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Good morning. We’re covering Ukraine’s counteroffensive, extreme heat and Beyoncé.

 
 
 
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On the front line in southern Ukraine.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Slow start

The recent mutiny in Russia has distracted attention from a more positive development for President Vladimir Putin: Ukraine’s much-anticipated summer counteroffensive hasn’t made much progress so far.

Since the counteroffensive began last month, Ukraine claims to have retaken only about 60 square miles. By comparison, a less heralded push last fall in the country’s northeast reclaimed nearly 5,000 square miles. “Ukraine is probably weeks behind where it hoped to be at this time,” said my colleague Eric Schmitt, who covers national security.

For now, Ukraine appears to be struggling against Russian forces that are better prepared than the ones they encountered in last fall’s offensive. Large minefields set up by the Russians have been especially difficult to deal with, making any Ukrainian advance risky. Western leaders are considering more aid to help Ukraine break through — a topic that will likely come up in a NATO summit, starting tomorrow. (Here’s a Times preview of the summit.)

“It has been hard going,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told my colleague David Leonhardt on Friday. “Defense has consistently been a more straightforward proposition than offense in this war, frankly, on both sides.”

To understand what’s at stake, today’s newsletter will walk through the two likely scenarios for coming months. In one, Ukraine eventually breaks Russia’s defenses. War victories, after all, often take time. In the second, less positive outcome for Ukraine, the stalemate continues, giving Putin reason to think that time is on his side.

Scenario 1: A breakthrough

Ukraine does have reason to remain cautiously optimistic. It still has months of dry, sunny weather and hard-packed ground before a rainy, muddy fall will make military advances difficult. And so far, Ukraine has not made a full push with the bulk of its troops. It has mostly prodded Russian forces with smaller strikes — trying to find weaknesses in defenses that are made up of not just minefields, but also tank traps, other obstacles and then two or three lines of dug-in soldiers.

If Ukraine finds a vulnerability in those defenses, it would then commit to a larger effort. If Ukrainian forces then break through, the rest of the Russian lines could panic and fall apart, allowing Ukraine to take back a lot more territory. All of this could play out very slowly, over weeks or months.

“American officials are growing anxious, but it is not too late,” said Julian Barnes, a Times correspondent who covers intelligence agencies. “The big push could still come.”

This scenario could look similar to Ukraine’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson last year. Ukraine spent months in the summer using smaller strikes to wear down Russian forces and exhaust their supplies around the city. Ukrainian forces moved into Kherson starting in late August, and Russia announced its retreat in November. It seemed like a sudden turn of events at the time, but it came after months of grinding work by Ukraine.

“Ukraine has yet to commit a substantial portion of its force,” Sullivan said about the current counteroffensive. “We won’t really know the extent to which Ukraine will retake territory until they commit the substantial number of forces that they have thus far held in reserve.”

Scenario 2: Russia holds on

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Ukrainian troops undergoing mine training.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

As poorly as the first year of the invasion went for Russia, the country does seem to have learned from some of its mistakes. Last year, Russia often used one hastily built line of troops to defend a large piece of territory. Russia’s multiple defensive lines and minefields in Ukraine today are a significant improvement. “The Russians are clearly more prepared than they were before,” Eric said.

Military shipments from the U.S. and Europe are meant to help Ukraine break through such defenses. But Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told CNN last week that advanced weapons had come too slowly, forcing him to delay the counteroffensive and giving Russian forces time to lay down more mines and fortify their defensive lines.

(The U.S. announced more support for Ukraine on Friday, including contentious cluster munitions.)

“If Ukraine doesn’t do as well as we hoped, the responsibility for that is partly going to fall on Western decision-making and its sluggishness,” said George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

The bottom line

Ukraine’s primary goal in its counteroffensive is to retake much, if not all, of the land connecting Russian forces in the eastern region of Donbas and the southern peninsula of Crimea. In doing so, Ukrainian leaders would hope to get Russia to worry about a full defeat and negotiate a favorable peace deal.

To achieve that, Ukraine will need to take much more territory than it has so far. With months to go, it still has time to succeed. And Ukraine has surprised the world before.

Related: A retired military official uses maps to explain Ukraine’s strategy on the front lines in a video for The Wall Street Journal.

More on Ukraine

 

THE LATEST NEWS

Climate
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Algae on Lake Okeechobee, Fla.Josh Ritchie for The New York Times
 
International
 
Republican Primary
 
Other Big Stories
  • An Arizona man named in a conspiracy theory on Fox News may sue the network for defamation.
  • The number of migrants at the southern border is down. Mexico has blocked many asylum seekers from crossing and has transported them to places deep in the country’s interior.
  • A murder suspect escaped from a Pennsylvania jail using bedsheets he tied together to climb down from the roof, officials said. He’s a survivalist, and he may be in the woods.
 
Opinions

The 18 years of Chief Justice John Roberts’s tenure have fulfilled every goal on conservatives’ wish list, Linda Greenhouse writes.

Don’t even think about checking a bag when you travel, David Mack insists.

Here are columns by Jamelle Bouie on a colorblind Constitution and Maureen Dowd on Hunter Biden’s estranged daughter.

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Visitors waiting to enter the Pantheon.Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pantheon confusion: There is now an entry fee of 5 euros, causing chaos in Rome.

Smashed up: Look at what happens to unwanted office furniture.

Art of translation: See how a translator carries the soul of a sentence from Spanish to English.

Cottage cheese: The ’70s diet staple is making a comeback.

Metropolitan Diary: How to squeeze a workout into a commute.

Lives Lived: Henry Kamm was a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, covering Cold War diplomacy in Europe and wars and genocide in Southeast Asia. He died at 98.

 

SPORTS NEWS

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Touching up the lines at Wimbledon.Julian Finney/Getty Images

Killer grass: The Times explains how Wimbledon’s tricky court surfaces leave some of the world’s best players feeling bad at tennis.

L.S.U. players: The pitcher Paul Skenes and the outfielder Dylan Crews became the first college teammates to go first and second in the M.L.B.’s draft, The Athletic reports.

Northwestern: The school’s president said he “may have erred” when he suspended the football coach Pat Fitzgerald for two weeks after hazing allegations, The Athletic writes.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Beyoncé in Toronto on Saturday.The New York Times

Opening night: Beyoncé’s North American solo tour, her first in seven years, began this weekend in Toronto. The two-and-a-half-hour concert featured blockbuster costumes, stage design and dancing, but the real star was Beyoncé’s voice, Lindsay Zoladz writes in The Times: “Beyoncé’s endurance as a world-class performer remained the show’s raison d’être; she is the rare major pop star who prizes live vocal prowess.”

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Julia Gartland for The New York Times

Mix up your caprese by adding olives.

Dine outdoors, using these tips for setting a table.

Pack your food in these containers for a picnic. Then sit on the best blankets.

 

GAMES

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangrams were deficient and infected.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 11, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the politics of immigration, a NATO summit and crop tops.

 
 
 
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A naturalization ceremony on Ellis Island last year.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

A long cycle

The global migration wave of the 21st century has little precedent. In much of North America, Europe and Oceania, the share of population that is foreign-born is at or near its highest level on record.

In the U.S., that share is approaching the previous high of 15 percent, reached in 1890. In some other countries, the immigration increases have been even steeper in the past two decades:

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Source: Migration Policy Institute | By The New York Times

This scale of immigration tends to be unpopular with residents of the arrival countries. Illegal immigration is especially unpopular because it feeds a sense that a country’s laws don’t matter. But large amounts of legal immigration also bother many voters. Lower-income and blue-collar workers often worry that their wages will decline because employers suddenly have a larger, cheaper labor pool from which to hire.

As Tom Fairless, a Wall Street Journal reporter, wrote a few days ago:

Record immigration to affluent countries is sparking bigger backlashes across the world, boosting populist parties and putting pressure on governments to tighten policies to stem the migration wave. …

The backlashes repeat a long cycle in immigration policy, experts say. Businesses constantly lobby for more liberal immigration laws because that reduces their labor costs and boosts profits. They draw support from pro-business politicians on the right and pro-integration leaders on the left, leading to immigration policies that are more liberal than the average voter wants.

Bernie vs. the left

The political left in both Europe and the U.S. has struggled to come up with a response to these developments. Instead, many progressives have dismissed immigration concerns as merely a reflection of bigotry that needs to be defeated. And opposition to immigration is frequently infused with racism: Right-wing leaders like Marine Le Pen in France traffic in hateful stereotypes about immigrants. Some, like Donald Trump, tell outright lies.

But favoring lower levels of immigration is not inherently bigoted or always right-wing. The most prosperous large countries in Africa, Asia and South America tend to have much smaller foreign-born shares of their population. Japan and South Korea make it particularly difficult for foreigners to enter.

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Source: Migration Policy Institute | By The New York Times

In earlier eras, the political left in the U.S. included many figures who worried about the effects of large-scale immigration. Both labor leaders and civil-rights leaders, for example, argued for moderate levels of immigration to protect the interests of vulnerable workers.

“There is a reason why Wall Street and all of corporate America likes immigration reform, and it is not, in my view, that they’re staying up nights worrying about undocumented workers in this country,” Bernie Sanders said in 2015. “What I think they are interested in is seeing a process by which we can bring low-wage labor of all levels into this country to depress wages for Americans, and I strongly disagree with that.”

Today, though, many progressives are uncomfortable with any immigration-skeptical argument. They have become passionate advocates of more migration and global integration, arguing — correctly — that immigrants usually benefit by moving from a lower-wage country to a higher-wage country. But immigration is not a free lunch any more than free trade is. It also has costs, including its burden on social services, as some local leaders, like Mayor Eric Adams of New York and officials in South Texas, have recently emphasized.

Rutte’s decision

With today’s left-leaning and centrist parties largely accepting of high levels of immigration, right-wing parties have become attractive to many voters who favor less immigration. The issue has fueled the rise of far-right nationalist parties in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland and elsewhere, as Jason Horowitz of The Times explained in a recent article. Jason focuses on Spain, another country where the anti-immigration party is growing.

The latest case study is the Netherlands. The governing coalition there collapsed on Friday after centrist parties refused to accept part of the conservative prime minister’s plan to reduce migration. Rather than alter his plan, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, dissolved the government, setting up an election this fall.

Rutte, notably, is not a member of the far right. He is a mainstream Dutch conservative who has tried to marginalize the country’s extremist anti-immigrant party. Yet he came to believe that reducing immigration was “a matter of political survival” for his party, my colleagues Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Claire Moses reported.

Although the details are different, President Biden has also recently taken steps to reduce unauthorized immigration. So far, his new policy — which includes both more border enforcement and an expansion of legal pathways to apply for entry — appears to have reduced the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Still, the issue clearly divides Biden’s party. Many liberal Democrats have criticized his policy as heartless and said the U.S. should admit more migrants, not fewer.

Democrats frequently like to point out the many ways in which Republicans are out of step with public opinion, including on abortion bans, the minimum wage, taxes on the wealthy and background checks for gun owners. Immigration cuts the other way, polls show. It is a subject on which much of the Democratic Party, like the political left in Europe, is in a different place than many voters.

 

THE LATEST NEWS

NATO Summit
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s leader, shaking hands with Ulf Kristersson, Sweden’s prime minister as NATO’s leader looks on.Pool photo by Wpa
 
International
 
Flooding
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Volunteers remove debris in Highland Falls, N.Y.Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
 
Heat
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Since Israel’s first invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, the nation has felt more emboldened in its apartheid policies, Tareq Baconi argues.

“We’re not telling parents how to parent,” Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah said in an interview with Jane Coaston about children’s social media access. “The law empowers parents.”

Here is a column by David French on Christian political activism.

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Alex Royle for The New York Times

Free the navel: More men are baring their midriffs in crop tops.

I don’t: Marriages in China are at a record low. Young people explain why.

Monster marlin: They caught the fish, but the $3.5 million prize got away.

Silence: Simon and Garfunkel were right. It really is a sound.

Lives Lived: Benno C. Schmidt Jr. was a constitutional law scholar who became one of the country’s leading education executives, bringing reforms to Yale. He died at 81.

 

SPORTS NEWS

Northwestern: The football coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired after an investigation into hazing allegations. Here’s a timeline of the scandal.

A looming exit: Shohei Ohtani, the baseball superstar, reiterated he’s tired of losing, even during the best season of his career. A trade could come soon.

Rising star: Kim English runs a basketball program in the Big East — and he’s just 34.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Outside Silvercup Studios in Queens.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Hollywood strike: Screenwriters in New York are picketing the set of “American Horror Story,” one of the few TV shows to continue production through the writers’ strike. Most shows have stopped, in part because sympathetic producers felt that the changes they regularly make during filming are a form of writing. “Writing doesn’t stop with the script,” Sarah Montana, a screenwriter, told The Times.

More on culture

  • “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film about the father of the atomic bomb, is based on a book that took 25 years to write.
  • Instead of using Craigslist, some Americans call their local radio stations to buy and sell things.
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Browse Wirecutter’s picks of the best Amazon Prime Day deals.

Try a more sustainable sandwich bag.

 

GAMES

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was atrophy.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. In a duel on this day in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton, who died a day later.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 12, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering a debate over military spending, extreme weather and art protests.

 
 
 
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NATO’s Saber Strike exercises in Lithuania, in 2015.Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Arsenal of democracies

NATO countries have been promising to spend more money on defense for many years.

In 2006, the defense ministers of NATO adopted a vague guideline suggesting that every NATO country spend 2 percent of its annual economic output on the military. At the time, most NATO members spent far less — and little changed after the 2006 announcement.

In 2014, worried by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, NATO’s heads of state formalized the benchmark and urged countries to move toward it within the next decade. Still, most countries have failed to meet it:

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Source: NATO | Numbers are rounded to the nearest decimal. | By The New York Times

Much of Western Europe has been especially reluctant to do so, to the frustration of leaders in the U.S. and Eastern Europe. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama complained about the gap during their presidencies, and Donald Trump castigated other countries about it. Wealthy countries like Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands — as well as Japan — seemed to be free riders, able to spend more on their own social safety nets while the U.S. protected them.

But now the situation really does seem to be changing.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year has led to a new willingness for countries to pay for their own defense. “It’s clearly a turning point for Europe in terms of the allocation of spending between military needs and social spending,” said Patricia Cohen, a Times economics correspondent based in London. Liz Alderman, a correspondent based in Paris, put it this way: “European leaders have decided that the threat is here to stay.”

Germany appears likely to meet the 2 percent threshold next year. In France, which was already close to the target, President Emmanuel Macron has promised to lift military spending by more than a third this decade. Other countries are also spending more.

“Incomplete is the grade, but the direction of travel is positive,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told me on Friday, before leaving for this week’s NATO meeting in Lithuania. At the meeting, American officials plan to push other countries not to stop at 2 percent. “Two percent should not be seen as a ceiling to hit, but really a floor that should be built upon,” Sullivan said.

‘Remarkably sanguine’

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A German antiaircraft cannon tank.Felix Schmitt for The New York Times

The arguments for more military spending involve both fairness and democracy.

The fairness point is the same one that Bush, Obama and Trump have made: At a time when many Americans are frustrated with slow-growing living standards and the U.S. has a $32 trillion federal debt, why should Western Europe effectively bill Washington for protection? And why should richer NATO countries like Germany be less willing to pay for defense than Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Greece and Poland (all of which have hit the 2 percent target)?

The democracy point is related to a major theme of Biden’s foreign policy. Global affairs are increasingly defined by a contest between autocracy and democracy, Biden has said. On one side are Russia and China. On the other are the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia and much of Europe. Democracy will be more likely to prevail if countries share the burdens of military spending.

Japan’s leaders seem to agree with this idea. Historically, Japan spent only about 1 percent of its economic output on the military — a legacy of its post-World War II desire to avoid belligerence, as was also the case for Germany. But starting in 2012, Shinzo Abe, then the prime minister, began pushing for a new approach, one that he argued was more fitting for modern realities.

Initially, the Japanese public was skeptical. In 2015, people took to the streets to protest a law that allowed Japanese troops to participate in some combat missions, notes Motoko Rich, The Times’s Tokyo bureau chief.

Today, people seem more supportive. Japan’s current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, plans to raise defense spending gradually to 2 percent of economic output, and the public reaction has been “remarkably sanguine,” Motoko says. The new aggressiveness of China and nuclear tests by North Korea help explain the shift.

There are trade-offs, of course. The additional money that countries spend on defense is money they cannot spend on roads, child care, cancer research, refugee resettlement, public parks or clean energy, my colleague Patricia points out. One reason Macron has insisted on raising France’s retirement age despite widespread protests, analysts believe, is a need to leave more money for the military.

But the situation over the past few decades feels unsustainable. Some of the world’s richest countries were able to spend so much on social programs partly because another country — the U.S. — was paying for their defense. Those other countries, sensing a more threatening world, are now once again promising to pull their weight. They still need to demonstrate that they’ll follow through this time.

Related: Right-wing Republicans want to use the annual defense bill to pick abortion fights and combat “wokeness” in the military.

