will get scooped up by speculators who then seek to make a profit on the resale market, effectively redirecting a show’s financial upside away from artists and investors and toward de facto scalpers. What happens next? Reviews for “Othello” should start rolling out in the hours of Monday morning. (The show gave critics free tickets under the condition that reviews be published after midnight, so the company can enjoy its opening night party without worrying about notices.) If the reviews are great, prices could rise; if they are terrible, they could fall — although the show is already pretty well sold, so there’s not a ton of remaining inventory. Meantime, expect prices for the most in-demand shows, on Broadway and beyond, to remain high as long as there are people willing to pay those prices. THE LATEST NEWS Immigration Venezuela said it would resume accepting U.S. deportation flights. The move was prompted by the plight of Venezuelan migrants sent by Washington to El Salvadoran prisons without due process. The I.R.S. is preparing to help Homeland Security officials locate migrants they are trying to deport. The Trump administration sent dozens of migrants to Panama last month. Some have been repatriated, but others are stranded and unsure of what to do next. Though U.S. officials have taken new and unusual measures to crack down on immigration, the number of deportation flights has not yet surged under President Trump. More on the Trump Administration A SpaceX Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., in January. Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via Shutterstock Elon Musk’s Space X could secure billions in federal contracts and other support under Trump. Trump directed officials to seek sanctions against law firms that engaged in “unreasonable” litigation, a broadening of his retribution campaign against lawyers he dislikes. Some academics worry about what Columbia University’s concessions to Trump might mean for academic freedom. What is the Department of Government Efficiency? Trump and Musk say one thing, but in court filings, government lawyers say another. The Democratic Party Looking ahead to the 2028 election and a post-Bernie Sanders era, some on the left see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the next leader of the progressives — if she wants it. As Nancy Pelosi weighs whether to run again for Congress, challengers in San Francisco are lining up. International Prime Minister Keir Starmer Andrew Testa for The New York Times “We have to treat this as a galvanizing moment”: Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, spoke with The Times about Vladimir Putin, Trump and the U.S.-Europe alliance. A court in Turkey jailed Istanbul’s mayor pending a trial on corruption charges. Critics believe the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is trying to abort the mayor’s presidential campaign before it begins. Doctors are expected to discharge Pope Francis from the hospital today. He will need to rest in the Vatican for at least two months, they said. Other Big Stories The scammer’s manual: Documents and insiders revealed how one of the world’s major money laundering networks operates. While the number of dementia cases will increase, researchers say, the rates seem to be declining with every birth cohort that reaches advanced age. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Do the released John F. Kennedy files disprove the conspiracy theories? Yes. Though some will continue to believe in a second gunman, they rely on nothing more than rumors. “It will be appropriate if the final revelation is that there is no revelation at all,” The Irish Times’s editorial board writes. No. The files aren’t the re-investigation of the facts that skeptics of the official narrative have called for. “It will not mean case closed. Too late in the game for that,” Bob Katz writes for The Boston Globe. FROM OPINION The U.S. keeps a seed vault in case of disease or disaster. If the government fires the scientists who maintain the collection, it could jeopardize the future of agriculture, Iago Hale and Michael Kantar write. A large part of Canadian identity is about not being American. Americans don’t realize how much we mean it, Glynnis MacNicol writes. Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on a Sudanese refugee. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS At Theater Deli in London. Sam Bush for The New York Times Just for fun: Immersive theater productions are taking jury service and packaging it as entertainment. Quiet, please: Spiders in cities build soundproof webs to protect themselves from their noisy surroundings. Vows: Happily unmarried — until her daughters staged an intervention. Most clicked yesterday: How Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur who wants to live forever, has used confidentiality agreements to control his image. Lives Lived: Kitty Dukakis was first lady of Massachusetts and a humanitarian who overcame alcoholism and depression with the help of electroconvulsive therapy, then became a proponent of the treatment. She died at 88. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Jennifer Harlan “Sunrise on the Reaping,” by Suzanne Collins: It’s been nearly two decades since Suzanne Collins introduced readers to Katniss Everdeen, to the brutal nation of Panem and to the televised adolescent death match known as the Hunger Games. Five books later, she returns to this dystopian world with a propulsive new prequel, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” which unspools the story of Katniss’s louche, loyal mentor, Haymitch Abernathy. Readers of the original “Hunger Games” trilogy will remember that a teenage Haymitch won the 50th Hunger Games and, when he returned home, found a government-inflicted tragedy that would haunt him for the rest of his life. In this new installment, Collins fills in the details — and, in doing so, explores with devastating precision how disinformation and authoritarianism work. There is so much that is out of Haymitch’s control: With the odds stacked against him 47-1, he certainly doesn’t expect to make it out of the Games alive. But he and the vibrant cast of new and familiar characters find ways to resist the government’s script, clinging to a piece of advice from Haymitch’s father: “Don’t let them paint their posters with your blood.” More on the book Read the full review here. Need a refresher on the world of “The Hunger Games”? Here’s a handy guide. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is the clinical psychologist Dr. Lindsay Gibson, author of the best-selling book “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.” What might your book’s ongoing popularity say about the culture now? I think the book’s ongoing popularity has been due to the fact that it said something about the cultural stereotype that we’ve had about parents for eons: that all parents love their children; all parents only want the best for their children. I think people’s actual experience is that these stereotypes don’t match up with their emotional experience. One of the problems with contemporary life is how we label other people in ways that are reductive. Is there any part of you that thinks it’s not a good thing for the people who have read your book to be thinking about a parent, “Oh, you’re emotionally immature, and that is what defines you now?” Absolutely, I think it’s a danger. That is the problem with the categorizing part of our mind. Once we call something something, we think we know all about it. I’ve tried to moderate that by helping people see more of the big picture about why these people became emotionally immature, what they’re trying to do with that kind of behavior and what you can do about it. Do children owe parents anything? I look at that question differently. I look at it as, do any of us owe anybody else anything? What’s the answer? Yes, I think we do. If I’m walking down the street and somebody trips and falls, I’m going to help them get up. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that wasn’t there, but what has happened is that there has been such an assumption that because you’re my child, you owe me something. That’s where you get to a point where there should be a boundary. Know what it’s going to cost you to respond. Think about yourself too, and then make your best decision. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photo illustration by Bobby Doherty. Source photograph by Jesse Dittmar/Redux. Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Fall asleep with this simple technique. Clean your shower. Use a hand warmer. MEAL PLAN Andrew Purcell for The New York Times In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making a spiced roast chicken with tangy yogurt sauce, a pasta with garlicky spinach and buttered pistachios, and a pan-seared salmon. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was molding. Can you put eight historical events — including the building of the Great Sphinx, the first diamond rings and the invention of plastic shopping bags — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports 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. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 24 Author Members Posted March 24 March 24, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering immigrants’ constitutional rights — as well as Ukraine talks, the New York mayoral race and Wes Anderson. At a demonstration in New York City. David Dee Delgado/Reuters Immigrant silence The Trump administration has tried in recent weeks to deport several immigrants who spoke out against Israel. First, it arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who’d joined pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Officials also arrested a Georgetown University researcher with an academic visa. They deported a nephrologist at Brown University, even though she had a valid visa. Another student activist at Columbia fled to Canada after immigration officials came to her home. President Trump has said that more arrests will come — a test of the government’s ability to deport people with views that he disagrees with. How is this legal? The First Amendment, after all, protects freedom of speech in nearly absolute terms. It allows people to espouse even the most unsavory views, including support for genocide, and face no criminal penalty as a result. But Trump is taking advantage of a genuinely unsettled aspect of the law: Does the Constitution protect noncitizens’ freedom of speech? Today’s newsletter will look at the arguments. Trump’s case The Supreme Court has said that the First Amendment applies to noncitizens in the United States when it comes to criminal and civil penalties. But those protections don’t necessarily apply to deportations, the court has found. The federal government has nearly absolute power over immigration, including its ability to deport noncitizens; it gets to decide who comes and then stays in this country, potentially at the expense of constitutional rights. In 1952, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could deport immigrants for Communist Party membership without violating the First Amendment. (I experienced this firsthand: A government official asked me if I was a communist during my interview to become a U.S. citizen in the 2000s.) More specifically, administration officials cite a 1952 statute that lets the government deport immigrants, even green-card holders, for views that hamper U.S. foreign policy. The administration says that Khalil and others supported Hamas and Hezbollah, designated terrorist groups. That supposed support seems to be limited to the immigrants’ advocacy — social media posts, fliers, protests, attendance at a Hezbollah leader’s funeral. The government has not accused them of sending money or other assistance to those groups. It says that speech is enough to justify deportation. Last week, the administration leveled new accusations against Khalil. It said that he failed to disclose his membership in pro-Palestinian groups or his work for the British government when he applied for a green card. The hastily added accusations appear to be an attempt to sidestep free speech concerns about his case, my colleague Jonah Bromwich wrote. Immigrants do have due process rights, and Khalil’s case is currently going through the courts. But the administration has tried to bypass even those protections in other cases. It cited the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants without any kind of hearing in court. It claimed, but did not prove, that these migrants were members of criminal gangs supported by the Venezuelan government. The administration’s efforts to punish speech and bypass due process would be blatantly unconstitutional for a U.S. citizen. But for immigrants, the legality of the government’s actions is less certain. The opposition This approach leaves immigrants with no practical free speech rights, Nadine Strossen, former president of the A.C.L.U., told me. The First Amendment allows us to speak freely without fear of legal retribution. But if an immigrant’s political advocacy gets him deported, he does have to worry about retribution — and may choose not to speak at all. While conservatives may feel empowered now, their approach could backfire in the future. Suppose that conservative immigrants — say, Trump-supporting Venezuelans, known as MAGAzuelans — attend a Make America Great Again rally. A Democratic administration could claim that participants of the rally supported an enemy of the United States by, for example, opposing aid to Ukraine. That administration could then try to deport the immigrants for their speech. This is the slippery slope of exceptions to free speech and other constitutional rights: What counts as a violent act? What is a terrorist group? Who is an enemy of the United States? What does it mean to support them? A president can twist the answers to these questions to fit any agenda and go after people with opposing views, bypassing fundamental rights. What’s next The Supreme Court has not directly addressed the issue of immigrants’ free speech rights since the Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s. Lower courts have, but they have been divided. As the Trump administration tests the law, the Supreme Court will likely have to chime in once again. In the meantime, immigrants have reason to worry. Already, college officials have warned immigrant students that nobody can protect them. In that sense, the Trump administration’s approach is already working: It has likely persuaded immigrants to stay quiet about causes that the president disagrees with. THE LATEST NEWS War in Ukraine Russian and U.S. officials are meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss details of a limited cease-fire in Ukraine. The U.S. and Ukraine met yesterday. Vladimir Putin’s war aims haven’t shifted, but he sees economic and geopolitical benefits in humoring Trump’s push for a peace deal, Anton Troianovski writes. See what Ukrainian families of children with long-term illnesses have endured in the war. More International News Pope Francis Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Pope Francis made his first public appearance in more than a month, waving briefly from the balcony of a hospital in Rome. The hospital has discharged him. Sudan’s army now controls most of central Khartoum, a shift in the tide of the country’s civil war. A Times reporter and photographer were the first Western journalists to re-enter the ravaged capital. Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, called an early federal election for next month. The Israeli cabinet moved to dismiss the attorney general. Critics say the move is part of an effort to curb judicial independence. Israel expanded its offensive in Gaza. It has taken control of more territory and issued new evacuation orders for residents who recently returned to their homes. Protests erupted in Turkey after the authorities removed and jailed Istanbul’s mayor, a rival of the president. Trump Administration Migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in December. Paul Ratje for The New York Times Lawyers will ask a federal judge today to maintain protections against deportation for nearly 350,000 Venezuelans. The U.S. plans to send Usha Vance and senior officials to Greenland this week. The island’s prime minister called the move aggressive. At the National Institutes of Health, senior scientists fear that Trump policies could undermine research into obesity and cancer. Mayor Eric Adams’s office instructed New York officials to avoid criticizing Trump and has screened agency statements closely. Elon Musk’s DOGE took over the U.S. Institute of Peace’s building after a nearly five-hour standoff. Read what happened. Radio Martí, a U.S.-funded broadcaster, provoked Cuba’s communist government for four decades. Trump dismantled it in days. The White House is trying to recruit corporate sponsors for its Easter Egg Roll. More on Politics Republican lawmakers in Montana, frustrated with liberal judges, are considering bills that would reshape the state’s judiciary. Mia Love, the first Black Republican woman elected to Congress, died at 49. She was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022. At a Covid memorial, candidates running for New York mayor urged voters not to support Andrew Cuomo because of his pandemic response. Business The C.E.O. of Netflix, Reed Hastings, donated $50 million to his alma mater, Bowdoin College, to research artificial intelligence. It’s the college’s largest ever donation. DoorDash announced a partnership with the finance company Klarna to let customers take out loans for food deliveries. Other Big Stories Two wildfires in North Carolina more than doubled in size and raged uncontained. The authorities ordered residents to evacuate. The Delta plane that flipped over and burned after landing in Toronto last month had been descending too fast, a report found. A thief in Orlando, Fla., swallowed a nearly $800,000 pair of diamond earrings. The police got them back. Opinions Trump’s efforts to mute Voice of America, and other government-funded broadcasters overseas, strip the U.S. of an effective instrument of soft power, Serge Schmemann writes. Many gay and closeted teen boys find that waitresses at Hooters are the first people to accept them as they are, Peter Rothpletz writes. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Chuck Schumer and higher education. Here are columns by David French on Canada and Ukraine, and Margaret Renkl on the measles vaccine. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In Hawaii. Michelle Mishina Kunz for The New York Times Travel: Spend 36 hours in Hilo, Hawaii. “Don’t think, just solve”: Watch the world’s fastest Rubik’s cube solver do his thing. Vacation dreams: In Japan, timeshares are back. Work Friend: How to talk to a neurodiverse colleague. Q. and A.: A lost-pet detective has to understand both humans and animals. Ask Vanessa: “What’s going on with clothing prices?” Most clicked yesterday: Use this simple technique to fall asleep. Metropolitan Diary: Curtains for this flirtation. Lives Lived: Max Frankel fled Nazi Germany as a boy and rose to pinnacles of American journalism as a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The Times and later as its executive editor. He died at 94. SPORTS Men’s college basketball: The Sweet 16 is set after a dizzying day of basketball. See who won. M.L.B.: The former Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner announced that his 14-year-old son had died unexpectedly. Soccer: The U.S. men’s national team lost at home to Canada for the first time in decades. ARTS AND IDEAS Some memoirists’ friends. From top left: Chloe Dalton; Helen Macdonald; Catherine Raven; Frieda Hughes Writers have long described their relationships with dogs and cats in literature. In recent years, however, the pet memoir has expanded to include a number of other domesticated animals including chickens, goats, pigs, alpacas and donkeys. These stories explore what it means to connect with an untamed creature. More on culture A new exhibition explores Wes Anderson’s distinctive visual style through his movie’s props. Conan O’Brien was awarded the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center. People joked about Trump’s takeover. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. Stir-fry turmeric-black pepper chicken with asparagus. Keep your relationship fun. Use these little-known iPhone tricks. Save space with a tiny air fryer. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was celibacy. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 25 Author Members Posted March 25 March 25, 2025 Good morning. Today, The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, explains the latest on the fighting in Gaza. We’re also covering the group chat leak, 23andMe and female clowns. In Gaza City, on Saturday. Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press Gaza war, again By Patrick Kingsley I’m the Jerusalem bureau chief. Last week, the Israeli Air Force restarted intense strikes on the Gaza Strip, ending a two-month cease-fire that some had hoped would evolve into a more stable truce. Israeli troops have slowly begun to recapture ground just inside Gaza’s borders. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the cease-fire collapsed and what might happen next. Why has fighting restarted? It’s mainly because Israel and Hamas have incompatible visions of how this war ends. Israel wants Hamas to relinquish power, and Hamas wants to retain control of Gaza. The sides were able to gloss over that fundamental difference in January, when they agreed to a weekslong truce in which Hamas released more than 30 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. But by March, Hamas wouldn’t release more hostages until Israel upheld its earlier pledge to hold talks over a permanent truce. Israel refused. To break the deadlock, Israel broke the cease-fire — seemingly with President Trump’s blessing. In early March, Trump warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” if more hostages weren’t freed. After his call went unheeded, the Israeli strikes began. Officials say the military is focused on killing senior Hamas administrators who were not previously viewed as high-priority targets, signaling to Hamas that Israel will not allow the group to retain control of Gaza. On the first night of strikes, for example, Israel killed Essam Daalis, who was considered Gaza’s de facto prime minister. If Hamas still won’t back down, Israel is planning a major invasion of large areas that it relinquished earlier in the war. The reaction Palestinians are uniformly horrified at the new bloodshed, which has brought the overall death toll in the territory to more than 50,000, according to the Gazan health ministry. Many Palestinians had only just returned to their homes after months of displacement and now have been forced to flee once more. In Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Israeli public’s response has been mixed. Some on the Israeli right have cheered the war’s resumption. They see it as another chance to occupy Gaza and defeat Hamas. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right lawmaker who quit the government in protest over the earlier cease-fire, quickly rejoined the ruling coalition, praising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reviving the war. Other Israelis were shocked. Hamas still holds roughly 60 Israelis, some of whom are dead, and the renewed fighting places their lives at greater risk. Netanyahu’s reprieve In the short term, hostilities help the prime minister. Ben-Gvir’s return shores up the government’s ranks in Parliament before a vital vote on a new national budget. If the budget doesn’t pass, the government will collapse, forcing a snap election. The long-term effect is less clear. To his critics, Netanyahu is increasingly acting in his own interest rather than in the national one — returning to war against the wishes of the hostages’ families, for instance. He has also attempted to expand his power by firing Israel’s domestic intelligence chief and its attorney general. Both are powerful gatekeepers. They oversee investigations into Netanyahu and his aides. The moves to consolidate power will likely prompt widespread protests, strikes and business shutdowns if he proceeds further. What chance for calm? For now, a renewed truce is unlikely. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Mideast envoy, has proposed that Hamas release several more hostages in exchange for several weeks of calm. But Hamas says it won’t free anyone unless Israel starts talks about an end to the war. And Israel has drawn up plans to re-invade large parts of Gaza if Hamas refuses to back down. Analysts reckon that the Trump administration could force Netanyahu back to the negotiating table, just as Witkoff did in January to secure the cease-fire deal. In recent days, Witkoff worried about the hostages, saying in an interview with Tucker Carlson that Netanyahu’s revival of the war “goes up against public opinion, mostly because public opinion there wants those hostages home.” But ultimately Witkoff appeared to back Netanyahu’s strategy. “Our policy is that Hamas cannot continue to exist here,” he said. “That’s the president’s policy.” More coverage The U.N. plans to withdraw about a third of its international workers from Gaza. Israel has repeatedly struck its facilities. Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacked the Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” and Israeli authorities detained him, witnesses said. THE LATEST NEWS Yemen Group Chat Pete Hegseth Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted plans for military strikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat with U.S. officials that also inadvertently included the top editor of The Atlantic. The editor said that Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, had added him to the chat by mistake days earlier. Until the strikes, he suspected it to be a hoax. The texts were an extraordinary breach of national security, experts said. Defense Department officials suggested that posting such sensitive information in a commercial app might violate the Espionage Act. The White House said the text messages appeared to be authentic. Hegseth denied the story, saying, “Nobody was texting war plans.” Read an account of the affair by the Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg. Immigration The Justice Department said it would not give a federal judge details about two flights that deported Venezuelan immigrants. A junior at Columbia University, who is a legal permanent U.S. resident, sued the Trump administration over its effort to deport her because she joined pro-Palestinian protests. The 1952 law that the Trump administration using as a basis to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Columbia protests, was once ruled unconstitutional — by Trump’s sister. Health Trump nominated Susan Monarez, the acting director of the C.D.C., to lead the agency permanently. Monarez is an infectious disease researcher who endorsed the Covid vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s approach to measles horrifies public health leaders. But government and industry are responding to many of his other ideas, like improving infant formula and removing artificial dyes from food. West Virginia banned foods containing most artificial food dyes and two preservatives, citing health risks. More on the Trump Administration The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling from a federal judge in California that ordered the government to rehire thousands of workers. Teachers’ unions, the N.A.A.C.P. and other groups filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s order to dismantle the Education Department. Trump has long complained that he is yet to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As he presses for cease-fires in Ukraine and the Middle East, he keeps talking about the prize. Trump claimed a painting of him in Colorado’s capitol was distorted. It will be taken down, The A.P. reports. See the portrait. More on Politics A majority of the Supreme Court seems inclined to allow Louisiana to keep a congressional map with two majority-Black districts. That could help Democrats regain control of the House. A liberal candidate in next week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election raised $24 million, a record in a judicial contest. Swelling crowds of devotees in merch gather to hear new versions of old hits. It’s not a Grateful Dead show — it’s the Bernie Sanders tour. International Outside a U.S. consulate in Greenland. Christian Klindt Soelbeck/Ritzau Scanpix Foto, via Associated Press For more than century, U.S. officials have been trying, as Trump puts it, to “get” Greenland. But Trump seems to have overplayed his hand big time, Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli write. Engineers built a huge steel shell in Chernobyl, intended to enclose the nuclear disaster site for a century. Last month, a cheap drone punched a hole in the structure. The U.S. has lifted multimillion-dollar bounties on three senior Taliban officials. Business Tech companies — including Meta, Google and OpenAI — have asked the Trump administration to let them train their A.I. models on copyrighted material. United Airlines is raising prices and cutting amenities at its airport lounges, which have grown more popular and crowded in recent years. 23andMe, the genetic testing company, filed for bankruptcy. The company has struggled since hackers gained access to customer information in 2023. The unemployment rate for white-collar workers has risen faster than for other workers over the past few years. Has the decline of knowledge work begun? Other Big Stories The justice system in Maverick County, Texas, is broken: Poor defendants rarely get lawyers, and people wait in jail for months without being charged. The F.D.A. approved a lab-grown blood vessel despite a warning about potentially fatal ruptures. Opinions The New York Times Scientists grow human embryos for research. Debates about abortion should clarify how long those embryos are allowed to develop, Anna Louie Sussman writes. Law firms that surrender to Trump’s attacks only help the U.S. slide into authoritarianism. They should fight, Deborah Pearlstein writes. Here’s a column by Thomas Edsall on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Angelina Jolie, center, with chefs and artists. Clement Pascal for The New York Times Angelina Jolie: The actress wants to pick up where Warhol left off and build a community of artists and thinkers in downtown Manhattan. A lot of beige: In London, restaurants that serve classic English food are experiencing a resurgence. Health: Puzzles, word games, reading, needlepoint — here’s what experts say about what may keep your brain sharp. Most clicked yesterday: See 18 things you didn’t know your iPhone could do. Lives Lived: Fred Eversley, a sculptor with an engineering background, used a technique traced to Isaac Newton to make otherworldly discs of tinted resin. He died at 83. SPORTS Tennis: Magda Linette of Poland upset Coco Gauff in the Miami Open round of 16, a match that highlighted the American’s recent serve struggles. Women’s N.C.A.A. Tournament: The U.S.C. star JuJu Watkins suffered a season-ending knee injury in a blowout win over Mississippi State. College football: Two former Michigan athletes filed a class-action lawsuit against the university over allegations that a former offensive coordinator hacked their accounts to access intimate photos. ARTS AND IDEAS Clowns in London. Will Sanders For centuries, clowns have mostly been men. A new generation of performers is trying to change that. They often use their work to explore womanhood. For example, Julia Masli, a clown in London, asks audience members to share their problems, and then offers advice both genuine and absurd. More on culture An 1870 watercolor. New York State Museum, Albany, N.Y. Mary Elizabeth Banning’s beautiful watercolors of mushrooms sat in a drawer for almost a century. Now, they’re the stars of a museum exhibition. Jon Stewart joked about the Yemen leak. “By the way, I might be in this group chat, I don’t know. I don’t check my group chats,” he said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Kate Sears for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff. Swirl chile crisp and spinach into fettuccine Alfredo for a 25-minute dinner. Tote one of these bags to the beach. Get around on an electric scooter. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was billboard. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 26 Author Members Posted March 26 March 26, 2025 Good morning. Today you’ll hear from our colleague Alex Travelli, who reported from Bengaluru about what American companies are doing in India. We’re also covering the group chat fallout, protests in Gaza and a Greenland reading list. At the Pure Storage office in Bengaluru, India. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times India’s hiring binge By Alex Travelli I cover business and economics in South Asia. The biggest companies in the United States are on a hiring spree in India. They are building hundreds of overseas office parks. These aren’t call centers — they’re offices for Indian professionals employed by global companies to perform advanced tasks that, not long ago, Americans would have carried out. There are already 1,800 of these centers, and the rate of growth is doubling. They will soon employ two million Indians. President Trump wants to restore American manufacturing. He is preparing to impose tariffs on India, a move that he says will bring jobs back and close a $46 billion trade deficit. But tariffs reduce trade by making goods more expensive; they don’t affect services or offshoring, the practice of hiring workers overseas. Visa restrictions are equally irrelevant. The roles at these new centers are not for immigrants. They’re for people who want to stay in India and work for American companies. Today’s newsletter is about a new kind of offshore office park. Here, Indian workers are doing the kind of jobs that American workers envy — for American companies. We’ll cover the firms that are building them and the professionals who now staff them. Office space, then and now Workers in Bengaluru. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times In the 1990s, banks and big tech companies realized they could send jobs to India, where wages are just a fraction of those paid in the United States. Many of these were positions Americans didn’t want to fill. Sweaty youngsters piled into rooms in the middle of the night to help American customers rebook their flights or learn whether warranties had expired. Now the roles are more advanced, and the people holding them often have graduate degrees. Workers are analyzing medical scans, writing marketing pitches, balancing budgets and designing state-of-the-art microchips — the kind of work that used to put Americans in the top tax brackets. It’s not just happening here. Japanese and British firms have set up offices in places like Mexico and Poland. But most of the multinationals are American, and most of these new centers are in India. Why white-collar jobs move America is reducing immigration, and its working-age population is shrinking. It’s harder than ever for companies to hire skilled workers. But the talent pool is nearly bottomless in India, which churns out roughly 10 times as many engineering degrees as the United States every year. So all kinds of companies are converging on six English-speaking cities in India. They include huge firms like Cisco and Target, which has a Bengaluru campus roughly the size of its Minneapolis headquarters. Bank of America is in Chennai. Hundreds of smaller companies have rushed in elsewhere, too. A third of the companies in the Fortune 500 have centers like these across the country, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in India. Workers there are managing publicity for new cellphone companies, developing apps, writing programs to detect fraud and, of course, hiring more employees for the same centers. I met one sight-impaired employee who was designing an interface that blind Americans will use to weigh and stamp packages. The pandemic sped up this transition because remote work made national borders irrelevant. Paroma Chatterjee, the country’s chief executive of Revolut, an online banking company that started in Britain, said that Covid had showed the fallacy of tethering a job to a place. In 2021, when Chatterjee and her colleagues at Revolut hired their first seven people in India, they couldn’t believe how adroit the newbies were. Same with the next seven. New hires were excelling in finance, marketing, engineering and even H.R. “Why shouldn’t we get this quality of talent, in India, to help us build out products for the rest of our various markets across the world?” she said her colleagues wondered. The employees are ambitious, and they want to climb the ranks at American-based companies. They devise business plans and make decisions that affect operations around the world. The greatest difficulty, workers told me, is the time zone: It’s a pain to coordinate Zoom calls when California is twelve and a half hours behind India. What happens next Trump may one day retaliate against American companies hiring service workers abroad. Some firms won’t brag about it for fear of inviting a backlash. But it’s unclear what could disrupt them: All of Trump’s levies so far focus on imports and don’t touch this part of the economy. Maybe Trump won’t notice. These high-wage, education-intensive positions aren’t the manufacturing jobs he promised to bring back. Related: I spoke to many of these workers and their bosses for a story The Times published this morning. THE LATEST NEWS Group Chat Fallout At the White House. Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump said yesterday that no classified information had appeared in a military planning group chat that had inadvertently included the editor in chief of The Atlantic. Former national security officials said they were skeptical of Trump’s claim, considering the life-or-death nature of the operation, which involved airstrikes on rebels in Yemen. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, had added the journalist to the chat. But Trump absolved Waltz of blame and instead smeared the journalist as a “sleazebag.” At a Senate hearing, the administration’s spy chiefs — Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe — shrugged off the seriousness of the security lapse. Democrats have called for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to resign. Hegseth’s first few months at the Pentagon have been rocky. See annotated messages from the group chat, a list of officials in the chat and a guide to everything else you need to know. The Daily interviewed the Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg. Listen here. Immigration An appeals court allowed the U.S. to pause admission of new refugees, but it also ordered the government to admit thousands of people granted refugee status before January. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop attempts to deport a Columbia student and legal permanent resident who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Foreign visitors are worried about feeling unsafe in America. Some are rethinking their travel or work plans. More on the Trump Administration Vice President JD Vance said he would join his wife, Usha, and other Trump officials on their trip to Greenland this week. The Senate confirmed Martin Makary to the lead the F.D.A., and Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health. Both are critics of the medical establishment. Trump targeted another law firm, Jenner & Block, with an executive order. The firm had hired a lawyer who worked on Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. The president also signed an order that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections. Trump pardoned Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who testified in Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family. Archer had been convicted in a fraud case. The Trump administration barred 80 more firms, mostly from China, from buying American technology because of national security concerns. War in Ukraine Ukraine and Russia agreed to stop fighting in the Black Sea, the White House said, though some details are unsettled. American intelligence agencies said in a report that Russia remained a potential threat to the U.S. More International News A rally in northern Gaza. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Palestinians in Gaza, in a rare show of public dissent, protested against Hamas. “We’ve had enough of the war, destruction and killing,” one demonstrator said. Wildfires in South Korea have killed at least 24 people and destroyed buildings, including two ancient Buddhist temples. Sudan’s military bombed a crowded market, killing at least 54 people, according to local monitoring groups, which said the attack was most likely a war crime. Other Big Stories The cost of eggs is hurting mom-and-pop restaurants. Four eateries shared their monthly egg budget. U.S. consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in four years. Americans appear anxious about what Trump’s policies mean for their finances. Some House Democrats have called their party spineless. They said they wanted to try a populist economic pitch to voters. Opinions Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi gave up their positions to clear the way for new leadership in Congress. Chuck Schumer should follow their example, Mariel Garza argues. Young liberal voters haven’t shifted to the right. Many simply didn’t turn out in November because they didn’t agree with Kamala Harris’s views, Neil Gross writes. Here is a column by Thomas Friedman on the future of A.I. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In the Solomon Islands. Matthew Abbott for The New York Times Solomon Islands: Residents are hunting dolphins to make enough money to move off an island sinking in rising seas. Spring break: New York’s elite high schoolers go to a luxury resort in the Bahamas to sunbathe, network and (legally) drink. Most clicked yesterday: For the second day in a row, the most popular link was 18 things you didn’t know your iPhone could do. Lives Lived: The federal judge Michael Boudin forged an independent path on the bench, though his rulings may have rankled his famously left-leaning family. He died at 85. SPORTS Track and field: The sport’s governing body will introduce mandatory DNA sex testing for athletes entering female competitions. N.F.L.: The New York Giants signed Russell Wilson to be their starting quarterback this season, just a week after agreeing to terms with Jameis Winston. N.B.A.: Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart both recorded triple-doubles for the New York Knicks in the team’s win over the Mavericks. ARTS AND IDEAS In Nuuk, Greenland. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times We at The Morning can’t stop reading about Greenland. Trump says he wants to buy it from Denmark. The Vances will travel there Friday. The Times has spent years covering the territory. Here are some of our favorite stories. Travel: Here’s what you should do on a trip to Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. Q. and A.: A geologist discusses Greenland’s ancient past. Lens: These photos show life in a remote northern settlement of 250 people. Television: The fourth season of the Danish series “Borgen” focuses on a geopolitical crisis brewing in Greenland. Soccer: Greenland crowns its national champion in the shortest season on earth, a single week of matches, injuries and controversies. See the games at the edge of the world. Trailblazers: Erik the Red settled the island in the 10th century. Researchers theorize that crystals called sunstones aided Viking navigation in heavy clouds or fog. Archives: In 1979, Greenlanders voted on home rule, which removed control of their daily affairs from the Danish Parliament. The Times was there to report on it. More on culture Karis Dadson Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times Millions of people online have watched videos of a California teenager’s steely gaze. She shows pigs at livestock competitions. “Signal might be a good app for you and me and our local drug dealer, but it’s not for the Pentagon to plan wars on,” Ronny Chieng of “The Daily Show” said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Ghazalle Badiozamani for The New York Times Prepare protein-rich cottage cheese egg bites for busy mornings. Read these books to heal from trauma. Pack your toiletries better. Improve your laundry skills. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were triviality, trivially and virality. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 29 Author Members Posted March 29 March 28, 2025 Good morning. Today you’ll hear from Miriam Jordan, an immigration correspondent who has picked up on a surprising trend. We’re also covering tariffs, an interview with the pope’s doctor and new details about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life. Jesús, 25, arrived last year from Venezuela. Jimena Peck for The New York Times The self-deporters By Miriam Jordan I cover immigration. It is incredibly hard to deport 14 million people — the estimated number of immigrants in the United States unlawfully. First, the government has to find them. For many, it has to pry them from their lives, their jobs, their communities. That’s why the Trump administration has deported only a few thousand migrants so far, focusing mostly on those it says are criminals. To make a real change, as Trump has promised to do, millions of people would need to leave voluntarily. So the administration is urging them — in some cases, trying to scare them enough — to “self-deport.” The Homeland Security secretary tells them in TV ads to “leave now” or be hunted down. Those who comply “may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream.” (This is unlikely, because anyone who has been in the country illegally for a year is ineligible to return for a decade.) Self-deportation, a longtime fantasy for immigration hawks, was popularized by Mitt Romney in a 2012 presidential debate and often mocked. But for the first time in my 15 years of reporting on this topic, immigrants tell me they’re considering it. Some have already followed through. If the climate here becomes intolerable — if the risks of being caught and severed from their families seem too high — it’s possible many more migrants will abandon the United States. Today’s newsletter is about what I’ve heard in my reporting. Who wants to go Migrants in Denver, Colo., in 2023. Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post, via Getty Images In recent years, Denver has absorbed 40,000 migrants — the most per capita of any city. Most of the newcomers are Venezuelans who fled their broken country. But the city is also home to many Latino immigrants who came long ago. I visited last week to take their temperature. Most are not inclined to bolt. Two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the country for a decade or longer. Most pay taxes. They’re people like Mirna, a Mexican who crossed the border 28 years ago. Her husband owns a house-painting business. They bought a mobile home and have three American children, including a daughter serving in the Navy. Mirna, who speaks English fluently, told me she wouldn’t go back to Mexico because it would mean leaving her kids. But recent border crossers are much more likely to consider departing. I interviewed several young men from Venezuela who are among them. They see footage of shackled migrants shuffled onto deportation planes. They watch the videos of more than 200 Venezuelan men, accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation, being flown to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Reporting suggests that some of them may not have been gang members. Rather than risk subjecting themselves to that ordeal, they want to leave on their own terms. Since arriving in Denver in 2023, Cristian, 29, has delivered meals and worked on construction sites. (Like other migrants I interviewed, he worried that immigration agents would find him and spoke on the condition that I identify him only by his given name.) He sends money to his wife and children in Venezuela. Cristian does not have any tattoos, a customary gang indicator, he said. He possesses a work permit and an active asylum application, which theoretically protects him from imminent deportation. But the enforcement climate since Trump took office has changed Cristian’s calculus “360 degrees,” he told me. With the help of an American friend who escorted him to several immigration offices, he made an appointment to appear before a judge today so he could request a voluntary departure from the United States. (Immigrants who receive formal permission to leave have an easier time returning later.) Other Venezuelans contemplating an exit were released into the United States by border officials with orders to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement every few months. Recently, officials have detained and deported people when they’ve shown up for their check-ins. ICE agents and the local authorities detain a person in Denver. Chet Strange for The New York Times Jesús, 25, has his next ICE appointment in early May and sees the writing on the wall. After arriving last year, he languished for months in detention until officials turned him loose, probably to make room for others. He found work remodeling homes in Denver. Now he’d rather return voluntarily to Venezuela than be confined again. “I came here to work to help my family,” said Jesús, the sole brother to five sisters. “I just hope to manage to leave before they deport me.” He has enough money to buy an airline ticket. But, like others, he told me that the U.S. authorities had confiscated his passport. How can he board a plane without it? American women in Denver formed groups in late 2023 to help recent arrivals from Venezuela. But more recently they also share tips about how to leave because the bureaucracy can be hard to navigate. A mother with a U.S.-born child needs to get a passport for her child, for instance. But his father, who needs to sign forms, has been deported. The local volunteers have researched what happens if migrants leave without an ID — and whether it’s safer to depart by air or over land. The departures are not exclusive to Denver. A family in Chicago recently left for Mexico, according to their lawyer. People have abandoned Springfield, Ohio — the town where Trump claimed Haitians were eating their pets — employers there told me. Others are contemplating leaving from elsewhere, like Houston. The right moment For now, most migrants are staying put. They’ve trekked through jungles and cartel territory to get here. Instead of giving up, they limit their outings and keep a low profile. What could change their minds? The job market, several told me. A crackdown on U.S. businesses that employed undocumented workers would drive many into the shadows and others back home. A recession would have the same effect. Wayne Cornelius, an immigration scholar at the University of California, San Diego, has found that bleak job prospects are most likely to impel undocumented immigrants to leave. Take Karla and Ender, a Venezuelan couple with four children. They worry about immigration enforcement. But they have plenty of work, and their family is thriving in Colorado. Since arriving in late 2023, they have relocated from a rundown apartment complex, acquired two cars and bought their kids cellphones. “You can barely make enough money to feed your family in Venezuela,” Karla said. “We live much better here.” Ender added, “We’ll leave once we have accomplished our goals, maybe in two years.” More on immigration Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had revoked the visa of a Tufts University graduate student because of her support of Palestinians. Rubio said the State Department is revoking visas daily, and he estimated that more than 300 people’s visa might have been revoked already. Teams of masked agents in masks have approached foreign students, zip-tied them and bundled them into unmarked vehicles. These tactics are usually reserved for criminal suspects. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Administration A federal judge ordered several Trump administration officials to preserve the messages from the Signal group chat planning attacks in Yemen. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested there probably would not be a criminal investigation into the Yemen chat. The Health and Human Services Department plans to lay off 10,000 employees. The cuts will be especially deep at the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. Trump asked Elise Stefanik to stay in Congress rather than serve as U.N. ambassador, amid concern about the slim voting margin that Republicans hold in the House. The Trump administration challenged a California law that says schools can’t be required to tell parents when students ask to use different pronouns. Auto Tariffs An all-electric Porsche in Leipzig, Germany. Jens Schlueter/Getty Images Shares in automakers around the world, including many in Germany, Japan and Korea, fell after Trump announced tariffs on imported cars and car parts. Shares in Tesla — which makes all the cars that it sells domestically in the U.S. — rose almost 3 percent. Trump’s tariffs are likely to encourage more domestic car production in the long run, economists say. But in the short term, they will probably hurt the economy. Experts say the tariffs will raise the average price of a car by thousands of dollars. Higher Education The University of Michigan will eliminate its central D.E.I. program, one of the largest at a major public school. (The Times published an investigation into the program last year.) When protests roiled Columbia, the school closed its campus to the public. New Yorkers say they lost a treasured public space. International Dr. Sergio Alfieri Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters In an interview, the leader of Pope Francis’s medical team said the pope came close to death in the hospital and said it was a “miracle.” A strong earthquake struck central Myanmar, killing at least 13 people. Follow our latest updates here. The BBC said Turkey had deported a correspondent who was covering the antigovernment protests in Istanbul. Read what the protests mean for Turkey. South Sudan’s defense minister put the country’s vice president under house arrest, his party said. The U.N. has warned that the detention is pushing the country back into civil war. King Charles was briefly hospitalized from the side effects of his cancer treatment. Other Big Stories Archaeologists have unearthed the tomb of an unknown pharaoh in Egypt. Researchers say it probably belonged to a line of kings that, until recently, had been lost to history. Companies that once helped fund Pride Month celebrations are cutting their support. Organizers blame Trump’s crusade against D.E.I. The amount of sea ice on the planet reached the lowest level ever recorded in March. Opinions Hillary Clinton writes that the most distressing part of the Trump administration’s group chat blunder isn’t the hypocrisy; it’s the stupidity. No one in Turkey is safe from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s erosion of democracy. To save the country, citizens should refuse to be silent, Ekrem Imamoglu, the imprisoned mayor of Istanbul, writes. To differentiate the plural “they” from the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” let’s capitalize the latter, John McWhorter writes. Here are columns by David Brooks on passions and Lydia Polgreen on migration in Sweden. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Budapest Akos Stiller for The New York Times Travel: Spend 36 hours in Budapest. A visit from God: People in Japan have chronicled what they considered a sign from God on a lake for nearly 600 years. It has disappeared. Fashion weeks: See good hair from outside the shows. Fly safer: Airlines allow you to carry a toddler in your lap. Experts say that’s not a good idea. Most clicked yesterday: How to stay mentally sharp in retirement. Lives Lived: Herb Greene was in the right place at the right time to document a seismic change in music: San Francisco in the 1960s. His portraits of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and others provided a visual record of the city’s thriving rock scene. He has died at 82. SPORTS Men’s N.C.A.A. Tournament: Texas Tech narrowly beat Arkansas in overtime of a thrilling game. Duke, Florida and Alabama also advanced to the Elite Eight. M.L.B. Opening Day: Orioles outfielder Tyler O’Neill hit a home run on Opening Day for the sixth straight year. N.B.A.: Commissioner Adam Silver pitched the league’s 30 owners an idea for an N.B.A.-owned league in Europe, which could start as early as next year. ARTS AND IDEAS F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda in 1921. Minnesota Historical Society/Corbis, via Getty Images One ill-fated night in December 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald got into a drunken brawl in Rome that ended in a police station. He described it as “the rottenest thing that ever happened in my life,” an event so traumatic that his biographers say he could not bear to discuss it. He did write about it, though, fictionalizing the event twice, including in his 1934 novel “Tender is the Night.” Scholars took these accounts of the scuffle as an accurate record. But newly uncovered documents suggest Fitzgerald may have behaved even worse than his stories depicted. More on culture The Sundance Film Festival is moving to Boulder, Colo. The event has outgrown Park City, Utah, its home for the past 40 years. The Atlantic picked the best poetry of the century so far. The University of Maryland will welcome Kermit the Frog as its commencement speaker in May. Is Melania Trump’s 2005 Dior couture wedding gown really available for resale? Or is this a hoax? Late night hosts are still joking about the Signal group chat. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times Make this viral, crunchy Dubai Chocolate bar at home. Lower your grocery bill. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were coupled, decouple and decoupled. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misstated the timing of the government group chat about strikes on Yemen. It happened earlier this month, not this week. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 30 Author Members Posted March 30 March 29, 2025 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Icebreakers are corny, corporate get-to-know-you exercises. But there’s something thrilling in dispensing with small talk and just asking the interesting questions. María Jesús Contreras Breaking through In a meeting at work last week, my colleague told the story of how she recently took her son, age 17, to his first concert, Kim Deal at the Brooklyn Paramount. She was so excited to blow his mind, to introduce him to the magic of live music that she’d discovered at 15 when she first went to a rock show herself. How cool, I thought, imagining her son, forevermore when asked “What was the first band you saw live?” getting to answer that he went with his mom to see a rock icon like Deal, bassist and frontwoman of the indisputably hip bands the Pixies and the Breeders. This occasioned everyone at the meeting revealing the first band they saw in concert. Perhaps more than any other bit of personal trivia, I find this one fascinating. You learn about their teenage tastes in music. If their parents took them, you learn something about their childhoods. (“Oh, he had the kind of parents who took their 6-year-old to see Steely Dan!”) My colleagues’ first concerts were impressive: Duran Duran, R.E.M. on the “Monster” tour. Mine was the English rock band Squeeze, age 15, third row, Madison Square Garden. And people love to tell you about their first concerts. It’s a jewel box of a question, an invitation to reveal something unique about themselves , to tell a well-practiced personal story. They get to convey as much or as little about your taste as you feel comfortable with — “See, I’ve always been cool” or “God, look what a dork I was.” It’s the perfect specimen of that most reviled form of corporate get-to-know-you activity: the icebreaker. I have, over the past few days, conducted an unscientific but wholly convincing study of my friends’ feelings about icebreakers. They all, to a person, hate them. I get it. On their face, team-building exercises of any sort should be treated with suspicion. Icebreakers are meant to loosen people up. How loose, one might wonder wisely, is it ever appropriate to get at work? We’re going around the table stating our favorite breakfast cereals, innocuous enough, but I’m not sure I want to reveal anything more intimate than that to the entire marketing department. But, as cheesy as they can be in a work context (is there anything more humiliating than trying to conjure “a fun fact about yourself”?), I will defend a good icebreaker as a delightful shortcut to a measured intimacy. In a past job where I ran a weekly staff meeting, I began each meeting with an icebreaker. A good portion of my team was remote, before remote work was normal, and it seemed impossible that we were going to get comfortable with one another without some kind of corny intervention. I may be deluding myself, but once the team members got to know one another a little, the icebreakers became a fun parlor game, a way to get closer, to remind ourselves that we were interesting, dynamic human beings even in the matrix of the workplace. Looking back at my icebreakers from those weekly meetings, I see in my notes questions I have no idea how the people closest to me would answer, and I’m tempted to ask them. Some of these questions I devised myself, some came from the writer Rob Walkers’s newsletter “The Art of Noticing,” some came from the team. “What’s the first thing you bought with your own money?” “What were you doing at 23?” “What’s something you’re great at but hate doing?” “What are the most common things people say when you tell them your hometown?” It might feel awkward or artificial to pose these questions in the middle of a regular conversation, but it might be fun to deliberately ask an icebreaker of your family at dinner, or a group of friends about whom you think you know everything, or your spouse. For those of us who understand the utility of small talk but deplore the slow, inefficient on-ramp of get-to-know-you questions — where are you from, what do you do, any siblings? — icebreakers do just what they claim to. You can wait for the ice to melt, or you can just smash it with a question that gets at something actually a little interesting, a little revealing. And you don’t have to call them icebreakers. Outside of a corporate framework, icebreakers are just manifestations of curiosity. What do you really want to know about the person you’re talking to? Why not just ask them? THE LATEST NEWS Politics President Trump on Friday. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Federal judges blocked President Trump’s executive orders targeting two major law firms that participated in investigations of him. Another firm agreed to do $100 million in pro bono work on issues Trump supports. Vice President JD Vance and a cohort of officials took a brief trip to Greenland. The reception was as chilly as the weather, David Sanger writes. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a rarely invoked wartime law to deport Venezuelans with little or no due process. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Trump pardoned Trevor Milton, an electric truck maker convicted of fraud. And he commuted the fraud sentence of Carlos Watson, a digital media founder. A federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Voice of America, the government-funded international broadcaster. Health The F.D.A.’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, resigned and said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on vaccines posed a danger to the public. Utah became the first state to ban fluoride in public drinking water. Kennedy has called for fluoride to be removed from water nationwide. Kennedy said that states could bar people from using federal food assistance to pay for soft drinks. Other Big Stories The death toll from the powerful earthquake in Myanmar has surpassed 1,000, the country’s military government said. The U.S. Geological Survey suggested that the toll could be far higher. A jury convicted Charlie Javice, founder of a student aid start-up, of defrauding JPMorgan of $175 million. The S&P 500 index dipped as investors weighed new and hotter-than-expected inflation data and braced for more tariffs. Israel launched airstrikes near Beirut, after rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanese territory. Both Israel and Hezbollah said they were still committed to upholding a cease-fire that took effect last year. Rescue crews are working frantically to extract a U.S. Army vehicle carrying four American soldiers that disappeared in a waterlogged forest in Lithuania. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Evan Goldberg, left, and Seth Rogen. Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times In “The Studio,” Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg — creative partners since childhood — poke fun at the Hollywood system that raised them. “Death of a Unicorn,” about a father (Paul Rudd) and daughter (Jenna Ortega) who run down a mythical beast, is wall-to-wall goofs, our critic writes. The Netflix series “Adolescence” has prompted debate in Britain about children’s smartphone use. Disney’s live-action remake of “Snow White” opened to paltry box office numbers. ChatGPT’s image creator has gotten good at imitating the style of Studio Ghibli, the beloved Japanese animation house. The internet is now flooded with Ghibli-fied memes. Music Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. Thea Traff for The New York Times Justin Vernon’s early success with Bon Iver left him drained. His next album — “Sable, Fable” — is a moment of reinvention. Listen to his conversation with the hosts of Popcast. Boost your mood this weekend with these new up-tempo songs, recommended by the Times’s pop music editor. More Culture President Trump is trying to change the way Smithsonian Institution depicts American history. Its museums and libraries, he says, should emphasize “American greatness.” “The Great Gatsby” turns 100 this year. The Times critic A.O. Scott explores the way it’s shaped our pop culture. The Museum of Modern Art in New York announced that its next director will be Christophe Cherix, a veteran curator who led its drawings and prints department. L.J. Smith, the author of the “Vampire Diaries” book series that became a popular TV show, died at 66. Trump wants to pare back or eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent agency. Library supporters are rallying to its defense. Jenifer Ringer, the celebrated New York City Ballet principal, is back at the School of American Ballet in a new role: teacher and guiding light. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR 🎬 “A Minecraft Movie” (Friday): This movie will have references — to things like water buckets, Creepers and Ender pearls — that go over your head. But they’ll delight the kids in your moviegoing party. Hopefully the high jinks of Jack Black and Jason Momoa bumbling through a video game realm prove entertaining enough that even the newbies can enjoy their time in the Overworld. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Yossy Arefi for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Earl Grey Tea Cake For a not-too-sweet dessert that will keep well into the week, there’s Samantha Seneviratne’s moist and tender Earl Grey tea cake with dark chocolate and orange zest. Its subtle floral-citrus scent comes from loose tea leaves stirred into the buttery cake batter, which is also liberally speckled with chopped dark chocolate. Serve thick wedges after dinner or for a midafternoon snack, preferably accompanied by a pot of Earl Grey tea. REAL ESTATE Donn and Alexandra Calder Jennifer Chase for The New York Times The Hunt: A couple with a $350,000 budget searched for a home on the sea. Which boat did they choose? Play our game. At home with: See inside the spacious Potomac, Md., home of a film producer couple. What you get for $55,000: A 1912 Queen Anne Revival house in Harpers Ferry, W.V.; a condo in an 1840 house in Charleston, S.C.; or a shingled house in New Bedford, Mass. Mortgages: Trump administration officials are ramping up talks of privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is what it will mean for home buyers. T MAGAZINE Mikael Olsson Click the image above to read this weekend’s edition of T, The New York Times Style Magazine. LIVING Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times Art of craft: Nails are the canvas for her mind-boggling creations. Manhattan: T.J. Byrnes, a no-frills Irish pub in the Financial District, has started attracting the young and hip. Digital art, IRL: Qualeasha Wood incorporates distorted self-portraits and internet memes into her tapestries. Lexicon: The Oxford English Dictionary added 42 new words borrowed from other languages, including “gigil,” a Tagalog expression for witnessing something adorable. Achy knees? This exercise can help. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER How to become a birder without going birding If you feel called to bask in the springtime delight that is bird-watching, but don’t have the time to camp out and patiently spy, consider setting up a smart bird feeder. Our favorites look just like regular feeders, but they come equipped with cameras that capture high-quality, up-close shots of avian visitors. They’ll send you smartphone alerts when birds come by, and even record videos or photos of their escapades — perfect for sparking some joy in your group chats. Also: We’ve spotted deals on both of our top-pick feeders as part of this weekend’s spring sales. — Brittney Ho GAME OF THE WEEK Agnes Emma-Nnopu of TCU, left, and Hannah Hidalgo of Notre Dame. AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, Michael Reaves/Getty Images Notre Dame vs. TCU, women’s N.C.A.A. tournament: Notre Dame’s past three seasons have ended in the Sweet Sixteen round. Can it avoid the same fate this year? The Irish defense has been great, thanks in large part to Hannah Hidalgo, the ACC’s defensive player of the year. But TCU’s offense can be tough to stop when Hailey Van Lith gets her pick-and-roll game going with Sedona Prince. Today at 1 p.m. Eastern on ESPN NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were headphone and openhanded. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 30 Author Members Posted March 30 March 30, 2025 Good morning. Today, Rory Evans of Wirecutter offers advice for taking better care of your skin. We’re also covering an earthquake in Myanmar, the war in Ukraine and renting chickens. Michael Hession/NYT Wirecutter Simple beauty By Rory Evans I cover beauty and skin care products at Wirecutter. The beauty industry has always preyed upon our insecurities: Try this lotion or potion to look (and thus be!) happier, healthier, prettier, younger. Savvy marketers use that vanity to convince us that we need products uniquely formulated for cold weather, warm weather, crow’s feet, undereye areas, lips, necks, scalps — and yes, even derrières. As a result, there have never been more skin care products out there. My family’s crowded bathroom counter is evidence of this, and my 15-year-old daughter is its driving force. Like many of her peers, she has developed a seemingly limitless appetite for all manner of beauty products. In fact, thanks to Gens Z and Alpha, global beauty sales are expected to reach $590 billion in 2028 (up from $466 billion in 2023). But, it turns out, a basic routine still reigns supreme. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what Wirecutter’s beauty team learned about skin care from months of research, testing and interviews with dermatologists. And I’ll share a simple regimen for healthier skin that won’t break your budget. Easy does it That focus on simplicity is something we heard repeatedly during our reporting and testing. “Simple is good,” Dr. Neelam Vashi, a dermatologist in Boston, told us. “You really just want to have products that moisturize, rejuvenate and feel comfortable on your skin. There is no magic cream. The magic is just finding the routine and sticking to it.” The more extraneous goops you layer on, the more you risk irritating your skin — and the trickier it becomes to discern exactly which ingredient might have triggered a reaction. In general, products with short ingredient lists are preferable. And scan ingredient lists to check that your products have components targeting specific skin care concerns — sometimes called active ingredients. On the labels of moisturizers and body lotions, for instance, look for water-trapping additives like glycerin, squalane, hyaluronic acid and ceramides. When shopping for a retinoid serum, look for retinol or retinaldehyde (aka retinal). And if you need an exfoliant to improve texture and tone, look for skin-buffing glycolic and lactic acids, or oil-fighting salicylic acid. If a product is a bargain, don’t assume it will feel like a compromise: Many of our picks are under $20. Don’t get bamboozled by fancy packaging, either. Some truly amazing products reside in lackluster tubs and tubes (and underperformers can lurk in luxe bottles). Four steps for skin care It doesn’t take much to maintain healthy skin. Here’s a routine you can follow that requires only a few products and a few minutes of your day. Cleanse. At night, remove grime, sweat, dirt and makeup. Clean skin allows for better absorption of serums and moisturizers. When you wake up, you can wash again to remove residual skin care products. (If you have dry or sensitive skin, try just rinsing rather than full-on cleansing.) Treat. In the morning, use an antioxidant like vitamin C serum to offset damage from sunlight and pollution. On alternating nights, use either a hydroxy acid exfoliant, which whisks away dead skin cells, or a retinoid, which helps minimize fine lines and other signs of aging, acne and oiliness. Moisturize. Apply cream or lotion to your face and body both morning and night. Massaging the product into slightly damp skin will boost its effectiveness. Protect. Every morning — rain or shine, clear or overcast, at the beach or in the basement — wear sunscreen. Our testing led us to 31 stellar products across skin types and categories — each ready for heavy rotation in an easy routine. You can find them in Wirecutter’s new Skin Care Essentials package. Wirecutter’s skin care guides The Best Facial Moisturizers The Best Body Lotions The Best Retinol Products THE LATEST NEWS Myanmar Earthquake In Mandalay, Myanmar. Sai Aung Main/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The death toll of the earthquake that shattered central Myanmar has surpassed 1,600 people. Experts expect further steep rises. International aid has started arriving, but getting it to where it needs to be will be hard: A yearslong civil war has fractured Myanmar. The quake’s impact reached into Thailand. At least 10 people died in Bangkok, where a 30-story building that was under construction collapsed. U.S. Foreign Policy Near Ukraine’s eastern front line. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine was deeper than previously known, a Times investigation found. Read about the extraordinary partnership and the secret 2022 meeting that cemented it. “They will label us as spies”: Afghan students in Qatar fear returning home after the Trump administration cut off aid and promises of visas. The Taliban freed an American woman detained in Afghanistan, according to a former U.S. ambassador. The move came days after the U.S. removed bounties on three Taliban officials. Government Overhaul Lee Zeldin Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press Lee Zeldin, the head of the E.P.A., was once a moderate Republican who spoke of the need to fight climate change. Read about his evolution into full MAGA warrior. Elon Musk has spent millions to back a State Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin. That’s made him the face of the contest. The Trump administration fired nearly all staff members at the U.S. Institute of Peace, part of its efforts to eliminate the independent agency. More on the Trump Administration President Trump told NBC News that he wouldn’t fire anyone involved in the group chat that inadvertently disclosed plans for airstrikes on Yemen to a journalist. Behind the scenes, however, Trump has asked aides whether he should fire Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who mistakenly added the journalist to the chat. Some car buyers are rushing purchases after Trump promised 25 percent tariffs on imported vehicles and car parts beginning next week. Other Big Stories Syria’s interim president announced a caretaker government that included popular activists and members of minorities, but kept his close allies in key positions. American colleges are using surveillance videos and search warrants to investigate students involved in pro-Palestinian protests. A storm in the Great Lakes region cut off power for hundreds of thousands of people. Weather warnings have gone out in the Midwest, the Northeast and Quebec. 50 STATES, 50 FIXES Across the country, in red and blue states, everyday people are doing quiet, vital work to confront climate change. A new series from The Times’s Climate desk will tell their stories. In Arizona, a development outside Phoenix says it’s the country’s first intentionally car-free neighborhood. In Hawaii, a neglected parcel of land became a community health center where patients can heal in nature. In Idaho, hundreds of buildings get their heat from a clean, renewable source deep in the ground. See more here. THE SUNDAY DEBATE What makes the leaked Signal chat by high-ranking government officials a scandal? The security failure. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was reckless to discuss on Signal the timing, weapons and targets of the planned strike against the Houthis. “Thank luck (or the grace of God, if you prefer) no U.S. pilots were killed due to Hegseth’s fecklessness,” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin writes. The contents of the leak. The chat revealed a more important issue at hand: the lack of seriousness the officials displayed when planning a military operation. “They spent more time discussing ‘messaging’ than say, protecting an ally like Saudi Arabia from retaliation,” The Times’s Farah Stockman writes. FROM OPINION From its founding, the U.S. has wanted to annex Canada. Previous attempts have been disasters, Stacy Schiff writes. Here’s a column by Ross Douthat on the defense secretary. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In Manhattan. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Hot yoga: Two million views, thousands of angry comments and a lost job, all stemming from a single sip of water. Backyard economics: You can rent chickens. But it may not get you cheaper eggs. Vows: The wedding of a bus driver and a salon owner became a detour on the path to parenthood. Most clicked yesterday: In Greenland, JD Vance found the weather and reception chilly. Lives Lived: The Los Angeles optician Gai Gherardi pioneered eyeglass frames as fashion statements, attracting a celebrity clientele. She died at 78. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Yoko,” by David Sheff: “The Lennon/Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko’s part has been hidden in the band’s formidable shadow and further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism,” writes David Sheff in his compassionate, just-this-side-of-authorized biography of Yoko Ono. Not only does he stare down the myths that landed the woman known as John Lennon’s wife in the cross hairs of conspiracy theorists, he gives Ono her due as an artist, musician, peacemaker and revolutionary in her own right. And Sheff — who’s best known for “Beautiful Boy,” a memoir of his son’s drug addiction — is well qualified to do so, if biased in ways he acknowledges: In September 1980, he spent almost three weeks with Lennon and Ono, interviewing them for an article that appeared in Playboy the week Lennon died. He later became friends with Ono. “I didn’t varnish the truth to depict Yoko as either a saint or a sinner,” Sheff writes. “Instead, I did my best to strip the varnish away.” The result is a time capsule from another era, and a thoughtful look at a determined woman who tried to make it better. More on books Read the full review of “Yoko.” The archives of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne are now at the New York Public Library. They reveal unseen aspects of their family life — and their way of writing. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who now hosts “The Megyn Kelly Show” on YouTube and SiriusXM. One of the things you did, which is a red line for most journalists, is that you showed up at one of Donald Trump’s rallies right before the election, and you formally endorsed him. Once you endorse a politician onstage at a rally, I don’t think you can reasonably be called independent anymore, or do you see it differently? I think I can. I don’t agree with that because I can still hit Trump, and do. There’s no question that I owned my bias on Trump and crossed a line that I had never crossed before, and never would have crossed when I was still straight news, ever. It’s just this weird new hybrid lane I’m in that even made it a possibility in my mind, that I even allowed myself to consider saying yes to the invitation. I think a lot of people saw you endorsing Trump as caving — as essentially going to where the power is. I don’t think it was me caving. It was me rising. It was me answering something I truly felt called to do. I’m thrilled Trump won. I shudder to think of what the country would be right now if Kamala Harris had won, and in the end, I had no qualms about going out there for him whatsoever. You know the symbolism of it: Someone who so famously had been at odds with him, that he had done so much to, to publicly stand up and embrace him — that was significant to a lot of people. I hope so. That was my goal in helping him, especially with women. I wanted to look them in the eyes, figuratively, and say: Trust me. You know I’m pro-woman, and you know I’ve expressed doubts about him in the past, about some of the choices he’s made when it came to dealing with women, but there is no other choice for women in this election. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photograph by Antoine d’Agata/Magnum, for The New York Times. Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Refresh your style with statement socks. Cut hair with easy-to-use clippers. Use a lip mask. MEAL PLAN Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui. Emily Weinstein devotes this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter to a ubiquitous, economical but sometimes underappreciated ingredient: ground meat. Emily’s recommendations include a fragrant coconut chicken and sweet potato dish, one-pot chicken and meatballs, and stir-fried cabbage and pork in fish sauce butter. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was catbird. Can you put eight historical events — including the discovery of X-rays, the invention of the chat room, and the painting of “American Gothic” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports 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. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted March 31 Author Members Posted March 31 March 31, 2025 by German Lopez and Ashley Wu Good morning. We’re looking at what America spends its money on. We’re also covering Trump’s tariffs, Marine Le Pen and a cake festival. Source: The Hamilton Project | Data is not adjusted for inflation, and is through March 26 for all years. | By The New York Times What the U.S. spends Discussions about federal spending are difficult because the numbers are so large that they can be difficult to grasp. How many ordinary folks can truly comprehend how much $1 billion — that’s a thousand millions — is? And still, it’s a rounding error (just 0.01 percent of spending) compared with the nearly $7 trillion federal budget. This is the context for the federal spending cuts led by President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Last week, the administration announced its latest dismissals: 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services. That sounds like a lot of people, but it’s small for a government that employs three million civilian workers. How much has DOGE pared back so far? Federal spending is actually higher this year than it was at this point in 2024, according to the Hamilton Project. Today’s newsletter walks through what the federal government spends money on, to clarify these big numbers and show the actual effects of Trump’s efforts. Growing debt Since the early 2000s, the federal government has spent more money — sometimes much more — than it collects in taxes. That has caused the debt to grow to levels not seen since World War II. Source: Congressional Budget Office | Chart excludes debt the federal government owes itself. | By The New York Times For years, many economists downplayed concerns about the debt. Interest rates were low, and debt payments — the cost of borrowing all that money — were consequently low, too. Inflation was also low, which suggested that government spending hadn’t overheated the economy. But interest rates and inflation have increased. Today, the federal government spends more to pay off its debt each year than it spends on Medicare or the military. Economists now warn that the federal debt is piling up too quickly. At the same time, politicians are scared of cutting popular programs. Trump has ruled out cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the military. Along with interest payments, that’s about 70 percent of what the government spends. There’s an old saying among wonks: The United States government is just an insurance company with a standing army. Source: Treasury Department | Numbers may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. | By The New York Times All of the other programs you hear about (schools, welfare payments, foreign aid, medical research) make up roughly 30 percent of the federal budget. Trump would have to eliminate all of those to balance the budget without touching the programs he has deemed untouchable. DOGE’s cuts Trump and Musk claim they can eliminate most of the deficit by downsizing the federal work force — the Times is tracking the firings here — and ending waste and fraud. This is the work DOGE says it’s doing. But these efforts, too, are likely to fall short. Presidents and Congress have launched many initiatives over the past few decades to tackle waste and fraud. They did not find significant savings. Watchdogs also track improper payments, which include fraud, duplicate charges and payments to ineligible recipients. These made up $149 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Even if DOGE managed to root out all of these payments — a difficult task for many technical reasons, The Wall Street Journal reported — it would shrink the deficit by only 8 percent. Similarly, shrinking the federal work force can do only so much. Even if Musk managed to fire every civilian employee and cut their benefits — an outlandish scenario — he would reduce the deficit by just 14 percent. Sources: Congressional Budget Office; Treasury Department | By The New York Times Some layoffs could even increase the deficit. The Biden administration wanted to hire more workers at the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax cheats. Experts said the plan would bring in $2.5 in tax revenue for every $1 spent. Trump wants to get rid of the new employees anyway. DOGE claims it has slashed $130 billion in spending. But its ledger is filled with errors, my colleagues David Fahrenthold and Jeremy Singer-Vine reported. The agency has revised its estimate downward multiple times, in acknowledgments of mistakes. In the end, the debt problem remains what it has long been: Republicans and Democrats refuse to cut popular but expensive federal programs and don’t want to raise taxes on most Americans. As long as that’s true, the federal government will remain in the red. Related: Musk has made sweeping claims about fraud in government spending. Read a fact-check. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Tariffs In Tokyo. Manami Yamada/Reuters Trump is expected to announce more tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners this week. Stocks around the world fell this morning. Other countries may respond with tariffs on the U.S. The administration is considering emergency aid for farmers who might be hit. Northern Minnesota produces most of America’s iron ore. Trump’s tariffs are meant to benefit its miners — but falling car sales could do the opposite. U.S. Foreign Policy Trump said he was very angry at Vladimir Putin and threatened to penalize countries that buy Russian oil if Russia thwarted a cease-fire deal with Ukraine. A yearlong Times investigation details the secret history of America’s involvement in Ukraine, which ran deeper than previously known. Part 1 describes how the partnership began. This weekend, Trump reasserted that the U.S. would “100 percent” annex Greenland. The island’s new prime minister said in response, “We decide our own future.” The U.S. has banned most refugees, but Trump has made one exception: White South Africans. Nearly 40 nations denounced a mining company’s plan to dig for metals beneath the Pacific Ocean. The company has said it will seek a U.S. permit, circumventing international law. The U.S. has been slow to send help after Myanmar’s earthquake because of U.S.A.I.D. cuts. More on the Trump Administration Voters in Wisconsin will elect a new justice to the State Supreme Court tomorrow. The race has turned into a referendum on Trump. The White House abruptly fired two longtime career prosecutors without giving a reason. Justice Department officials called the move an alarming use of presidential power. Middle East Benjamin Netanyahu named a new domestic spy chief, even though the Israeli Supreme Court has suspended the dismissal of the current one. Israel has built outposts and fortifications in Syria and Lebanon, deepening those countries’ concerns about a protracted Israeli occupation. Hamas said it had accepted a cease-fire proposal, less than two weeks after a previous deal collapsed. Israel said it was making a counterproposal. Read what to know. An Israeli operation in the West Bank has displaced tens of thousands of people. Aid groups say they’re struggling to respond, The Washington Post reports. More International News Marine Le Pen Thibaud Moritz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A Paris court found the French far right leader Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement. This endangers her plans to run for president in 2027. The police in London forced their way into a Quaker meeting house and arrested activists gathered there to plan Gaza war protests. The chair of a charity founded by Prince Harry accused him of harassment and bullying to force her out of her post. Other Big Stories At Howard University. Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times The number of Black men attending four-year colleges has fallen, with a drastic shift at historically Black colleges and universities. Severe storms across the U.S. killed at least one person, with forecasts of strong winds, large hail and tornadoes. Warnings went out from Texas up to Michigan. Opinions Support for Ukraine is in America’s interest because of the signal it sends countries like China and Iran, Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, writes. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss the leaked government Signal chat and the next president. Here are columns by David French on the leaked chat and Margaret Renkl on young women on social media. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In New York City. Preparations: On the night before Eid al-Fitr, these mothers made the magic happen. Colombo: Insider tips for visitors to a Sri Lankan city with great design and seafood. Cold plunge: Finland says it can teach happiness. Here’s how that went for an anxious American writer. Metropolitan Diary: Different definitions of old. Most clicked yesterday: One inopportunely timed sip of water during a hot yoga class caused an online uproar. Lives Lived: Richard Carlson, the father of the conservative commentator Tucker, won a Peabody Award for exposing fraud at a car company, and later ran Voice of America. He died at 84. SPORTS Men’s college basketball: Auburn and Houston are through to the Final Four. The Athletic’s data slightly favors Duke to win it all. Women’s college basketball: South Carolina advanced to the Final Four. For the first time, U.C.L.A. did too. N.B.A.: A brawl during Minnesota’s win over Detroit ended with five players and two coaches ejected. See the video. ARTS AND IDEAS At the Cake Picnic. Laura Morton for The New York Times At a recent event in San Francisco, there was only one rule: no cake, no entry. There thousands gathered with deserts both store-bought and homemade, sweet and savory for Cake Picnic, a touring festival that one attendee said was harder to get a ticket for than a Taylor Swift concert. See inside. More on culture The actor Richard Chamberlain died at 90 this weekend. He was the most compelling face of a maximalist, soapy television era, our TV critic writes. Johnny Mathis, among the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century and a pioneer of romantic ballads, will retire from touring after almost 70 years. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Bake chewy breakfast bars with oats, coconut, almond butter and dried cherries. Hand-wash clothes with the best detergent. Clean your white sneakers. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was echoing. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 2 Author Members Posted April 2 April 1, 2025 Good morning. We’re covering threats to public broadcasters — as well as Trump’s tariffs, deportations and “Othello.” Filming “Sesame Street.” Jonah Markowitz for The New York Times Public airwaves By Benjamin Mullin I cover the media. There is no reason, Republicans say, for the government to fund NPR and PBS. Last week, G.O.P. members of Congress, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, flayed the leaders of both organizations for what they said was partisan programming. “You all can hate us on your own dime,” Greene said. The next day, a Republican introduced a bill to end all government support. What would happen to public broadcasting if Republicans succeeded? In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain. NPR The specter of government abandonment has haunted public radio for so long that executives drafted a secret plan for the worst. In February 2011, NPR assembled a 36-page document that detailed exactly what would happen if the Treasury stopped cutting checks to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the government-backed company that supports NPR and PBS. The document, which has not previously been reported, is bleak. It describes a precarious radio system that will bear the blow poorly, with consequences for listeners across the nation. “Most NPR member stations operate at, or barely above, break-even,” it begins. A cutoff would cause up to $240 million to vanish and up to 18 percent of roughly 1,000 member stations to close. The Midwest, the South and the West would be affected the most. Nationwide, up to 30 percent of listeners would lose access to NPR programming. NPR provides national coverage, but the independent member stations across the country get most of the money devoted to public radio. That makes them more vulnerable than the national headquarters, which says it gets only 1 percent of its budget from Congress. (It gets a bit more from local stations that pay for its programming). NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Eric Lee/The New York Times What are these local stations doing? Take WEKU, a constellation of 10 FM stations with headquarters in Richmond, Ky., that broadcast to nearly 1.5 million residents. For people who don’t have access to broadband internet, WEKU is one of the few reliable sources of information when emergencies happen. Floods swept through the state earlier this year. “Our transmitters stayed on the air, and we were broadcasting information to residents in Pikeville on where they could get fresh water, how they could deal with FEMA,” said Mike Savage, the station’s director and general manager. NPR’s audience has fallen by about 28 percent since 2020. But many of the residents who still tune in really need the information. After the floods, someone from Hazard, Ky., emailed Savage to say that public radio was her only source of vital information. “We were her lifeline because they had no power, they had no cell service, they had nothing except for listening to our public radio station and getting information every day,” Savage said. NPR can weather the funding cut, its document predicts, thanks in part to aggrieved listeners: Executives predict a sudden boom in donations if Congress defunds it, as listeners rush to defend their favorite programs. But they will likely give more in big-city markets. PBS A taping of “PBS NewsHour.” Jared Soares for The New York Times Public television in the United States would likely be in worse shape because PBS receives much more of its budget — about 15 percent of $373 million — from the federal government. There’s something quirky about PBS: Many of the shows operate their own businesses. So marquee programs like “PBS NewsHour” and “Nature” would need to find money elsewhere, such as from donations or syndication. But again, the member stations, which rely more on public funding than the national organization does, would bear the brunt. Those stations use the money to cover local affairs, often in a news desert. Alaska Public Media, for instance, is a PBS and NPR member station with several local affiliates in rural areas. Those team up with newspapers, including The Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks and The Juneau Empire, to cover state and local governments. That’s crucial, in part, because reliable sources of information are disappearing from smaller towns across America, said Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS. “There isn’t an economic model that would compel commercial broadcasters to have outlets strewn across the state where the population is so sparse,” she said. Public and broadcasting It’s not an issue that moves large voting majorities. About a quarter of American adults believe that public media should be defunded, and 43 disagree, according to the Pew Research Center. In the past, members of Congress have been persuadable. In 1969, as Congress contemplated reducing funding for public media, members invited Fred Rogers, the creator of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” to testify. Lawmakers sat rapt as he quoted a song he’d written about keeping anger under control. One legislator said that Mister Rogers had given him “goose bumps” and acknowledged that the testimony had saved the day. “Looks like you just earned the $20 million.” A half-century later, the party that controls Congress is tuning those arguments out. When Mister Rogers’s testimony came up at the hearing last week, one witness said that Congress shouldn’t have listened to him. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Tariffs President Trump is set to reveal the details of his global tariff plan tomorrow, a date he has called “Liberation Day.” Advisers have not yet decided whether the White House will raise or lower tariffs. At the core of Trump’s tariff plan is a risky bet: that Americans will accept higher prices if it helps bring back manufacturing. The administration released a list of foreign trade barriers that could influence the planned tariffs. Uncertainty over tariffs caused S&P 500 index’s worst month in more than two years. The Fed is speaking with companies to figure out to what extent Trump’s policies will create inflation. Government Overhaul Trump said he was “not joking” about the possibility of seeking a third term. That would require amending the Constitution. He may be saying it to avoid being treated like a lame duck. DOGE gained access to a system that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees, despite officials’ concerns over the security of the data. In an open letter, nearly 2,000 scientists accused the Trump administration of conducting a “wholesale assault on U.S. science.” The Trump administration said it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts with Harvard, claiming that the school had let antisemitism run unchecked. The government placed staff at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the largest source of federal funding for museums and libraries, on administrative leave. The Pentagon eliminated lower fitness standards for women in combat units, a move that could hinder the recruitment women in dangerous military jobs. Immigration The Trump administration deported 17 more migrants, whom it described as gang members, to a prison in El Salvador. The government has granted itself authority to deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being part of a gang based on tattoos or streetwear. The U.S. has spent about $40 million to house fewer than 400 migrants at Guantánamo Bay. More on Politics Supporters of Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin. Jim Vondruska for The New York Times An election in Wisconsin today will decide whether conservatives or liberals control the state Supreme Court. Voters say the race is a referendum on Trump’s second term. Read what to know. A special election for a House seat in a deep-red Florida district has become surprisingly competitive after the Democratic candidate raised nearly $10 million. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House leader, accused Texas’ governor of delaying a special election in a blue district to cushion the House Republicans’ slim majority. A federal judge ruled that Alabama cannot prosecute doctors for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions. China The U.S. imposed sanctions on six senior Chinese and Hong Kong officials over the targeting of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and on U.S. soil. China launched military exercises around Taiwan after the island’s president called China a hostile foreign force. More International News Marine Le Pen Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The conviction of the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen means that unless she wins an appeal, she can’t run for president in 2027. She had been leading in early polls. The Israeli military attacked the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, killing three people. It was Israel’s second strike there in less than a week. A recovery operation found the bodies of three U.S. Army soldiers days after their vehicle sank into a bog in Lithuania. A fourth is still missing. More than 2,000 people are now confirmed dead in Myanmar’s earthquake. Volunteers said the military had blocked them from one badly hit area, a rebel stronghold. Other Big Stories OpenAI said it had completed a deal that values the company at $300 billion, twice the figure it reached just six months ago. A toxic algae bloom in Southern California has caused hundreds of sea lions, dolphins and seabirds to wash ashore. America has never been richer. But for many Americans, because of huge gaps in wealth, it doesn’t feel that way. See charts that show the gaps. Heavy snow is falling in the Sierra Nevada mountains. That will mean more water for California. Opinions It’s not up to law firms or universities to free themselves from government coercion. Voters should demand a government with less power to coerce, Robert Smith argues. With Trump back, Taiwan must begin an immediate and serious conversation about how to secure peace with China, Yingtai Lung, a former culture minister of Taiwan, writes. Here are columns by Thomas Edsall on what Democrats need to do and Carlos Lozada on Trump’s first 100 orders. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS At Fort Jackson in South Carolina. Sean Rayford for The New York Times Mess hall menus: Can the Army make food that soldiers will actually enjoy? A TV chef wants to help. Fossils: It was a hole in the ground behind a New Jersey home improvement store. Now it’s a state-of-the-art dinosaur museum. Most clicked yesterday: For the second day in a row, the most clicked link was the story of a scandalous hot yoga class. Lives Lived: Hank Steinbrecher was a top official in U.S. soccer who helped usher the sport into the American mainstream. He died at 77. SPORTS Women’s college basketball: The women’s Final Four is set after victories for UConn, led by Paige Bueckers, and Texas. M.L.B.: The Braves outfielder Jurickson Profar will miss the next 80 games after testing positive for a fertility drug often taken after steroids. ARTS AND IDEAS Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; Martha Swope/NY Public Library; Johan Persson; Library of Congress Since “Othello” was first performed in the 17th century, one question has plagued audiences: Who owns the production, Othello or Iago? “Othello” is the only major Shakespeare work that gives the hero and the antihero equal weight, which means the contest between the actors playing them has always been fierce. As one scholar put it: It is Othello’s tragedy, but Iago’s play. Read about famous stagings. More on culture Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco are in the middle of a sappy press tour for their new album, The Cut reports. You may have seen videos online. Joost Klein was thrown out of the Eurovision Song Contest last year after being accused of threatening a camerawoman. He’s not over it. “Are you trying to order off-menu from the Constitution?”: Jon Stewart joked about Trump’s comments about a possible third term. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Romulo Yanes for The New York Times Bake even if you forgot to soften the butter. Try this simple, lemon-scented olive oil cake. See how to do a better burpee. Add these items to a wedding registry. Go key-free with a smart lock. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was comeback. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 3 Author Members Posted April 3 April 2, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. Today, we’re covering President Trump’s tariff plans. But first, we’ve got election results from Wisconsin and Florida. Susan Crawford Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times Elon Musk’s millions weren’t enough. Judge Susan Crawford, a liberal candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, overcame more than $25 million in spending by Musk to defeat her conservative opponent, Judge Brad Schimel, last night. Crawford’s win maintains the liberal majority on the court, which faces key decisions on abortion and labor rights in the coming months. Elsewhere, two Trump-backed Republicans won special congressional elections in Florida, shoring up the party’s slim House majority. In both races, however, Democrats cut into Republican victory margins from November. The elections suggest a once-demoralized Democratic base is animated again. Read takeaways. Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock Today’s tariffs Today is, in President Trump’s telling, “Liberation Day.” For decades, many countries have imposed higher trade barriers on the United States than America does on them. In a Rose Garden event, Trump plans to strike back with tariffs that he claims will be “reciprocal” — ones that merely counter the penalties of other nations. The logic is intuitive: Why shouldn’t we impose tariffs on countries that have imposed tariffs on us? Europe’s tax on U.S. cars, for instance, has been four times as high as America’s tax on European vehicles. That doesn’t seem fair. Past presidents asked the same question — and came to a different conclusion than Trump did. They saw such tariffs as self-harm. That’s because America would lose more in a global trade war than every major economy except Mexico, experts estimate. Source: O.E.C.D. Economic Outlook | By The New York Times Today’s newsletter explains how tariffs can hurt the U.S. economy — and why Trump believes they are worth it anyway. Tariffs’ harms Consider how America has benefited from freer trade. Yes, it meant cheaper shirts, cars and phones. But it also allowed the country to play to its more profitable strengths. The United States no longer needs factories with low-skill workers to make clothes. It can instead invest more in advanced technologies like computers and pharmaceuticals. Those investments lead to jobs that pay better than traditional manufacturing work, making Americans richer. Open trade then lets high-tech businesses sell their new products to billions of people worldwide instead of just hundreds of millions of Americans. With more customers, these companies make more money, and they can pour their profits into further innovation, well-paying jobs and higher taxes to the U.S. government. In theory, this process leaves the country as a whole better off. Not everyone wins. Some manufacturing jobs go to China, Mexico and elsewhere. Communities that rely on those jobs suffer unless they find a way to adjust to the new economy. But using trade barriers to keep those old jobs is costly: First, it means higher prices. Second, a closed-off United States needs to pay for factories that make clothes, for instance, meaning it can invest less in those newer, better-paying jobs in advanced technology. The economy becomes less efficient and fails to reach its potential. Trump’s style also comes with costs. He has imposed and rescinded levies on a whim, making his moves unpredictable. Even now, no one outside the administration knows what Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will look like. Markets loathe such unpredictability. Businesses want to know what’s coming so they don’t waste money investing in the wrong things. They can’t do that if materials they depend on can become 25 percent more expensive with little warning. Trump’s view Trump and his allies argue that they take a long view. Yes, they say, tariffs lead to chaos in the short term. But they will eventually bring back manufacturing jobs that people in some communities relied on. Yes, they say, consumers and businesses will pay higher prices. But those higher prices are worth the long-term benefits of self-sufficiency and more jobs. Yes, they say, the federal government will have to subsidize businesses that are vulnerable to a trade war (including farms). But tariffs will bring in more revenue than the subsidies cost. And the tariffs may not last long, anyway, if other countries repeal their own trade barriers against America, after which the United States can unwind its reciprocal levies. Most economists disagree with Trump’s claims. To the extent that he’s right, his goals will require something he has not demonstrated so far: commitment. Businesses will invest in domestic manufacturing only if they think they have no other option because the tariffs will stick. Other nations will withdraw their tariffs only if they think doing so is necessary to regain American customers. Because Trump rescinded some of his previous tariffs after markets recoiled, businesses and other countries have good reason to believe that today’s tariff rollout is a feint. They may try to call Trump’s bluff. What happens next depends on whether he folds. More on tariffs Auto sales surged last month as buyers rushed to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs on imported cars and parts. Looking for the basics on the tariff plan? This article explains what you need to know. THE LATEST NEWS Immigration A state-provided photo from El Salvador. Secretaria De Prensa De La Presidencia, via Reuters The Trump administration told a court that it had mistakenly deported a legal Maryland resident to El Salvador, but that it could not bring him back. A British Gambian student who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Cornell said that ICE officials had come to his home and revoked his visa, and that he had left the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered diplomats to scrutinize the social media accounts of student visa applicants to keep out those who criticized the U.S. or Israel. Some conservative voices, including Joe Rogan and Ann Coulter, have expressed concern over the government’s immigration tactics. Government Overhaul The Trump administration fired thousands of federal health workers whose jobs include regulating food and researching new treatments for disease. Some federal workers who followed Trump’s order to return to the office have faced long security lines and toilet-paper shortages. The U.S. is ending financial support for family-planning programs in developing countries, cutting access to contraception for nearly 50 million women. More on the Administration The Trump administration suspended dozens of federal grants to Princeton. It’s the fourth Ivy League school to face such punishment. Months ago, Harvard introduced changes to meet the administration’s demands to combat antisemitism. It’s at risk of losing funding anyway. Members of Trump’s National Security Council have used personal Gmail accounts to handle sensitive government matters, The Washington Post reports. Trump will meet with White House officials today to discuss TikTok’s future in the U.S. Congress Senator Cory Booker Eric Lee/The New York Times Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, spoke on the Senate floor for a record 25 hours straight, a marathon session criticizing Trump’s policies. Republican House members thwarted an attempt by their speaker, Mike Johnson, to kill a bipartisan measure that would let new parents in Congress vote by proxy. (See how members voted.) Middle East Israel’s defense minister said that the military will expand its operation in Gaza and plans to seize large areas. The U.N. accused Israel of killing 15 rescue workers as they tried to aid injured civilians last month. Israel said nine of the 15 were Palestinian militants. The family of a Palestinian man said that Hamas militants tortured and killed him after he took part in anti-Hamas protests, CNN reports. Benjamin Netanyahu withdrew his nominee to lead Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, in part because the nominee had criticized Trump. China China recently practiced maneuvers off its southern coast using new, special barges. The vessels form a bridge that could help land weapons and troops on Taiwan. China held military exercises around Taiwan for a second day. More International News The Sky Villa apartment complex was a symbol of success in Mandalay — a city growing rapidly despite a civil war. Myanmar’s earthquake, which now has a death toll over 2,700, turned the tower into a tomb. The rebels who ousted Bashar al-Assad want to fold Syria’s disparate militias into a single force. It’s a struggle. As Bangladesh tries to rebuild its democracy, support for Islamist extremism is bubbling to the surface. Other Big Stories Attorney General Pam Bondi directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who is charged with killing the C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare. Pope Francis’ health has improved in the week since he left the hospital, the Vatican said. Eleven percent of Americans can’t afford medication and medical treatments, a survey found — the highest level in the four years it has asked the question. Opinions Dru Donovan for The New York Times New technology could let parents select taller, smarter, happier embryos. Anna Louie Sussman explores what it would mean to engineer the next generation. Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Gaza’s anti-Hamas protests and Thomas Friedman on China’s success. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Tom Schaar in the X Games in 2023. Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images Big air: Tony Hawk’s style of gravity-defying skating, known as “vert,” is making a comeback. He’s campaigning for it to be in the 2028 Olympics. Cool faucets: These are some of the best bathrooms to appear in T, The Times’s style magazine. Letter of Recommendation: The case for telling total strangers to shut up. Most clicked yesterday: America has never been wealthier. But that’s not true for everyone. See charts that show the inequality. Lives Lived: Val Kilmer was a homegrown Hollywood actor who tasted leading-man stardom as Jim Morrison and Batman, but his protean gifts and elusive personality also made him a high-profile supporting player in movies like “Top Gun.” He died at 65. SPORTS ESPN: Pat McAfee’s show amplified a lurid rumor about a college freshman. The young woman at the center of it says the ordeal has destroyed her life. N.F.L.: Team owners agreed to table a vote on the “tush push” play, which has caused strife over the last two years. ARTS AND IDEAS Atop the New York Marriott Marquis. Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times The revolving restaurant, long regarded as a midcentury novelty, is making an unlikely comeback across America. You can find them now in New York, Atlanta and San Francisco. Danny Meyer, a restaurateur, believes the resurgence comes from a post-pandemic desire for experiences diners can’t get at home. More on culture The Broadway revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross” boasts some good performances: It stars Kieran Culkin, Bill Burr and Bob Odenkirk. But the production is surprisingly limp, our critic writes. “Yes, ‘Liberation Day.’ I’m reminded of the immortal words of Patrick Henry: ‘Give me liberty or charge me an extra $10,000 for a Hyundai Elantra,’” Stephen Colbert joked. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Mark Weinberg for The New York Times Prep spinach and feta lentil bowls for an easy lunch throughout the week. Use the best slow cooker. Organize a small kitchen. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was echoing … a Monday’s pangram of Sunday’s pangram? (April Fools!) And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 4 Author Members Posted April 4 April 3, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering President Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement — as well as Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, government cuts and the Duchess of Sussex. President Trump and his tariffs. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Trade war begins Yesterday, President Trump held up a chart at the White House Rose Garden. He laughed that not everyone in the audience could read it because the font was so small. But the content was anything but small. It detailed the tariffs he will impose on China, the European Union, Japan, India and dozens of others. That chart started a trade war against the rest of the world. The levies will total 10, 20 and even 50 percent, depending on the country. “Many people had been expecting the president to announce high tariffs today, but the numbers that he just revealed are stunning,” my colleague Ana Swanson said. In Trump’s telling, the tariffs are necessary to counter trade barriers that other countries have placed on America. To some extent, he has a point: Other nations do have higher tariffs than the United States does. But Trump exaggerates how big the gap is, as Ana explained. And these tariffs will not simply hurt other countries; they will also hurt the U.S. economy. Experts say the levies will result in higher prices and lower economic growth — and potentially even a recession. Today’s newsletter looks at Trump’s new tariffs and what may come next, with help from reporting by my colleagues. The levies The tariffs make little distinction between allies and adversaries. The administration claims they are based on other countries’ trade barriers against the United States. In reality, the levies are based on how much more another country exports to America than imports from it, Tony Romm, Ana and Lazaro Gamio wrote. The difference between exports and imports doesn’t necessarily reflect trade barriers; Americans may simply want to buy more stuff from, say, Japan than the Japanese want to buy from the United States. This chart shows the levies on some of America’s biggest trading partners. (The new fees exclude Canada and Mexico, which already face separate tariffs.) Sources: White House, Observatory of Economic Complexity | By The New York Times Practically speaking, the chart shows that Americans will now pay more for goods from other countries. If companies pass the tariffs on to consumers — and they almost always do — a $20 pack of beer from Germany will cost $24. A $100 bike from China will cost around $130. A $400 video game console from Japan will cost nearly $500. The levies are in addition to past tolls, such as those Trump placed on China. They exempt some goods, including some forms of energy, pharmaceuticals and things that Trump had already tariffed, particularly cars, steel and aluminum. Overall, though, they amount to a huge tax on some of America’s biggest trading partners. The world reacts In Tokyo. Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Following Trump’s announcement, China and Europe vowed to retaliate and the global economy showed signs of distress. China’s government said it would take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.” Its options could include more tariffs, restrictions on U.S. investment in China or export controls on rare earth minerals. In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, held a news conference just after 5 a.m. and said the bloc was ready to respond. “If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said. Markets in Asia and Europe dropped. The U.S. market is also expecting a rough day. One analyst told The Times that the tariffs were “shockingly high” and “a disaster.” What’s next In the coming days, other countries will probably retaliate with their own tariffs and other trade barriers. The European Union has even discussed limiting American banks’ access to certain E.U. markets, Bernhard Warner reported. Those steps could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy. One question remains: Is Trump committed to a trade war? He said he would withdraw his tariffs if other countries rescinded their own trade barriers. Perhaps minor concessions would suffice; Trump suspended his penalties against Canada and Mexico after they promised to make nominal changes. A month later, he tried again but largely reversed himself after the market panicked. Perhaps that story will repeat itself. More international reactions France’s prime minister said that the tariffs were “a catastrophe for the economic world.” Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said the tariffs were “a measure that I consider wrong.” Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said he and his ministers would respond with “cool and calm heads.” (Not even a royal invite spared Britain from tariffs.) European officials said they’re willing to place limits on U.S. tech companies’ access to markets in response. Japan’s prime minister called the tariffs “extremely regrettable.” Japan is the largest overseas investor in the United States. Taiwan’s government condemned the tariffs as unreasonable. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who describes himself as a radical libertarian, described the 10 percent minimum tariff as a positive. “Friends will be friends,” he posted. More on tariffs A 25 percent tariff on cars assembled outside the U.S., which Trump announced last week, took effect today. Laptop computers from Taiwan, wine from Italy, frozen shrimp from India, Nike sneakers from Vietnam and Irish butter. Read what else could be affected. While the U.S. imports goods, it heavily exports services — meaning industries like finance, engineering and medicine. That gives trading partners some leverage in negotiations. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, like so much else in his second term, show that the restraints that once bound his presidency are gone, David Sanger writes. Late night hosts described it as a “tariff-fying” day. THE LATEST NEWS Wisconsin The liberal candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race benefited from large Democratic turnout as counties swung left across the state. Before the election, a right-wing group rallied for voters’ attention with unauthorized photos of Emily Ratajkowski and a shirtless man. Elon Musk made himself the face of the humiliating political defeat in Wisconsin. That could be useful for Trump. Government Cuts The administration laid off the entire staff of a program that helps millions of low-income Americans to pay their utility bills. Extensive layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the world’s premier public health agency, could hurt America’s health, critics say. More on Politics A judge dismissed the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, but criticized the Justice Department for wanting to drop it without a valid reason. The Supreme Court upheld an F.D.A. order that prohibited retailers from marketing flavored vapes, which are popular with teenagers. Milbank, a large law firm, agreed to a deal to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to causes supported by Trump. Lawyers for a Maryland man who was deported in error to a prison in El Salvador called for the Trump administration to bring him back as soon as possible. Xavier Becerra, the former secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, announced that he would run for governor of California. Business Amazon made a bid to acquire TikTok, which has a Saturday deadline to find a new owner. The U.S. has also discussed a possible deal with Oracle, the tech giant co-founded by Trump’s friend Larry Ellison. Tesla’s global sales in the first quarter fell 13 percent from a year earlier, in part because of a backlash against Elon Musk in E.V.-friendly Europe. Climate Change A burning forest in Ukraine. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times The environmental costs to the war in Ukraine have been significant: Toxins are seeping into the earth and water, and habitats are disappearing. Experts call it ecocide. The most polluting coal plant in the U.S. has requested an exemption from stricter air pollution rules. International Hungary said it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court. The announcement came hours after Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the country for a visit despite facing an international arrest warrant. Three U.S. citizens sentenced to death over a failed coup attempt in the Democratic Republic of Congo have had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The U.N. accused Israel of killing 15 humanitarian workers in Gaza. Officials in Gaza recovered the bodies and said some were reportedly shot multiple times before being buried in a mass grave. Other Big Stories Multiple tornadoes were reported across parts of the South and the Midwest. The storm system is expected to continue, with potentially once-in-a-lifetime flooding. The shingles vaccine can reduce the risk of developing dementia, a study found. Opinions Trump’s tariffs on Mexican goods will fuel the black market at the border. That could help gangs expand their power, Ted Genoways writes. Pamela Paul says goodbye with her final column for The Times. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Yummy? Or not? Jimena Peck for The New York Times America’s least favorite fry: Are steak fries deservedly reviled or underappreciated edible spoons? Colorful: New York City released a new subway map for the first time in nearly half a century. Sharing is caring? A TikTok trend is testing toddlers, one cookie at a time. Brain health: Everyday habits can help keep you sharp. And it’s never too late to start. Most clicked yesterday: The best bathroom designs. Lives Lived: Joe DePugh was a gifted young baseball player when he gave his clumsy teammate Bruce Springsteen the nickname Saddie because his athletic abilities were so sad. Years later, Springsteen memorialized his friend in the song “Glory Days.” DePugh died at 75. SPORTS N.B.A.: The league is investigating the Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant for a gunlike gesture he made this week against the Golden State Warriors. Basketball: U.S.C.’s JuJu Watkins is the Naismith Women’s College Player of the Year. ARTS AND IDEAS Martha Argerich and a fellow pianist, Darío Ntaca. Mischa Christen for The New York Times Martha Argerich is among the world’s most astonishing pianists — and one of classical music’s most enigmatic and eccentric artists. At 83, Argerich is defying the expectations of age: Her fingers remain capable of acrobatic feats, and she can still find new dimensions in pieces she has played hundreds of times. See a video of Argerich at the peak of her powers. More on culture In Montecito, Calif. Adam Amengual for The New York Times Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is parlaying her royal fame into a lifestyle brand. The Times visited her kitchen — the real one, not the one from TV. Barack Obama appeared in a family’s picture at the Tidal Basin in Washington. See the photo. Nintendo announced that its next video game system, the Switch 2, would be available in June for $450. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Kelly Marshall for The New York Times Make this date-flecked sticky toffee pudding in the microwave, in just 10 minutes. Visit Shanghai. Give a new mom a gift. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was canonization. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 5 Author Members Posted April 5 April 4, 2025 Good morning. Today, our colleague Katrin Bennhold covers a development that may help the far right in Europe. We’re also covering stocks, South Korea and “The White Lotus.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times Europe’s paradox By Katrin Bennhold I cover international politics from London. As the United States deserts Ukraine, and Europe with it, leaders on the continent are closing ranks and arming up to defend their democracies against Russia. In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer elicits comparisons to Winston Churchill. In France, President Emmanuel Macron is channeling Charles de Gaulle’s argument for independence from Washington. Germany changed its strict budget rules to spend more on defense. Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, came to Brussels yesterday to urge them on. But Russia isn’t the only threat to democracy in Europe. Far-right and autocratic parties here have gained ground for a decade. They’re already part of the government in six capitals. And the impulse to ramp up defense may energize their voters. Europe is rearming to battle fascism and autocracy abroad. Unfortunately, this may also empower fascism and autocracy at home. Welfare vs. warfare To understand why, remember the state of European politics: Economies are stagnating, governments are unpopular and efforts to keep the far right out of coalition governments are barely holding. Now, as critics see it, leaders want to spend money containing Russia instead of helping their citizens. In Britain, Starmer plans to increase military spending from 2.3 percent of the economy today to 3 percent early in the next decade. At the same time, he plans to cut Britain’s annual welfare bill by some 5 billion pounds (about 6.5 million dollars) a year. It’s a risky proposition after the economy shrank in January and at a time when the hard-right Reform U.K. party is snapping at Labour’s heels in some working-class regions. British voters say welfare spending is more important than military spending. “Welfare Not Warfare,” read a banner at protests last week. Outside Parliament in central London. Benjamin Cremel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Macron faces similar headwinds in France. Voters say they support a stronger military but don’t want to pay for it by increasing taxes, decreasing social spending or raising the retirement age. Macron has already promised not to raise taxes, so some cuts to social spending seem likely. Now parties on the far right and the far left smell blood: Macron is using the Ukraine war to “justify the destruction of the welfare state,” wrote one right-wing lawmaker on X. Cutting back the social services in favor of defense is “psychosis,” said the leader of one of France’s most powerful unions. Already, France’s deadlocked Parliament struggles to govern. The political dysfunction — and the notion that it might slash popular programs — will only help the extremes. No wonder Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, retains a comfortable lead in polls for the next presidential election. (An embezzlement conviction means she can’t run, but she is appealing it.) Daring or deceptive? The critique from the right isn’t just about unpopular budgetary choices. There is also a sense that mainstream politicians don’t listen to voters — and don’t keep their promises. Before his conservative party came first in Germany’s snap election last month, Friedrich Merz said he wouldn’t alter the budget rules. But after the election, he pushed through a constitutional amendment that will let his future government spend nearly a trillion euros on the military and other things. He had to rush it through the outgoing Parliament because, in the newly elected chamber, pro-Russian parties on the left and the right gained enough seats to block the move. The right-wing Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in particular has spent years arguing that mainstream parties adhere to a sort of elitist, trans-Atlantic centrism that gives voters little say in how their country is governed. Then Merz used departing lawmakers to enact a policy he had campaigned against. The AfD quickly branded the maneuver as “gigantic voter deception.” Three in four German voters agree, as do almost half of the supporters of Merz’s own conservative camp. The political cost was immediately apparent: Approval ratings for the conservatives fell, while those of the AfD, already the second-biggest party in Germany, rose. Ten years too late If Europe’s rearmament push had come a decade ago — if Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea had served as a wake-up call — the trade-offs would have looked different. Back then, Europe’s economy was growing twice as fast as it is now. Barack Obama was in the White House. Brexit had not happened. The AfD was a one-year-old fringe party. Le Pen was nowhere near as popular. Europe’s big liberal democracies were in fighting shape. Rearmament is still the only way Europe can deter Vladimir Putin at a time when Washington has abandoned it. But now governments are fighting for democracy at home as well as abroad. Leaders hope that voters will ultimately rally behind them in the face of threats from Putin and President Trump. They also hope that rearmament will boost growth and manufacturing jobs. (Experts say that this is plausible but far from certain.) Yet because they waited, they may pay a steep price: Voters may punish those who push for a stronger military. Leaders may need to backpedal. There’s another possibility, too. Rearming in the name of democracy today could leave the far-right governments of tomorrow — many with close ties to Moscow — in charge of big, muscular militaries. THE LATEST NEWS Tariff Fallout China announced a 34 percent tariff on American imports, matching Trump’s 34 percent tariff. Markets fell for a second day in Asia and Europe. The S&P 500 dropped nearly 5 percent yesterday, its deepest retreat since the height of the pandemic. Shares of Apple, which makes most of its iPhones, iPads and Macs overseas, fell 9 percent. Other big tech stocks, including Microsoft and Amazon, also slumped. Trump insisted that the long-term payoff of the tariffs would be worth the pain. “The markets are going to boom,” he said. “The country is going to boom.” Trump’s tariffs are estimated to cost American importers nearly $800 billion. These charts explain the costs. Countries that built their economies on manufacturing goods for the U.S., like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, face the greatest risk from the tariffs. See where tariffs will hit hardest. More on Tariffs Canada introduced a 25 percent tariff on cars and trucks made in the U.S. in response to Trump’s auto tariffs, which took effect yesterday. Trump’s tariffs could slow the shift to renewable energy: They affect most components of clean-energy production, from wind turbines blades to electric vehicle batteries. Trump closed a loophole that had allowed retailers like Shein and Temu to ship Chinese goods directly to American shoppers without paying tariffs. He imposed tariffs on Antarctic islands with more penguins than people. Trump has been angry for decades about trade. He started talking publicly about tariffs in 1988, when he lost an auction for a piano used in the film “Casablanca” to a Japanese trading company. Read the story from 2019. National Security Laura Loomer, a longtime Trump supporter. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Trump fired six National Security Council officials after a far-right activist, Laura Loomer, visited the White House and listed them as being disloyal to the president. A general who led the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command was fired after Trump’s meeting with Loomer. Education The Trump administration intends to block $510 million in federal contracts and grants for Brown University. The Education Department threatened to withhold funds from public schools unless state education officials verified the elimination of D.E.I. programs. More on Politics Layoffs at the F.D.A. could mean that Americans have to wait longer to get cheaper generic medications. Mayor Eric Adams of New York said he would run for re-election as an independent instead of as a Democrat. The Pentagon’s acting inspector general will review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s disclosure on Signal of the timing of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. Weather Hail, heavy rains and more than 30 tornadoes hit the Midwest and South, killing at least seven people. Residents in those regions are also preparing for flooding that forecasters warned could be catastrophic. Middle East Israel hit Syria with airstrikes on military bases and a ground raid that it said had targeted terrorist infrastructure. Syrian officials said the attacks were an attempt to destabilize their new government. An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City killed dozens of people, according to the local health authorities. A child found a 3,800-year-old Egyptian amulet while on a family hike in Israel. More International News South Korea’s top court voted unanimously to dismiss the country’s impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol. Prince Harry said he welcomed an inquiry by British regulators into a charity he co-founded, after the chair of the charity’s board accused him of bullying. Other Big Stories A report predicts what will happen if A.I. becomes smarter than humans. Researchers are warning of danger. Radhika Jones, the editor of Vanity Fair since 2017, said she would step down. Americans facing jail time have a constitutional right to legal representation. In much of Texas, that right is routinely denied, a Times investigation found. Opinions Trump claims a Venezuelan gang is invading the United States. He’s wrong, Rebecca Hanson, David Smilde and Verónica Zubillaga write. Trump’s tariffs may be 50 times as painful for Americans as the ones he instituted in his first term, Justin Wolfers argues. Here are columns by David Brooks and Thomas Friedman on Trump’s tariffs. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS David B. Torch for The New York Times Robo-butlers: Are you ready to share your home with an A.I. humanoid? Permanent housing: For two years, a reporter and a photographer documented life inside a building where homelessness ends. Reused: A bird’s nest in Amsterdam contained 30 years of human trash. See the items, which show how our wrappers and packaging linger. Hong Kong: One surfer is trying to find new spots in a city that doesn’t surf. Social Q’s: “My future sister-in-law is skipping my wedding to dance at a football game. Help!” Most clicked yesterday: Barack Obama appeared in the background of a family portrait. See the photo. Lives Lived: Leonardo Patterson became known for having rare, beautiful Latin American antiquities to sell. He rose to prominence despite accusations that he trafficked in fake and stolen artifacts — accusations that proved to be true. He has died at 82. SPORTS Women’s college basketball: The Final Four begins tonight. People are watching UConn star Paige Bueckers. N.B.A.: Grizzlies guard Ja Morant, one night after being warned by the league, celebrated with a finger-gun gesture again. ARTS AND IDEAS Cristóbal Tapia de Veer Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press Cristóbal Tapia de Veer’s theme song was one of the breakout stars of “The White Lotus.” But in an exclusive interview, the composer, who won three Emmy Awards for his work on the show, told The Times that he had ooh’ed his last loo-loo — that is, he won’t be back next season. He also discussed the angry responses to his Season 3 theme and described creative disagreements with the show’s creator and director, Mike White. More on culture George Clooney appeared on Broadway in “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Our critic gave it a good review. Bruce Springsteen announced a new album due in June, “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” which will include dozens of previously unreleased songs. Late night hosts joked about tariffs. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Mix quinoa and broccoli in this salad. See Gracie Abrams’s beauty routine. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was whiningly. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 6 Author Members Posted April 6 April 5, 2025 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Creating rules around the content we consume can help calm our overtaxed brains and manage our moods. María Jesús Contreras Works of art If you sit close enough to the front of the theater for “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, you can see Paul Mescal spit and sweat as he stalks the stage as Stanley Kowalski, an artist doing his work in real time and space. It had been a while since I’d seen live theater when I went to see “Streetcar” a few weeks ago, and I found myself in awe of the very liveness of it. I’ve grown so accustomed to experiencing culture through screens that I forgot how exciting it is to be in the room where the art is happening, to witness the effort and passion and bodily exertion that go into it. It’s not just movies and TV, of course — we’re all aghast at how much time we spend on devices, consuming content, whatever that means. Reading and watching and posting and shopping, always shopping for things and ideas and comfort and distraction. Surely this endless marketplace will turn up something that satisfies us at some point! I complained to a friend that I had the blues recently and her advice surprised me in its specificity and simplicity: “Engage with things that someone put a lot of work into.” This wisdom seemed to cut through a lot of the bargaining I do with myself about how I spend my time. “Well, it’s OK that I spent the last 45 minutes reading the NYCBike subreddit because I learned about how they’re ticketing cyclists who run red lights on Second Avenue, which is useful to me as someone who frequently cycles down Second Avenue,” I might rationalize. But if I am determined to engage only with things that someone put a lot of work into, idly reading Reddit is out. So is my habit of scrolling through Instagram Reels of senior dogs. No more using ChatGPT as a therapist — there isn’t even a “someone” in that equation. I had thought my online hygiene was unimpeachable, that I’d skirted many of the mental-health hazards of social media by using it only as a source of impersonal pleasure (no looking at friends’ envy-inducing vacation photos, no posting, just the aforementioned old dogs, some fashion stuff, maybe some inspiring quotes from interviews with famous authors). But once I started cutting stuff out and noticed my mood improving, I realized that it wasn’t the nature of the content that was making me sad, but the volume. If I sometimes feel like my hard drive is full, then it doesn’t matter if what I’m adding to the drive is, on its face, soothing. It’s just more stuff, more data, more things to process. By adopting my friend’s elevated standard for what’s allowed in, I decreased the number of inputs, the number of demands for thought and work and reaction I was requesting of my brain. Of course, there are complications that arise with this rule. “A lot of work” is a subjective measurement, and often the things that entail a lot of work are expensive, only available to those who can afford them, which risks creating a pretty boring, exclusionary selection for cultural consumption. I’m not interested in — nor is it a realistic proposition, given my means, tastes, profession — subsisting solely on great novels and live theater to the exclusion of all else. But any rubric that stems the tide of information we’re allowing into our brains and hearts, even temporarily, can be helpful. It helps to remember we have choices: You don’t have to check Facebook every day just because you always have. You don’t have to read that blog while you drink your coffee or watch TikToks on the toilet. If you’re experiencing a general sadness or ennui or overwhelmsion without obvious origin, why not try switching things up? It might not totally reverse your mood, but then again — who knows? — it might. THE LATEST NEWS Tariffs The S&P 500 fell 6 percent yesterday, and is now down more than 10 percent over the past two days. But President Trump sounded a defiant note about his approach, writing on social media, “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.” Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, warned that Trump’s tariffs risk stoking even higher inflation and slower growth. Worries about an escalating global trade war overshadowed positive news about the labor market: The U.S. added 228,000 jobs last month. Gov. Gavin Newsom said California would pursue its own international trade deals to exempt the state’s products from retaliatory tariffs. The Trump administration used a simple, one-size-fits-all formula to determine its tariffs. These charts show how different the rates would be if it changed some parameters. More administration news A federal judge told the Trump administration that it had to bring back a legal resident from Maryland whom it mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Trump again extended the deadline for the sale of TikTok. The platform now has until June to spin off from its Chinese parent company. International Video of an attack on aid workers in Gaza shows that their ambulances were clearly marked and had emergency lights on, contradicting Israel’s version of the event. A Russian missile strike killed at least 16 people in the hometown of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Russia that it was running out of time to convince the Trump administration that it’s serious about striking a peace deal with Ukraine. Other Big Stories Tornado damage in Selmer, Tenn. William DeShazer for The New York Times Days of relentless rain in the central U.S. have pushed creeks and streams beyond their banks. Floodwaters swept away a 9-year-old boy in Kentucky. Los Angeles County agreed to pay $4 billion to settle sex abuse claims in its juvenile detention and foster care systems. It will be the largest payout of its kind in U.S. history, lawyers say. Prosecutors in Britain charged the actor Russell Brand with multiple counts of sexual assault, including two counts of rape. A North Carolina appeals court ordered tens of thousands of voters to promptly verify their eligibility or have the ballots they cast in a state supreme court election thrown out. Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and the highest American Catholic official to be accused of abusing minors, died at 94. In the women’s Final Four, UConn routed U.C.L.A. and South Carolina came back to beat Texas. They’ll meet in the final on Sunday. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Bonnie Schiffman/Getty Images Val Kilmer, who died this week at 65, was a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body, Esther Zuckerman writes in an appraisal. See his life in pictures. The director Sam Mendes announced the stars of his four-film series on the Beatles: Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan. Jack Black and Jason Momoa star in the video game adaptation “A Minecraft Movie.” A lot of the film is “so dumb it’s sort of fun,” Brandon Yu writes. “Adolescence,” the Netflix series about a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a classmate after consuming misogynistic content, has proved popular. The Times interviewed the series’ child star. Art David Hockney, 87, is now under constant medical care. He was determined to make it to Paris for the largest exhibition of his career. On a rainy night on the Upper East Side, art world philanthropists, billionaires and socialites gathered to celebrate the reopening of the Frick Collection. See pictures. The 2,000-year-old Torlonia collection of Roman sculptures, now at the Art Institute of Chicago, has the urgency of the greatest contemporary art, our critic writes. Three doctors fell in love with a fresco of a crucifixion by Fra Angelico. They pledged to restore it for a blockbuster exhibition in Florence this fall. More Culture Tracy Chapman in San Francisco. Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times The singer and songwriter Tracy Chapman has avoided the spotlight for the past decade. In an interview with The Times, she breaks her silence and looks back on her powerful hit “Fast Car.” The Irish actor Andrew Scott calls his solo performance in “Vanya,” an Off Broadway production of Chekhov’s melancholy comedy, an “endless experiment.” Take five minutes out of your day to fall in love with the music of Billie Holiday. Listen here. Mark Hoppus, the bassist and singer in Blink-182, recounts his personal struggles and his band’s history in a new memoir. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR By Desiree Ibekwe 🎸 Bon Iver, “Sable, Fable” (Friday): For those who love “very talented and very sad person with a guitar” music, Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago,” released almost 20 years ago, is almost certainly still in rotation. It is for me at least. After a five-year hiatus, Bon Iver is back with another studio album, “Sable, Fable,” and sounding a little different — healed, even. In the intervening years, the frontman, Justin Vernon, began courting joy instead of pain. The result of that personal work is an album that “captures hope, thrills and a kind of unselfconscious exultation,” the Times critics Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli write. Watch Vernon’s interview with The Times. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Armando Rafael for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Shrimp in Purgatory Sarah DiGregorio’s shrimp in purgatory has the garlicky, chile-flake sauciness of the traditional Southern Italian egg dish, but instead of using those pricey orbs of chicken caviar, Sarah’s recipe stars succulent, sweet shrimp. Serve this one over polenta or couscous for maximum red sauce absorption, or chunks of a torn, crusty baguette for a contrasting crunch. REAL ESTATE Miranda and Hiranya Nayyar with their dog, Meeko. Katherine Marks for The New York Times The Hunt: A couple with a budget of just over $1 million wanted a bigger space in a smaller building in Brooklyn. Which home did they choose? Play our game. D.I.Y. renovations: Instagrammers keep tearing up and remodeling their homes. We can’t stop watching. Memories: On a block in Altadena, Calif., destroyed by wildfires, families shared photos and videos of the special moments in the homes they lost. What you get for $700,000: A midcentury modern house in Murray, Utah; a 1921 Craftsman house in Birmingham, Ala.; or a brick rowhouse in Washington, D.C. LIVING The daiquiri at Bar Kabawa in New York. Janice Chung for The New York Times A dash of respect: Bartenders revere the daiquiri. Why, then, do they not sell more of them? Getting creative: Easter eggs are so expensive that some Americans are dyeing potatoes. Supermarket tourism: Visiting local grocery stores has become an essential stop on the vacation itinerary. Fertility: Your weed habit may be messing with your sperm. Well, The Times’s personal health section, is hosting its first festival on May 7. Times journalists will chat with Peter Attia, Padma Lakshmi, Robin Arzón, Sara Bareilles and others about the science and art of living well. Find out more here. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER How to care for an aging pet There are few things that tax the human heart more than seeing pets approach the end of their lives. And while you can’t stop time, there are things you can do to keep an aging pet comfortable, including investing in gear that may help them sleep better, eat more and generally feel at ease. Since hardwood and tile can be slippery, rugs, carpets and yoga mats can be helpful for traction. Elevating their food and water bowls can help reduce the strain of bending down. And a sharp pill cutter can make it easier to sneak smaller bits of their medicine into a treat. For more, Wirecutter’s experts have a list of considerations and helpful tools; consider it a starting point as you navigate this phase of your pet’s life. — Mel Plaut GAME OF THE WEEK Cooper Flagg Patrick Smith/Getty Images Duke vs. Houston, men’s N.C.A.A. tournament: For a second straight year, Duke and Houston will face off in the tournament. And although all four No. 1 seeds are playing tonight for a spot in the national championship, it’s this later game that has the makings of a classic. An unstoppable force, Duke’s top-rated offense, is meeting an immovable object, Houston’s top-rated defense. If Duke has an edge, it’s the standout freshman Cooper Flagg, The A.P.’s player of the year and most likely the top pick in the next N.B.A. draft. Tonight at 8:49 p.m. Eastern on CBS NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was excitement. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Correction: Because of an editing error, yesterday’s newsletter misstated the U.S. dollar equivalent of 5 billion pounds. It’s about $6.5 billion, not $6.5 million. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 6 Author Members Posted April 6 April 6, 2025 Good morning. Today, an interview with the M.L.B. commissioner about the future of baseball. We’re also covering government firings, the Israeli military and a new Universal theme park. Shohei Ohtani Darryl Webb/Associated Press What’s on deck by Matthew Cullen and Michael S. Schmidt A new baseball season is underway, and the sport is enjoying a sort of renaissance. Baseball is making more money than it ever has. The addition of a pitch clock has made games quicker and created more action on the field. Attendance and ratings are on the rise. But the sport also faces a possible long-term problem: the widening gap between its haves and have-nots. Baseball’s future, both good and bad, is on display in California. It’s a glorious moment for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won the World Series last year and have baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani. After winning the title, the Dodgers added even more talent to their roster — the team will spend well over $300 million this year on player salaries. A few hundred miles up Interstate 5, in Sacramento, that kind of money feels almost unfathomable. There the Athletics, who left Oakland after 57 years, are playing their home games at a minor-league ballpark as they prepare to move to Las Vegas in three years. The A’s entire payroll is only slightly more than what Ohtani alone is owed each year. Money doesn’t win games. It’s baseball, after all. And the A’s are scrappy. Even if they aren’t as well compensated, they can beat anyone on any given day. But the imbalance of resources, over time, tends to offer richer teams an advantage. For today’s newsletter, The Times spoke with the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, about the state of the game. Payroll disparity Unlike other major American sports, baseball does not have a salary cap, which is used to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest teams. Some M.L.B. owners are pushing the league to adopt a salary cap as part of their next contract with the players’ union. Manfred told us in an interview at his office in New York that he believes the financial imbalance is an existential problem for the sport. “We sell entertainment that’s based on competition,” he said. “If people don’t believe there’s competition, you’ve got a product problem.” The problem: Players vehemently oppose a salary cap and many insist that they would never agree to play under one. Their union argues that players deserve to be compensated, without restriction, for the work they do. Last time the owners made a real push for a cap, in 1994, it resulted in a 232-day strike, a canceled World Series and years of fan frustration. The current contract is set to expire after next season. If the owners make another push for a cap, another painful work stoppage could follow. Baseball’s future In his interview with The Times, Manfred also spoke about a range of other topics concerning the present and future of the sport, including: Torpedo bats: The new, oddly shaped bats that caused a frenzy when the Yankees used them to hit several home runs are legal and “absolutely good for baseball,” Manfred said. Robot umpires: “The experiment was really successful,” Manfred said about the computerized challenge system for balls and strikes that the league tested during spring training. He hopes to use it in the regular season as soon as next year. Pitching injuries: Manfred warned that pitching “is getting taught in a way that emphasizes velocity and spin rate,” which puts additional strain on pitchers’ elbows. “By the time we get guys,” he said, “they’re already damaged goods.” What would make the game better: Recent rule changes have led to more action on the field, which Manfred thinks is key to the sport’s future. “Action, movement, the ability to show how athletic you are,” he said. “Any changes that allow the showcasing of the athleticism of your players is huge.” Read the full interview with Manfred here. For more: At the Athletic, Keith Law offers his predictions for the season and Tim Britton explains how each team could reach the playoffs. THE LATEST NEWS Government Overhaul The Department of Justice building in Washington. Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times The Trump administration suspended a senior Justice Department immigration lawyer after he questioned the decision to deport a Maryland man to El Salvador. President Trump’s firing of the head of the National Security Agency, on the advice of Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, has rattled some lawmakers. The ousting of the N.S.A. chief is one of several moves that have eroded U.S. cyberdefenses at a moment of rising danger. Trump administration officials have fired workers for the main American aid agency who were sent to Myanmar after the deadly earthquake there. Trump Tariffs Trump’s tariffs will wound global free trade, but the blow may not be fatal: Other countries could find a way to maintain the system without the U.S., Mark Landler writes. Trump vowed to help small businesses by reducing taxes and red tape, but some owners say his other policies have put them at a disadvantage. Vietnam, a manufacturing destination for U.S. brands, faces a potentially devastating 46 percent tariff. Its leader is asking Trump for a delay. Trump’s political strength is built on the economy. If it sinks, he could drag Republicans down with him, Nate Cohn writes. More on the Trump Administration In Phoenix, Arizona. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times Demonstrators took to the streets in cities and towns across the U.S. to protest Trump. Marco Rubio revoked the visas of all South Sudanese passport holders, saying the country had refused to accept deported citizens in a “timely manner.” Republican Medicaid cuts would put South Dakota, Missouri and Oklahoma in a bind: their constitutions require they participate in Medicaid expansion. International Chemical weapons investigators in Syria in 2013. Reuters More than 100 chemical weapons sites are thought to remain in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, inspectors said. Israel said its initial account of the killing of 15 rescue workers had been partially “mistaken.” A video obtained by The Times had contradicted the military’s assertion that the workers had been advancing suspiciously. Rodrigo Duterte, the former Philippine president, is attempting a political comeback from a cell at The Hague. He’s charged with crimes against humanity. Other Big Stories A Louisiana jury ordered Chevron to pay about $750 million to a parish government to help restore wetlands that the jury said the company had harmed for decades. An endangered Galápagos tortoise became a first-time mother at 100. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Do tariffs on cars and car parts help autoworkers? No. Automakers will lose profits to tariffs, which will likely hurt workers through layoffs and production cuts. “All are possible save the impossible: namely, that the impact of Trump’s tariffs will be zero on an industry he says he supports,” The Detroit News’s Daniel Howes writes. Yes. Trump’s auto tariffs will bring skilled, high-paid labor needed to produce car parts back to the U.S. “This isn’t protectionism. It’s restoration,” Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, writes for USA Today. FROM OPINION Trump’s attacks on democratic principles are not invincible. If institutions like law firms and universities want to survive, they have to fight back, the Editorial Board writes. To save globalization from the far right, governments need to address the inequality that is turning people against it, Tara Zahra writes. Here’s a column by Ross Douthat on Trump’s tariffs. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Stardust Racers, a roller coaster at Epic Universe. Todd Anderson for The New York Times Epic Universe: Our reporter got a peek inside Universal’s new Orlando theme park. He says it lives up to its name. Big ship, big concepts: Is your child obsessed with the Titanic? You’re not alone. Here’s why the disaster fascinates young minds. Most clicked yesterday: A couple wanted to a bigger space in a smaller building in Brooklyn. Which home did they choose? Vows: An awe-inspiring celebration in Guatemala, ruins and volcano included. Lives Lived: Dave Pelz left his job as a NASA scientist to study the short game of golf, and he made himself a celebrated guru of putts and wedge shots. He died at 85. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Heartwood,” by Amity Gaige: For armchair adventurers, Gaige’s twisty mystery will be as gratifying as the first daffodil at the end of a long winter. The tale unfolds in two spheres: In one, we have Valerie Gillis, a 42-year-old nurse who goes missing in Maine while hiking the Appalachian Trail. Her story takes shape through journal entries written as letters to her mother. (Gaige used a version of the same device in her last novel, “Sea Wife,” to great effect. Who doesn’t love reading over a character’s shoulder?) And then we have the crew searching for her, including a game warden, a septuagenarian scientist, fellow hikers and Valerie’s husband, who is, as the kids might say, “sus.” Paths twist, outlooks bleaken and metaphors abound as Gaige guides readers ever closer to answers — which lead to questions worth pondering, even if you don’t own hiking boots. More on books Here’s the full review of “Heartwood.” Liz Moore is another dependable purveyor of missing-person thrillers with soul, including “Long Bright River” and last year’s best-selling “The God of the Woods.” Read our profile. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is Bill Murray, whose new movie, “The Friend,” is in theaters. He talked about the film, his lifelong quest to be in the moment, and what celebrity has cost him. The inability to walk down the street anonymously, how did you figure out how to manage that? It’s a continuous process. It is not like, Oh, I figured that one out, because I’m not the same person now that I was 20 minutes ago. You can have a different point of view about it. You can hide from people. I’ve walked down the street with a hat down over my head, glasses on my eyes. I loved Covid. Because you could disappear? Because I could walk down the street with a mask on. But I’ve been all kinds of ways about it, and it’s a continuing development. I used to spend so much energy. People would say, “Can I take your picture?” And I would be the kind of ass that would say, “It’s may I take your picture?” I wasted a whole lot of time that way, doing stuff to make it acceptable on my stupid terms. So now what I do for a living is, I take cellphone photographs. I’m not an actor. I am a donkey that is photographed with people who don’t know how to operate their own cellphone camera. Have you found a way to get fulfillment out of this new job that you have? It’s not so much fulfilling. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Most people recognize when they see how skillful I am with this reverse, they say: “Oh, my God. How did you do that?” Well, because I’ve done it thousands of times, that’s how I got good at it. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE The New York Times Magazine Read this week’s magazine here. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Find your next fantasy book. Buy an emergency food kit. Lounge in the best pajamas. MEAL PLAN Kerri Brewer for The New York Times In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making “outrageously good” garlicky Alfredo beans, salmon with anchovy-garlic butter, and sheet-pan sausages, sweet potatoes and balsamic kale. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was radicchio. Can you put eight historical events — including the Louisiana Purchase, the invention of the No. 2 pencil, and the release of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Sports 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. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 7 Author Members Posted April 7 April 7, 2025 Good morning. Stocks in Asia and Europe plunged again after President Trump said tariffs would stay. U.S. markets are expected to drop. Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit the White House. We also share a recap of “The White Lotus” season finale. (No spoilers here!) More news is below. But first, our colleague explains the creative ways Trump is getting even with his opponents. President Trump Eric Lee/The New York Times The clapback By Michael S. Schmidt I’m an investigative reporter covering Washington. When President Trump returned to office, his rivals feared he would seek revenge by using the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to investigate and even imprison his perceived enemies. But the retribution effort is far more expansive, efficient and creative than that — and less reliant on the justice system. Trump has found new ways to use his power against foes. And his actions, or just the prospect of them, have led some of his antagonists to fall in line. Trump has filed lawsuits, signed executive orders, drafted regulations, fired people from government jobs and withdrawn security details to battle those who he believes stood in his way. In many cases, rather than turning to the courts or federal agencies to carry out his demands, he has asserted unilateral executive power. His defenders say the Constitution should be interpreted to give a president centralized, untrammeled control of government. Trump appears to hold a maximalist view of his powers even if they are disputed or untested. Can he deport people without due process, impound money allocated by Congress or remove appointees from independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board? He is not waiting to find out. He has imposed costs on those who fail to heed his demands at universities, news organizations and executive agencies. Most recently, major law firms have buckled rather than endure punitive executive orders or fight in court. “They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’” Trump said last recently. In today’s newsletter I’ll look at some of the most prominent cases and explain his prospects for ultimate success. A broad campaign The administration has struck at perceived adversaries in many realms. Attorneys general in blue states, lawyers and advocacy groups have filed many lawsuits to stop Trump’s policies. In the face of those challenges, Trump issued an order directing the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.” The law firm Paul Weiss is home to many former Democratic officials. Its managing partner is a major Democratic fund-raiser, and another partner prepared Kamala Harris for her debates. Trump barred it from dealing with the government and suggested that its clients could lose their government contracts. Despite believing that what Trump was doing to the firm was wrong and illegal, Paul Weiss made a deal with the Trump administration to reverse the order. Many alumni of Trump’s first administration later spoke out against him in the 2024 election, including John Bolton, his national security adviser, and Mark Esper, his defense secretary. Both had security protection because, the government believed, Iran might target them for their roles in helping Trump kill a top Iranian general. Trump revoked their security protection. Defense Department officials also withdrew protection for Mark Milley, a former top military officer who worried Trump was staging a “Reichstag moment” during the Capitol riot, and removed Milley’s portrait from the Pentagon. The Trump administration is investigating government lawyers who prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters — and will do the same for prosecutors who refused to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. The White House blocked Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the wire service refuses to use “Gulf of America,” Trump’s preferred term for the Gulf of Mexico. Trump sued an Iowa pollster who underestimated his support before the election. A Trump appointee has also announced an investigation into the San Francisco radio station KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions. Facebook suspended Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 riot. During the campaign, Trump threatened to imprison the company’s founder. After he took office, Meta, the parent company, agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit on the matter. Read a list of Trump’s other retributive actions here. What next In his first term, Trump tried to get the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. to investigate his rivals. Many of them came under scrutiny, but he was furious that none were charged. When he tried to revoke a former C.I.A. director’s security clearance, for instance, his aides stopped him. This time, with a more compliant staff, the only people holding him back are judges. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed (The Times is tracking them here), but it is impossible for courts to keep up. A good example came last month at a hearing about an executive order punishing the law firm Perkins Coie. The judge acted immediately with a temporary restraining order. But some of Perkins’s clients had already fled to other firms, and they are unlikely to return to lawyers blacklisted by the president. In other cases, Trump has said judges who rule against him should be impeached. Claims of executive power follow a pattern, experts say. When one president finds a new and different way to flex it, the next ones follow suit. The next Democratic president, for instance, might decide to fire government lawyers affiliated with the conservative Federalist Society. He or she could end all government contracts with Elon Musk’s companies — or hold back emergency aid from red states that resist new climate regulations. In the end, Trump’s actions may empower future presidents to use the executive branch as a cudgel of revenge. I explain Trump’s campaign in this video. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Tariffs In Seoul. Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press Stock markets in Asia and Europe plummeted this morning as investors become increasingly concerned about the impact of Trump’s tariffs. The U.S. is close to a bear market. Read more about the upheaval. The markets were reacting to Trump’s comments to reporters on Air Force One yesterday that he would not reverse the tariffs until trade deficits with other countries disappeared. Wall Street analysts spent the weekend assessing the damage of last week’s drops in the stock market. The Fed isn’t rushing to save the markets. Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said it was important to fully understand the effect of the tariffs before taking action. One group is optimistic: Gulf Coast shrimpers. They have struggled to compete with cheaper imported shrimp for years. China has tried to play down the impact of the trade war, presenting itself as too powerful to succumb to U.S. pressure. Elon Musk His social network X is still struggling, but Elon Musk’s relationship with Trump has prompted some advertisers to return to the platform. A thriving market for used Teslas has emerged as some owners sell their cars in protest. “0 to 1939 in 3 seconds”: Anti-Musk satire is flourishing in Britain. More on the Trump Administration Trump’s comments about a third term both distract from his policies and underscore the threats to America’s constitution, Peter Baker writes. Trump rejected a Biden administration plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs. Cambodia’s authoritarian leader has silenced most of the nation’s independent media. A Trump directive threatens the few that remain. Israel-Hamas War Benjamin Netanyahu is traveling to Washington today to meet with Trump. They are expected to discuss tariffs and the war. Two witnesses said they saw Israeli forces attack medics in Gaza, killing 15 people. See a video which appears to show soldiers opening fire on ambulances and a fire truck. The video contradicts Israel’s initial version of events, and the military now says it was “mistaken.” Read more about the case. War in Ukraine In Istanbul. Emin Ozmen for The New York Times Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled their country after the invasion of Ukraine. Many feared the draft, but they say even a cease-fire would not be enough to lure them home. Ukraine has had success over Russia in the Black Sea. In the port city of Odesa, some wonder what Kyiv stands to gain from a truce with Moscow over the waters. Other Big Stories Pope Francis Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The pope made a surprise public appearance during a mass in St. Peter’s Square, his first since leaving a hospital two weeks ago. A second child died of measles in West Texas, where an outbreak of the disease has infected hundreds. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended her funeral. After heavy rains and winds hit the Midwest and South, killing at least 18 people, the storm is now turning toward the Atlantic coast. Read what to expect. Opinions Trump intends to use tariffs to lower the value of the dollar, making U.S. exports more competitive with China, Jennifer Burns argues. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss education and Trump’s tariffs. Here is a column by David French on due process. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS A not-so-smart phone. Andria Lo for The New York Times Brain rot: Can a dumber phone make you smarter? A weird walk: Millions are flocking to the art collective Meow Wolf’s exhibitions. See inside. The Great Read: For years, the father of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s friend asked her to recount his childhood escape from the Nazis. She wrote the story she said she never would. Metropolitan Diary: An apology to a dog. Most clicked yesterday: Mass protests across the U.S. this weekend showed broad resistance to Trump. Lives Lived: Marcia Marcus was a figurative and conceptual artist with a steely will and a bold contemporary style. She found fame in the 1960s and was then largely overlooked until she was nearly 90, though she kept working decade after decade. She died at 97. SPORTS Paige Bueckers Carmen Mandato/Getty Images Women’s championship: Paige Bueckers and UConn secured a record 12th national title in a rout of the defending champion, South Carolina. N.H.L.: Alex Ovechkin scored career goal No. 895, surpassing Wayne Gretzky to become No. 1 on the all-time list. ARTS AND IDEAS We’ll take a booth, please. Phil Donohue Casual dining chains like Pizza Hut, Chili’s, Olive Garden — places where middle-class families can walk in without a reservation and share a meal — have been in decline for most of the 21st century. The loss of these spaces, along with the rise of delivery apps, signals the fall of the middle-class restaurant. More on culture Aimee Lou Wood in “The White Lotus.” Fabio Lovino/HBO The third season of “The White Lotus” ended yesterday. We won’t spoil anything here, so go read our recap. Jason Isaacs, who played the Ratliff father on “The White Lotus,” sat for an interview with The Times. Lorazepam, the medication that became synonymous with the show, is still finding new life in memes and merchandise. “Adolescence” on Netflix has made parents more concerned about their sons online, The Cut reports. “A Minecraft Movie” is a surprise box office smash, selling nearly double the expected amount. In honor of the arrival of the Betty Boop musical on Broadway, our theater reporter looks back on the character’s nearly 100-year history. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Stir-fry shrimp and green beans for a quick recipe inspired by the flavors of chile crisp. Start composting. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were hotline and neolith. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 8 Author Members Posted April 8 April 8, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. In two rulings, the Supreme Court temporarily cleared the way for some of President Trump’s deportations. Scientists say they have revived an extinct wolf species made famous by “Game of Thrones.” And microplastics are getting into our brains. More news is below. But first, I explain the global market panic over tariffs. The New York Stock Exchange. Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times The sell-off It’s been an ugly few days for markets around the world. Yesterday, the S&P 500 closed down 10 percent from where it was at the start of the month. It briefly entered bear-market territory. European and Asian indexes are also down since April 1. Source: LSEG Data & Analytics | Data as of 3 a.m. Eastern on April 8. | By Karl Russell, Ashley Wu and Pablo Robles The chaos began, of course, with President Trump’s tariffs. International leaders are now seeking reprieves from the president. More than 50 nations have contacted the White House to negotiate, the administration claims. Israel’s prime minister came to Washington yesterday in search of a deal. The situation is unusual in that it’s entirely in Trump’s hands. The president can usually influence, but rarely control, economic challenges — a bank collapse, a housing bubble, a pandemic. In the current market rout, Trump is the cause. He imposed the tariffs, and he decides when they go. So world leaders have one place to turn. Today’s newsletter looks at their efforts to persuade Trump and whether they’re likely to succeed. Seeking reprieve Other countries, it’s fair to say, are confused. World leaders want to strike a bargain with Trump to ease the tariffs against them, but they don’t know what he wants. And he has not explained a clear purpose for his tariffs. At times, he has outlined goals that contradict each other: Trump has suggested that the tariffs are reciprocal and part of a negotiating tactic, which would make them temporary as long as other countries work with him. But he has also said that the tariffs are meant to raise tax revenue and to bring back U.S. manufacturing, which would suggest they are actually permanent; tariffs can’t raise money or entice manufacturers back to America if they end. Consider Israel’s situation. Before Trump announced his tariffs last week, Israel’s government vowed to rescind all of its levies on the United States. After all, Trump had said that his tariffs were meant to retaliate against other countries’ trade barriers, so Israel figured that it could preemptively give Trump what he wants. Trump imposed new levies on Israel anyway. President Trump with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Eric Lee/The New York Times Yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel became the first world leader to speak to Trump in person since the president issued his tariffs. Netanyahu reiterated that Israel would eliminate trade barriers against the United States. Trump thanked him but promised nothing in return. The market chaos reflects the uncertainty that foreign leaders are navigating. Stocks briefly rose yesterday on unsubstantiated reports that the administration might pause the tariffs for 90 days. But the White House’s social media accounts called the reports “FAKE NEWS,” and Trump threatened even more tariffs on China to counter its retaliatory duties on the United States. The markets tumbled again. Over just a few hours, trillions of dollars appeared and vanished. Different possibilities The president’s gambit has one of two likely outcomes. In the first, Trump weathers the economic chaos and gets serious concessions from other countries. In the second, markets — and, potentially, the economy — continue to fall apart, and Trump never gets real concessions from trade partners. Maybe he backs down, with little to show for his tariffs, as he did with Canada and Mexico earlier this year. Israel is gambling on the first outcome, as Netanyahu demonstrated at the White House. Europe is, too; it is preparing retaliatory measures, but they are more modest than its initial threats. “Officials are moving slowly and deliberately, avoiding a single sweeping set of retaliatory moves, in hopes of giving the United States time to come to the table to make a deal,” my colleague Jeanna Smialek explained. Others are betting on the second outcome. China, for one, has struck a defiant tone, David Pierson, Claire Fu and Vivian Wang reported. It says that it’s ready for a trade war — and that it will win. China’s government appears to believe that it is no longer reliant on the U.S. market for its exports. (The Times is tracking which countries are negotiating and which are retaliating here.) Unlike other complex pieces of policy — income tax changes, new laws, court cases — this chapter of Trump’s presidency rests in one pair of hands: his own. Its conclusion is up to him. Related: Stocks in Europe and Asia were calmer this morning. More on the economy Tech leaders spent millions courting Trump to influence regulation. Their efforts have yet to pay off. American whiskey distillers are bracing. The industry has become a target for retaliatory tariffs by other countries. The Trump administration believed it had a plan to save TikTok, then it hit a wall: China blocked the deal because of the president’s tariffs. THE LATEST NEWS Supreme Court In El Salvador. Pool photo by Alex Brandon The Supreme Court said that the Trump administration could continue using a wartime powers act to deport Venezuelan migrants, for now. The ruling, however, did not address the merits of the case. Rather, the justices said that the migrants’ lawyers had filed their lawsuit in the wrong court. The Supreme Court also paused a lower court’s order that had required the U.S. to bring back a Maryland resident whom it had mistakenly deported. More on Immigration ICE is seeking $45 billion to expand immigrant detention. If approved, it could amount to a sixfold increase in spending for migrant detention. The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing grants to ensure that cities and states are complying with Trump’s priorities on immigration and diversity. Trump called Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing the challenge to his deportation flights, a “Radical Left Lunatic.” His reputation and his appointment by George W. Bush suggest otherwise. Read about him. The U.S. has revoked visas from nearly 150 international students in recent days. Many weren’t given a reason. The Trump Administration The U.S. and Iran are expected to hold talks Saturday to negotiate over a possible deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. Trump withdrew from the previous agreement in 2018. Career lawyers at the Justice Department say they feel trapped between judges’ demands and their bosses’ instructions to protect the Trump agenda at all costs. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for bans on fluoride in drinking water, a move that would reverse what some experts consider one of America’s greatest public health achievements. The Trump administration is expected to reverse several Biden-era gun control measures, including an effort to crack down on some gun dealers who skip background checks. Maine sued the Agriculture Department over a funding freeze that the state said could threaten school meal programs. FEMA will cut more than $300 million in disaster prevention aid to New York, much of which was to be used for flood mitigation efforts in New York City. International Debris from buildings destroyed in the Myanmar earthquake. Associated Press Aid groups say that earthquake relief is not reaching Myanmar fast enough and that the country’s military government is to blame. Prince Harry is in court today for a hearing in his case over the withdrawal of publicly financed security for his family during visits to Britain. Other Big Stories A wolf pup. Colossal Biosciences Using DNA from fossils, researchers bred gray-wolf pups that carry genes of the extinct dire wolf. Thousands of working people in New York City live in shelters, unable to afford apartments despite holding down decent-paying jobs. Speaker Mike Johnson effectively quashed a bipartisan proposal to let new parents in Congress vote remotely. The issue has divided Republicans. Scientists know that our bodies contain more microplastics than they did a few years ago. Now they’re trying to figure out what that means for our health. Click the video below to see our reporter explain how microplastics get into our brains. The New York Times Opinions Are embryos people or property? Even the courts can’t settle on a definition, and that has major consequences for us, Anna Louie Sussman writes. Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on Trump and the economy and Thomas Edsall on the Hispanic vote. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Victor Llorente for The New York Times A race to the bottom: An inside look at the realities of being a contractor, including labor shortages and low, low margins. Hatsushima: Japan built a 3D-printed train station in six hours. See video of how it did it. Be prepared: Experts offer advice for what to do if you’re in an earthquake. Most clicked yesterday: In a video, the reporter Mike Schmidt explains why Trump is punishing law firms. Watch it here. Lives Lived: John Peck, known as the Mad Peck, was a cultural omnivore whose work as an underground cartoonist, artist, critic and disc jockey had a dry humor and an ornate eccentricity. He died at 82. SPORTS The Florida Gators celebrate. Bob Donnan/Imagn Images, via Reuters Men’s college basketball: Florida overcame a 12-point deficit in the second half to defeat Houston and win the national title, 65-63. It came down to the final possession. N.H.L.: Meredith Gaudreau, wife of the late Johnny Gaudreau, announced the birth of the couple’s third child. ARTS AND IDEAS In New York City. Logan Jackson for The New York Times A new literary scene has emerged in New York that is equal parts sincere and wry. “Straight Girls,” a monthly poetry night, features a mix of original works and found texts — including Letterboxd reviews — that the readers find accidentally poetic. Read more about the event, which is attracting established literary-world figures and socialities. More on culture On the first episode of her podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder,” Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, discusses media scrutiny and family. Independent fashion-focused magazines are experiencing a mini boom. See a list of 10 of the freshest and most creative publications. The third season of “The White Lotus” has come to a close. Craving more dramas about rich people? Read these books. “Hey, Mom, look — no economy!”: Jon Stewart joked about the stock market on “The Daily Show.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Cure your own gravlax at home with just a few ingredients. Improve your agility. Find “gently used” designer clothing at a steep discount. Use the best dish soap. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were inaptly and pliantly. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S. Curious about what happens inside The Times when news breaks? This article explains our process for covering big stories. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 9 Author Members Posted April 9 April 9, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering due process and America’s immigration crackdown. But first, we look at the response to Trump’s global tariffs. Workers in Guangzhou, China. Qilai Shen for The New York Times President Trump’s global tariffs took effect this morning. They hit nearly all U.S. allies and raised import taxes on Chinese goods to at least 104 percent. Stocks slumped in Asia and Europe in response. Investors are worried about a global recession. (Read the latest news here.) China has retaliated with its own tariffs, set to take effect at midday, and the European Union is preparing a response. Many world leaders are trying to negotiate. Trump said 70 governments had approached the U.S., and many have scheduled phone calls and sent delegations to Washington. The administration is expected to begin talks with Japan and South Korea. Still confused by the tariffs? These charts will answer all your questions. In Maiquetía, Venezuela. Cristian Hernandez/Associated Press Immigrants’ rights This week, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to deport planeloads of Venezuelan migrants. Trump called the ruling a victory, but it came with a catch: The administration’s rationale can still be challenged, and it must ensure that would-be deportees have their day in court. “All nine members of the court agree that judicial review is available,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence. Of all Trump’s actions so far, few have alarmed democracy scholars more than his mass deportations of migrants without a hearing. Why? Experts see a precedent that could undermine the liberties of all Americans. Your right to due process — your day in court — underpins all of your other rights. If a prosecutor wants to deny you freedom and lock you up, she has to make her case. If a police officer illegally violates your privacy and searches your house to try to prove a crime, a trial can verify if he gathered the evidence legitimately. If Congress passes a law that lets officials arrest you for your political speech or religious beliefs, a court challenge can get the statute overturned. It turns out that some of the Venezuelan migrants who were packed into planes and shipped to a prison in El Salvador may not be the gang members who officials say they are. That fact could have come out in hearings. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why our constitutional system depends on due process — and what might happen without it. Getting heard A state-provided image of Venezuelan migrants in El Salvador. Agence France-Presse, via El Salvador's Presidency Press Trump and his allies argue that his deportations last month targeted criminal migrants — specifically, Venezuelans who were not citizens and were part of a gang, Tren de Aragua. But his administration never had to prove those claims in court. A judge never checked the government’s work. And the government made mistakes. Officials rounded up migrants based on their clothes and tattoos, arguing they were proof of gang membership. A judge would bring skepticism to such claims. Several migrants say the government got it wrong with its crude approach. One migrant says his tattoo is a crown that merely honors the soccer team Real Madrid. Another, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, had protected legal status. The administration acknowledged it shouldn’t have deported him immediately, and a lower court ordered his return. The Supreme Court has put that order on hold for now. These cases show the importance of due process. Governments mess up. Sometimes, officials act maliciously and abuse their power. The Constitution has an answer to those problems: A defendant’s day in court forces the state to prove that its actions are justifiable and lawful. The administration has also made several other unprecedented immigration moves, such as revoking the visas of nearly 300 students without a clear explanation. So far, these cases are following some measure of due process; the students can challenge the decision before they’re deported. But if officials start to ship these students home without a hearing, that would clearly break with the Constitution. A lack of due process presents a slippery slope: If government officials can say anything, true or not, to justify their actions — as they did with the Venezuelan migrants — what stops them from doing that to an American citizen? If they never have to prove someone is actually who they say he is, they can claim anything and act with impunity against anyone. Trump’s deportations set a precedent that his opponents could abuse once they’re back in power. Republicans have benefited in recent elections from growing support among Latino voters, including Venezuelans. A Democratic president could cite Trump’s actions to deport so-called MAGAzuelans, claiming they’re also criminals with Tren de Aragua and in the country illegally, all without a court hearing. Even some of Trump’s backers worry about the slipshod deportations. The podcaster Joe Rogan warned on his show, “You’ve got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting, like, lassoed up and deported and sent to, like, El Salvador prisons.” The legal arguments The Trump administration argues that it has the power to ignore due process in these cases. It says the influx of unauthorized immigrants into the United States is an invasion, meaning these migrants are effectively alien enemies. Officials say that the president has special wartime powers, such as those outlined in the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to detain and deport people without trial. They also say that noncitizens, especially those in the country illegally, don’t have the same rights as Americans. Trump’s critics disagree. The constitutional amendments that enshrine due process rights apply to “persons,” not just citizens. Tellingly, current Supreme Court justices have voiced regret for Japanese internment during World War II, which detained people without due process. And, generally, migrants have the right to challenge their removal in court, as my colleagues Albert Sun and Miriam Jordan explained: By The New York Times The Supreme Court’s ruling this week suggests that the justices agree with Trump’s critics — that migrants, even people here illegally, have due process rights. That finding, however, is preliminary. The justices will likely issue a full decision after deportees challenge the law and appellate judges examine the issue. The court’s verdict could set the boundaries of everyone’s due process rights. THE LATEST NEWS More on Tariffs The New York Stock Exchange. Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times Billionaires who backed Trump, agitated by the tariff plan, are pleading with White House officials to change Trump’s mind. Trump’s top trade official, Jamieson Greer, defended the tariffs before the Senate Finance Committee. He spoke of “a moment of drastic, overdue change.” The carmaker Stellantis shut down factories in Canada and Mexico, and Audi paused exports to the U.S. from Europe. Other auto companies are also taking action. Elon Musk called Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” as tensions between the two exploded. Trump wants to eliminate trade deficits with every U.S. trading partner. Many economists say that doesn’t make sense. The global trading system is another example of the Trump administration tearing something apart, only to reveal that it has no plan to replace it, David Sanger writes. Late night hosts joked about the tariffs. Trump Administration The Supreme Court. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The Supreme Court blocked a lower court’s order directing the administration to rehire thousands of probationary federal workers. The court’s early rulings on Trump’s plans have been narrow and technical, as though it wants to avoid the larger questions of government power, Adam Liptak writes. At the administration’s direction, the I.R.S. agreed to help ICE officials find immigrants to deport. Several top agency officials are preparing to resign in response. The government froze more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern as it investigates the universities over accusations of racial discrimination and antisemitism. The Justice Department is disbanding a team that investigates cryptocurrency crimes. A federal judge ordered the White House to restore The Associated Press’s reporting access, which it limited after the wire service refused to adopt the term “Gulf of America.” International A collapsed nightclub in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Erika Santelices/Reuters At least 98 people died after the roof of a nightclub in the Dominican Republic collapsed during a concert, including a governor and a former major-league baseball player. Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had captured two Chinese citizens fighting alongside Russian forces. He did not suggest that they were sent by Beijing’s military. The Times obtained a partial transcript of pilots’ communications in the minutes before the deadly Jeju Air crash in South Korea last year. Other Big Stories The Keystone pipeline system, which carries crude oil from Canada to the U.S., shut down because of an oil spill in North Dakota. A California man pleaded guilty to trying to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh. He was arrested near the justice’s home with weapons in June 2022. The family of a 14-year-old Palestinian American boy said that Israeli forces shot and killed him in the West Bank. Community leaders in New Jersey gathered to demand justice. A massive tree fell on a woman’s car. See her narrow escape in this video from CNN. Opinions If the Trump administration keeps chipping away at food safety programs, we may rediscover how much we need them, Deborah Blum writes. “Liberation Day” was messy, but Trump’s tariffs can still work, Oren Cass writes. Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and Bret Stephens on the mistakenly deported Maryland man. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Photo illustration by Tyler Comrie How to rebuild? Wildfires destroyed much of the Palisades in Los Angeles — and ignited competing visions for its future. Captive: A woman is accused of locking her stepson in his room for about two decades, until he escaped by starting a fire. When found, he was 32, and 68 pounds. Read his story. Air travel: Long delays on the tarmac are becoming more common. Here’s what airlines have to do for you when that happens. Conversation: A neuroscientist says ideology may not be what you think but how you’re wired. Health: The F.D.A. has authorized new at-home tests for S.T.I.s. Read what to know. Most clicked yesterday: Microplastics are in our brains. In a video, our reporter explains what that might mean for our health. Watch it here. Lives Lived: King Holmes almost single-handedly legitimized the study of sexually transmitted infections, turning a neglected, stigmatized subject into a major field of medical research. He died at 87. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Denver Nuggets fired their coach, Mike Malone, two years after he won a title and with less than a week left in the season. They could still make the playoffs. It was part of a strange two weeks in the league. M.L.B.: The former player who died in the roof collapse in the Dominican Republic was Octavio Dotel, 51, a reliever who played for 13 teams. Read about his life. ARTS AND IDEAS Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s “bed-in” for peace in 1969. Charlie Ley/Mirrorpix, via Getty Images Are we living through a Yokossance? Over the past few years, Yoko Ono, 92, has been the focus of a tribute album, several biographies and a blockbuster exhibition. Now, another biography and a forthcoming documentary peer further into her well-chronicled life. Two Times pop music critics discuss what these histories add to our understanding of Ono. More on culture Madonna and Elton John made up backstage at “Saturday Night Live.” (Yes, they were feuding.) There’s a Caribbean cruise for heavy-metal fans. About 3,000 took it, The Washington Post reports. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Julia Gartland for The New York Times Make crispy potato kugel, finished with chives. Test your knowledge of the history of books. Camp in your car. Create a home theater with a projector. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was laughed. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 10 Author Members Posted April 10 April 10, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering Trump’s pause on tariffs. We’re also covering the budget, a mouse brain and Poppy McIlroy. Eric Lee/The New York Times Trump’s retreat When it comes to tariffs, President Trump is a creature of habit. He first rolls out new levies with bluster. He claims they will solve a major problem: They’ll help stop fentanyl trafficking across the Mexican and Canadian borders. They’ll bring back manufacturing. They’ll rebalance trade. They’ll collect trillions in revenue. Soon, the markets panic. Investors worry about the higher prices and lower economic growth that tariffs will cause. Stocks tank. Business leaders call the White House to complain — or, worse, vent publicly about Trump and his methods. Then, the president rolls back his plans. We reached that final stage yesterday. Trump paused his so-called reciprocal tariffs on every nation but China for 90 days. The move leaves a universal 10 percent tariff on all other countries except Canada and Mexico, which face separate duties. But it undoes some of the most shocking tolls — 20 percent on the European Union, 24 percent on Japan, 46 percent on Vietnam. Markets rallied at the news. The S&P 500, which had flirted with bear-market territory, shot up almost 10 percent. But stocks haven’t fully recovered from the chaotic “Liberation Day” announcement last week, and the United States remains in an open trade war with China, which faces a 125 percent penalty on its goods. And what happens when the pause ends? Today’s newsletter looks at the fallout from this latest tariff episode. Unclear goals The Port of Los Angeles. Maggie Shannon for The New York Times From the start, the president has faced one key question about his plan: What’s the point? On the campaign trail, Trump spoke about the need for tariffs to revitalize U.S. manufacturing, and JD Vance fantasized about once again making toasters in America. Trump also said the tolls would bring in tax revenue. But neither of these goals — manufacturing and revenue — is achievable unless the tariffs remain in place. Manufacturers won’t shift production back to the United States if they think the incentive to do so will soon disappear. Some of Trump’s allies have built a different case for tariffs: that they are a negotiating tactic, one that gets other countries to remove their own trade barriers against the United States. But this implies that the tariffs are fleeting and will vanish when Trump lands new trade deals. In other words, the stated goals contradict each other. Trump’s announcement yesterday muddled things further. On one hand, Trump and his cabinet said that the pause would give them time to complete new trade deals, suggesting that they were a negotiating tactic. On the other hand, Trump is keeping the 10 percent universal tariffs. Are they now permanent? The administration hasn’t provided a clear answer. If the intention was hard to parse, so were the methods. “Only an hour or so ago, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, stood in front of the White House and said that the reversal on tariffs was the president’s strategy ‘all along,’” my colleague Ben Casselman wrote yesterday. “Now Trump himself is saying that he made the decision in response to the market turmoil.” One reason for the mixed message is disagreement within the administration. Over the weekend, Bessent pressed Trump to use the tariffs to get concessions. (He said the president “is the most deft negotiator there is,” according to an inside look at White House deliberations that my colleagues published yesterday.) Trump refused, believing the market pain was “short-term.” He changed his mind after the bond market faltered. What’s next Once the pause ends in 90 days, we could go through another round of economic chaos. That kind of uncertainty has rattled markets throughout Trump’s second term, and it will likely continue as long as the tariff threat looms. It’s easy to forget, but Trump’s original idea on the campaign trail — the one that alarmed economists to begin with — was a universal 10 percent tariff. Now he has it. That levy is still one of the largest tax hikes since World War II. It will lead to higher prices and slower growth, and poorer Americans will disproportionately pay for it. The United States will suffer more from the ensuing trade war than any other major economy besides Mexico, experts estimate. Source: O.E.C.D. Economic Outlook | By The New York Times And the steep tariffs on China will additionally hit many imported products, including 73 percent of smartphones, 78 percent of laptops, 87 percent of video game consoles and 77 percent of toys, the economist Wendong Zhang said. Trump has undone some of the expected damage by abandoning his plan, for now. But America still taxes trade much more than it did before Trump’s presidency — and that will continue to roil the world’s economy. More on tariffs China makes lots of the clothing Americans buy, as well as toys and electronics. Here’s a guide to how the tariffs could affect prices. Ratings at Fox Business and CNBC have soared. Canada expects to raise billions from retaliatory tariffs, and it has promised to use the money to help companies under threat from the U.S. Trump’s auto tariff hasn’t changed. People in the English town of Solihull, where Jaguar Land Rover employs thousands, are stressed. Trump spared Russia from tariffs. But falling oil prices could hurt its economy even more. Below, the Times finance reporter Rob Copeland explains how three White House advisers have shaped Trump’s tariff policies. Click the video to watch. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a budget vote after conservatives said the plan would add too much to the nation’s debt. Trump signed executive orders punishing two officials from his first term who opposed his 2020 election lies. He also targeted another elite law firm. Federal judges in Texas and New York restricted the Trump administration’s use of a wartime statute to deport Venezuelan migrants. The administration slashed many of the aid programs it promised to keep. The U.N. food agency said the new cuts “could amount to a death sentence” for millions. The Senate confirmed Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former governor who ran for president twice, as ambassador to Israel. Chief Justice John Roberts said Trump could temporarily remove the leaders of two independent agencies while the Supreme Court considers their cases. Climate After cutting federal climate programs, Trump is targeting efforts by states. The Trump administration cut funding and staff for the government’s premier climate change report. Scientists said it wasn’t clear the report could continue. The administration also cut nearly $4 million in funding for climate change research at Princeton, claiming that the work made young people anxious. In Washington State, where salmon farming is a multibillion-dollar industry, government firings and budget freezes may endanger future harvests. War in Ukraine Ksenia Karelina in August. EPA, via Shutterstock Ksenia Karelina, a Russian American who was jailed for treason in Russia after donating about $50 to a nonprofit supporting Ukraine, is returning to the U.S. in a prisoner swap, Marco Rubio said. A Ukrainian teen is accused of becoming an unwitting foot soldier for Russia abroad. Read his story. More International News In Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Alfred Davies/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Jet Set, the nightclub in the Dominican Republic whose roof collapsed this week, was where the country’s big names went to party. Officials say the disaster killed at least 184 people. The Islamic State has regained strength in Syria, attracting fighters and increasing attacks, according to U.S. officials and the U.N. Thailand arrested an American academic on charges of criticizing the monarchy. Other Big Stories Jo Ellis, a National Guard pilot, is suing an influencer who falsely identified her as the captain of a helicopter that crashed with a passenger plane. A leader of the pro bono practice at the elite law firm Paul Weiss is resigning weeks after it struck a deal with Trump to escape a punitive executive order. Opinions The Trump administration refuses to free the man it mistakenly put in a Salvadoran prison because it wants to show it’s above due process, Erwin Chemerinsky and Laurence Tribe write. While the world convulses, Painted Lady butterflies are thriving and adapting. Lucas Foglia and Aimee Nezhukumatathil help you meet them. In a new podcast from Times Opinion, “Interesting Times,” Ross Douthat seeks to sort out the new world order. Hear a conversation with the economist Oren Cass about the trade war. Here are columns by Jamelle Bouie on what drives Trump and Nicholas Kristof on Palestinian Christians. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Allen Institute Mental map: Scientists have charted a millimeter of a mouse brain — something they once thought was impossible. They found more than half a billion neural connections. Wealth: Read the strange case of an Hermès heir, an emir and a deal gone wrong. Faith: A man served 36 years for his wife’s murder and then forgave the man who confessed to it. Frontier: American needs more homes, and they won’t all fit in cities. The only answer is sprawl, a Times reporter writes. Doomsday: Preparing for the collapse of civilization is becoming more mainstream. Health: Expensive “longevity hacks” are all the rage. But many of the best tools for living longer are cheap or free. Most clicked yesterday: These charts explain Trump’s tariffs. Lives Lived: Xavier Le Pichon’s computer rendering helped revolutionize how scientists understand movements of the Earth’s crust. He died at 87. SPORTS Poppy McIlroy The Masters Golf: The Masters begins today. Rory McIlroy’s 4-year-old daughter, Poppy, sank a major putt on the course. See the video in The Guardian. N.B.A.: Luka Dončić scored 45 points in his return to Dallas. ARTS AND IDEAS In Manhattan. Oliver Farshi for The New York Times This spring, the crafts chain Hobby Lobby is expected to open a store in TriBeCa, a Manhattan neighborhood known for its liberal politics. Some people aren’t happy: The chain’s owners are vocal about their conservative Christian beliefs. “I moved to New York to get away from things like that,” said one resident who is calling for a boycott. Can Hobby Lobby make it in Manhattan? More on culture Maria Fraterrigo with Plucky, her 24-year-old parrot. Maria Fraterrigo A woman tried to board a plane with an emotional support parrot. It led to a fight. Thomas Pynchon is publishing a new novel in October. He’s 87 now, and “Shadow Ticket,” featuring a Depression-era private eye, will be his first book since 2013. Customers lined up outside Trader Joe’s grocery stores to buy new variations on its $3 tote bag. On late night, tariffs were still the main punchline. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Ryan Liebe for The New York Times Combine amatriciana, cacio e pepe, carbonara and gricia for rigatoni alla zozzona, which loosely translates to a big mess. Get a great rate on a hotel room. Upgrade a shower head. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was modular. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 12 Author Members Posted April 12 April 11, 2025 Good morning. China has raised tariffs on U.S. imports to 125 percent. The Supreme Court sided with a man the government wrongly deported to El Salvador. A helicopter on a sightseeing tour crashed in New York, killing a pilot and a family of five tourists. More news is below. But first, we explain this weekend’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. An anti-American mural in Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Iran talks By David E. Sanger I’m a White House correspondent covering national security issues. Tomorrow, the United States will resume nuclear negotiations with Iran for the first time since Tehran lost most of its proxy forces — including thousands of fighters for Hamas and Hezbollah — and its bet that Donald Trump would not return to the Oval Office. No country has worked harder on a nuclear bomb without actually building one than the Islamic Republic. Nor has any country insisted more loudly that it wouldn’t build a weapon. Now, despite years of technical setbacks, assassinated scientists and sabotaged nuclear facilities, Iran is almost capable of pulling it off — if it makes the political decision to do so, Western intelligence agencies say. It could produce bomb-grade fuel in weeks and a workable weapon in months to a year or so. Israel is once again threatening military action, and the United States has moved B-2 stealth bombers in range. Trump insists military action won’t be necessary if Iran makes a deal — but it has to move fast at the point of a gun. So talks begin tomorrow in Oman between Trump’s personal negotiator, Steve Witkoff, and Iran’s foreign minister. I’ve covered the Iranian nuclear program for more than two decades. Today, I’ll explain what changed in recent years and examine the chances that diplomacy might work. Washington’s view After Iran watched the United States oust regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, it stopped developing a nuclear warhead, U.S. intelligence concluded. But Tehran kept options open. It got better at enriching uranium even as it insisted the work was for power plants, medical isotopes and research. Iran had that right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But the past five presidents feared it would be too easy for the theocracy — one that still reaches for chants like “Death to America” and threatens to obliterate Israel — to fabricate a bomb. So Israel covertly killed a number of Iranian nuclear scientists. (Assassins wove through traffic to attach “sticky bombs” to their car doors.) The U.S. and Israel created a computer virus that seized control of nuclear centrifuges and blew them up. The sabotage campaign helped bring Iranians to the negotiating table with the Obama administration, China, Russia and some European nations. Iran agreed to ship 97 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country. But the deal had weaknesses: Iran retained its nuclear-enrichment infrastructure and the deal would expire in 2030. In exchange, the U.S. and other nations lifted economic sanctions. Obama bet that, with time, a younger generation would push Iran to a more Western-leaning posture. The agreement polarized Congress. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, lobbied against it, arguing the Iranians would cheat. Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018 — over the objections of national security aides who noted it was working. Then, in 2020, Trump ordered the U.S. military to kill a beloved Iranian general who had overseen many of the region’s deadliest strikes on Americans and their allies. The Iranians vowed revenge, and they tried to hire a hit squad to assassinate Trump on the campaign trail, according to an indictment last year. (Iran denies involvement.) It began enriching uranium to near-bomb-grade quality. The country now has enough for roughly six bombs. Tehran’s view The remains of a ballistic missile fired by Iran against Israel. Amir Cohen/Reuters Iran detests Trump, who says the country will be in “great danger” if it fails to strike a deal. But Trump is clearly more open than President Biden was. Officials in Tehran feel defenseless, since Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen — all nurtured and supplied by the Islamic Republic — have been pummeled. Iran’s own missile attacks on Israel last year were a failure. And sanctions are still hurting. I asked Rob Malley, who worked on the 2015 deal and then represented President Biden for talks with Iran that led nowhere, how the Iranians think about the latest two presidents. “Biden was lukewarm about a deal; Trump is eager. Biden fixates on domestic politics; Trump couldn’t care less. Biden was calculating; Trump, impulsive,” Malley told me. “Trump is throwing caution, prudence and logic to the wind. Which is why there is probably a greater chance of some kind of understanding now than there ever was under the prior administration.” In short, Trump benefits from “madman theory”: The Iranians believe he may give Netanyahu the green light and the weapons to attack — or even join in the operation. A possible deal The Iranians clearly hope for an agreement like the one from 2015: Give up some fuel stockpiles but retain fuel-making capability. Trump’s national security adviser says a deal must require “full dismantlement” of the nuclear program, along with the ability to make missiles or support terror groups. Netanyahu says that the Iranians must “blow up” their facilities under American supervision. Of course, after denouncing the 2015 deal, Trump will be under pressure to get a better one that prevents Iran from rebuilding. The most likely outcome for the weekend is that the two sides define what topics this negotiation is about. Trump refused on Wednesday to say how long talks could take. But American officials say they are determined not to get stuck quibbling over every facility, timeline and verification of compliance. Of course, as Trump discovered in dealing with the Ukraine war, if this problem were easily solvable, it would have been resolved long ago. THE LATEST NEWS Tariffs China said it was raising its tariffs on American goods to 125 percent from 84 percent. It’s the third time China has retaliated in an escalating trade war. The growing feud between the two economic superpowers has put the world economy on edge. Tesla has stopped accepting new orders in China for two car models that it imports from a factory in the U.S. Trump threatened more tariffs and sanctions on Mexico citing a long-running water dispute over shared rivers. Economy Stock markets remained volatile: The S&P 500 fell 3.5 percent yesterday, a day after it rose sharply. Some stocks around the world dropped slightly today. Inflation cooled in March. But economists warn that Trump’s tariffs are likely to send prices higher. Egg prices rose about 6 percent last month. Compared with a year earlier, they’re up more than 60 percent. Immigration Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, center, during a demonstration in support of her husband, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Rod Lamkey Jr. for The New York Times The Supreme Court said the Trump administration had to take steps to return a Maryland man it mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. The White House has effectively canceled many migrants’ legally obtained Social Security numbers, cutting them off from financial services. The aim is to pressure them to voluntarily leave the U.S. Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate detained over his role in pro-Palestinian protests, will seek testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Budget Vote House Speaker Mike Johnson Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The House passed a budget blueprint for slashing taxes and government spending, after Republican deficit hawks ended their revolt. The blueprint is spare on policy details. Congress will now write specific legislation that follows its basic instructions. The budget plan lets Republicans cut taxes by more, and trim spending by less, than their previous plan allowed, as these charts show. One Republican said he “reluctantly voted” for the measure only after Trump and his party’s House and Senate leaders privately promised deeper cuts to entitlements. More on the Trump Administration The Senate confirmed Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, the former National Guardsman and fighter pilot, to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Inside Trump’s plan to “get” Greenland: The White House hopes it can win control of the island through a P.R. campaign. Kathleen Sgamma, an oil and gas advocate, withdrew her nomination to run the Bureau of Land Management after a memo surfaced in which she criticized Trump. The Social Security Administration said people seeking retirement or survivor benefits could continue to file applications by phone, reversing a much-criticized change. Trump repealed Biden-era limits on water flow in shower heads, a topic he has obsessed over for years. International The scene of an Israeli strike in Syria’s Hama province. Abdulaziz Ketaz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Turkey and Israel have begun talks to prevent conflicts between their troops in Syria. Both countries have sought to influence Syria since its government collapsed. Pierre Poilievre, the conservative Canadian leader who draws comparisons to Trump, is struggling in battleground provinces. In oil-rich Alberta, though, he’s a hit. South Africa wants Elon Musk’s Starlink to operate in the country. Musk refused because he disagreed with a law intended to distribute wealth to victims of apartheid. Other Big Stories A New York City sightseeing helicopter crashed in the Hudson River, killing all six people on board, including three children. The charter company had prior mechanical failures. A Delaware judge ruled that Newsmax made defamatory statements when it falsely claimed that Dominion Voting Systems rigged votes in the 2020 election. Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, will run for governor of Colorado. Opinions Conservatives shouldn’t cut funding to elite institutions. They should fill those institutions with their own high art, Mark Bauerlein writes. Ukraine’s western border is a line that separates Ukrainians who can be attacked from people in the E.U. who can’t. Zhenya Oliinyk illustrates the border’s significance. Here are columns by David Brooks on literacy and critical thinking and David French on the conservative degrowth movement. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In Nebraska. Erinn Springer for The New York Times An expedition: Each spring, hundreds of thousands of cranes converge in Nebraska. The phenomenon draws in artists, conservationists and the curious. Ask the Therapist: “I had a sex dream about my therapist. Was she right to be upset?” Most clicked yesterday: A video explaining the advisers behind Trump’s tariffs. Lives Lived: Gerald Luss was a designer who worked on Manhattan high-rise offices and lush layouts for residential interiors. He helped define the look known as midcentury modern. He died at 98. SPORTS Golf: Justin Rose leads after the first round of the Masters, but it was 65-year-old Fred Couples stealing the day’s headlines after finishing under par. N.F.L.: The draft prospect Isaiah Bond turned himself in to the authorities regarding an outstanding sexual assault warrant. N.W.S.L.: The Thorns forward Deyna Castellanos, who also plays for the Venezuelan national team, will not be able to join her team abroad because of fears on looming travel restrictions. ARTS AND IDEAS Wes Anderson at the Venice Film Festival in 2023. Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Cannes Film Festival’s 78th edition opens this weekend. Movies directed by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Ari Aster are among 19 films that will compete for the Palme d’Or, its top prize. The festival will also feature the premiere of “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning” and Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great.” More on culture In Mexico City. Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times Some young people sick of the grind are spending their money on “mini retirements,” or extended career breaks. Prada announced that it would buy Versace for nearly $1.4 billion. A British version of “Saturday Night Live” is set to debut next year, executive produced by Lorne Michaels. Sabrina Carpenter is on Fortnite, The Cut reports. Late night hosts joked about Trump’s obsession with shower water pressure. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Smashed chicken burger Dane Tashima for The New York Times Make extremely tender burgers with smashed avocado and chicken. Mix the best martini tonight. Here’s a guide from Rebekah Peppler. Read “Audition,” a thrilling novel which examines how we perform for others. Remember Mumford & Sons? They’re making a comeback. Listen here. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was packable. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 13 Author Members Posted April 13 April 12, 2025 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Fan gatherings present intense opportunities to geek out with fellow enthusiasts. Can we cultivate some of that energy in everyday life? María Jesús Contreras Brain trust Last Friday afternoon, in the lobby of a Marriott in downtown Stamford, Conn., attendees of the 47th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the annual confab of word nerds hosted by The Times’s puzzle editor, Will Shortz, joyously convened. Veteran puzzlers greeted old friends with the excitement of a homecoming. First-timers smiled nervously, eyeing others’ name tags in hopes of catching a glimpse of a favorite crossword constructor. Some broke off into groups to chat or work on one of the many crosswords stacked on the welcome table. “Electric!” I scrawled in my notebook, smiling eagerly at the scene despite my efforts to be a dispassionate observer. Before last weekend, I thought of myself as a crossword person, insofar as I do the Times puzzle regularly and with some speed. I had, since seeing the 2006 documentary “Wordplay,” dreamed of attending the tournament, but only idly, sometimes musing to my one crossword friend about how it might be fun to spend an entire weekend doing puzzles. I had no idea what an amateur I was. At the tournament I encountered puzzlers who can finish a Saturday puzzle in three minutes. I met a fan who can, when presented with a constructor’s name, recall with precision just how many crosswords that person has had published in The Times. I witnessed a die-hard dressed as a cruciverbalist Phantom of the Opera, replete with grid-printed cape and mask and a rose whose stem was a giant pencil. “There are no casual puzzle people here,” I wrote in my notebook after the late-night wine-and-cheese reception where I sipped pinot grigio and listened to two constructors try to articulate the ecstasy they feel when, while painstakingly crafting a crossword, they realize the grid is actually going to come together, that they’re going to be able to complete an elegant puzzle. On Saturday, I did six timed puzzles with the competitors, only one of which I didn’t manage to complete in the 30 minutes allotted, and I felt some measure of pride that I wasn’t totally out of my league. But like a majority of the nearly 1,000 people at the tournament who had no hope of making it to the final round (grand prize: $7,500) my times were beside the point. The point was the community, the shared love and language participants possessed. In the hotel elevator after the first puzzle session, strangers became immediate comrades in arms as they commiserated over the clues they didn’t get: “Wait, how is POT a three-letter word for ‘Cash on hand’?” The puzzles they’d all just completed were enough of a connection to start a conversation, to linger and chat when they got to their floor, then make plans to get lunch together. This kind of fast intimacy is nearly impossible in the real world. If we take the time to even acknowledge a stranger in an elevator, we’re apt to nod, smile politely, look down at our phones: I see you, I recognize your humanity, but I have no desire to take this liaison any further. At a conference of enthusiasts, this impulse to withdraw is inverted. You’re there because you want to connect, because you’ve been doing puzzles alone in your kitchen for the past year and this is your one chance to geek out with others who share your niche interest. I spend most of my time avoiding eye contact with strangers; at a summit of the devoted, everyone is wide open, gazes get met eagerly. Here we are, all of us with this one passion in common, so we have common ground on which to establish a warm and satisfying chat, if not a lasting friendship. On my way home from the conference, I stopped in to see my old friend Peter, whom I’ve known since college. As much as I’d marveled at how easy it was to bond with strangers over crosswords at the tournament, it was a relief to be around someone who really knew me, to relax into the easy flow of our shared history. Meeting new people is exciting, but it’s also exhausting. What would be ideal, I thought, was if Peter were into crosswords — then I could have the excitement of this shared interest within a rich, established relationship. That’s unlikely to materialize though; he’s shown no interest. But for many years, we’ve both convened regularly with a group of friends for “Cookbook Club,” a roving potluck where everyone prepares a dish from the same cookbook. It’s our own sort of conference, based on an existing shared interest in cooking and eating. For several years, I sampled a different grape varietal every month with a group of friends at “Wine Club.” My friend Avi jokingly calls our weekly dinners out “Restaurant Club.” Eating and drinking with friends is hardly an arcane interest akin to speed-solving puzzles. But putting some structure around our everyday enthusiasms elevates them, adds some of the pageantry of the fan conference to an ordinary gathering, rendering the goings-on of ordinary life a little more exciting. THE LATEST NEWS Immigration The maximum-security prison in San Vicente, El Salvador, last week. Alex Peña/Getty Images The Trump administration clashed with a federal judge, refusing to comply with her demand for a road map to release a man deported to a Salvadoran prison last month. An immigration judge ruled that the Trump administration could deport the Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, though it’s unlikely to happen while a federal judge in New Jersey considers a broader challenge to his detention. The top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, an ally of President Trump, said she was investigating Gov. Philip Murphy and the state’s attorney general over an immigration policy. The Trump administration will end temporary protections for more than 10,000 people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. More on Politics The Trump administration has purged certain books from U.S. Naval Academy’s library: “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou is gone, while “Mein Kampf” remains. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to discover the cause of the increasing rates of autism in the U.S. by September. Scientists consider that timeline unrealistic. Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Trump’s special envoy met with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, to make progress on cease-fire talks over the war in Ukraine. Five more prominent law firms facing punitive action by Trump reached deals to do free legal work on causes he supports. Economy Yields on usually steady U.S. government bonds have spiked sharply. It’s a sign that Trump’s trade war has shaken faith in the U.S. economy. Tesla sales in the U.S. fell almost 9 percent in the first three months of the year, even as the overall market for electric vehicles grew. Other Big Stories Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after her body rejected it. She had lived with the kidney for 130 days — the longest anyone has tolerated such an organ. The mayor of Miami-Dade County vetoed legislation that would have removed fluoride from the drinking water in Florida’s most populous county. For the second time this year, South Carolina executed an inmate by firing squad. Both men chose the method over lethal injection. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Jon Hamm Adali Schell for The New York Times The decade since “Mad Men” has been a time of personal and professional change for Jon Hamm. Suddenly, he’s everywhere again. “Chicken jockey!”: Young audiences are responding raucously to a scene in “A Minecraft Movie.” The director approves; some theaters don’t. Modern Hollywood executives tend to wear gray sweaters and thousand-dollar sneakers. The clothes in Seth Rogen’s “The Studio,” though, are a throwback to a bygone era. A statue of Paddington — marmalade sandwich in hand — returned to its bench in the English town of Newbury. It had been vandalized last month. The new season “Black Mirror” on Netflix includes the show’s most blatant satire of streaming services yet. Music Nicole Scherzinger and Janacek operas: These are the classical music performances our critics can’t stop thinking about. Clem Burke, the drummer in Blondie, died this week at 70. His energetic rhythms propelled the band’s post-punk, disco and rock hits. The Library of Congress added 25 audio works to its registry, including the Windows 95 chime and the “Hamilton” cast album. The singer Rubby Pérez, who spent his long career devoted to merengue, died in the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. Hear five of his best songs. More Culture Josh Johnson Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Josh Johnson doesn’t have a tight five minutes like most stand-up comics. Instead, he’s winning fans with his sets of up-to-the-moment material. For a second year, people waited outside Trader Joe’s stores for a chance to buy miniature tote bags. At some locations, they sold out in less than an hour. A “Fiddler on the Roof” revival and a “Benjamin Button” musical were among the big winners of the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 📺 “The Last of Us” (Sunday): A show to make you think twice about that lunchtime portobello burger or pizza ai funghi, “The Last of Us” is an unusually stylish and affecting adaptation of a popular video game, and it returns for a second season. Set in a future in which cordyceps mushrooms have turned people into near zombies, the show centers, initially, on Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a mysteriously immune teenager, and Joel (Pedro Pascal), the smuggler who delivers her to what he hopes will be safety. The first season ended with a violent shootout. This one, set several years later, begins more peaceably. (Therapy has returned to the land.) But post-apocalypse, things rarely stay calm for long. For more: Can you tell a clicker from a walker? Test your zombie knowledge with this quiz. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Johnny Miller for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Chocolate-Caramel Matzo Toffee Passover starts tonight. If you’re looking for a last-minute gift to bring to a Seder, there’s still time to whip up a batch of chocolate-caramel matzo toffee. To make it, bake matzo crackers beneath a buttery topping of brown-sugar toffee and then cover it in bittersweet chocolate. You can add any toppings you like (chopped nuts, dried fruit, candied ginger, even crushed potato chips), or leave it pleasingly minimalist with just a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. It will keep up to a week when stored airtight at room temperature, but it rarely lasts that long in our toffee-loving house. REAL ESTATE Melissa Smith and Monte Harhouri Oliver Parini for The New York Times The Hunt: A couple scoured pastoral properties in Maine, Vermont and New York for a space where they could live and work. Which did they choose? Play our game. Budding industry: To revive the farm that had been in his family for seven generations, this antique collector chose to plant cannabis. What you get for $1.6 million: A 1875 Colonial Revival house in Kennebunkport, Maine; a converted church in Thunderbolt, Ga.; or a contemporary house in Phoenix. LIVING The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca. Yassine Alaoui Ismaili for The New York Times No phone, no guidebook: A writer visited Casablanca, Morocco, for the first time — without the internet. Here’s how it went. All about looks: Restaurateurs are finding that ambience and branding matter more to some diners than the food. Micro-retirement: Some young people are spending their savings on an extended break earlier in their careers. Green your garden: Read about four ecologically crucial things you should do in your garden. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Create an al fresco oasis The right patio dining set can instantly make your home feel bigger and transform your outdoor space. But this furniture is often expensive, and it can be hard to know where to start. Wirecutter’s experts recommend considering a few factors. First, the layout: Putting down painter’s tape will help you imagine the set’s overall footprint. And choose materials you can realistically maintain. Wood, for example, generally requires the most upkeep, but it’s also often the most repairable. To help, we spent more than 80 hours assembling and testing sets in all kinds of climates and spaces. Any of our five favorites would make a lovely setting for upcoming spring meals. — Daniela Gorny GAME OF THE WEEK Scottie Scheffler on the 18th hole on Thursday. Doug Mills/The New York Times The Masters golf tournament: Turn up the volume this weekend and enjoy the sounds of Augusta National Golf Club: the thwack of a 7-iron, the polite applause of well-heeled patrons, the chirps of birds greeting springtime. We asked Kathi Borgmann, an expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, what types of birdsong viewers might hear this weekend. “Keep your ears tuned in for the ‘peter, peter, peter’ of the tufted titmouse and the boisterous ‘teakettle, teakettle, teakettle, tea’ from the Carolina wren,” she said. “You might even hear a ‘birdie, birdie, birdie’ from a northern cardinal, or an announcer getting excited about a good shot.” Today and tomorrow, starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on CBS Oh, about the golf … Justin Rose (-8) leads after two rounds, but Rory McIlroy is closing in. Follow Masters coverage at The Athletic. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were hollowing and howling. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 13 Author Members Posted April 13 April 13, 2025 Good morning. Today, we explore the surge of A.D.H.D. cases in the United States. We’re also covering Trump’s tariffs, DOGE and a rising women’s basketball star. Illustrations by Todd St. John The A.D.H.D. dilemma By Adam B. Kushner I’m the editor of The Morning. This morning, my colleagues at The Times Magazine published a remarkable cover story by Paul Tough about a surge of A.D.H.D. cases in the United States — and the way we treat them. Today, 23 percent of 17-year-old boys have received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The number of prescriptions rose nearly 60 percent in a decade. You almost certainly know people who take these stimulants. Why is this happening? One thing I love about Paul’s story is that it’s partly a tale about how science is made and changed. Researchers in the 1930s saw immediate benefits when they treated jumpy kids with amphetamines. Eventually, doctors crafted a diagnosis that could explain distracted and excitable personalities, and a consensus formed about how to treat them. Paul’s story describes how a few scientists have come to challenge that consensus — and some of the fundamental ideas behind A.D.H.D. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Paul about his reporting. What got you interested in this story? I’ve been writing for decades about education and children, and I now have two boys of my own. A few years ago, I began to notice how many families I met were struggling with their kids’ attention issues. Attention was something I worried about in my own children — and in myself, too. But I didn’t know much about the science behind attention. So I started talking to scientists. When I did, I discovered they had a lot of big unresolved questions. What is A.D.H.D., and why is it so tricky to define? There is no biological test for A.D.H.D. So it has to be diagnosed by its symptoms, and those symptoms are sometimes hard to pin down. One patient’s behavior can look quite different from another’s, and certain A.D.H.D. symptoms can also be signs of other things — depression or childhood trauma or autism. Take a child who is constantly distracted by her anxiety. Does she have A.D.H.D., an anxiety disorder or both? So A.D.H.D. may not be a clear, distinct medical disorder with defined boundaries — something you either have or don’t have? Increasingly, the science shows that the condition exists on a continuum, and there is no clear dividing line between people who have A.D.H.D. and people who don’t. For many kids, A.D.H.D. symptoms fluctuate over time — worse one year, better the next — and those fluctuations may depend on their external environment as much as their internal wiring. Traditionally A.D.H.D. is treated with stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. Now a few researchers are raising questions about them. Why? Most researchers I spoke with believe that stimulant medications are, on the whole, a positive thing for children with A.D.H.D. But some feel that their benefits have been oversold. One big study found that stimulants were more effective than other interventions only for the first 14 months of treatment. By 36 months, their relative benefit had disappeared. And even when these medications improve children’s behavior in the short term, they don’t seem to boost their learning or academic achievement. As a result, some scientists — and some families — are looking for other approaches. What other approaches work? That’s another challenge for the field: At this point, there isn’t much solid evidence for any treatment other than stimulant medication. What I found encouraging, though, was research suggesting that changes in children’s environments — a more stimulating classroom, a calmer home life, or, as they get older, an interesting job — can often have a positive effect on their symptoms. My guess is that a lot of the field is heading in that direction. It’s tough because parents can’t always pick their kids’ classroom or work fewer hours. Do you think the way we diagnose and treat A.D.H.D. in this country is likely to change? I hope so! For many families, stimulant medication has been, and will continue to be, a lifesaver. But there are plenty of other children who would benefit from a new and different approach. My hope is that the research I’ve written about will lead to a new way to treat A.D.H.D. and a new way to think about it. I recommend you read Paul’s story here. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Tariffs The Trump administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from some of the tariffs it had placed on China. Nonetheless, the U.S. and China’s trade war shows few signs of abating. Before President Trump paused some tariffs, he posted on social media that it was a “great time to buy.” Was this market manipulation? Our reporter explains in this video. Trump’s trade war has added risk to the surest bet in global finance: U.S. government bonds. After the fall of its textile industry, the Upstate region of South Carolina was saved by foreign investors. Now, tariffs are bringing another round of uncertainty. Brexit, described by critics as a startling act of economic self-harm, foreshadowed the president’s tariffs, Mark Landler writes. More on the Administration Elon Musk at a cabinet meeting. Eric Lee/The New York Times Elon Musk told the cabinet that DOGE would fall short — by 85 percent — of its goal to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget. But even that revised estimate may be overstated. Musk’s trillion-dollar goal was always out of reach: The part of the budget DOGE has been mining was expected to total only $950 billion. The Trump administration ignored a federal judge’s orders to provide a plan to return a Maryland man who had been wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Harvard professors sued the administration, saying that the government’s threat to cut the university’s funding violates free speech. More on Politics Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, is using his podcast to explore how Democrats could win back young men. Meta will face the U.S. government tomorrow in a landmark antitrust trial over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. An Idaho judge slightly broadened access to abortion there, ruling that an exception to the state’s ban does not require a woman to face impending death. International A Passover Seder in Tel Aviv. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times Passover, a festival of freedom, is a time for celebration. For many Israelis, the continued captivity of hostages in Gaza is tempering the joy. The U.S. and Iran held preliminary diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear program in Oman. The next round of discussions is set for the coming week. The Democratic Party in Hong Kong, once the city’s largest opposition force, has disbanded following a crackdown by Beijing. Paramilitaries in Sudan killed all the staff of the last medical clinic in a famine-stricken camp in the western region of Darfur. Other Big Stories “I worry they could take my mom”: America’s tougher stance on immigration has caused anxiety among children whose parents are vulnerable to deportation. The helicopter that came apart in the sky and crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday had flown tourists in New York City thousands of times. Read about its final flight. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Is free trade free? Yes. Markets are at their best when they’re allowed to work without central government planning. “I have money, my grocer has food. The grocer doesn’t need to buy anything from me for it to be a mutually-beneficial relationship,” The Orange County Register’s Matt Fleming writes. No. What we call free trade works well for goods, but for the last five years, the European Union has been able to tax online services at the United States’ expense, only to cry foul at Trump’s tariffs. “If the EU has its way, on net, protectionism will increase,” Bloomberg’s Tyler Cowen writes. FROM OPINION The U.S. cannot afford to wait for Trump to take back his tariffs. Congress should act by itself and limit the presidency’s trade powers, the Editorial Board writes. Here are columns by Ezra Klein on speed in politics and Nicholas Kristof on animal welfare. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Paige Bueckers Clement Pascal for The New York Times Ascendant: Paige Bueckers became a college sensation. Now she’s about to join the W.N.B.A.’s growing constellation of stars. Lofoten, Norway: Travel above the Arctic Circle for an adventurer’s paradise, complete with skiing, climbing and sailing. Look out below: The Times’s resident meteorologist explains how avalanches actually happen — and how experts are trying to make them less deadly. Most clicked yesterday: A couple scoured the Northeast for a space they could live and work in. Which home did they choose? Play our game. Vows: They met as teens. Both love dogs, but it would be years before they loved each other. Lives Lived: Max Kozloff was a leading art critic who wrote extensively about the New York art scene in the 1960s and ’70s. He later became a well-regarded photographer. He died at 91. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Everything is Tuberculosis,” by John Green: It doesn’t have the catchiest title. It covers a subject that might seem long ago and far away, but it’s not. As John Green demonstrates in his heart-tugging best seller, tuberculosis is a modern problem, killing over a million people a year worldwide, more than any other infectious disease. What’s more, Green tells us, in the simple, straightforward language that made him a folk hero to young adult readers — yes, this is the same John Green who brought us “The Fault in Our Stars” — “We know how to live in a world without tuberculosis. But we choose not to live in that world.” His slim, timely book is an examination of the history of this scourge and our maddening failure to eradicate it. (“The problem,” Green writes, is that “the cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not.”) But this is also the story of Henry Reider, a magnetic 17-year-old boy whom Green crossed paths with while on an advocacy mission in Sierra Leone. His fight against tuberculosis forms the spine of this book. His spirit is its soul. More on books Read our review of “Everything is Tuberculosis.” Looking for your next thriller? See our editors’ recommendations. THE INTERVIEW By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Ramy Youssef, whose new animated show, “#1 Happy Family USA,” tells the story of the fictional Hussein family as they try to fit into a changing America after the Sept. 11 attacks. We spoke about the show, Adam Sandler’s influence and how he thinks about politics in his work. There’s this little title card at the top of every episode that warns that the characters should not be taken as representation. Why are you so uncomfortable with representation? When we put out “Ramy” on Hulu, I remember seeing a headline that was like, “Muslims, Here’s the Show for You,” and my heart sinking and going, “No, no, we are two billion people, and a lot of them are not gonna like what I’m doing, and they shouldn’t, because I am a guy from New Jersey who thinks this type of thing is funny.” Putting the representation warning was a cathartic thing of being like: “I know you guys didn’t elect me.” I know from some of my Muslim American friends that because their community has suffered so much scrutiny, they are wary of opening themselves up to the eyes of broader culture. Are you worrying about perception when you’re writing? I think my way of handling that goes back to the work being self-reflective above all. I’m not satirizing the culture so much as I am looking at the way people behave. The father in our show is a lot of people’s fathers. We open up our pilot with him handing out to his family these small electrical bills that show the output that everyone is spending in the house, how much GameCube is being played. He’s so worried about getting his family through, under budget. The things that hit on the sensitivities that you’re talking about, I try to take a more tender approach toward. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Illustration by Chan Yu Chen Click to read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Get lost in a good murder mystery book. Clean a patio with the best pressure washer. Brew coffee in a French press. MEAL PLAN Armando Rafael for The New York Times Chances are you probably have a can or two of tuna in your pantry right now. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests using them to make spicy tuna and avocado tostadas, a five-star recipe from Kristina Felix. Emily also recommends some other (non-tuna) dishes, including miso-honey chicken and asparagus, and crispy gnocchi with sausage and broccoli. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was lifeblood. Can you put eight historical events — including the first stock markets, the domestication of sheep and the creation of the zodiac — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports 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. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 14 Author Members Posted April 14 April 14, 2025 By German Lopez Good morning. Today, we explain the arguments for and against a trade war with China. We’re also covering El Salvador, Mark Zuckerberg and Rory McIlroy. President Trump Eric Lee/The New York Times Power struggle The United States and China are waging a trade war. Relative to the indiscriminate trade battles President Trump has pitched against the rest of the world, a conflict with China might seem small or even justified. China, after all, is an adversary. It has taken American jobs and threatened to topple democracy in Taiwan. But open conflict with one of America’s three largest trade partners is still a big departure from decades of U.S. policy. It will bring higher prices and lower economic growth, experts say. Is it worth it? Today’s newsletter will look at the arguments on both sides. The case for There are two main arguments for Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on China. The first is about the trade imbalance. America has bought a lot from China over the years, and China has not returned the favor. To sell stuff there, American companies bend over backward to comply with Communist Party rules. Chinese companies don’t face the same barriers. Consider video games: U.S. companies have to censor their games to get into Chinese markets, if they can get in at all. Chinese developers ship their games to the United States replete with pro-China censorship. Trump and his allies say tariffs will force China to negotiate friendlier trade rules with the United States. China can’t afford to lose America, its biggest customer, if it wants to keep its economy growing quickly. It will have to capitulate and allow more U.S. products into its markets. The second argument is about national security. America relies on China for electronic chips, pharmaceutical ingredients and rare earth metals. (Beijing has suspended critical rare earth exports, and U.S. companies don’t have an alternative supplier.) At the same time, China is working to weaken the United States on the global stage, and America could go to war with China if Beijing invades Taiwan. The tariffs on China force the countries to decouple; companies will have to find other places, including within the United States, to source and make their products. A rare earth magnets factory in Ganzhou, China. Keith Bradsher/The New York Times Notably, these arguments — on trade imbalances and national security — are at odds with each other. If the trade balancers get their way, the United States could actually trade more with China. If the national security side gets its way, America will shut China out. Still, the administration has made both points at different times. The case against Trump’s critics make two main arguments against his tariffs — one on the merits and one on the tactics. On the merits, they argue that a trade war with China will leave the United States worse off. China has built expertise and resources for manufacturing that no other country has — with advanced machine tooling, for instance. So it’s not possible to shift production to, say, Mexico or Vietnam and expect the same affordable goods. The cost of living will go up and the quality of life will go down. Maybe the economic pain is worth it if the United States wins the trade war, but victory is not guaranteed, experts argue. And if the United States loses, it could suffer all the pain of tariffs only to end up with less-favorable trade conditions with China. On tactics, even supporters of a trade war with China question Trump’s methods. The president increased tariffs on China to 145 percent from 20 percent in a little more than a week. But companies are not able to shift manufacturing to the United States or other countries so quickly, which means Americans will have no choice but to pay higher prices while that process plays out. If Trump had phased in the tariffs over time, companies could have left China without interrupting production. In Yangjiang, China. Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times Narrower tariffs could also achieve the same goals, critics say. Tolls on computer chips or other parts used in military equipment could help protect national security. Levies on clothes and smartphones don’t. (Trump plans to impose additional tariffs on computer chips, he said yesterday.) What’s next So far, Washington and Beijing have responded to each other’s tariffs with more tariffs. But the impact of even higher levies is small, because the difference between a toll of 105 percent and 145 percent is less than meets the eye. If you’re looking for a $20 toaster, the distinction between a $40 and $50 price tag is irrelevant — both are far more than you’re willing to pay. The consequential next phase of the trade war, then, will not play out in tariff announcements but in shops and at kitchen tables across both countries. People in America will pay more for the same stuff, if they can get it at all, and people in China will have fewer customers and make less money. Their respective economies will grow slower, if not shrink. Eventually, America’s or China’s leaders will decide they’ve had enough and try a negotiated peace. For more Some American companies, anticipating growing tensions between China and the U.S., have shifted production from China to other countries. Trump’s tariffs undermine that strategy. Xi Jinping is on a weeklong tour of South Asia to bond with countries facing U.S. tariffs. THE LATEST NEWS Deportations Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the U.S. had sent 10 gang members to El Salvador. Trump is expected to meet with the president of El Salvador at the White House today. Deportations have been good business for a private prison firm that makes digital tools to track migrants. More on the Trump Administration Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already taken steps to undermine vaccines, including canceling research funding. Today is the deadline for federal agencies to present plans for another round of mass firings. Cuba has, for decades, sent thousands of its doctors and nurses to work abroad. The Trump administration is targeting the practice. More on Politics At the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas. Desiree Rios for The New York Times Muslims in Texas want to build a community, anchored by a mosque, on a 400-acre field near Dallas. Governor Greg Abbott has said no. Pennsylvania authorities charged a man with setting fire to the governor’s mansion. The fire forced Governor Josh Shapiro and his family to flee at 2 a.m. after the start of Passover. International In Maaloula, Syria. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times In Syria, some Christian and Muslim residents in an ancient town are learning to coexist after a fractious 13-year civil war. See photos from the town. The community of Haina, just outside the Dominican capital, lost more than two dozen people in a deadly nightclub roof collapse. Voters in Ecuador re-elected President Daniel Noboa, a show of faith in his promise to tackle drug violence. His opponent immediately contested the results. Tech Mark Zuckerberg Photographers for The New York Times. Mark Zuckerberg is facing an antitrust trial beginning today over Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Investors had hoped that Trump would show more deference to tech companies in his second term. Instead, his administration has continued to try to rein in their power. Other Big Stories “We are open”: While some Florida cities discourage spring breakers, towns along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast are eager for an influx. A small plane crashed near Hudson, New York, killing all six people on board — two surgeons, two of their children and the children’s partners. Opinions Israel is the new hegemon of the Middle East. Which means it has no reason to negotiate with its enemies or end the violence, Aaron David Miller and Steven Simon write. Here are columns by David French on the Supreme Court’s deportation decision and M. Gessen on universities and Trump. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Rugile Kaladyte for The New York Times Bentonville: Read how an Arkansas city became an epicenter of the cycling world. A snow paradise? In a wealthy Colorado ski town, people experiencing homelessness can sleep in their cars — but only if they have a job. How to evade taxes in ancient Rome: This 1,900-year-old papyrus offers a guide. Metropolitan Diary: Rescued by shoelaces in Queens. Ask Vanessa: “Are my pants really supposed to drag on the ground?” Most clicked yesterday: Have we been thinking about A.D.H.D. all wrong? Lives Lived: Mario Vargas Llosa was a Peruvian novelist who combined gritty realism with playful erotica and depictions of the struggle for individual liberty in Latin America. He also ran for Peru’s presidency in 1990 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. Vargas Llosa died at 89. SPORTS The Athletic / X Golf: Rory McIlroy ended an 11-year majors drought by winning the Masters. McIlroy became just the sixth player to win the career grand slam. See video of his victory. Women’s basketball: The former UConn star Paige Bueckers signed a three-year deal with the start-up league Unrivaled, which will pay Bueckers more in her first year than her first W.N.B.A. contract would pay over four. College football: Kyren Lacy, the former L.S.U. wide receiver who was once considered a top N.F.L. Draft prospect, died at 24 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. ARTS AND IDEAS Mads Mikkelsen Zegna There was a time when the wealthy would dress themselves in rich colors like indigo and purple. No longer: Today, beige is color of money. Set against the backdrop of anti-elitist sentiment, neutral hues have taken over moneyed enclaves like St. Moritz in Switzerland. “The ultrawealthy don’t want to show off,” one luxury designer said. “This class of people is super discreet and doesn’t want to be seen.” More on culture In his latest movie, “Warfare,” the director Alex Garland worked with Ray Mendoza, a U.S. Navy veteran of the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders made his Coachella debut, where he introduced the singer Clairo — but not before a speech on billionaires, The Cut reports. Rosie O’Donnell has moved to Ireland and befriended a Menendez brother. Read her interview with The Times. Bed checks and jailhouse lasagna: Inside Sean Combs’s life in a Brooklyn detention center as he awaits trial next month. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Cook gnocchi with miso butter and asparagus. It’s a super fast weeknight meal. Save on these skin-care essentials. Browse spring sales that actually have good deals. Spend 36 hours in the Hudson Valley. See our best recommendations. Find your next favorite workout. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was promontory. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 15 Author Members Posted April 15 April 15, 2025 Good morning. Harvard announced it would not comply with Trump administration demands, and the White House responded by freezing more than $2 billion in funding. In the Oval Office, El Salvador’s president and Trump said they would not return a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison. Trump also moved to impose additional tariffs. More news is below. But first, we’re covering a White House plan to slash regulations. The New York Times Changing the rules By Coral Davenport I cover the Trump administration’s deregulation efforts. The government makes — and unwinds — rules slowly. An agency proposes a regulation — say, establishing minimum staffing levels for nursing homes. Then economists analyze it, the public comments on it, lawyers revise it and, finally, the agency enacts the rule. It generally takes a few years, start to finish, and the same is true for the process to repeal a rule. President Trump has no patience for that pace. During his first term, he wanted to erase hundreds of rules on the environment, financial oversight and more. But he grew frustrated when some of the rollbacks took almost the entirety of his term to complete. Then, to his chagrin, the Biden administration restored many of them. So this time around, Trump plans to quickly and permanently kill rules across the more than 400 federal agencies that regulate almost every aspect of American life, from flying in airplanes to processing poultry. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how his plan works and which agencies it might affect. Government, slashed Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and an architect of the Project 2025 blueprint, is overseeing the White House’s deregulation effort. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is executing it. Russell Vought Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times In some cases, the administration believes it can simply revoke rules outright, without following the traditional yearslong process. In others, it plans to effectively nullify rules by directing agencies to stop enforcing them while the slow, legal unwinding process plays out. Experts say parts of that plan are probably illegal. But it could quickly affect Americans’ lives regardless, as companies stop complying with rules concerning the environment, transportation, food, workplace safety and more without fear of government penalties. The ‘kill list’ The White House’s first step is to identify regulations it can cut. Federal agencies must put together lists of rules that might run afoul of recent Supreme Court decisions — or that just don’t align with the administration’s priorities. Vought will then compile the rules into one master deregulation list — a so-called kill list. The administration plans to immediately revoke or stop enforcing those rules. Workers in Dearborn, Mich., and a chicken processing farm in Laurel, Miss. Brittany Greeson and William Widmer for The New York Times Musk has also developed an artificial intelligence tool to comb through the 100,000-plus pages of the Code of Federal Regulations and identify rules that are either outdated or legally vulnerable. Some of the likely candidates for the list: Dozens of Environmental Protection Agency rules designed to curb climate change and chemical pollution in air, water and wetlands. A Mine Safety and Health Administration rule to protect miners from inhaling harmful dust from crystalline silica, a mineral used in cement, smartphones and kitty litter. Labor Department rules that increased the number of workers who are eligible for sick leave, minimum wage and overtime pay. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule that expanded background checks for gun sales. A Federal Trade Commission rule on “junk fees,” which forbids hotels and ticket vendors from advertising misleading prices without disclosing other fees. Legal basis Many industry groups are thrilled. “This is a real opportunity to rebalance the regulatory environment,” said Marty Durbin, senior vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And while some expect that the plan to swiftly revoke regulations will be caught up in the courts, they are more optimistic about the other approach — to simply stop enforcing rules while they are legally unwound. That method relies on an obscure 1985 Supreme Court decision, Heckler v. Chaney, which concluded that if a federal agency does not enforce a regulation, that regulation is generally beyond the review of the courts. That case could serve as a basis for the administration’s deregulation efforts, even as Trump pushes it further than any previous administration has, said Lisa Heinzerling, who served in the E.P.A. during the Obama administration. The consequences of the cuts, she added, “will be huge.” For more: Read the full story, which includes many more details of Trump’s deregulation plans. I also explain more in this video. THE LATEST NEWS Education The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard after the school rejected a list of government demands. Harvard is the first university to refuse to comply. Read the school’s letter to the administration, which calls the demands illegal. Harvard is a main target in the White House’s campaign to break what it sees as liberalism’s hold on higher education. That campaign is being led by a task force of about 20 officials. See inside their team. Deportations In the Oval Office. Eric Lee/The New York Times During an Oval Office meeting with Trump, the president of El Salvador said he would not return a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported and sent to a Salvadoran prison. The meeting also made clear that the White House had no intention of retrieving the man, despite a Supreme Court order. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, suddenly declared the man’s deportation was not a mistake. “This was the right person sent to the right place,” he said. Read how the White House has twisted facts. Trump is using the Oval Office as a performance space. It’s a gilded set, Shawn McCreesh writes. The administration said the more than 200 migrants it sent to the Salvadoran prison were members of a Venezuelan gang. The Times found little evidence of any criminal background for most of the men. ICE detained Mohsen Mahdawi, a pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University, after he arrived for an appointment that he thought was a step toward becoming a U.S. citizen. Tariffs Trump moved to put additional tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, citing national security. On the day before Trump paused a set of tariffs and the day he did so, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene purchased at least tens of thousands of dollars in stock. The dollar — long considered a safe haven in global financial markets — has continued to fall against other major currencies. More on the Trump administration The White House plans to ask Congress to rescind over $1 billion in funding for public broadcasters. That could eliminate almost all federal support for NPR and PBS. A Trump administration memo proposed cutting the State Department budget by nearly half. It would stop almost all funding for NATO and the U.N. Vice President JD Vance dropped the College Football Playoff trophy at a White House event honoring Ohio State. See the viral video. More on Politics The man charged with setting fire to the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania told the police that he also hoped to attack Shapiro with a hammer. Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand to defend Meta in an antitrust trial that focuses on the company’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Two influential New York City labor unions that backed Mayor Eric Adams in 2021 endorsed Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, in this year’s race for mayor. War in Ukraine A Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy killed at least 35 people. Trump called the attack “a mistake” and a “horrible thing.” One Ukrainian lawmaker is proposing a change he says could help the nation fight: legalizing pornography. Doing so would increase tax revenue to fund the war. Other Big Stories The Blue Origin crew. Justin Hamel for The New York Times Jeff Bezos’ rocket company carried an all-female crew of scientists and celebrities, including Katy Perry and Gayle King, on a brief trip to space. Pope Francis placed Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan modernist once called “God’s architect” for his work on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, on the path to sainthood. Hungary’s governing party voted to amend the Constitution to state that all Hungarians are either male or female. It also reinforced a law that bans gay pride events. Opinions Trump broke the cardinal rule of American politics: Don’t mess with the economy, James Carville writes. The Trump administration should allow states to build housing on the federal lands no one wants, Binyamin Appelbaum writes. Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg on Republican dissidents. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS A collector’s shelves. Kristian Thacker for The New York Times Colorful cult: Le Creuset, which recently turned 100, has inspired generations of home cooks — and obsessive collectors. Medicine: This kidney was frozen for 10 days. Could surgeons transplant it? “Hero ingredient”: A scientist has touted maple syrup as a wonder food that may help stave off Alzheimer’s and cancer. He’s also paid to promote it. Most clicked yesterday: The story of a plane crash in Hudson Valley, which killed all six people on board. Most searched yesterday: People wanted to know about Katy Perry’s visit to space. (Read our critic’s review of the 10-minute trip.) Lives Lived: Brad Holland was an idiosyncratic artist who upended American illustration in the 1970s with his startling imagery for Playboy magazine and The New York Times, spawning a generation of imitators. He died at 81. SPORTS The W.N.B.A. commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Paige Bueckers. Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images W.N.B.A.: The Dallas Wings selected UConn’s Paige Bueckers with the No. 1 pick in the draft. At No. 2: Dominique Malonga, a 6-foot-6 French prospect, who heads to Seattle. N.B.A.: Phoenix fired Mike Budenholzer as coach after just one year. New Orleans dismissed David Griffin as executive vice president after a disappointing six-year tenure. ARTS AND IDEAS On Broadway. Graham Dickie for The New York Times “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a new Broadway play based on the beloved Netflix series, opens with a bang: A bold, five-minute scene featuring gunfire and marauding Demogorgons. “It’s the most technical and challenging physical production that’s probably ever been onstage,” one producer said. Read about how the blockbuster opener came together. More on culture See the most notable looks from the first Coachella weekend, from Lady Gaga, Bernie Sanders and Charli XCX. The long-awaited “Harry Potter” series on HBO has cast its Dumbledore: John Lithgow. The late night hosts joked about the results of Trump’s annual physical. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Todd Wagner for The New York Times Bake a quick rhubarb bread. Test your knowledge of this year’s best-selling books. Moving? Use this checklist. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was pageboy. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Do you have questions about the news for The Morning that you want us to get an expert at The Times to answer? Ask us here. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 16 Author Members Posted April 16 April 16, 2025 Good morning. Trump threatened revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. At Meta’s antitrust trial, Mark Zuckerberg dodged questions about why he bought Instagram and WhatsApp. In Iraq, a severe sandstorm sent thousands to emergency rooms. More news is below. But first, many of you used our new questions page to ask about a wrongly deported Maryland man. Below, Emily Bazelon explains the administration’s legal defiance in that man’s case and elsewhere. The Department of Justice. Kent Nishimura for The New York Times A conundrum By Emily Bazelon I cover legal issues. Lawyers for the federal government are saying some astonishing things in court. Yesterday, in a Maryland courtroom, a deputy assistant attorney general told a judge that the government is following her order to facilitate the return of a mistakenly deported Maryland man. If the man were to show up at a port of entry, the lawyer said, the government would not turn him away. The problem is the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, has no way to get to the border on his own. He has been held in a brutal prison in El Salvador since mid-March — because the government deported him there by mistake. Yesterday, the judge rebuked the government for doing nothing to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Scenes like this have played out in courtrooms around the country since President Trump took office. Defending the deportations of more than 200 Venezuelans to the same Salvadoran prison last month, the same deputy assistant attorney general told a judge that the government had complied with his order to turn flights around in the air. “It seems to me that there is a fair likelihood that that is not correct,” said the judge in that case, James Boasberg, “and in fact, that the government acted in bad faith.” Government lawyers called off the prosecution of New York’s mayor by saying he couldn’t enforce immigration laws while the charges were pending (even though he was clearly doing so). They also said the E.P.A. was rife with fraud and criminality but couldn’t come up with any proof. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the administration’s lawyers have created a conundrum for the judiciary. The Maryland case In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that Abrego Garcia, who had come to the U.S. from El Salvador, should not be sent back because there was a risk that gang members there might torture or kill him. But last month, by the government’s own admission, it deported him by accident. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, middle, the wife of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The federal judge in Maryland, Paula Xinis, ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed with that part of her order, directing the government to share what it could about the steps it was taking to do so. It was a mild directive — but an important one — for the Trump administration to follow the law and be forthright in court. But then Trump said that he had no intention of bringing back Abrego Garcia. That leaves the Justice Department with a difficult position to defend. It’s hard to do a good job as a lawyer when your client wants you to make an argument with little legal or factual basis. Yesterday, Judge Xinis ordered officials to answer questions about the case over the next two weeks. She also mentioned the possibility of holding the government in contempt of court. Dilemma for the bench Let’s put aside the policies behind the Justice Department’s recent arguments in court. Government lawyers have prided themselves on the high quality of their briefs and oral arguments for both Republican and Democratic presidents. The Trump administration is deviating from that tradition in a way that’s unprecedented. Some of its new legal claims are not contested positions on the judicial battlefield — they are occasionally absurd on their face. What are courts supposed to do about this? Judges have tools for addressing the problem of lawyering they’re suspicious of, beginning with pointing it out. As a last resort, they can hold lawyers or their superiors in contempt. But penalizing the Justice Department is fraught, given the Trump administration’s combative stance toward the judiciary. “If courts frequently call out government falsehoods or bad faith, and the executive branch ignores or dismisses these findings, the judiciary’s authority is diminished,” Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor, wrote recently. But if courts don’t call out the falsehoods, he said, they may lose “credibility with the public.” Dismayed judges The first thing judges can do about dubious lawyering is to build a record of it. Judges have been calling out the Justice Department’s approach to defending Trump’s executive orders. The government’s representations of the facts were “highly misleading, if not intentionally false,” one judge wrote in March after it stopped work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress created. No matter what a client demands, lawyers have an ethical responsibility to be honest in court. Yet judges have had to remind Justice Department lawyers “to make truthful representations,” as another judge wrote. In the past, most presidential administrations had high win rates in court for actions involving federal agencies — close to 70 percent before Trump’s first term in office. By contrast, since Trump took office in January, the government is winning only about 30 percent of cases so far, with courts stopping 58 executive orders and allowing 26 to go forward, according to the group Just Security. The Supreme Court weighs in The Supreme Court has begun to play its role as the ultimate arbiter. Earlier this month, in the case of the Venezuelan deportees, Boasberg was inquiring into whether the government had ignored his order to halt the flights they were on. The Supreme Court intervened, finding, in a 5 to 4 vote, that the case did not belong in his courtroom. The majority said nothing about the government’s irregular conduct in response to Boasberg. “That a majority of the Court now rewards the Government for its behavior,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent, “is indefensible.” For more Trump says he’s powerless to retrieve Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. But in 2018, in a similar case, he brought back a man mistakenly deported to Iraq. The Trump administration is flirting with outright defiance of the courts, Adam Liptak writes. THE LATEST NEWS Harvard University At Harvard. Sophie Park for The New York Times Trump threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status after the university refused to comply with his administration’s demands. In defying Trump, Harvard’s leaders bet that the university could outlast his crusade, and chose its reputation and legacy over the government’s threats. Columbia’s president has now also pledged to reject any deal that would “relinquish our independence and autonomy.” The late night hosts joked about Harvard rejection letters. Immigration Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Columbia activist Mohsen Mahdawi should be deported because his activities could undermine the Middle East peace process. The New York City Council sued Mayor Eric Adams to block him from letting ICE open offices at Rikers Island. More on the Trump Administration About 22,000 I.R.S. workers signed up for the Trump administration’s latest resignation offer. The agency is on track to lose about a third of its staff this year. Messages from a leaked Signal group chat were deleted from the C.I.A. director’s phone, the agency said in a court filing. A watchdog group had sued to preserve them. A federal judge blocked Trump from punishing a top law firm, calling his retribution campaign “a shocking abuse of power.” The White House has welcomed right-wing podcasters into its briefing room. Click the video below to see our colleague Ashley Wu explain. More on Politics David Hogg, a young liberal activist and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, is leading an effort to unseat the party’s older lawmakers in primaries. The A.C.L.U. sued Defense Department schools over their removal of certain books in response to Trump administration orders. U.S.-China Trade War Big tech companies’ share prices fell in Asia this morning after Nvidia, the American chip giant, revealed that the U.S. government would restrict some of its sales to China. China’s ban on some mineral exports highlights how much America relies on the country for critical raw materials. See a chart. The trade war is also likely to affect the flow of students and tourists. Trump’s tariffs have been good for China’s economic growth — at least before they hit. Factories there raced to ship exports while they were still cheap. Trump also wants other things from China, including less pressure on Taiwan and a deal on TikTok. His trade war could imperil those negotiations, David Sanger writes. Middle East In Basra, Iraq. Hussein Faleh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A sandstorm swept over parts of Iraq, sending thousands of people to emergency rooms with breathing problems. “I thought about death many times in that tunnel”: Keith Siegel spent nearly 500 days as a hostage in Gaza. He recounted his experience to The Times. The paramedics and rescue workers killed in an Israeli shooting in Gaza last month died mainly from gunshots to the head or chest, according to autopsies obtained by The Times. Other Big Stories At Meta’s antitrust trial, Mark Zuckerberg dodged questions about whether he had bought Instagram and WhatsApp to kill competitive threats to his company. Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that trans women do not fall within the legal definition of women under the country’s equality legislation. The South Korean airport where a plane crash killed 179 people was not meeting guidelines to prevent bird strikes, despite repeated warnings. Opinions Trump’s tariffs won’t reindustrialize America. Instead, they’ll raise production costs, Kyla Scanlon writes. Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on the erosion of American values and Bret Stephens on an Iran nuclear deal. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Rüdiger Koch in his undersea chamber off the coast of Panama. Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York Times Floating republics: These techno-utopians want to colonize the sea. Hot bricks: Rare Lego sets have soared in value. Thieves have noticed. Reality TV: A weekslong moose migration has captivated viewers in Sweden. Most clicked yesterday: See a viral video of Vice President JD Vance dropping Ohio State’s championship trophy. Trending online yesterday: People were searching on Google for the W.N.B.A. draft. Read about Paige Bueckers, the top pick. Lives Lived: Wink Martindale was a radio personality who became a dapper and affable television star, hosting game shows like “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough.” He died at 91. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Orlando Magic and Golden State Warriors are through to the first round of the playoffs after winning their first Play-In Tournament games. Mavericks: The Dallas general manager Nico Harrison said he had “no regrets” about trading Luka Dončić. ARTS AND IDEAS The Grand Egyptian Museum. Stephen Hiltner for The New York Times The world’s most anticipated museum is finally open. The Grand Egyptian Museum, outside Cairo, had been announcing and then canceling plans since 2012, delayed by revolutions, wars, financial crises and a pandemic. Now you can see inside, with photographs from our colleague Stephen Hiltner. More on culture Our critic calls “John Proctor Is the Villain,” a Broadway play in which high-school students prosecute a #MeToo case against “The Crucible,” urgently necessary. Read the review. With tariffs looming, American home décor retailers will soon have to decide how much consumers are willing to spend on items they don’t really need. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Use store-bought pastry for this asparagus, goat cheese and tarragon tart. Embrace neutral fashion. Here’s some inspiration. Fill an Easter basket with these gifts. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was traumatic. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Do you have questions about the news for The Morning that you want us to get an expert at The Times to answer? Ask us here. (No paywall.) Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted April 18 Author Members Posted April 18 April 17, 2025 Good morning. A federal judge threatened to open a contempt investigation into whether the Trump administration violated his order to stop some deportation flights. A Sudanese paramilitary group declared a parallel government. And astronomers have detected a possible sign of life on a distant planet. More news is below. But first, our colleague Dana Goldstein explains Trump’s threats against K-12 schools. At Belvedere Middle School in East Los Angeles. Philip Cheung for The New York Times Classroom control By Dana Goldstein I cover education. Harvard might be the most famous educational institution opposing President Trump’s threats of funding cuts and a federal takeover, but it’s not the only one. Another legal battle is brewing that affects a far different, and far larger, group of students. The Trump administration is threatening to withhold billions of federal dollars from public schools that serve low-income children, unless they sign documents attesting that they do not use “illegal D.E.I. practices.” Those funds pay for, among other things, teachers’ aides, counselors and free meals. The threats may not have much of an effect in Republican-led states, many of which already have anti-D.E.I. laws on the books. But many schools in Democratic-led states have programs and policies regarding race and gender that Trump considers illegal. Last week, the administration announced that it was moving to cancel federal funding to all schools in Maine because of its rules regarding transgender athletes. It has threatened to do the same in California because of the state’s policies around parental notification and transgender students. Education officials in about a dozen states, mostly liberal, have refused to adopt Trump’s directives. And advocacy groups like the A.C.L.U. and the N.A.A.C.P. have filed lawsuits challenging the threatened cuts. One of those is set to go before a federal judge in New Hampshire today. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why the president is taking on K-12 education, and how officials are responding. What Trump believes At Carpenter Community Charter School in Studio City, Calif. Philip Cheung for The New York Times The Trump administration has set out its case in a series of executive orders and memos. It believes that when schools allow transgender students to play on the sports teams or use the bathrooms of their choice, they are violating the rights of girls under Title IX. And it believes that D.E.I. programs violate the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on race, color or national origin. The administration has not offered a detailed definition of D.E.I. But it has argued that programs that separate students by race in order to provide targeted support are a form of illegal segregation. That could include mentoring programs intended to raise graduation rates for Black boys, or tutoring to increase Black and Hispanic students’ enrollment in advanced courses. The Trump administration has also argued that teaching about concepts like white privilege is discriminatory toward white students. Those concepts, however, are central to ethnic studies courses, which are increasingly common in K-12 schools in liberal states. In some states, including California, agreeing to Trump’s demands would put school districts in violation of state laws that lay out the curriculum and prescribe the ways schools must handle issues of race and gender. The local control paradox In Studio City. Philip Cheung for The New York Times And here lies a major paradox: For decades, many liberals have argued that the federal government should play a bigger role in K-12 education. They have called for national curriculum standards and greater financial support. Conservatives, including Trump, have often said that the federal government should allow states to chart their own educational paths. Now, however, the American tradition of local control of schools is what allows liberal states and districts to push back against a more muscular federal approach. In the case that will be heard today in New Hampshire, the nation’s largest teachers’ union and the A.C.L.U. will argue that Trump’s threat to withhold funding violates congressional regulations that prohibit the federal government from exercising control over local curriculum and instruction. The plaintiffs will also argue that the administration’s ban on D.E.I. in education is unconstitutionally vague and presents a threat to students’ and teachers’ free speech rights. The government will respond that the 2023 ban on affirmative action in college admissions set a precedent for ending all school programs that favor one racial group over another, even in K-12 education. This dispute may ultimately reach the Supreme Court. Have questions about Trump’s funding cuts? Ask us here. We will respond to some questions in an upcoming newsletter. For more: The I.R.S. is considering whether to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. THE LATEST NEWS Deportations Judge James Boasberg Erin Schaff/The New York Times A federal judge, James Boasberg, threatened to open a contempt investigation into whether the Trump administration had violated his order to stop some deportation flights to El Salvador. Hours later, the White House invited the mother of a woman who was killed by an unauthorized immigrant to speak at a special briefing. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador to press for the release of a man mistakenly deported by the Trump administration but was not allowed a meeting with him. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said of the deported man, “If he ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again.” The Trump administration is relying more on tattoos summarily deport Venezuelans it says are gang members. Experts say that’s unreliable. Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, said that autism was preventable, angering researchers within his own agency. A leading nutrition scientist at the National Institutes of Health retired early, citing censorship of his work by federal officials. The F.D.A. halted sales of cheaper versions of weight-loss drugs, saying a shortage of name-brand ones was over. Hundreds of thousands could lose access to the medication. U.S.-Iran Talks Trump waved off an Israeli plan to strike Iranian nuclear sites, preferring to negotiate a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program. The U.S. is sending mixed signals over whether it wants Iran to completely dismantle its nuclear program. An Iranian official said the shifting messages weren’t helpful. The two sides plan a second round of discussions on Saturday. More on the Trump Administration The administration is scrutinizing real estate transactions by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, one of the president’s foremost adversaries. To avoid retribution, law firms promised free services for uncontroversial causes. Trump has suggested he could put them to work on trade deals or even defending him and his allies. The A.P. said in a court filing that the Trump administration had defied a judge’s order requiring it to restore the wire service’s full access to the White House. The government directed immigration judges to swiftly deny asylum to migrants whose applications they consider unlikely to succeed. More on Politics Bernie Sanders and his apparent heir, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have drawn enormous crowds on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, energizing a beaten-down Democratic Party. Representative Elise Stefanik is considering a run for New York governor. She was Trump’s nominee for U.N. ambassador but withdrew to protect Republicans’ slim House majority. The man charged with setting fire to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Pennsylvania mansion told the police he was responding to Shapiro’s stance on the war in Gaza. Trump named Jay Clayton as the interim U.S. attorney for Manhattan. Senator Chuck Schumer has said he would block a permanent appointment for Clayton. International Displaced people in western Darfur. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A Sudanese paramilitary group declared its own government, stoking fears that Sudan’s two-year civil war was pushing the country to a split. China faces an economic double whammy: stubborn deflation and a trade war with the U.S. Germany charged a Berlin palliative care doctor with the murder of 15 patients. The authorities are investigating another 75 deaths. Other Big Stories Is there life on K2-18b? It’s a massive planet, 120 light-years away, and astronomers think they’ve detected a molecule there whose only known source is living organisms. As fentanyl deaths fall across the country, some places have seen the return of another dangerous drug: meth. Puerto Rico suffered an island-wide blackout, with all of its power plants knocked out of service and well over a million people without electricity. Opinions The New York Times The location data of three billion Facebook users provide an extraordinary view of human migration. Explore an interactive globe, which uses estimates from Meta. Universities must resist Trump’s intimidation tactics just as Harvard did. No college should lose its First Amendment freedoms without a fight, the Editorial Board writes. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on Trump’s autocratic style and Jamelle Bouie on the wrongly deported Maryland man. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Victor J. Blue for The New York Times 2,143 species: For mushroom hunters, New York City is a land of abundance. Ask Well: If cancer runs in your family, there are steps you can take to lower your risk. Social Q’s: “How do I tell my old friend that his new partner is a dud?” Relic: Van Gogh painted his final work, “Tree Roots,” in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. The roots still exist, igniting a fight over their preservation. Most clicked yesterday: Late night hosts joked about Harvard’s Trump rejection letter. Trending online yesterday: Gayle King responded to critics who said she shouldn’t go to space: “Have you been?” she asked. Read more in Vulture. Lives Lived: Tim Mohr was an American who worked as a D.J. and freelance writer in Berlin in the 1990s. He used his experiences to produce sensitive English translations of up-and-coming German writers. He died at 55. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat kept their playoff hopes intact with wins in the NBA Play-In Tournament. Read takeaways. College football: The former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava is expected to transfer to U.C.L.A. after a contract dispute. Softball: Kim Ng, a former M.L.B. executive, will serve as commissioner of the upstart Athletes Unlimited Softball League, which opens its regular season in June. ARTS AND IDEAS In Ushuaia, Argentina. Victor Moriyama for The New York Times Thousands of visitors set out for Antarctica each year from Ushuaia, a port city in Argentina that proudly calls itself the “end of the world.” The explosion of tourism has brought prosperity to Ushuaia’s 83,000 residents but has also taxed its resources and raised the cost of living. The remoteness of the city makes the strain worse. Read more about Ushuaia here. More on culture The world will soon be able to read Joan Didion’s notes about her therapy. Is this what she would have wanted? Two documentaries explore the dangers of being an influencer as a child. Regulation can be difficult in an industry that blurs the line between work and home. On late night, Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld joked: “Do the Dems realize they have no authority in El Salvador? El Salvador is a little different than the green room at ‘The View.’” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Cover scalloped potatoes with a creamy sauce, then broil in the oven. Watch a new Agatha Christie adaptation. Visit London on the cheap. Stop killing your houseplants. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was elegantly. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
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