More on NATO

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Northeast Floods
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Kayaking in downtown Montpelier, Vt.Hilary Swift for The New York Times
 
Heat
 
Business
  • A judge rejected the F.T.C.’s attempt to delay the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, essentially ending the government’s effort to block the deal.
  • Regulators fined Bank of America $150 million over junk fees like double-charging its customers for overdrafts.
  • Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, found overnight success with its built-in audience. But its growth may not last, Mike Isaac writes.
 
Politics
 
Abortion
  • The Iowa Senate approved legislation that would ban abortions after six weeks.
  • A Nebraska woman pleaded guilty to giving her 17-year-old daughter pills for an illegal abortion and helping to burn and bury the fetus, The Associated Press reported.
 
Other Big Stories
  • Milan Kundera, the Czech-French author of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and a Communist Party outcast, died at 94.
  • Chinese hackers intent on collecting U.S. intelligence gained access to government email accounts and went undetected for a month, Microsoft said.
  • Covid probably spread among deer and may have been passed back to people after mutating in the animals.
  • Leslie Van Houten, a Manson family member convicted of murder in the group’s 1969 killing spree, was released on parole.
 
Opinions

Cambodia’s propaganda campaigns on Facebook exploit a neglected area in content moderation: foreign languages, Samuel Woolley argues.

Here is a column by Paul Krugman on “lazy” workers.

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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New York City.Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

Daddy’s little meatball: A New York shirt loved by both tourists and locals.

Hair loss: It may be linked to stress.

It’s never too late: To become a nurse.

Lives Lived: Ruth Fitzpatrick was a crusader for letting women be Roman Catholic priests. She died at 90.

 

SPORTS NEWS

Golf: PGA Tour executives testified at a Senate hearing yesterday regarding the organization’s pending agreement with the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

Wimbledon: Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina upset the No. 1-ranked Iga Swiatek to reach the semifinals. “War made me stronger,” Svitolina said.

New rules: The N.B.A. has officially banned flopping, one of two changes implemented by the league yesterday.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Activists splashed oil on a Gustav Klimt painting protected by glass. Letzte Generation Oesterreich, via Associated Press

Art and activism: Climate activists have vandalized art at more than a dozen museums as acts of protest over the past year, often smearing liquids across famous works. “No art on a dead planet,” read signs at a recent demonstration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But while corporations and politicians are the focus of the activists’ anger, museums shoulder the costs of the protests, Zachary Small writes. Institutions have hired extra security, installed barriers and paid for cleanups of soup-splattered masterpieces.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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David Malosh for The New York Times

Find the best Amazon Prime Day deals under $100.

Read a John le Carré novel. Here’s a guide to find the right one.

 

GAMES

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was beatific.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Share on other sites

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Good morning. We’re covering extreme weather, cooling inflation and Emmy nominations.

 
 
 
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A community center in Phoenix.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Floods, heat and smoke

Extreme weather suddenly seems to be happening everywhere at once.

The heat index in parts of Arizona, Texas and Florida will surpass 110 degrees Fahrenheit today. Much of the Midwest is in a severe drought. Areas in New York and Vermont just saw as much rain in a day as is typical for all of July, and subsequent flash floods washed out homes, cars and bridges. Wildfire smoke recently blanketed the Midwest and Northeast — at times giving U.S. cities the worst air quality in the world.

These events show one danger of global warming: Simultaneous climate disasters can play off one another, further worsening extreme weather and straining limited resources. Consider some examples:

  • For years, the U.S. and Australia shared firefighting resources because their fire seasons do not typically overlap. In 2019 and 2020, they were instead forced to compete for personnel and equipment as California dealt with a wildfire season that extended into its winter, while much of Australia burned during its so-called Black Summer.
  • In the Western U.S., both more heat and unusually dry conditions have caused the megadrought of recent years. The heat and dryness have also acted as kindling for more frequent and more severe fires. In both cases, the two conditions, exacerbated by climate change, compounded each other to cause more disasters.
  • Last year, a heat wave in Pakistan pushed temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Then floods submerged more than a third of the nation. The back-to-back events strained resources in an already poor country.
  • States often support each other during natural disasters by sending equipment or opening residents’ homes to people who have been displaced. But New York can’t as easily help neighboring Vermont while both states are battling floods. (Vermont has received help from North Carolina, Michigan and Connecticut, among others.)

We should expect more such problems going forward, largely propelled by climate change.

Worse to come

This year really has been unusual for the climate. The chart below shows global surface air temperatures since 1979. The daily global temperature set a record last week, and it could again in the coming weeks.

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Source: Climate Reanalyzer | By Elena Shao

Climate change is one culprit. Some of the current problems also stem from the periodic weather pattern known as El Niño, which causes temperatures to rise. It will likely subside next year, bringing somewhat cooler conditions, before returning again several years later. When it does, it could bring even worse disasters than this year’s El Niño because climate change will have continued to warm the planet all the while.

“Extremes are already worse because of man-made climate change,” said Kim Cobb, the director of the Institute at Brown University for Environment and Society. “And they’re going to get worse with each additional increment of warming.”

Humans can’t prevent El Niño, but they can do something about climate change. Anything that reduces greenhouse gases can help. While much of the world has already taken steps to cut human emissions, experts continue to say that progress has been too slow to stop or reverse global warming.

More weather news

 

THE LATEST NEWS

Economy
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Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics | By The New York Times
 
War in Ukraine
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President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky.Doug Mills/The New York Times
 
China
 
International
 
Politics
 
Other Big Stories
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The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)
  • NASA released another photo from the James Webb Space Telescope. It has been taking “baby pictures of the universe” in the closest star-forming region to Earth.
  • A tornado touched down in Chicago, near O’Hare, and hundreds of travelers sheltered in one of the airport’s neon hallways. See the video.
 
Opinions

A ruling restricting the Biden administration’s contact with online platforms means that state and local authorities get to set internet policy, Kate Klonick writes.

The U.S. government should stop backing Haiti’s acting prime minister, an unpopular figure implicated in the former president’s murder, Jake Johnston argues.

Here are columns by Thomas Edsall on Republican voter suppression and Lydia Polgreen on “woke capitalism.”

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Dropping in.Mark Woodward

Webbed shaka: An otter steals surfboards and rides them. She’s wanted by California officials.

Menopause: Do hormone treatments increase the risk of dementia?

Icon of the Seas: Some can’t wait to ride this giant, candy-color cruise ship. Others call it a monstrosity.

Year of the fungi: Mushrooms took over wellness. Now they’re appearing in chocolate.

Lives Lived: Ellen Hovde was a director of the 1975 movie “Grey Gardens,” but saw her role as one of its editors as more pivotal. “The person who is doing the editing,” she said, is “making the decisions about what is really going to be there on the screen.” She died at 97.

 

SPORTS NEWS

Professional surfer: Mikala Jones, known for the videos he took inside the giant waves he rode, died when the fin from his board cut an artery. He was 44.

ESPYs: Damar Hamlin broke down onstage as he presented an award to the Buffalo Bills training staff for saving his life on the field. Watch the video from ESPN.

More spotlight: The Jets will be the latest subject of “Hard Knocks,” HBO announced yesterday.

A mayor’s pitch: Oakland’s mayor said in an exclusive interview that she had presented the M.L.B. commissioner with a plan to keep the A’s in Oakland.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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On the set of “Succession.”Macall B. Polay/HBO

TV’s best: The final season of “Succession” scored 27 Emmy nominations yesterday, the most of any series, including acting nods for nine of its cast members. And HBO pulled off a rare feat, with four of its shows — “Succession,” “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “House of the Dragon” — nominated for best drama. The most closely watched comedy award will probably be the competition for best actor, which includes Jason Sudeikis for “Ted Lasso” and Jeremy Allen White for “The Bear.” (See all the nominees.)

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Add nuoc cham, a Vietnamese sauce, to this chicken and herb salad.

Forage for your next meal with the same gear the pros use.

Stash your leftovers in reusable storage bags.

Workout in the pool. No swimming needed.

Read this great story about a mysterious, glamorous neighbor who needed help.

Listen to a podcast by a duchess talking to other duchesses about running their castles.

 

GAMES

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was femininity.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misspelled the name of Vermont’s capital, Montpelier.

P.S. The artist Maria Jesus Contreras was shortlisted for a 2023 World Illustration Award, for her work in The Morning’s Saturday editions. Congratulations, Maria!

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 14, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the fight over semiconductors with China, a strike of Hollywood actors and Wimbledon’s strawberries.

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In Beijing. Pool photo by Mark Schiefelbein

The chips battle

Publicly, the U.S. and China have turned down the heat recently on their relationship. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have both visited Beijing in recent weeks partly to improve communication between the two countries. “President Biden and I do not see the relationship between the U.S. and China through the frame of great-power conflict,” Yellen said at the end of her trip.

But the underlying reality is unchanged: The U.S. and China remain competitors for global supremacy. The two countries are great powers, and they are often in conflict.

Look at what’s happened since Yellen returned home on Sunday:

  • U.S. officials announced that in the run-up to Blinken’s trip last month, hackers apparently affiliated with the Chinese government broke into the email accounts of top U.S. officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a noted critic of China’s policies. The spy balloon that flew over the U.S. early this year may have received more attention, but the hacking of high-level email accounts seems more belligerent.
  • Biden administration officials appear close to announcing rules restricting American firms from investing in many cutting-edge Chinese technology companies. Advocates say the rules are intended to keep Americans from financing threats to U.S. national security. Biden’s aides have held off on announcing the policy, partly to avoid disrupting the recent diplomatic outreach. (Here is a Times story with more details.)
  • The U.S. continues to enforce a strict set of restrictions intended to hamper China’s ability to produce advanced semiconductors. The Biden administration put the restrictions in place Oct. 7. “If you’d told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war — we’d have to be at war,” said C.J. Muse, a semiconductor expert at Evercore ISI, an investment advisory firm.

Choke points

Muse's quotation comes from a new Times Magazine article by Alex Palmer, and I recommend making time to read it this weekend. The article explains how the Biden administration is trying to prevent China from getting access to cutting-edge semiconductors, which are vital to many digital technologies. By doing so, the U.S. hopes to slow China’s efforts to build advanced weapons, develop artificial intelligence and surveil its own citizens and people in other countries.

The U.S. believes it can succeed, Alex writes, because the semiconductor industry is “a web of mutual interdependence, spread all over the planet in highly specialized regions and companies, its feats made possible by supply chains of exceptional length and complexity.” The most advanced operations tend to be located in either the U.S. or its allies, such as Japan, the Netherlands and Taiwan — three governments that have all signed on to the Oct. 7 restrictions.

“The entire industry can only function with U.S. inputs,” Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts University, said. “In every facility that’s remotely close to the cutting edge, there’s U.S. tools, U.S. design software and U.S. intellectual property throughout the process.” (Miller recently appeared on Ezra Klein’s podcast to talk about the global importance of semiconductors.)

So far, the semiconductor restrictions seem to be having an effect, analysts say. China is struggling to get as many advanced semiconductors as it needs and is instead trying to build up its domestic industry. Ultimately, it will probably succeed in doing so. By then, though, the U.S. and its allies hope to have raced further ahead.

Unfulfilled promises

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High speed rail lines on the outskirts of Beijing. James Hill for The New York Times

The Oct. 7 rules are a telling sign of how much U.S. policy toward China has changed. For decades, presidents from both parties vowed that economic engagement would benefit both China and the U.S. As China became richer, the politicians claimed, its development would provide jobs for American workers, while China itself would become a freer country and more friendly to the West.

Only some of those promises came true.

China did become richer. Its rise has included arguably the most rapid decline of poverty in human history, improving the material living conditions of hundreds of millions of people. Many American investors and corporate executives also flourished, as their companies became more profitable by moving parts of the supply chain to China and by selling goods in China.

But China became less democratic, not more, in the process. Its rise has also hurt millions of U.S. workers more than it has helped them. One academic study uses the phrase “China shock” to describe the devastating effect on factory jobs and wages in many U.S. communities over the past two decades. People in these same places have become more likely to vote for extremist political candidates, the researchers found in a follow-up study.

Now U.S. policy makers of both parties are more often treating China as the rival that it has become. True, there are risks to this new approach — including an actual war, which could be devastating. And China and the U.S. will need to continue cooperating on some issues, especially climate change, even as they compete on many others.

By trying to keep the lines of communication open, Blinken, Yellen and their counterparts in Beijing can reduce the threat of misunderstanding and catastrophe. But they can’t change the fact that China and the U.S. are competitors, not allies. The two countries are indeed engaged in a great-power struggle.

What’s next: John Kerry, Biden’s special climate envoy, will arrive in China on Sunday to restart climate talks between the countries, the world’s two largest polluters. Congressional Republicans accused Kerry at a hearing yesterday of being soft on China.

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Hollywood on Strike
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Screen Actors Guild president Fran Drescher, center, and others in Los Angeles.Mark Abramson for The New York Times
  • Hollywood actors are going on strike today, joining screenwriters on the picket lines. The two groups have not been on strike at the same time in 63 years.
  • The actors are seeking higher pay, which has fallen in the streaming era, as well as guardrails for the use of A.I.
 
Politics
  • The House’s defense policy bill has become a partisan battle. Republicans yesterday passed measures to limit abortion access and diversity training for military personnel.
  • Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, is pushing legislation to declassify government documents about U.F.O.s. The measure has bipartisan support.
  • Democrats in Congress are again trying to make the Equal Rights Amendment part of the Constitution as a way to guarantee sex equality and protect reproductive rights.
  • A super PAC aligned with Donald Trump made a $155,000 payment to Melania Trump in 2021. It’s listed as pay for a speaking engagement.
  • Federal prosecutors asked Jared Kushner if Donald Trump privately conceded in the days after the election that he had lost the 2020 race.
 
Health
  • The F.D.A. approved the first over-the-counter birth control medication in the U.S. Here’s what to know about the drug known as Opill.
  • The W.H.O. said aspartame, a sweetener commonly found in diet soda, is a possible carcinogen. But it said normal consumption posed little risk.
 
Weather
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Wading through the flooded waters of Yamuna River in India.Arun Sankar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
  • Thousands of people evacuated their homes in Delhi after monsoon rains killed nearly 100 others in neighboring states. See photos of the flooding.
  • Extreme temperatures killed 10 people in Laredo, Texas. One man died in his truck, parked on a busy street with its hazard lights on.
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Europeans overcame hurdles to create an economic union and a shared currency, and they can do the same for their militaries, Rajan Menon argues.

On “The Ezra Klein Show,” Tom Hanks has an antidote for America’s age of cynicism.

Here is a column by Paul Krugman on inflation.

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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A “limited-time offer.”USA Today

A real cheeseburger? Burger King Thailand serves one sesame burger bun with 20 slices of American cheese. No pickles.

Dim lighting: See how the National Archives preserves centuries-old documents.

Modern Love: For one writer, colored latex catsuits are freedom.

Lives Lived: Evelyn Witkin explored the ways in which radiation both damaged DNA and generated a repair mechanism. She died at 102.

 

SPORTS NEWS

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Inspecting a strawberry.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times

The strawberry fields of Wimbledon: See photos of seasonal workers picking and packing the more than two million strawberries for the tournament.

A perfect shot: Marketa Vondrousova hit one of the best shots of Wimbledon. It sent her to the final, ending the Ukrainian player Elina Svitolina’s run.

The latest on James Harden: The disgruntled Philadelphia star still wants out, despite rumors of a possible Sixers reunion.

Retired at 28: Blake Martinez could be playing linebacker in the N.F.L. right now. Instead, he retired to sell Pokémon cards.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” and Margot Robbie in “Barbie.”Universal Pictures ("Oppenheimer"); Warner Bros. ("Barbie")

Double feature: In one week, two of the most-anticipated movies of the year hit theaters: “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” Many fans plan to see both on the same day, relishing the irony of seeing two star-studded films with such incongruous themes. One marketing manager told The Times that she and her friends had planned their day “the way the Lord herself intended: ‘Oppenheimer’ at 10 a.m. with a black coffee / ‘Barbie’ at 4:20 p.m. with a big Diet Coke.”

More on culture

  • Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, died in January from a bowel obstruction, after a previous bariatric surgery.
  • Lola Tung describes how she is similar to her character in Amazon’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Jenny Huang for The New York Times

Use one pot for this zucchini basil pasta.

Weave through your city on the best electric scooters.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was godchild.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 15, 2023

 

Good morning. You don’t necessarily have to travel to experience the benefits of a summer vacation.

 
 
 
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
María Jesús Contreras

Staying put

I’ve always been skeptical of the staycation. The coinage is too cute for what feels like a consolation prize: While other people are off exploring the Blue Lagoon by camper van, you get to stay in your very own home and go to your usual supermarket for Cheerios!

So I was intrigued to discover, thanks to my colleague Catherine Pearson, that I have been staycationing all wrong. Evidently, my tendency to stumble into time off without a plan is unlikely to produce a restorative effect. Instead, one should imbue the time off with the urgency of a weeklong trip. Jaime Kurtz, a psychology professor at James Madison University and the author of “The Happy Traveler: Unpacking the Secrets of Better Vacations,” advises asking oneself, “If I were moving away soon, what would I most want to do, and who would I most want to spend time with?”

I like this spin on “live every day as if it were your last.” Any reminder that time is fleeting, no matter how cliché, is a good one if it gets you to live better or more deliberately. And now, mid-July (already!), is really the time to try this out. This weekend, you could, for instance, seek out some vegan ice cream that doesn’t taste terrible. (The new varieties are made with creamier plant-based milks that taste more like the real thing.) You could try running in a pool, which is easier on the joints but as effective as running on land. You could go for a walk or a drive while listening to “Slow Radio,” a very soothing BBC podcast featuring sounds of the natural world. (This installment showcases a nightingale singing and a newborn lamb’s first bleat.)

Whether or not you have a proper vacation planned for the coming weeks, you could envision any coming weekend as its own two-day mini-break, programming it as you would a trip to somewhere new, with an itinerary more exciting than just “sleep as much as possible” and “mow the lawn.” What do you most want to do this weekend, and whom do you want to spend time with? Sometimes, when we’re caught up in getting stuff done and living through the next crisis, just asking ourselves what we would like to do and then doing it can be, if not revelatory, at least a bit of a relief.

For more

 

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THE WEEK IN CULTURE

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“Succession.”Claudette Barius/HBO
  • At the couture shows in Paris, the street style rivaled the clothes on the runway.
  • A Taylor Swift ticket sale again broke Ticketmaster, this time for shows in France.
  • “Sound of Freedom,” a thriller about child trafficking championed by the political right, is not far behind this summer’s blockbusters at the box office.
  • Minnie Bruce Pratt, a celebrated poet of lesbian life, died at 76. Her collection “Crime Against Nature” recounts her losing custody of her children after she came out.
  • Ten years ago, the B-movie silliness of “Sharknado” helped Twitter become the place to talk about TV. That era has ended, James Poniewozik writes.
  • A fallen tree trapped people for hours at the former holiday home of Agatha Christie in Britain.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy yesterday.Tom Brenner for The New York Times
 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

CULTURE CALENDAR

🎬 “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” (Friday): Barbenheimer. Boppenheimer. Call it what you will, but between this week’s release of the new “Mission: Impossible” film and next week’s double feature of Greta Gerwig’s poppy look at one of the most famous dolls of all time and Christopher Nolan’s sober look at one of the most famous theoretical physicists of all time, moviegoing is back! (For this month, at least.)

📚 “Crook Manifesto: (Tuesday): What do you do after you’ve won your second Pulitzer Prize? If you’re the novelist Colson Whitehead, you write a crime story set in Harlem in the 1960s. And what do you do if that book is well received? You write another! Whitehead’s equally entertaining follow-up returns to Harlem a decade later and, in his review, the ace crime novelist Walter Mosley called it “a glorious and intricate anatomy of the heist, the con and the slow game.”

 

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RECIPE OF THE WEEK

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Shish Kebab

An excellent thing about Naz Deravian’s recipe for crisp-edged shish kebabs is that you can cook them either outside on your grill, or inside under the broiler, making them very versatile depending on the weather and your mood. If you have time to let these marinate in the fridge overnight, they’ll be especially intense and suffused with a heady mix of cumin, paprika, dried oregano and garlic. But even a couple of hours make a big difference. Serve with flatbread on the side and loads of herbs on top for a fresh and leafy contrast to all those delightfully charred nuggets of meat.

 

REAL ESTATE

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David Mitchell

Hamptons home: It looks like a James Bond villain’s lair.

Tiny cabin: Style in just 600 square feet.

What you get for $1.1 million: An 1888 Queen Anne Revival in Versailles, Ky.; a Craftsman bungalow in Denton, Texas; or a split-level home in New Hope, Pa.

The hunt: A single mother in Oakland, Calif., was looking for a home that would fit a family of three. Which one did she choose? Play our game.

 

LIVING

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Tanveer Badal for The New York Times

Beach and wine: Spend 36 hours in Santa Barbara.

Biometrics: Glucose tracking is popular. Should you do it?

Environmental storytelling: Visit Folly Tree Arboretum in New York.

Surrogate partners: Talk therapy combined with some physical touch helps people who struggle with sex.

 

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

For the kids

An inflatable water slide is a delightfully cheesy antidote to sweltering and sticky summer days. My brother gave my family a garish blowup contraption that includes a climbing wall that leads to a slide that leads to a shallow pool of water festooned with inflated water guns and a basketball hoop. The whole thing screams excess. Which means my kids love it, of course. And that’s what matters. So, if I may: Consider an inflatable water slide for your backyard. Yes, it’s a kitschy monstrosity. But your kids will squeal with glee. — Ben Frumin

 

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

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Novak Djokovic.Julian Finney/Getty Images

Novak Djokovic vs. Carlos Alcaraz, Wimbledon men’s final: The future of tennis has arrived with Alcaraz, the Spanish 20-year-old who wears down opponents with his speed and relentless hitting. Unfortunately for Alcaraz, the old guard hasn’t left yet. Djokovic, 36, has won the past four Wimbledon titles, as well as this year’s Australian and French Opens. While his peers retire, Djokovic seems to be playing his best tennis. “It really is very good to be Novak Djokovic right now,” The Times’s Matthew Futterman writes. 9 a.m. Eastern tomorrow on ESPN.

For more

  • Alcaraz was a great youth player, but he was also lucky: A candy magnate saw him play and sponsored him to compete with the sport’s best.
  • In the women’s final this morning, Ons Jabeur and Marketa Vondrousova are each vying for a first Grand Slam title.
 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was mailbox.

See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Good morning. We’re saying goodbye, again, to the band that was once the Grateful Dead.

 
 
 
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Dead & Company fans in New York in June.Peter Fisher for The New York Times

A long, strange trip

Fans of the Grateful Dead are saying goodbye to the band this weekend. It’s not the first time.

Since the band lost its frontman Jerry Garcia nearly three decades ago, it has re-formed several times, touring continuously and winning over new generations. Along the way, it has given each new set of fans its own chance to mourn, my colleague Marc Tracy writes.

The day Garcia died in 1995, the Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir gave a concert near Boston. One fan, Albie Cullen, recalled that the encore felt like an emotional send-off for Garcia and the band. “Everybody kind of knew that was the end,” Cullen said. But it wasn’t.

In 2015, the surviving members held a series of goodbye concerts. It was another emotional send-off, but it wasn’t the end, either. Within months, a new iteration had formed, Dead & Company. It features the singer-songwriter John Mayer, who was born more than a decade after the original band formed.

During Dead & Company’s eight-year run, the band once again became a cultural touchstone. Longtime fans came to embrace Mayer, a skilled guitar player. Many young fans discovered the group on streaming services or through its deep online archive of live concerts, and the band recently had its best week of record sales in 35 years. When I saw the band perform at Citi Field in New York last month, the stadium’s upper deck was packed with Gen Z fans dressed in tie-dye.

Tonight, Dead & Company is in San Francisco to play the final show of what it says will be its final tour. Even if that turns out not to be true, once again, fans have embraced the ritual.

“We like to say goodbye. We find a usefulness to saying goodbye. It’s almost like practice,” Marc told me. “People genuinely like the bittersweetness of it. You’re not supposed to like sad things, but people go see sad movies all the time.”

 

NEWS

War in Ukraine
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Antitank mines.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
 
Heat
  • The brutal temperatures across the southern and western states are expected to peak this weekend, The Washington Post reports.
  • More than 100 million people have been under excessive heat warnings and advisories.
 
Politics
  • Ron DeSantis’s campaign has let go of staff as he struggles in polling against Donald Trump.
  • Wealthy Democrats have thrown money behind President Biden’s re-election, but so far, small donors aren’t contributing as much as they did in the 2020 campaign.
  • Recruits who quit Florida’s State Guard, which was billed as an emergency relief organization, said the group was too militarized.
 
Aging Societies
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By The New York Times
  • A coming demographic shift will remake the global balance of power, experts say. These graphics show how.
  • Aging populations will strain developed countries’ welfare systems, while a young labor force will benefit developing countries.
  • Britain’s public health service, flooded by older patients, is in the deepest crisis of its history.
 
International
  • John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, arrived in China today for three days of talks between the world’s two biggest polluters. Here’s what to expect.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, spent a night in the hospital after feeling dizzy. He was released after tests today.
 
Other Big Stories
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Marketa VondrousovaGlyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
 

FROM OPINION

The Supreme Court has lost its discernment about unethical conduct, the federal judge Michael Ponsor writes.

A poem by Amanda Gorman on a recent migrant boat disaster honors the many who drowned.

Here are columns by David Brooks on human intelligence, Michelle Goldberg on British elections and Maureen Dowd on the actors’ strike.

 
 

The Sunday question: Should Ukraine join NATO?

To bring Ukraine into NATO would “draw a bright line that Russia dare not cross,” Marc Thiessen and Stephen Biegun write for The Washington Post. But the support Ukraine needs after the war can be achieved “without admitting Ukraine to NATO,” The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board writes.

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Fans cheer on the Texas Super Kings.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Cricket: South Asian communities have helped the sport take hold in South Texas.

Paddleball Paul: He’s fighting a lonely war against pickleball in Central Park.

“They’re outsmarting us”: Some birds are building nests out of spikes meant to keep them away.

Vows: Their breakup was the best thing to happen to them.

Lives Lived: Everett Mendelsohn, a longtime Harvard professor, became known for lecturing on diverse topics — genetic engineering and the making of the atomic bomb — and encouraging students to examine the impact of science. He died at 91.

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

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On the cover: Greta Gerwig wanted “Barbie” to be a work of art.

Eat: After three generations, fried zucchini takes its final form in a caper-filled pasta.

 

BOOKS

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The University of Virginia.Ciara Quilty-Harper

“Onlookers”: Ann Beattie’s new story collection, her “best in more than two decades,” examines the forces shaping America by looking at Charlottesville, Va.

Our editors’ picks: “Directions to Myself,” a poised memoir of parenthood and processing, and eight other books.

Times best sellers: Colleen Hoover is all over the latest paperback trade fiction list.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Convert your desk into a standing one.

 

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For
  • Novak Djokovic, seeking his third Grand Slam title of the year, faces Carlos Alcaraz in the Wimbledon men’s final today.
  • Jurors in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting will begin considering on Monday whether to recommend that the judge sentence the gunman to death or life in prison.
  • The Senate is scheduled to begin considering an annual defense bill Tuesday. House Republicans loaded their chamber’s version with social policy provisions.
  • Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, will meet with President Biden at the White House on Tuesday.
  • The Women’s World Cup begins Thursday in Australia and New Zealand.
 
What to Cook This Week
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Joe Lingeman for The New York Times

Margaux Laskey’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter is filled with the low-stress recipes you make when the kids are away at summer camp. Puttanesca chickpea-tomato salad is a simple bean salad you can eat all week, and this caramelized corn and asparagus pasta from Alexa Weibel highlights summer veggie superstars.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was deviant.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 17, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the end of the pandemic, a Crimean bridge and Wimbledon.

 
 
 
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A Brooklyn memorial commemorating Americans who died during the pandemic.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Measuring Covid deaths

The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal.

Excess deaths, as this number is known, has been an important measure of Covid’s true toll because it does not depend on the murky attribution of deaths to a specific cause. Even if Covid is being underdiagnosed, the excess-deaths statistic can capture its effects. The statistic also captures Covid’s indirect effects, like the surge of vehicle crashes, gun deaths and deaths from missed medical treatments during the pandemic.

During Covid’s worst phases, the total number of Americans dying each day was more than 30 percent higher than normal, a shocking increase. For long stretches of the past three years, the excess was above 10 percent. But during the past few months, excess deaths have fallen almost to zero, according to three different measures.

The Human Mortality Database estimates that slightly fewer Americans than normal have died since March, while The Economist magazine and the C.D.C. both put the excess-death number below 1 percent. Here is the C.D.C. data:

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Source: C.D.C. | Data is through the week ending June 17, 2023. | By The New York Times

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The story is similar in many other countries, if not quite so positive:

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: The Economist excess deaths model | Data is through the week ending July 10, 2023. | By The New York Times

The power of immunity

The progress stems mostly from three factors:

  • First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
  • Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
  • Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.

“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most — immunocompromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immunocompromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immunocompromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immunocompromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

With vs. from

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Even so, some Americans are still dying from Covid. “I don’t know anybody who thinks we’re going to eradicate Covid,” Jha said.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)

Yet the number of Covid deaths has now dropped low enough that they are difficult to notice in the overall death data. They can be swamped by fluctuations in other causes of death, such as the flu or vehicle crashes.

Almost a year ago, President Biden angered some public health experts when he declared, “The pandemic is over.” He may have been premature to make that declaration. But the excess-deaths milestone suggests that it’s true now: The pandemic is finally over.

Related: Researchers are working to ensure developing countries don’t have to rely on wealthy nations for vaccines in a future pandemic, The Washington Post reports.

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
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A damaged section of the bridge.Crimea24TV, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
  • The Kremlin blamed Ukraine for an attack on a vital bridge in occupied Crimea. The Russian military uses it to support its troops in southern Ukraine.
  • Russia said it had pulled out of an agreement allowing Ukraine to export grain by sea. The deal was seen as key to keeping global food prices stable.
 
Politics
 
Extreme Weather
 
Economy
 
Other Big Stories
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Jane BirkinGamma-Rapho, via Getty Images
  • Jane Birkin, the British-French singer and actress who inspired the Birkin handbags by Hermès, died at 76. See her best looks.
  • Despite years of political promises, the relationship between France’s minority populations and its police force has only gotten worse.
  • The Powerball lottery will draw a $900 million jackpot tonight.
 
Opinions

To lower the maternal mortality rate, the U.S. needs to reduce racial biases in care, Veronica Gillispie-Bell writes.

Here are columns by David French on “The Bear” and Ezra Klein on supply-side liberalism.

 
 

Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all with an introductory offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Minutes before John F. Kennedy was assassinated.Bettmann, via Getty Images

The Kennedy Files: Some of the assassination papers are redacted. Historians and conspiracy theorists have questions.

Civil War-era gold: More than 700 coins were found buried on a Kentucky farm.

Metropolitan Diary: Newlyweds, separated by a crowd.

Lives Lived: Sally Kempton was a rising star in New York journalism. Then, she pivoted to a life of Eastern asceticism and spiritual practice. She died at 80.

 

SPORTS NEWS

Wimbledon: Carlos Alcaraz upset Novak Djokovic to win the Wimbledon men’s singles title in a thrilling comeback.

Lionel Messi: The soccer star’s contract with Inter Miami is official, and he was presented to fans at a ceremony in his new home stadium.

Golf momentum: Rory McIlroy will enter the British Open this week with gusto after winning the Scottish Open yesterday.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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No cast members showed up at the premiere of Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” over the weekend.Allison Dinner/EPA, via Shutterstock

Hollywood on strike: The actors’ strike may reshape Oscars season. The actors’ guild is prohibiting members from promoting any film while the strike is on — including interviews and red-carpet appearances at film festivals in Venice and Toronto that can be crucial to Oscars buzz. Seven of the past 10 best-picture winners debuted at a fall festival, where ovations and acclaim helped propel them to nominations.

For more

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Make butter chicken at home.

Start birding. It doesn’t require any gear, but some binoculars help.

Snorkel with the best masks and flippers.

 

GAMES

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangrams were rotunda and turnaround.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 18, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the Hollywood strikes, heat in the Southwest and Taylor Swift.

 
 
 
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Eddie Cantor and the studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn in 1934.Bettmann/Contributor

From Groucho to now

To celebrate his first Thanksgiving as president, Franklin Roosevelt traveled to his vacation home in Warm Springs, Ga., in 1933, and he invited a guest to join him: Eddie Cantor, a comedian who was then among Hollywood’s biggest stars.

The invitation wasn’t simply a politician's attempt to associate himself with a celebrity. It also came with a political message. Cantor was one of the founders of a new Hollywood labor union, the Screen Actors Guild, along with James Cagney, Miriam Hopkins, Groucho Marx, Spencer Tracy and others. The previous month, the union’s members had elected Cantor as their president.

The Guild’s formation was part of a surge in union membership in the 1930s. During Roosevelt’s early flurry of legislation, he signed an economic recovery bill that included a provision giving workers a clearer right to join labor unions than they had previously had. Americans responded by signing up for unions by the thousands.

Cantor was a symbol of this right. Hollywood stars were obviously not typical workers, but they were famous. By inviting Cantor to join him for Thanksgiving, Roosevelt reminded Americans of the central role that labor unions played in a healthy capitalist economy. The president was subtly encouraging other workers to consider joining a union at their own workplace.

Rising approval

Ninety years later, Cantor’s union (now known as SAG–AFTRA) is in the news again, after going on strike last week. Its members still are not typical workers, and the strike’s outcome will have little direct effect on most Americans. By comparison, the recent attempts to form unions at Starbucks and Amazon probably matter much more to the future of the U.S. economy.

But Hollywood continues to have symbolic importance. Actors are familiar figures to many Americans. Over the past few days, people have seen these familiar figures — including George Clooney, Rosario Dawson, Mandy Moore, Margot Robbie and Jason Sudeikis — walking picket lines and arguing for fair wages.

“The eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us,” Fran Drescher, the current union president and former star of “The Nanny,” said in a fiery speech last week. “What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor.”

She added, “I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us!”

The actors’ strike, along with a simultaneous Hollywood writers’ strike, has become one more way in which labor unions are a subject of newfound interest and attention. More than 70 percent of Americans say they approve of labor unions, according to Gallup, up from 54 percent a decade ago. Unions have their highest approval rating since 1965.

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Source: Gallup | By The New York Times

This interest in unions is economically rational for many workers. Collective bargaining gives employees leverage that they tend to lack when they negotiate on their own. Unionized workers typically make 10 percent to 20 percent more than similar nonunionized workers, as I’ve explained before. The extra pay often comes out of executive salaries or corporate profits, reducing income inequality in the process.

Still, a surge in unionization resembling that 1930s surge seems unlikely today. Forming new unions remains extremely difficult. Many companies go to extremes to keep out a union, including firing the workers who try to organize one, usually with little legal penalty.

The union boom in Roosevelt’s day depended on changes in federal law. Two years ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill to protect union organizing, and President Biden favored it, but it lacked the support in the Senate to pass. Until that changes, strikes like those in Hollywood are likely to remain rare events — and income inequality is likely to remain high.

More on the strike

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Jason Sudeikis with Screen Actors Guild members in New York.Brendan McDermid/Reuters
  • Hollywood’s two traditional sources of income, movie theaters and television, are both broken, Brooks Barnes writes.
  • A key issue in the strike: The rise of streaming has allowed studios to write new rules about how actors are paid for old episodes — in a way that gives them less.
  • The union also worries that artificial intelligence could automate the work of background actors, The Verge reports.
  • Mergers have helped entertainment companies grow much larger in recent years, increasing their leverage over actors and writers, Jennifer Rubin explains in The Washington Post.
  • Go back in time: “Actors Threaten Strike in Movies,” The Times reported in 1933.
 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Israel
  • President Biden invited Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to the U.S., easing tensions between the two leaders.
  • Biden is meeting with Israel’s figurehead president, Isaac Herzog, at the White House today. That invitation had been seen as a slight to Netanyahu.
  • Democrats in Congress are fighting over their position on Israel. Some plan to boycott a speech by Herzog.
 
Climate
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Zookeepers in Phoenix hose down a rhino. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
 
Politics
 
China
 
New York City
 
Other Big Stories
  • Sea drones — unmanned vessels carrying explosives — may have been used to attack Russia’s bridge to Crimea. Read more about these weapons.
  • The labor market has recovered from the pandemic by nearly every measure, and the Fed is working to keep it strong while also trying to cool inflation.
  • A California man who killed three teenagers by ramming into the car of a group who had played a prank on him was sentenced to life in prison.
 
Opinions

The U.S. needs China to build a competitive electric vehicle industry, Robinson Meyer writes.

Here are columns by Paul Krugman on politicizing the weather and Michelle Goldberg on political correctness about Israel.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

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Officials haven’t yet identified this cylinder.Australian Space Agency

Mysterious metal object: It’s more than 6 feet tall and it turned up on a beach in Australia.

Disaster-proof: Architects are trying to design homes that can endure climate change.

Furby’s face lift: The animatronic toy had a makeover. It’s getting mixed reviews.

Ozempic: Weight-loss drugs can also make you lose muscle, a particular risk to people over 65.

Lives Lived: In his bluntly titled surprise best seller, the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt argued that a certain kind of dishonesty was worse than lying. He died at 94.

 

SPORTS NEWS

The next mega-trade? Joel Embiid is still committed to the Sixers, but it’s not hard to envision a future in which he plays for someone else.

Miami loves Messi: Soccer-crazy South Florida welcomed its new superstar with murals and milanesas.

Northwestern hazing scandal: Eight former Wildcats football players plan to pursue legal action. Lawyers expect more to join the case.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Taylor SwiftJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Taylor on top, again: Taylor Swift’s new album, a rerecording of 2010’s “Speak Now,” has reached No. 1. Swift now has the most No. 1 albums of any female artist: 12, which is one more than Barbra Streisand. The only artists with more are Jay-Z (14) and the Beatles (19).

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Toss crispy paneer in soy and chile.

Fetch your dog a gift.

Train for a marathon by focusing on the basics.

Swim on a guided tour.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
NYT

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangrams were rotunda and turnaround.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fliveintent.newyor mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fliveintent.newyor mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fliveintent.newyor mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fliveintent.newyor mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fliveintent.newyor
The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 19, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering a potential Trump indictment and record heat, and reviewing the Barbie movie.

 
 
 
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Donald TrumpJohn Tully for The New York Times

Third time

With a third indictment of Donald Trump now seeming quite likely — this one involving his attempts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election — today’s newsletter will cover three big questions about the case.

One, what would be the specifics of such an indictment? Two, would an indictment include significant new evidence, or focus on information that’s already known? Three, what are the chances that Trump may one day face prison time?

1. The specifics

Yesterday, Trump said he received a letter confirming he was a target in the federal investigation into his attempts to stay in power after the 2020 election, including any role in inciting the Jan. 6 attacks. Such a letter is typically a sign of an imminent indictment, my colleague Charlie Savage wrote. Any charges will require months to work through the legal system.

On what grounds could Trump be charged? Several possibilities exist: his attempts to obstruct Congress’s Jan. 6, 2021, proceedings; possible fraud related to fund-raising; and efforts to recruit so-called fake electors from states he narrowly lost. (Hours after Trump revealed the letter, Michigan authorities charged 16 people in the fake elector scheme.)

We know only a little about where prosecutors are focusing, and that information comes from the letter to Trump. It cited statutes that could be applied in a prosecution, including a potential charge of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and a broad charge related to a violation of rights.

2. New information?

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Crowds at Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, before the Capitol attacks.Mark Peterson for The New York Times

Without seeing the evidence, experts are unsure how strong the case against Trump is. In the classified documents inquiry, investigators uncovered new evidence, including photos of documents in a bathroom at Trump’s Florida home and Trump suggesting in a recording that he knew he wasn’t supposed to have the papers. So far, the public evidence around Trump’s attempts to cling to power is less explicit.

Consider Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 riots: He made suggestive comments, including earlier that day at a rally in Washington. But none of them were explicit orders for an attack, and he eventually encouraged his supporters who had breached the Capitol to disperse.

Trump “is often both all over the place and yet somewhat careful not to cross certain lines,” my colleague Maggie Haberman, who covers Trump, has said. “At his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, he told people to go ‘peacefully and patriotically’ but also directed them to the Capitol with apocalyptic language about the election. Frequently, people around him understand the implications of words, even when he’s not being direct.”

(He also has tried to recast Jan. 6 in a more positive light, Maggie explained.)

If investigators do have evidence that more directly links Trump to any potential charges, we will find out in the coming days or weeks, if an indictment is filed and made public.

3. The prison possibility

In addition to this case, Trump already faces state charges in New York of falsifying business records to cover up potential sex scandals before the 2016 election as well as federal charges in the classified documents case. And Trump may face separate state charges in Georgia over his attempts to stay in power; a local prosecutor is expected to announce an indictment decision soon.

Any of these cases could lead to a conviction and prison time. Or Trump could beat the charges in court.

There is one other possibility that his advisers have raised: He could win the 2024 election, potentially making it too difficult to imprison him or allowing him to use the powers of the presidency to drop the federal investigations and charges.

“When he was indicted in the documents investigation, his advisers were blunt that in their view, he needs to win the election as a defense against possible jail time,” Maggie wrote yesterday. “That only increases with an indictment related to Jan. 6 at the federal level.”

The circumstances put Trump’s presidential campaign in a different light. He is not running, as politicians typically do, solely to push a policy agenda, establish his legacy or gain power. He is running for self-preservation, too.

The U.S. has never confronted this scenario. Experts are divided over whether and how Trump could act as president if he were sentenced to prison. No one knows for certain how America’s political and criminal justice systems would handle that outcome. As Jessica Levinson, an election law expert, told The Times, “I don’t think that the Framers ever thought we were going to be in this situation.”

More on Trump

  • A few Republican presidential candidates were more critical of Trump than they were in the face of his earlier legal problems. “We can’t keep dealing with this drama,” Nikki Haley said.
  • Other primary rivals stayed more muted. Ron DeSantis said Trump “should have come out more forcefully” against Jan. 6 rioters, but added, “I hope he doesn’t get charged.”
  • The judge overseeing the classified documents case expressed skepticism about prosecutors’ request for the trial to start as soon as December and about Trump’s desire to put it off until after the presidential election.
 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Weather
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PhoenixMatt York/Associated Press
 
International
  • Henry Kissinger, the 100-year-old former secretary of state, made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese leaders.
  • Data briefly posted by one Chinese province suggested that it may have had as many Covid deaths this year as the government has admitted across the mainland during the entire pandemic.
  • A U.S. soldier facing assault charges in South Korea dashed into North Korea, which took him into custody.
  • An Australian man was rescued with his dog after three months lost at sea. He said he survived on raw tuna and rainwater.
 
War in Ukraine
 
United Kingdom
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

The F.D.A.’s approval of over-the-counter birth control is a promising sign for other medical advances that could help offset state abortion bans, Dr. Daniel Grossman writes.

Housecleaning in the Russian military after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny will only worsen its campaign in Ukraine, Dara Massicot writes.

Here’s a column by Carlos Lozada on competing views of U.S.-China relations.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

Party report: Zucchini and celebrities in Gwyneth Paltrow’s yard in the Hamptons.

Wherever I go, there you are: Young people use apps like Find My Friends to affectionately keep tabs on each other.

A language haven: Descendants of Holocaust survivors in Australia are trying to preserve Yiddish.

Lives Lived: Angelo Mozilo led Countrywide Financial as it grew into one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders and then crashed in the 2008 financial crisis. He died at 84.

 

SPORTS NEWS

Major stakes: Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler are among the golfers facing the most pressure this week at the British Open.

Another Northwestern lawsuit: A former Wildcats football player accused the former head coach Pat Fitzgerald of negligence in the school’s hazing scandal.

Ligament curse: Some of soccer’s biggest stars will miss the Women’s World Cup because of a rash of knee injuries.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Johnny Nunez/Getty

Voices of hip-hop: Fifty years after the birth of hip-hop, The Times asked 50 artists to recount their time in the genre — how they discovered rap, began their careers and carved out places in its history. Together, they form a family tree of hip-hip that connects old-school figures like DMC and Kool Moe Dee to modern stars like Ice Spice and Lil Baby.

More on culture

  • As a movie about a product, “Barbie” can push only so far — but has moments of something like enlightenment, Manohla Dargis writes. Read her review.
  • Country Music Television pulled a video for Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town” that was filmed at the site of a lynching.
  • The police searched a Nevada home in connection with the unsolved 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Perfect your cacio e pepe with help from Rome.

Play one of Wirecutter’s picks for family games under $35.

Consider keeping a multi-tool in your pocket.

Watch the season finale of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” where Dennis tries to have a relaxing beach day.

Book a cruise, and join other first-time passengers looking for a deal.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was extinction. (Yesterday’s newsletter included the wrong pangram for Monday’s Spelling Bee. The correct pangram was acridity.)

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

Correction: A chart in Monday’s newsletter comparing the excess death rate across countries was mislabeled. It showed an estimate of the daily rate, not the weekly rate.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 20, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the rise of piecemeal work, the Stanford president’s resignation and the Women’s World Cup.

 
 
 
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A Ford assembly line in Dearborn, Mich., in 1927.The New York Times

The ‘fracturing’

Universities devote a smaller share of faculty slots to tenured professorships than in the past — and hire more adjunct professors who have little chance for promotion. Law firms employ relatively fewer partners and more lawyers who are paid less. And Hollywood hires fewer writers to participate in the entire production process, relegating more of them to piecemeal work.

This trend is part of what my colleague Noam Scheiber calls “the fracturing of work,” and it is a central issue in the Hollywood writers’ strike that is now 11 weeks old. As one historian explained, there is increasingly a “tiered work force of prestige workers and lesser workers.” The arrangement has its roots in manufacturing, Noam writes in a story that just published:

At the turn of the 20th century, automobiles were produced largely in artisanal fashion by small teams of highly skilled “all around” mechanics who helped assemble a variety of components and systems — ignition, axles, transmission.

By 1914, Ford Motor had repeatedly divided and subdivided these jobs, spreading more than 150 men across a vast assembly line. The workers typically performed a few simple tasks over and over.

Specialization does have big advantages. Companies can complete tasks more efficiently and inexpensively. But workers sometimes pay the price in the form of lower wages and less responsibility, especially if they are not unionized and lack bargaining leverage.

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The writer and actor Bob Odenkirk on a picket line in May.Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Piketty’s rule

Screenwriters — who are unionized — have gone on strike in an attempt to use their collective leverage to avoid becoming Hollywood’s equivalent of adjunct professors. Until the past decade, writers not only wrote scripts but also remained on set during filming and participated in the process. They offered thoughts about costumes and props and would tweak the script as the cast acted it out.

The producer Michael Schur has compared the job to an apprenticeship. Schur was a writer on “The Office,” and the experience helped him learn how to create and run his own shows. Later, he did so, with “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Place.”

Today, only one or two writers remain with a show through production, while others produce scripts and are then dropped from the process. “The making of television is very compartmentalized now,” John Koblin, who covers the television business for The Times, told me. “The writers write. The actors act. The directors direct.” (John went into more detail as a guest on the NPR show “Fresh Air.”)

As a result, writers’ pay has stagnated even as streaming has led to a boom in the number of television shows. Studio executives say that they need to hold down costs in response to declining revenue from cable television and movie theaters. And those challenges are real, but the executives also seem to be using the shift to streaming as an excuse to change the economics of their industry in ways that are less favorable to many employees.

The trend is a microcosm of larger developments. Nationwide, the pay of the bottom 90 percent of earners has trailed well behind economic growth in recent decades (as you can see in these Times charts). Most Americans have not received their share of the economy’s growing bounty, while a relatively small share have experienced very large income gains.

That’s not shocking. As the economist Thomas Piketty has explained, inequality tends to rise in a capitalist economy, partly because the wealthy have more political power and economic leverage than the middle class and poor do. But history also shows that rising inequality is not inevitable.

There are forces that can push in the other direction. Rising educational attainment can give more people the skills to become specialists. Taxes on top incomes and large fortunes can redistribute wealth. Labor unions can give workers the bargaining power to prevent wage stagnation.

Hollywood writers — and, as of last week, actors too — are now trying to make such a push against inequality.

Here, you can read Noam’s story — which details the accounts of writers from “The Mentalist,” “Billions” and other shows.

For more

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Climate
  • More than 86 million Americans live with dangerous heat, and El Paso has endured 33 straight days of 100-degree temperatures. See the U.S. heat wave by the numbers.
 
Donald Trump
  • The letter that Donald Trump received from the special counsel suggests that prosecutors may use a civil rights statute to charge him over trying to reverse his 2020 election loss.
 
War in Ukraine
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Oleksandr, center, is a Ukrainian soldier from Bakhmut, which was destroyed in the war.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
  • Russia intensified its assault on Ukraine’s food exports, attacking port facilities in Odesa and warning other countries that bypassing its Black Sea blockade would be an act of war.
  • The head of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, said Vladimir Putin had “cut a deal” with the Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin during last month’s rebellion to save face.
  • Ukraine allows soldiers displaced by Russia’s invasion to join the fight to liberate their hometowns.
 
Education
  • Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, will resign after an investigation found flaws in his research.
  • Tessier-Lavigne’s departure and the recent ouster of Northwestern’s football coach have something in common: Both were driven by tenacious student newspapers.
  • Wesleyan University in Connecticut is ending admissions preferences for the relatives of alumni.
 
Other Big Stories
  • A gunman opened fire at a building site in Auckland, New Zealand, killing two people. The suspect’s motive appeared connected to work at the site, not to the start of the Women’s World Cup in the city.
  • Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish Embassy in Iraq and set part of it ablaze to protest a planned burning of the Quran in Stockholm.
  • A Powerball jackpot of more than $1 billion has a single winning ticket, sold in California.
  • The New York City subway is raising its base fare for the first time in years. A ride will be $2.90, up from $2.75.
  • Abortion-rights advocates are arranging free flights to bring patients to states where the procedure is legal.
 
Opinions

No Labels’ flirtation with a third-party presidential campaign is a frivolous response to another potential Trump-Biden matchup, Katherine Miller writes.

Here is a column by Pamela Paul on the hazards of Biden’s candidacy.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

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Roddy Mackay for The New York Times

Canine convention: Imagine wrangling 488 golden retrievers for a family portrait.

Beauty and bacteria: An endurance athlete plans to swim all 315 miles of the Hudson River.

Multiplying: Rabbits have overrun a Florida island.

Lives Lived: Kevin Mitnick was once one of the most wanted computer criminals in the U.S. After prison time, he became a security consultant and public speaker. He died at 59.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

The U.S. is favored to win its third straight Women’s World Cup, which started today, but other countries have closed in on American dominance.

New Zealand upset Norway, 1-0, in the opening match — the country’s first ever Women’s World Cup victory.

See the schedule in your time zone, and sign up for The Times’s daily tournament newsletter.

 

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SPORTS NEWS

Northwestern’s culture: Players were hazed for years at the football team’s preseason camp, including through naked pull-ups and being forced to squeeze past soaped-up teammates to reach the showers.

Cementing victory: Jonas Vingegaard was on the brink of repeating as the Tour de France champion after opening up a nearly insurmountable lead in the final days of cycling’s premier race, the BBC reports.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Cole Saladino for The New York Times

A highbrow hot dog: The most talked-about dish in New York this year is the $29 hot dog at Mischa, the restaurant critic Pete Wells writes. The dog is about nine inches long, with a natural casing that snaps and a filling of emulsified brisket with pork fat. It comes with inventive condiments.

“Considered as a public statement, the $29 hot dog is obnoxious, a flagrantly expensive lowbrow-highbrow stunt out of the Jeff Koons catalog,” Wells writes. “If you can forget all this and just eat it, though, the $29 hot dog is glorious.”

More on culture

  • “Oppenheimer” displays Christopher Nolan’s virtuosity as a film director, Manohla Dargis writes. Read her review.
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Beth Coller for The New York Times

Tour Los Angeles for $5 by taking the subway.

Enliven tofu with a spicy soy dressing.

Drink that glass of wine. The latest health advice ignores pleasure, Emily Oster writes in The Atlantic.

Clean your air-conditioner.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangrams were whooping and whopping.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. Alice Callahan, who has a doctorate in nutritional biology, will be The Times’s new nutrition reporter.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 21, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering corporate takeovers, air travel legislation and the U.S. women’s soccer team.

 
 
 
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Lina Khan.Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Less competition

When President Biden took office, he sent several signals that he was ready to take on increasing corporate concentration. Among the clearest was appointing the consumer advocate Lina Khan — a prominent critic of monopoly power — to lead the Federal Trade Commission.

Instead, the takeovers have persisted under Biden’s watch. Last week brought the latest evidence that reducing corporate concentration will be more difficult than Biden might have hoped: U.S. courts rejected the F.T.C.’s attempts to block Microsoft from absorbing the video game company Activision Blizzard. Microsoft could finalize the deal in the coming months; a key deadline was extended this week.

The merger would be by far the biggest ever in video games, after adjusting for inflation. The game industry now accounts for significant chunks of the economy. It is larger than music, U.S. book publishing and North American sports combined. Microsoft’s game division and Activision Blizzard each make more money annually than all U.S. movie theaters. The two companies are among the biggest in games, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows:

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Source: Newzoo | By The New York Times

The F.T.C. said that the Microsoft-Activision merger was anticompetitive and sued to stop it. The agency argued that the merger would give Microsoft, maker of the game console Xbox, too big of an advantage over its rival Sony, the maker of PlayStation. Of particular interest was Activision’s massive franchise, Call of Duty. A new edition of Call of Duty is consistently one of the best-selling games on Xbox and PlayStation each year. But if Microsoft owns Call of Duty, it could make the game exclusive to Xbox and rob Sony of one of gaming’s biggest attractions.

To address those concerns, Microsoft promised that it would put Call of Duty games on PlayStations for 10 more years. That was one reason the courts ruled against the F.T.C.: They found the agency had not shown that the deal would likely hurt competition.

With their ruling, the courts are allowing another big merger that will further consolidate a major industry. Many experts say that trend is ultimately hurting consumers by diminishing the kind of competition that lowers prices and improves quality for goods and services, even if the F.T.C. wasn’t able to prove all of that in this case.

Concentrated power

Let’s zoom out. In the past several decades, markets have become more concentrated. The very biggest companies dominate most industries, as this chart shows:

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: “100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration” by Spencer Y. Kwon, Yueran Ma, Kaspar Zimmermann | By The New York Times

Why does this matter? In simple terms, a lack of competition lets companies lower wages, increase prices and dilute the quality of their products. A classic example is internet service: Many Americans live in places with only one or two providers. These companies keep prices high, the internet can be spotty and the customer service is often bad. Since customers don’t have alternatives, providers can get away with those faults.

Corporate concentration deepens that kind of problem, experts say. One economist concluded that market concentration costs the typical American household more than $5,000 a year. Progressives like Khan have argued that regulators need to take the issue more seriously.

Courts push back

The Biden administration released guidelines this week that seek to toughen antitrust law, which restricts anticompetitive practices. Under Khan, the F.T.C. has also pushed courts to effectively lower the burden of proof required to show that a merger is anticompetitive. There is merit to that approach, some experts argue: U.S. courts have raised the bar very high over the past few decades, surpassing standards in the U.K. and much of Europe.

“We can convict someone and send him to prison for murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence,” said Douglas Melamed, an expert on antitrust issues at Stanford Law School. “But it often seems that courts will not let plaintiffs win an antitrust case based on circumstantial evidence.”

The F.T.C. has yet to persuade the courts to ease their standards. The agency’s loss in the Microsoft-Activision case is the latest example. It also failed to block Meta’s acquisition of a virtual reality firm, Within. And it has even lost in its own administrative court, which ruled in favor of the gene-sequencing company Illumina in its acquisition of the firm Grail.

Khan’s cause still has potential. The last major shift in antitrust law, in the 1970s, came after decades of work by conservatives to push the law and courts in their direction. The movement that Khan helped popularize among progressives is only a few years old. If it persuades more of the public and, most importantly, judges, it could eventually succeed.

Related: The F.T.C.’s defeats have prompted fresh questions about Khan’s strategy. “All these court losses are making their threats look more like a paper tiger,” one chief executive said.

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Politics
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Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va.Tom Brenner for The New York Times
  • The House passed legislation to improve air travel by hiring more air traffic controllers and modernizing airports, among other measures. The bill goes to the Senate.
  • Biden has had political gains lately — the economy is recovering, and his rival is in trouble. If his approval ratings don’t rise soon, it could be cause for alarm, Nate Cohn writes.
 
Extreme Weather
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Siestas in Toledo, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
 
International
  • Britain’s Conservative Party lost two seats in special parliamentary elections, an ominous sign for the political future of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
  • War has compounded the suffering of Ukrainian children with cancer.
  • Under a dense forest in Mexico, archaeologists using lasers discovered the ruins of a Maya city.
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

The burden of medical paperwork is delaying care and making patients sicker, Dr. Chavi Karkowsky writes.

On the “Matter of Opinion” podcast, Times writers share their summer book recommendations.

Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on the sex trade and Gail Collins on Joe Manchin.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Farah Al Qasimi for The New York Times

Where we are: Young Arab Americans find community at a hookah lounge in Dearborn, Mich.

“Am I training my replacement?”: Call center workers are confronting A.I.’s threat to their jobs.

Modern Love: A father lost his memory but gained recognition of his child’s gender.

Lives Lived: After she was ousted from the U.S. military in 1963 for being a lesbian, Lilli Vincenz became an early crusader for gay rights in an era before the Stonewall riots. She died at 85.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

The older players once relied on MapQuest printouts. A younger one has never used a CD player. The U.S. team has a generation gap to overcome as it opens tournament play tonight against Vietnam.

The Vietnamese women are representing a soccer-obsessed country in its first World Cup.

The U.S. will take home more money than any team, no matter how it finishes, because of its labor agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation.

After losing its star player, Sam Kerr, to an injury, Australia beat Ireland, 1-0. Canada, a top contender, battled Nigeria to a scoreless tie. And Spain beat Costa Rica, 3-0.

 

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OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Changing hands: N.F.L. team owners approved the sale of the Washington Commanders and fined the outgoing owner, Daniel Snyder, $60 million after an inquiry found he had harassed a former cheerleader. It was the largest penalty ever levied against an N.F.L. team owner.

N.F.L. coach comes out: Kevin Maxen, an associate coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, is believed to be the first openly gay male coach in major American men’s professional sports.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Kodansha Comics

Translating between cultures: Japanese comic books, known as manga, are popular in the U.S. But translating them for a Western audience is tricky, Gabriel Gianordoli and Robert Ito write. In Japan, the books are meant to be read from right to left. And pages are often filled with sounds — there are thousands of onomatopoetic words in Japanese, far more than the usual “pow!” of American comics.

More on culture

  • Fans say John Mayer’s facial expressions when he plays guitar are almost as unforgettable as his music.
  • With six-figure face-lifts and racy text messages, the character Bitsy von Muffling on “And Just Like That …” evokes Samantha Jones of the original “Sex and the City.”
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Accentuate the flavors of fruit salad with sugar and lime.

Work out with some of our favorite routines.

Whip up smoothies or pesto with Wirecutter’s picks for a compact blender.

Sleep with a stuffed animal to get better rest.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was heavily.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

P.S. On this day in 1861, Union and Confederate troops clashed at Bull Run in Virginia during the first major battle of the Civil War.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 22, 2023

 

Good morning. It’s Barbenheimer weekend. You have little choice but to surrender to the dark and the air-conditioning and the allure of two of the summer’s biggest movies.

 
 
 
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
María Jesús Contreras

Double date

Start the day with the darker fare: Christopher Nolan’s moody “Oppenheimer,” about the physicist who ran the Los Alamos Laboratory during the development of the atomic bomb. A morning screening is best, so you can get some fresh air, some sustenance other than Milk Duds, clear your head before Greta Gerwig’s “live-action, you-go-girl fantasia,” “Barbie,” the second half of the double feature known, for better or worse, as “Barbenheimer.”

“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” two of the summer’s biggest films, premiered yesterday, and, for what feels like 100 years now, breathless meme-makers and discriminating cineastes alike have been chattering about the correct order in which to see the movies back to back. The sanest move seems to be dark before light, or as one Barbenheimist told The Times by email, “My friends and I in Chicago are spending our day at the Alamo Drafthouse and seeing the films the way the Lord herself intended: ‘Oppenheimer’ at 10 a.m. with a black coffee / ‘Barbie’ at 4:20 p.m. with a big Diet Coke.”

Will Barbenheimer be the key, more than three years since the pandemic began, to getting fans back to theaters? The movie industry hopes so. Ticket sales for the year in the U.S. and Canada are down about 20 percent from the same period in 2019. Analysts predict that “Barbie” could take in $100 million domestically through Sunday; “Oppenheimer” around $50 million.

With fans tiring of the typical summer fare of new installments of old franchises, the studios behind the two movies “went all-in on original films, directed by notable auteurs with an interest in pushing the envelope,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore, which compiles box office data, told The Times. “These are not the tried-and-true safe bets that are the hallmark of the summer movie season,” he said. Will the gambles pay off?

The real die-hards, of course, called in sick and took in Barbenheimer yesterday. If you’re one of them, I hope you went full on and costumed, flannel suit followed by a neon roller-skating ensemble (or vice versa). Even if the prospect of spending an entire day in a movie theater seems excessive — too expensive, too commercial, too much sitting, too little vitamin D — you have to admit the excitement around the double bill is refreshing.

When so much of our time is spent gazing into our own devices, each of us captive to our own tiny screens, a surge of enthusiasm for a group viewing experience feels almost quaint, a remnant from a time before we could meticulously tailor all of our entertainment to our own interests. I’m not overly concerned with whether I like these films. I’m just looking forward to cocreating an experience, to being a member of an exhilarated audience for a day, laughing and clapping and cheering as one.

For more

  • Which film should you see? Take our quiz.
  • “I hadn’t played a character that’s been on that classic hero’s journey before.” An interview with Margot Robbie, who plays Barbie, and her castmate Ryan Gosling, who plays Ken.
  • “I love acting with my body, and Oppenheimer had a very distinct physicality and silhouette, which I wanted to get right.” Cillian Murphy on playing Robert Oppenheimer.
  • How the Hollywood strikes complicated the movies’ releases.
  • Nolan spoke to the veteran Times science reporter Dennis Overbye about why Oppenheimer was the most important person who ever lived.
 

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THE WEEK IN CULTURE

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Tony Bennett at the opening of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1966.Las Vegas News Bureau, via European Pressphoto Agency
  • Tony Bennett’s melodic clarity, embrace of the audience and warm interpretations of musical standards won him generations of fans. He died at 96.
  • Bennett may have become famous for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” but his own heart was unquestionably a New Yorker’s.
  • His collaboration with Lady Gaga changed both of their careers.
  • The actors’ strike ended the red carpet, for now. Its absence could change how we consume fashion, Vanessa Friedman writes.
  • Swifties are correct: Concerts are worth the price, the economist and Times Opinion columnist Paul Krugman argues in a five-minute podcast.
  • We are fascinated with celebrity divorces because dealing with a breakup is one of the most relatable things about stars.
  • Workers at Anchor Brewing Company, the oldest craft brewer in the U.S., want to buy it to save it from shutting down.
  • The actress and singer Jane Birkin thrived by communicating a seemingly nonchalant demeanor that camouflaged a melancholy core. She died at 76.
  • Endless optimization and entitlement have turned international travel into a parade of identical, overcrowded experiences, Rebecca Jennings writes in Vox.
  • You are free to say Taco Tuesday after the chain Taco John’s gave up its legal claim to the phrase, The Washington Post reports.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

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John Tully for The New York Times
  • Judge Aileen Cannon set a start date of May 2024 for Donald Trump’s classified documents trial.
  • Russia deepened its assault on Ukraine’s food exports, attacking ports for the fourth straight night and holding naval exercises in the Black Sea.
  • Major tech companies, including Google and OpenAI, agreed to A.I. development safeguards under pressure from the White House.
  • Texas A&M University’s president resigned after getting pushback over the work that a newly appointed director of its journalism program had done promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
  • Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing criticism for Florida’s new Black history standards, which teach students that enslaved people developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

CULTURE CALENDAR

📺 “Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale” (Tuesday): The standup comedian Jim Gaffigan is one of the kings of dad humor — that is, humor about what it means to be a middle-aged parent (in his case, of five kids). His latest special will be available to stream on Prime Video.

📚 “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet” (Out now): It’s terrible out there, with record-breaking temperatures all across the world. In his new book, Jeff Goodell — who previously wrote a book about climate change and rising waters — details how extreme heat affects our bodies and communities, and what the future is likely to look like. (It’s not great.)

 

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RECIPE OF THE WEEK

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Christopher Simpson for The New York Times

Cucumber-Avocado Salad

For a no-cook recipe that’s a perfect combo of cooling and rich, look no further than Ali Slagle’s cucumber-avocado salad. She uses a few smart techniques to make the most of the five ingredients here, like salting the cucumbers first to concentrate their flavor, and soaking the scallions in ice water to crisp them. Then, right at the end, she tosses the avocado cubes vigorously into the salad to break them down, making the lemony dressing especially creamy. Serve this as is for a side dish or light meal. Or embellish it with any combination of cheese, toasted nuts, herbs, halved cherry tomatoes, radishes and jammy eggs for something more satisfying but just as summery.

 

REAL ESTATE

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Aerious Plus

What you get for $860,000: A Spanish-style home in Altadena, Calif.; a townhouse in St. Louis; or an 1870 cottage on Martha’s Vineyard.

Splish splash: Want to help birds beat the heat? Get a birdbath.

The hunt: A theater director wanted to put down 5 percent toward a home in Brooklyn. Which did they choose? Play our game.

Inseparable: Fans reflect on Yoko Ono’s 50 years living in the Dakota.

Better than fiction: A book lover stumbled upon two unbelievable deals — a cozy bookshop and a cozy apartment.

 

LIVING

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Lorenzo Gritti

Stealth wealth: In contrast to the ostentatious ’80s, today’s richest people play down the excess luxuries they consume.

Heat preparedness: Traveling to Europe? Follow these tips to protect yourself in high temperatures.

Focus the mind: Ease your way into meditation with five minutes each morning.

Demystifying a transition: These seven books help you learn to get through menopause.

 

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Make great ice cream

Looking to perfect homemade ice cream? A few tweaks can take a failed science experiment to a delectable dessert. First, chill your ingredients and supplies — the liquid ice cream base, any mix-ins, the machine paddle and even the storage containers. If you’re using an ice cream maker that requires a frozen element, like Wirecutter’s top recommendation, let it freeze completely before churning. Go for quality dairy. If you’re opting for nondairy, blend complementary flavors like peanut butter with cashew milk, or rose with coconut cream. Your ice cream is done when it reaches soft-serve consistency. Prefer harder ice cream? Pop it in the freezer. — Mace Dent Johnson

 

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

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Amrita Marino

England vs. Haiti, Women’s World Cup: The U.S. is the favorite to win this World Cup, but victory seems less assured than in tournaments past. For one thing, this U.S. team may fail what Rory Smith calls “the Goldilocks test” — many of its best players are either too old or too young. And the rest of the world keeps getting better: England won last summer’s European championship, Canada won gold at the last Olympics, and Spain’s roster is built largely from the best club team, Barcelona. “This is definitely the most wide-open World Cup in history,” said Janine Beckie, a forward for Canada. Re-airing at 11 a.m. Eastern on FS2.

For more

  • The U.S. women beat Vietnam, 3-0, including two goals from Sophia Smith, a 22-year-old forward playing in her first World Cup match.
  • Here is a schedule of the tournament. Because it’s in Australia and New Zealand, much of it will take place in the middle of the night in the U.S.
 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangrams were acronym and monocracy.

See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 23, 2023

 

Good morning. Can Cirque du Soleil get Gen Z’s attention?

 
 
 
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Marie-Andrée Lemire/Cirque du Soleil

Less Cirque, more Soleil

The idea of Cirque du Soleil might invite images of extravagant live shows with clowns, acrobats and fire breathers. The company is trying to change that.

Cirque du Soleil came out of the pandemic in rough shape. So it decided to build a more expansive, catastrophe-proof brand — aiming to sell not just shows but also sunglasses, perfumes and video games, as my colleague Emma Goldberg wrote in a story documenting its transformation.

“Cirque is a funny example of an attempt at cultural reinvention because I don’t even think of circuses as trying to be relevant,” Emma told me. “They were asking the question, ‘Why isn’t Gen Z interested in the circus?’ That almost feels rhetorical. It’s because 5-year-olds are into the circus.”

The decision came after months of meetings with consultants. Because they were talking about the circus instead of, say, banking, people dropped phrases like, “I think there’s a real opportunity to elevate the art of clowning” and “Don’t focus on the Cirque, focus on the Soleil.”

Still, the meetings succeeded in giving Cirque du Soleil a sweeping plan to transform itself. This week, the company will release a video game on the popular gaming platform Roblox. It produced a show last month for Motorola to introduce a new phone. It is working on a line of home goods (think psychedelic curtains) and a television documentary series (current title: “Down to Clown”).

“They’re saying: ‘Forget the circus. Forget the red-nosed clown and the big tent and the popcorn. Think about this as an artistic statement,’” Emma said. “And they’re trying to channel that into selling consumer products.”

Read Emma’s full story, which includes more dazzling photos of Cirque du Soleil performances, to see how the changes are faring.

 

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NEWS

Politics
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Ron DeSantis in May 2020.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
  • Ron DeSantis’s campaign-trail account of how he dealt with the pandemic as Florida’s governor omits key points, including his flawed approach to vaccinations.
  • As DeSantis’s campaign struggles to gain traction, advisers plan to reorient his operation.
  • Senator Tim Scott appears to be making early progress in the Republican primary and is positioning himself to capitalize if either Donald Trump or DeSantis falters.
 
Israel
  • Benjamin Netanyahu had an unplanned heart procedure to implant a pacemaker. Doctors said afterward that the Israeli prime minister was “doing very well.”
  • Netanyahu was expected to stay in the hospital for at least a day, casting uncertainty over his government’s deeply contentious plan to pass a law tomorrow to limit judicial power.
  • A miles-long column of demonstrators marched into Jerusalem to protest the proposal. Follow our updates.
 
International
  • In Spain’s elections today, mainstream conservatives may come out on top, but they would most likely need hard-right allies to govern.
  • Mismanagement and U.S. sanctions devastated Venezuela’s oil industry, leaving behind leaking pipelines and polluted neighborhoods.
  • Belarus’s leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, has further cracked down on dissent since crushing protests three years ago.
  • A man who was kicked out of a bar in Mexico because he was harassing women, witnesses said, returned later and threw a firebomb at the club, killing at least 11.
 
Health
 
Other Big Stories
  • Some New York City developers have ignored requirements to build public spaces in exchange for being allowed to add height to skyscrapers.
  • A 13-year-old girl was kidnapped in Texas then rescued in California after she held up a handmade “Help Me!” sign in a parking lot.
  • The actor Jamie Foxx said he could return to work after he was hospitalized in April with an undisclosed illness.
  • Two San Diego residents checked out almost all of a library’s Pride-themed books to keep others from reading them. Dozens of other people responded by donating books and money.
  • Sweden came from behind to beat South Africa, 2-1, and the Netherlands won 1-0 against Portugal in the Women’s World Cup.
 

FROM OPINION

Algorithms on social media are denying young people the joys of exploration and discovery, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut argues.

Many men struggle to make new friends. One idea to relieve this loneliness: Go play pickleball, Michelle Cottle says.

Smartphone apps and QR codes were supposed to make travel simpler. Instead, they have made it more annoying, Jessica Grose writes.

 
 

The Sunday question: Should No Labels field a presidential candidate?

The group is effectively a surrogate for Trump because it can siphon voters who are not enthusiastic about Biden, David Faris writes in Newsweek. But Democrats are making the case against a third-party candidate so strongly that they may insulate Biden from its effect, Aaron Blake writes in The Washington Post.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

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Ghibli Park in Japan.Andrew Faulk for The New York Times

Magical creatures: The eccentric, enchanting animated films of Studio Ghibli, theme-park-style.

Hollywood’s secret weapon: Ann Roth is the costume designer behind iconic looks in “Midnight Cowboy,” “Working Girl” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

Wheels of fortune: Cheese is part of Switzerland’s identity. So why is it importing more than it’s exporting?

Vows: She dreamed of finding love at Whole Foods, but she discovered it on Twitter instead.

Lives Lived: Richard Barancik was the last surviving member of the Allied unit known as the Monuments Men and Women, which preserved European artworks and cultural treasures that Nazi Germany had looted. He died at 98.

 

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TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE

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Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times

Joyce Carol Oates, one of America’s greatest living writers, is the author of the new short-story collection “Zero-Sum.” I spoke with Oates, who is 85, about the legacies we leave behind.

In your book “On Boxing,” you have a line about how, for fighters, life is about the fight and the rest is just waiting. Do you feel that way about writing?

That’s a good question. It points to a philosophical issue of what is essential in our lives and what is existential or incidental. My husband was a professor, and we talked about books all the time. Though we talked and talked for years, I don’t really remember that dialogue. All I have left of all that happiness is my writing of that time. It’s a kind of devastating fact. Everything that you think is solid is actually fleeting and ephemeral.

Does it give you any solace to know that you at least have those books that you wrote during that period of happiness?

I suppose it has some solace to it; otherwise, things would all be lost. If you read Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” Ovid writes about how, if you’re reading this, I’m immortal. You see that theme in Shakespeare’s sonnets: You’re reading this, so I’m still alive. In fact, they’re not alive, they’re gone. But while they were alive, they did have that extra dimension of their lives. That is not nothing.

So having a body of work to leave behind ameliorates the feeling of things being gone from your life?

I don’t know how to answer that. We start losing people. That’s the human experience, and you suddenly realize that the human experience is going to be your experience. When that starts to happen to you, it is quite stunning.

More from the magazine

 

BOOKS

Read your way through: To soak up life on the streets of Salvador, Brazil, start with Jorge Amado, the writer Itamar Vieira Junior says.

Our editors’ picks: “My Hijacking,” a memoir, and eight other books.

Times best sellers: “Beyond the Story,” an oral history of the K-pop group BTS, debuts at the top of the hardcover nonfiction list.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Help clothes last longer with a few laundry tricks.

Stop thinking about work at 2 a.m.; try distracting yourself or these other tips.

Set your wedding date with help from a growing trend: astrological guidance.

 

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For
  • Besides Spain, Cambodia is also holding elections today.
  • Israel’s Parliament was expected to vote tomorrow on a divisive proposal to overhaul its judiciary, though Netanyahu’s hospitalization may alter that plan.
  • The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates on Wednesday.
  • The president’s son Hunter Biden is scheduled to plead guilty on Wednesday to tax-related misdemeanors.
  • President Biden will host the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, at the White House on Thursday.
  • Iowa’s Republican Party will hold its Lincoln Dinner on Friday. Trump, DeSantis, Scott and other candidates are scheduled to speak.
 
What to Cook This Week
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Bryan Gardner for The New York Times

The recipes in Emily Weinstein’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter this week are fast and summery, and they require little effort. Chopped salad with jalapeño-ranch dressing goes well with chicken or tofu. Soy-butter corn ramen comes together with just five ingredients.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was hemlock.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — German

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Good morning. We’re covering a new look at college admissions, Israel’s judicial overhaul showdown and a big box office weekend.

 
 
 
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Harvard YardKayana Szymczak for The New York Times

Thumb on the scale

For almost 20 years, I have been writing about economic diversity at selective colleges. Many of my articles have suggested that the colleges are not enrolling as many low- and middle-income students as they could.

Every so often, I hear from a professor or college administrator who pushes back, and the critique tends to go something like this:

Do you realize how many of the top-performing students on our campus are affluent? By the time students arrive here, they have been living in America’s highly unequal society for 18 years. We wish that weren’t the case, but it is, and there are real problems with pretending otherwise.

You’d see this if you looked at who did the best in our classes. Or who our top research assistants are. Those students often come from comfortable backgrounds. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to do the cutting-edge research we do.

This morning, a team of economists released a detailed study of elite college enrollment. It’s based on admissions records that several colleges made available as well as tax returns that tracked students after college. The findings likely apply to many elite colleges, including the Ivy League, Duke, Stanford, Swarthmore and Williams. And the implications are particularly relevant when many colleges are revamping admissions policies in response to the Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action.

The findings have also helped me understand both how my interlocutors have been right and how they have been wrong.

Today’s newsletter explains what I mean by that. If you want to learn more about the study, The Times has published a detailed article.

7 vs. 16

The new study, by Raj Chetty and David Deming of Harvard and John Friedman of Brown, demonstrates that the country’s most qualified high school students are indeed disproportionately affluent.

About 7 percent of the country’s very top students come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution. These students tend to have scored at least 1500 on the SAT (or 35 on the ACT), received top marks on Advanced Placement tests, earned almost all A’s in their high school classes, and often excelled in science fairs or other competitions.

Perhaps the most surprising pattern involves so-called legacy students, those who attend the same college that their parents did. At the elite colleges that the researchers studied, legacy students had stronger academic qualifications on average than nonlegacy students. Similarly, graduates of private high schools had stronger academic records on average than graduates of public high schools or Catholic schools.

These stellar academic backgrounds predict later success. Highly qualified affluent students tend to excel in college and afterward — which indicates that the professors and university officials who’ve reached out to me over the years have a point.

Yet they are also overlooking an important part of the story: Most of these colleges do not admit only the hyper-qualified affluent students; they also admit many other high-income students.

As I mentioned above, 7 percent of the country’s very best high school students come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution. But what proportion of students at elite colleges comes from the top 1 percent of the income distribution? Much more: 16 percent.

This combination of facts is a tricky one to grasp. Affluent students are overrepresented among the nation’s best high school students — but the colleges are nonetheless admitting a larger number of affluent students than if the decisions were based on academics alone. The biggest boost goes to the wealthiest students:

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: Opportunity Insights | Data is from at least three of the top 12 colleges with available records. | By The New York Times

Private school polish

The results from Chetty, Deming and Friedman point to three main explanations:

  • Legacy is a major advantage. These colleges are inundated with strong applications. When admissions offices are making close calls among students with similar transcripts, legacy status acts as a trump card. About half of legacy students at these colleges would not be there without the admissions boost they receive.
  • A similar advantage applies to the graduates of private schools (not including religious schools). Schools like Andover, Brentwood and Dalton do such a good job of selling their students — through teacher recommendations, essay editing and other help — that colleges admit them more often than academic merit would dictate. Many college admissions officers think they can see through this polish, but they don’t.
  • Recruited athletes are admitted with much lower academic standards — and are disproportionately affluent. It’s not just true of the obvious teams, like golf, squash, fencing and sailing. In today’s era of expensive youth sports, most teams skew wealthy. If colleges changed their approach to sports, they could admit more middle-class and poor athletes (or nonathletes) with stronger academic credentials.
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: Opportunity Insights | By The New York Times

The bottom line

Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former Obama administration official who has seen the study’s results, has a helpful way of making sense of them. At some point, there really would be a trade-off between equity and excellence. But elite colleges aren’t anywhere near that point, Furman said. They are admitting many more affluent students than their qualifications justify.

Chetty put it this way: “The key point is that we don’t need to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the poor. We just need to take the thumb that we — perhaps inadvertently — have on the scale in favor of the rich.”

There are obviously still hard questions, like how selective colleges might make up the lost tuition from well-off students or the lost donations from alumni and sports fans. The good news, though, is that there are plenty of standout students from modest backgrounds who would benefit from attending these schools. Elite colleges can become more economically diverse without sacrificing academic preparation.

(A note of disclosure: I’m on the unpaid board of advisers of Opportunity Insights, the research group that published the paper.)

For more: The Times’s article and graphics explain much more, including these colleges’ outsize role in propelling their graduates into elite jobs.

 

THE LATEST NEWS

Israel
  • Israel’s Parliament plans to hold a binding vote today on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s divisive plan to restrict the power of judges. Follow our updates.
  • Opposition groups are poised to shut down large parts of Israel’s economy if the bill passes.
  • The standoff reflects deeper tensions between Israelis who want a more secular country and those with a more religious and nationalist vision.
  • Netanyahu was released from the hospital today after a procedure to fit a pacemaker.
  • The tight U.S. relationship with Israel has hit turbulence before, but not usually over Israeli domestic issues. This judicial dispute is different.
 
War in Ukraine
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A Ukrainian soldier at the front line.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
 
International
 
Media
 
Other Big Stories
  • The contract between UPS and its employee union expires next week. A strike there could disrupt the economy.
  • Louisiana’s Democratic governor has used vetoes to stall the agenda of the legislature’s Republican supermajority.
 
Opinions

Latinos need more — and less stereotypical — representation in entertainment, Arlene Dávila writes.

Here are columns by Bret Stephens on visiting Ukraine and Thomas L. Friedman on Israel.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

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Mark Herman, a dog walker in New York, believes he has a lost early work by Chuck Close.OK McCausland for The New York Times

Art find: Was the painting rolled up in the closet worth millions?

One breath at a time: A silent meditation retreat is a respite from a demanding job.

Metropolitan Diary: She went into a cafe with her sister and came out with an Alexander McQueen bag.

Lives Lived: Cheri Pies broke barriers with her 1985 book “Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians,” a bible of the 1980s “gayby boom.” She died at 73.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Italy — a team in a generational transition that started two teenagers — beat Argentina, 1-0.

Lise Klaveness, the president of Norway’s soccer federation, is the rare insider to publicly criticize the sport’s ethical failures.

France’s coach had just five weeks with his players before the tournament.

 

OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Golf history: Brian Harman won his first major with the fewest putts of any British Open champion in 20 years.

Pop the Champagne: Jonas Vingegaard rode away with his second straight Tour de France.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Far Out Ice Cream in Brookline, Mass.Tony Luong for The New York Times

Sweeter in America: Real fruit ice cream — a scoop of vanilla blended with fruit in a machine that produces a buttery texture — has made its way from New Zealand to the U.S., Priya Krishna writes. It’s had an American makeover, sometimes mixed with graham crackers, drizzled with hot fudge or served atop a sprinkle-dipped cone.

More on culture

  • “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” collected a combined $235 million in the U.S. and Canada, in movies’ biggest opening weekend since 2019. (One theater ran out of ice.)
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Caramelize bell peppers for a sweet, summery pasta.

Fizz your own soda with Wirecutter’s equipment picks.

Brighten a bed with colorful printed sheets.

Take our news quiz.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangram was pompadour.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Good morning. We’re covering Israel’s judicial changes, a cold-case arrest and nu metal’s resurgence.

 
 
 
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Protesters blocked a highway in Tel Aviv yesterday.Corinna Kern/Reuters

Strength from weakness

In their details, the judicial changes that Israel’s Parliament passed yesterday sound like something that liberals in the U.S. and democracy advocates around the world might support.

Israel reduced the power of its Supreme Court judges, who until now could use the vague standard of “reasonableness” to overturn policies enacted by government ministers. Going forward, democratically elected leaders will have more power, and unelected judges will have less. Conceptually, the policy is not so different from changes that many Democrats would like to implement in this country.

But the reaction from political progressives, moderates and even some conservatives — in Israel and elsewhere — has instead been one of extreme alarm. And that alarm stems from worries among many observers that Israel is using the mechanics of democracy to transform itself into an undemocratic country.

The government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who’s known as Bibi) is the most right-wing in the country’s 75-year history, many observers say. Freed from judicial oversight, it will have the ability to push Israel further toward becoming a religiously conservative country. In the process, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians could worsen.

Among the fears of Netanyahu’s critics:

  • Israel may build many more settlements in the West Bank, including on privately owned Palestinian land, making long-term peace impossible.
  • Ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious study may have an easier time avoiding military service, creating a two-tier society even among Israelis.
  • Netanyahu may be able to appoint corrupt officials to top posts. The clash with the Supreme Court stems partly from its decision blocking Netanyahu’s appointment of Aryeh Deri — an ally who had been convicted of accepting bribes — to be a minister.
  • Netanyahu, facing his own corruption trial, may replace the attorney general now that the Supreme Court has been defanged. Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing and said he doesn’t plan to replace the attorney general.
  • Thousands of Israeli military reservists may follow through on their threats to abstain from training and service because of the overhaul, undermining national security.

Bibi’s turnabout

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Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, left, speaking with Netanyahu yesterday.Amir Cohen/Reuters

As our colleague Isabel Kershner, who’s based in Jerusalem, told us: “The basic divide is between the more liberal, largely more secular Israelis who want a pluralistic country with a tolerant and open society and the religiously conservative and right-wing forces who make up Bibi’s current government.”

The Supreme Court has been an especially important body because Israel lacks a formal constitution. In other countries, a constitution can limit the powers of an elected government, including attempts to rig the political system to allow leaders to remain in power. In Israel, the court played that restraining role.

One paradox of the judicial overhaul is that it both strengthens Netanyahu’s government and is a sign of his own political weakness. He long opposed such an overhaul, while some far-right and religious parties supported it. But he now needs those parties to remain in power — and he may need to remain in power to stay out of prison.

“He looks like a weak prime minister who is being led by the hard-liners in his party and his coalition,” Isabel said. A Netanyahu biographer told David Remnick of The New Yorker that the mass protests and military disobedience suggest that Netanyahu has become Israel’s weakest prime minister.

Of course, the Israeli political center and left may be weaker yet, a reason Netanyahu remains in power.

More from Israel

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Protesters blocking traffic in Jerusalem yesterday.Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters
  • The measure passed Israel’s 120-seat Parliament by a vote of 64-0, after opposition members walked out in protest.
  • The law includes only some of the planned changes. Netanyahu said lawmakers would delay voting on other proposals to allow for talks with the opposition.
  • Opposition leaders plan to ask the Supreme Court to rule on the new law. The court has not said whether it would take a case about its own powers.
  • The court has three choices, The Times’s Emily Bazelon writes: strike down the law, narrowly interpret it to limit its impact or avoid any decision by refusing to hear petitions asking to void it.
  • Israelis blocked roads in protest. In Tel Aviv, police officers unleashed a water cannon; in central Israel, a car drove into a demonstration on a highway, injuring three protesters.
  • Critics questioned whether Netanyahu can manage the aftermath of such a divisive moment.
  • President Biden chastised Netanyahu over the vote, but his defense of democracy can be situational.
  • Many businesses shut in protest yesterday. Doctors went on strike today in much of the country, and Israel’s largest labor union is considering a general strike. Follow our updates.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
 
Politics
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The barrier in the Rio Grande.Brandon Bell/Getty Images
 
New York
 
Other Big Stories
  • A former minister was charged in the killing of an 8-year-old Pennsylvania girl who disappeared on her way to Bible school in 1975.
  • The roof of a middle-school gym in China collapsed during a volleyball practice, killing at least 10 girls.
  • A chef for the Obama family was found dead after struggling while paddleboarding near their house on Martha’s Vineyard. The Obamas weren’t at the home.
  • An astrophysicist at Harvard says material recovered from the seafloor could be from an alien spacecraft. His peers are skeptical.
 
Opinions

Vladimir Putin should understand that China’s loyalties have a history of crumbling when a partner’s usefulness wanes, Sergey Radchenko argues.

Here are columns by Jamelle Bouie on No Labels and Michelle Goldberg on “Barbie” and Taylor Swift.

 
 

Global news. Games and recipes for every mood. Product reviews and personalized sports coverage. If you’re into it, The Times has it covered. Save when you subscribe to All Access.

 

MORNING READS

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The Chaotic Singles PartyJackie Molloy for The New York Times

Chaotic fun: At a monthly party in New York, guests bring a Tinder match they’ve never met. What could go wrong?

“The younger person’s version of Goop”: Sporty & Rich started as an Instagram account. It’s about to open a New York store.

Ick factor: It tastes like any other beer, but it’s brewed with wastewater.

Lives Lived: Reeves Callaway made high-performance automobiles for deep-pocketed customers that challenged Porsche and Ferrari, reaching speeds of 250 miles per hour. Callaway died at 75.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Linda Caicedo, the 18-year-old who scored the winning goal in Colombia’s 2-0 victory over South Korea, is in her third World Cup in a year after playing in the under-20 and under-17 tournaments.

The Philippines won its first World Cup game ever with its first World Cup goal, defeating the co-host New Zealand, 1-0.

Three points for a win and one for a tie: Here’s how teams can advance to the round of 16.

 

OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Settling in: Aaron Rodgers, the Jets quarterback, has yet to throw a pass but is soaking up New York culture.

Another gambling penalty: A Denver Broncos defensive tackle, Eyioma Uwazurike, was suspended indefinitely for betting on N.F.L. games, joining a succession of players penalized this off-season for violating the league’s gambling policy.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Ian ShawEvelyn Freja for The New York Times

A family of shark hunters: “The Shark Is Broken,” a comedy based on the troubled production of the 1975 film “Jaws,” comes to Broadway next month. The one-act play centers on the squabbling of the film’s stars, notably Robert Shaw, the acclaimed British actor who played the shark hunter Quint. If the Quint onstage appears to be a dead ringer for the original, it’s for good reason: Shaw’s son Ian plays him.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Stir-fry Thai basil chicken in just 15 minutes.

Stop your teen from gaming all night.

Freshen up your look with Wirecutter’s picks for the best white sneakers.

Watch “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” on TV tonight.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was rainbow. You can now play Bees from previous days. See them here.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. Liz Johnstone is joining The Times as the first news director for the Politics desk.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Did Covid jump from an animal to a person at a food market in Wuhan, China — or leak from a research lab there? That question remains the pandemic’s central mystery.

There may never be a definitive answer. But scientists and other experts continue to study the issue and uncover relevant information. This week, The Times Magazine published a story about Covid’s origins by David Quammen, a veteran science journalist, and I’m turning over the rest of today’s newsletter to Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence agencies in Washington. — David Leonhardt

 
 
Author Headshot

By Julian E. Barnes

Domestic Correspondent

Good morning. We’re covering the origins of Covid, Harvard’s legacy admissions and an Italian vigilante on TikTok.

 
 
 
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Hospital staff in Wuhan, China, in January 2020.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Missing evidence

In the early days of the pandemic, I was speaking to a variety of U.S. intelligence officials who believed that China was hiding the truth of what happened with Covid. They were right: China was.

In the name of safety, Chinese officials ordered that coronavirus samples be destroyed. At best, this hampered the later investigation into Covid’s origins, and at worst it was a sign of a cover-up.

In this context, some of those intelligence officials believed that people were not paying enough attention to the lab-leak theory. They spoke about a history of accidents and safety problems in Chinese labs. Some, including the lab in Wuhan, also had a history of “gain of function” research, which tries to create dangerous viruses so scientists can learn how to combat them before they emerge in the wild.

The problem is that viruses can leak from labs with destructive effects. The 2001 anthrax attacks leaked (purposely) from Fort Detrick, one of the most secure labs in America, and a deadly 1977 flu outbreak likely came from a Soviet lab. (Josh Clark’s “The End of the World” podcast did an episode on near-miss lab leaks.)

These patterns probably helped explain the conclusion that F.B.I. intelligence officials made, with medium confidence, that a lab leak was the most plausible origin of Covid. The Department of Energy also considers the lab-leak theory to be the more likely explanation, at least in part because of the safety protocols in the Chinese labs.

At the end of the Trump administration, the State Department released a piece of intelligence that seemed to bolster the lab-leak hypothesis: In late 2019, a few researchers at the Wuhan lab, known as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, became ill with flulike symptoms.

From the beginning, there were divisions in the U.S. intelligence community. The politics swirling around lab-leak idea made intelligence officers wary of reaching conclusions, for fear of being seen as partisan. Some Republicans had gravitated to the theory, and President Trump pushed it as a way to blame China for Covid. Some Democrats dismissed it as a conspiracy theory with xenophobic overtones.

Still, the lab-leak theory gained traction early in the Biden administration because of the sick Wuhan workers and China’s failure to cooperate with international investigators.

‘Not consistent’

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The Wuhan Institute of VirologyHector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But the situation has changed somewhat over the past year.

One development: U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the sick lab workers in Wuhan might not have had Covid. As a recent report explained, “The researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with Covid-19.” That report — which is short and easy to read — is nominally neutral. But because it undermined some evidence that the lab-leak advocates had cited, the report had the effect of bolstering the case for natural transmission.

The intelligence community also says there is no evidence that the coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab could have been a precursor to the virus that causes Covid (as the Times Magazine story details).

This information helps explain why five intelligence agencies lean toward the natural-transmission theory. While officials have not explicitly outlined the reasoning, the scientific research tracking the virus’s origins seems to favor natural transmission.

The C.I.A., the nation’s premier spy agency, does not lean one way or the other. Officials say that is because too much evidence has been lost — because of the chaos of the pandemic, China’s destruction of samples and the passage of time.

U.S. intelligence agencies work by stealing secrets from other countries. But American officials said that China did not appear to want to know what caused the pandemic. Some Chinese officials believe the case for natural transmission. Others are less convinced but know that if evidence points to a lab leak, it will be bad for their country. So they have every incentive not to look. If you want to keep a secret, as George Orwell wrote, you must hide it from yourself.

We have to be prepared that we might never know the answer.

Related: “Some contrarians say that it doesn’t matter, the source of the virus. What matters, they say, is how we cope with the catastrophe it has brought, the illness and death it continues to cause,” David Quammen writes in the magazine. “Those contrarians are wrong. It does matter.”

 

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics
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Border Patrol agents in New Mexico detaining men from El Salvador in May.Todd Heisler/The New York Times
 
Business
  • UPS reached a tentative deal with unionized workers, likely averting a strike next week.
  • The I.M.F. is growing more optimistic about the world economy: It expects inflation to ease and growth to increase this year.
  • The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates by another quarter of a percentage point today.
 
War in Ukraine
 
Other Big Stories
  • China removed its foreign minister, a former protégé of Xi Jinping’s who vanished from public last month.
  • Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, said he would resign and hand power to his son.
  • A New York gynecologist convicted of luring women across state lines and abusing them was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
  • A federal judge wiped out the conviction of Bowe Bergdahl, the former Army sergeant held captive for five years by the Taliban, citing potential bias by the military judge in the case.
  • Soaring rent is pushing people in Orlando, Fla., onto the streets and into dangerous heat.
 
Opinions

South Koreans are taught to long for reunification with the North, but differences in culture and ideology and potentially high economic costs for the South stand in the way, Haeryun Kang writes.

Here are columns by Paul Krugman on Japan’s lessons for China’s economy, and Bret Stephens on Israel.

 
 

News subscriptions now include Audio

Have you heard? We recently launched New York Times Audio, a new iOS app featuring exclusive shows, narrated articles and more. Download now.

 

MORNING READS

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Bodypainting Day in New York.Amir Hamja/The New York Times

Human canvases: Artists’ subjects traded clothes for body paint.

Listen: Can you speak bird? Take our quiz.

Out of view: Melania Trump wants what she couldn’t get at the White House — privacy.

Lives Lived: Johnny Lujack, who won the 1947 Heisman Trophy and played on three national championship teams, was Notre Dame’s most publicized football player since the 1920s. He died at 98.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Japan dispatched Costa Rica, 2-0, a second strong win that’s prompted chatter about title hopes.

The U.S. midfielder Rose Lavelle, a standout during the last World Cup, said she’s ready to play tonight against the Netherlands as she recovers from a knee injury.

The scrappiest, most resilient underdog team is Haiti, Kurt Streeter writes.

 

OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Stopped heart: Bronny James, the son of LeBron James, suffered a cardiac arrest during practice at U.S.C. He is in stable condition.

A cold reality: The Bills could cut Damar Hamlin after training camp, months after he went into cardiac arrest during a “Monday Night Football” game. (Such episodes remain rare.)

Federal case: Joe Lewis, the 86-year-old British billionaire who owns the Tottenham Hotspur soccer club, was indicted in New York on charges of insider trading.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

Saving tourist dollars: If you’ve spent time on TikTok, you might recognize Monica Poli’s voice, yelling in Italian: “Attenzione, pickpocket!” Poli and other citizens roam Venice shouting at people they believe to be thieves preying on tourists. After decades of patrolling, she began to post her vigilantism on TikTok and became a sensation.

“We want the tourists, people coming to Venice and Milan, to pay attention,” she told The Times. “The pickpockets are so quick.”

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Adapt peanut sauce using any nut butter for cold noodle salad.

Brew instant coffee that actually tastes good.

Get away to one of these crowd-free hotels.

Ease into college life with Wirecutter’s five dorm essentials.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were amenity and anytime.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Good morning. We’re covering the Fed’s rate increase, Ukraine’s counteroffensive and Miami English.

 
 
 
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Jerome Powell on a television at the New York Stock Exchange.Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

When to stop?

After raising interest rates again yesterday, the Federal Reserve now faces a tough decision.

Some economists believe that the Fed has raised its benchmark rate — and, by extension, the cost of many loans across the U.S. economy — enough to have solved the severe inflation of the past couple years. Any further increases in that benchmark rate, which is now at its highest level in 22 years, would heighten the risk of a recession, according to these economists. In the parlance of economics, they are known as doves.

But other experts — the hawks — point out that annual inflation remains at 3 percent, above the level the Fed prefers. Unless Fed officials add at least one more interest rate increase in coming months, consumers and business may become accustomed to high inflation, making it all the harder to eliminate.

For now, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, and his colleagues are choosing not to take a side. They will watch the economic data and make a decision at their next meeting, on Sept. 20. “We’ve come a long way,” Powell said during a news conference yesterday, after the announcement that the benchmark rate would rise another quarter of a percentage point, to as much as 5.5 percent. “We can afford to be a little patient.”

The charts below, by our colleague Ashley Wu, capture the recent trends. Inflation is both way down and still somewhat elevated, while economic growth has slowed but remains above zero.

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Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis | By The New York Times

Today’s newsletter walks through the dove-vs.-hawk debate as a way of helping you understand the current condition of the U.S. economy.

The doves’ case

The doves emphasize both the steep recent decline in inflation and the forces that may cause it to continue falling. Supply chain snarls have eased, and the strong labor market, which helped drive up prices, seems to be cooling. “A happy outcome that not long ago seemed like wishful thinking now looks more likely than not,” the economist Paul Krugman wrote in Times Opinion this month.

Economists refer to this happy outcome — reduced inflation without a recession — as a soft landing. The doves worry that a September rate hike could imperil that soft landing. (Already, corporate defaults have risen.)

“It’s crystal clear that low inflation and low unemployment are compatible,” Rakeen Mabud, an economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, told our colleague Talmon Joseph Smith. “It’s time for the Fed to stop raising rates.”

A recession would be particularly damaging to vulnerable Americans, including low-income and disabled people. The tight labor market has drawn more of them into work and helped them earn raises.

The hawks’ case

The hawks see the risks differently. They point to some signs that the official inflation rate of 3 percent is artificially low. Annual core inflation — a measure that omits food and fuel costs, which are both volatile — remains closer to 5 percent.

“The Fed should not stop raising rates until there is clear evidence that core inflation is on a path to its 2 percent target,” Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute writes. “That evidence does not exist today, and it probably will not exist by the time the Fed meets in September.” (Adding to the hawks’ case is the fact that big consumer companies like Unilever keep raising their prices, J. Edward Moreno of The Times explains.)

Fed officials themselves have argued that it’s important to tame inflation quickly to keep Americans from becoming used to rising prices — and demanding larger raises to keep up with prices, which could in turn become another force causing prices to rise.

At root, the hawk case revolves around the notion that reversing high inflation is extremely difficult. When in doubt, hawks say, the Fed should err on the side of vigilance, to keep the U.S. from falling into an extended and damaging period of inflation as it did in the 1970s.

And where do Fed officials come down? They have the advantage of not needing to pick a side, at least not yet. Between now and September, two more months of data will be available on prices, employment and more. Powell yesterday called a September rate increase “certainly possible,” but added, “I would also say it’s possible that we would choose to hold steady.”

As our colleague Jeanna Smialek, who covers the Fed, says, “They have every incentive to give themselves wiggle room.”

More on the Fed

  • The Fed’s economists are no longer forecasting a recession this year.
  • Powell noted that the labor force has been growing. “That’s good news for the Fed, because it helps ease the labor shortage without driving up unemployment,” Ben Casselman wrote.
  • Responding to a question from Jeanna, Powell said it was good that consumer demand for the “Barbie” movie was so high — but that persistently high spending could be a reason for a future rate increase.
  • Stock indexes rose after the Fed announced the increase, but fell after Powell delivered his economic outlook.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine
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A Ukrainian soldier on the front line in eastern Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
 
Politics
  • A judge halted Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax charges after the two sides disagreed over how much immunity it granted him.
  • In her first Supreme Court term, Ketanji Brown Jackson secured a book deal worth about $3 million, the latest justice to parlay fame into a big book contract.
  • Mitch McConnell, the 81-year-old Senate Republican leader, abruptly stopped speaking during a Capitol news conference and was escorted away. He spoke in public again later.
  • A former intelligence officer told Congress that the U.S. government had retrieved materials from U.F.O.s. The Pentagon denied his claim.
  • Rudy Giuliani admitted to lying about two Georgia election workers he accused of mishandling ballots in 2020.
  • Representative George Santos used his candidacy and ties to Republican donors to seek moneymaking opportunities.
 
Other Big Stories
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Getty Images
 
Opinions

Congress should create an agency to curtail Big Tech, Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, argue.

Thousands of Americans drown every year. More public pools would help, Mara Gay writes.

Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on affirmative action and Pamela Paul on the so-called Citi Bike Karen.

 
 

All encompassing. Entertaining. Appetizing. Discerning. And sporting.

No matter what you’re into, it’s all in The Times. Subscribe with an introductory offer to enjoy everything we offer.

 

MORNING READS

Eternally cool: Fans keep you dry on a hot day. They let you channel Beyoncé. They say, “I love you.” Can an air-conditioner do that?

The yips: A star pitcher lost her ability to throw to first base. Now, she helps young athletes with the same problem.

Spillover: Could the next pandemic start at the county fair?

Lives Lived: Bo Goldman was one of Hollywood’s most admired screenwriters, winning Oscars for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard.” He died at 90.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

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The Dutch midfielder Jill Roord, left, and Lindsey Horan of the U.S. team.Grant Down/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A second-half goal from the co-captain Lindsey Horan gave the U.S. a 1-1 tie against the Netherlands, in an evenly matched game.

Spain’s star midfielder Alexia Putellas returned to the starting lineup for the first time in more than a year after a knee injury.

 

OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Off the market: The Angels are reportedly withdrawing the superstar Shohei Ohtani from trade talks.

Honeymoon phase: Aaron Rodgers agreed to a reworked contract with the Jets, which saves the team money and likely ensures he plays multiple seasons in New York.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

A growing dialect: What is Miami English? The linguist Phillip Carter calls it “probably the most important bilingual situation in the Americas today,” but it’s not Spanglish, in which a sentence bounces between English and Spanish. Instead, Miamians — even those who are not bilingual — have adopted literal translations of Spanish phrases in their English speech. Some examples: “get down from the car” (from “bajarse del carro”) instead of “get out of the car,” and “make the line” (from “hacer la fila”) instead of “join the line.”

More on culture

  • Kevin Spacey was found not guilty in Britain of sexual assault.
  • The Japanese pop star Shinjiro Atae came out as gay, a rare announcement in a country where same-sex marriage isn’t legal.
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Brighten up grilled chicken with Tajín, the Mexican seasoning made with red chiles and lime.

Preserve vintage clothes in wearable condition.

Calculate your life expectancy to guide health care choices.

Consider a body pillow.

Reduce exposure to forever chemicals in tap water.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was thrilling.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. David is on “The Daily” to talk about how the wealthy get an advantage in college admissions.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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  • Members
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July 28, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering new charges against Donald Trump, heat in the Northeast and Google’s robot.

 
 
 
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Donald TrumpDoug Mills/The New York Times

‘The boss’

Donald Trump is facing more criminal charges in a federal case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.

The new allegations are in a revised indictment from the special counsel’s office released last night. It added three charges: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; asking someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act.

Today’s newsletter will explain the new charges and why they matter to the case.

The charges

The first two charges are connected. Prosecutors said that Trump asked the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, to have surveillance camera footage deleted. That video was important to the special counsel’s investigation into whether boxes of documents were moved to avoid complying with a federal subpoena.

The property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, is now also charged in the case. He told a Mar-a-Lago information technology expert that “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the revised indictment. After the employee said he did not know how to delete the footage, or whether he had the right to do so, De Oliveira restated the request from “the boss” and asked, “What are we going to do?”

The third charge, under the Espionage Act, concerns a memorable scene from the original indictment. An audio recording captured Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., showing visitors a classified document that detailed battle plans against Iran. Trump could be heard admitting to having the document and acknowledging that it was confidential.

Now that at least one of the charges is linked to the Iran document, the recording could become more damning in court, by directly tying Trump’s own remarks to one of the crimes that he’s accused of.

The indictment indicates that prosecutors have the document itself and details the dates that Trump possessed it, undermining his earlier claims that he never had it and was simply blustering.

Trump’s campaign called the new accusations a “desperate and flailing attempt” by the Justice Department to undercut him.

The bottom line

As this newsletter has noted before, it is not unusual for federal officials to misplace or accidentally keep classified documents when they leave office. Such files were found in the homes of President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. What is unusual in Trump’s case is his attempts to keep the papers, even after federal officials asked him to return them.

The new charges help demonstrate the exceptional nature of Trump’s actions. If the accusations are true, Trump not only tried to keep documents that he knew he was not supposed to have, but he also tried to cover up his attempts to hold onto the files by deleting video evidence.

More on the indictment

  • Some legal experts think De Oliveira is likely to end up cooperating with prosecutors to avoid prison time. “This is a defendant who has almost no choice but to flip,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said on MSNBC.
  • But the new charges may slow the case, currently set to go to trial next May, and could even push it past the 2024 election. “For Trump, his best defense is delay,” Kim Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor, writes in The Bulwark.
  • Trump’s lawyers met yesterday with the special counsel’s office, which is also investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Charges in that case — which appear likely soon — would add substantially to Trump’s legal peril. (Track all the Trump investigations here.)
  • The Times’s Charlie Savage annotated the indictment.
 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Extreme Weather
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Liam Warner, 5, cooling off at a playground in Manhattan.Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times
 
Politics
  • The Senate passed bipartisan military policy legislation, setting up a clash with the House, which added conservative mandates on abortion and gender to its version of the bill.
  • After budget troubles and staff layoffs, Ron DeSantis began a slimmed-down reboot of his presidential campaign in Iowa.
  • Mitch McConnell’s apparent medical episode has stirred talk about who could succeed him as the Senate Republican leader.
 
War in Ukraine
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Ukrainian soldiers fire toward Russian positions on the front line.Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press
  • Ukraine’s offensive made small gains, but the scope of the assaults and their toll remained unclear.
  • Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, promised free grain to several African countries after his blockade on Ukrainian exports disrupted the global food supply.
 
Economy
 
Other Big Stories
  • The Justice Department will investigate allegations of violence and discrimination by the police in Memphis, months after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols.
  • Russian oligarchs in Britain have gotten permits to spend lavishly on perks like private chefs and chauffeurs, despite ostensibly having their bank accounts frozen.
  • Google has begun plugging A.I. language models into robots, giving them the equivalent of artificial brains.
  • A judge ordered the release of three of the “Newburgh Four,” who were convicted in 2010 of a plot to blow up synagogues. The judge suggested that the F.B.I. invented the conspiracy.
  • “Everybody’s punching bag”: Former classmates said the suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killings was an outcast with a mean streak.
 
Opinions

The pain of losing a loved one to an overdose is crushing. But prosecuting drug dealers as murderers does more harm than good, Maia Szalavitz says.

Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on Saudi-Israeli relations, Paul Krugman on Twitter’s rebrand and Michelle Goldberg on Republicans’ push to impeach Biden.

 
 

All encompassing. Entertaining. Appetizing. Discerning. And sporting.

No matter what you’re into, it’s all in The Times. Subscribe with an introductory offer to enjoy everything we offer.

 

MORNING READS

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The annual swan census on the River Thames in Britain.Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock

The king’s swans: An annual bird count on the Thames found a worrisome drop.

Titanium clouds: Astronomers have come across the shiniest planet ever found.

“Phubbing”: Ignoring a partner in favor of your phone can breed distrust.

Modern Love: Learning to hear “no,” in acting, friendship and romance.

Lives Lived: Julian Barry’s scripts for a Broadway play and Hollywood movie about Lenny Bruce became definitive portraits of the comedian as a truth teller who drove himself mad in a righteous struggle against hypocrisy. Barry died at 92.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

A hip-check from a Dutch player sparked a flash of anger and the only U.S. goal in the teams’ tie.

Nigeria upset Australia, the tournament’s co-host, which is in danger of failing to advance to the knockout rounds.

 

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OTHER SPORTS NEWS

New coach bluster: In an interview, Broncos coach Sean Payton said his predecessor Nathaniel Hackett’s performance last season was “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the N.F.L.”

Home safe: Bronny James, LeBron James’s son, was discharged from the hospital after a cardiac arrest during a practice.

An unbelievable day: Shohei Ohtani spent the first half of a doubleheader throwing a shutout and the second hitting two home runs. He sounds energized for the Angels’ surprise playoff push.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Dani Pendergast

Tricks for a better vacation: Traveling is wonderful but can be taxing, whether you’re planning for a group or coping with delays. The Times’s Travel desk has tips for managing. One expert noted that during a flight delay, it’s easier to get help if you leave the gate, where crowds gather, and find your airline’s service desk. And when traveling with a group, ease stress by having a different person take ownership of each day’s activities.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Stick with Fritos in this taco salad.

Upgrade your ice cube trays.

Cool off with this portable fan.

Save your skin — check whether it’s time to toss products.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was unlovely.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

Correction: A chart in yesterday’s newsletter misstated the change in gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2023. It grew 2 percent, not 2.6 percent.

P.S. Simon Romero is joining The Times’s Mexico City bureau to cover migration, climate change and more.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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Good morning. When we’re young, we define ourselves as much by the culture we disdain as by the culture we love. A pleasure of adulthood is letting some of that go.

 
 
 
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María Jesús Contreras

Acquired taste

The Dave Matthews Band is on tour, as they have been every summer, except 2020, for the past 30-odd years. Like the Grateful Dead and Phish, so-called jam bands with which it’s often lumped together, Dave Matthews has a deliriously passionate fan base that follows the band from city to city, reuniting with fellow disciples at preshow tailgates, showing off devotional tattoos, trading live recordings.

In the early ’90s, when I arrived for my first year at the University of Virginia, Dave Matthews was a local celebrity. His band played for five bucks every Tuesday night at the little bar down the street from campus. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I never went to see them.

It would be years before the stereotype of Dave Matthews fans as “pot-smoking, tie-dye-touting former frat bros fawning over craft beers in parking lots between cornhole games,” as Perri Ormont Blumberg puts it, would become a widely understood social designation. But for those of us figuring out how to reconcile the rise of grunge with our carefully curated Manic Panic-dyed identities, a college bar band with a fiddle player was way too mainstream.

“You’re sort of defined as much by what you dislike as by what you like at that age,” Ben Sisario, a music reporter at The Times and one of my first college friends, said recently. Ben and I met on our first night at Virginia. He was wearing a T-shirt from the 1992 tour of the alt-rock band the Pixies; our friendship was cemented in the uncomplicated way of teenagers for whom there’s little distinction between who you listen to and who you are. We spent the next four years not going to Dave Matthews Band shows together.

When I read about the community that flourishes via shared adoration of the Dave Matthews Band, I feel — not left out, exactly — but instead like I missed an opportunity. I could have participated in the early fandom of a band that would become an American institution. I could have “been there when” rather than having “been there on the sidelines with my arms folded smugly when.”

In adulthood, in theory, we get more comfortable with our contradictions. We can emphatically like things that others — or even we — deem uncool without risking an identity crisis. Ben has seen Dave Matthews perform several times since college and has come to appreciate the complexity of their music. “I was just too clouded with the teenage factionalism of being a first year in college to see that,” he said, adding, “My persona at the time was very much ‘indie rock snob.’”

Ben and I became friends because of our indie rock snob personas, which makes it hard for me to totally dismiss my youthful disdain for popular music as useless. I’m grateful for the taste I developed as a teenager that helped me find my people, taste that’s become more complex. Now, I listen to the 1994 Dave Matthews Band album “Under the Table and Dreaming” and am overcome with nostalgic pleasure. And when Dave sings on the first track, “If you hold on tight to what you think is your thing, you may find you’re missing all the rest,” I know categorically that he’s right.

For more

 

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

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Jason Kempin/Getty Images
  • The death this week of Sinead O’Connor prompted collective grief across Ireland, where she was a symbol of both hope and defiance, Una Mullally writes.
  • When O’Connor ripped up a photo of the pope as a criticism of priest abuse and the complicity of the church, many in the U.S. were not ready to hear her.
  • Listen to 10 essential songs by O’Connor, and see her life in photos.
  • A Taylor Swift concert in Seattle shook the ground so hard that it registered as roughly equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake.
  • The Emmy Awards, which had been scheduled for September, will be postponed because of the strikes in Hollywood.
  • Influencers are rejecting deals to promote movies or TV shows for fear of someday being barred from the striking actors’ union.
  • Venice Film Festival organizers said the Hollywood strikes would have little effect and that they expect to premiere films including “Maestro,” a drama about the composer Leonard Bernstein, starring Bradley Cooper.
  • Kevin Spacey was cleared of sexual assault charges. A return to major Hollywood roles may not be likely anytime soon.
  • The dance of the Kens in “Barbie” recalls the vitality and grace of Gene Kelly, Gia Kourlas writes.
  • Some of Britain’s biggest ’90s bands, like Blur and Pulp, are playing major gigs again. (There was even talk, albeit misplaced, of an Oasis reunion.)
  • “Oppenheimer” fans are rediscovering a 40-year-old documentary about him.
  • Browse our guide to summer theater in upstate New York and western Massachusetts.
  • Props were stolen from the set of “Beetlejuice 2” in Vermont.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

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John Tully for The New York Times
  • The new charges against Donald Trump are clearer examples of potential obstruction of justice than Trump’s earlier behavior that the Mueller investigation scrutinized.
  • Trump attacked Ron DeSantis as an “establishment globalist” at a dinner in Iowa that both men attended.
  • Russia said it shot down two missiles within its borders, apparently rare instances of Ukraine using such weapons to attack inside Russia.
  • President Biden approved the most significant changes in decades to the military legal system, including steps to ensure that sex assault prosecutions are independent of the chain of command.
  • Biden acknowledged his 4-year-old granddaughter, Navy, for the first time publicly. Hunter Biden, the girl’s father, has said he is not involved in her life.
  • Lebanon’s yearslong financial crisis has forced some people to hold up banks to take out their own deposits.
 
 

All encompassing. Entertaining. Appetizing. Discerning. And sporting.

No matter what you’re into, it’s all in The Times. Subscribe with an introductory offer to enjoy everything we offer.

 

CULTURE CALENDAR

📺 “Hijack” (Wednesday): Yes, it’s been a bad summer for air travel, but no one has had it worse than the passengers of Kingdom Airline flight 29, which is hijacked shortly after taking off from Dubai on its way to London. The seventh episode of this overheated and entertaining Apple TV+ show, starring Idris Elba, is the Season 1 finale.

📚 “Tom Lake” (Tuesday): In the latest by Ann Patchett, whose 2019 novel “The Dutch House” was a Pulitzer finalist, family members find themselves holed up at their Michigan cherry farm early in the pandemic. There, they hear the story of their mother’s youthful affair with a famous actor during a production of “Our Town.” Patchett’s is one of several books to look forward to in August.

 

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

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Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

Blackberry Corn Cobbler

A juicy berry cobbler is a laid-back weekend treat, an adaptable, colorful way to showcase seasonal fruit. This one, from Jerrelle Guy, is especially vivid, with blackberries that cook down into a jammy purple compote that bubbles around a cornmeal topping. To make it even more summery, Jerrelle grates fresh corn cobs, collecting the kernels and corn milk, to knead into the biscuits instead of the usual buttermilk or heavy cream. It adds a lovely, sweet character to every bite. If you can, serve this warm with scoops of ice cream or coconut yogurt, letting them melt into a creamy sauce to mingle with the berry syrup.

 

REAL ESTATE

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Structure Media

What you get for $550,000: An 1820 townhouse in Portsmouth, Va., a 1940 home in Oklahoma City or a Colonial Revival in Westbrook, Maine.

The hunt: Empty-nesters wanted more space in Bloomington, Ind. Which home did they choose? Play our game.

Replacing your lawn?: Instead of a meadow, try a food forest.

Home or gallery: At Maison Lune in Los Angeles, sit on the sofa and admire the art.

City vs. suburbs: The movie “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” which turns 75 this year, dramatized real estate choices.

 

LIVING

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Elizabeth Cecil for The New York Times

“Sailing capital of the world”: Spend 36 hours in Newport, R.I.

Selling wellness: Dubious claims are all over product marketing.

Bridal alterations: The wedding world is short on seamstresses.

Stay here: An elegant hotel in Querétaro, Mexico, attached to a craft brewery.

 

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Phone took a dip? Skip the rice.

This time of year, your everyday tech may be sitting dangerously close to a pool or lake, putting it at risk of an accidental soaking. You may have heard that if your iPhone gets waterlogged, you should submerge it in dry rice. Don’t. Instead, Wirecutter’s tech experts advise sticking it in a plastic bag stuffed with silica gel packets, which you can buy in bulk online. While the old bag-of-rice trick can dry out your tech, the grains can introduce mold, corrosion or other irreparable damage and may even worsen the problem. — Rose Maura Lorre

For expert advice, independent reviews and deals, sign up for Wirecutter’s daily newsletter, The Recommendation.

 

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

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The Brazilian forward Bia Zaneratto.Matt Turner/EPA, via Shutterstock

Brazil vs. France, Women’s World Cup: Brazil is desperate to win a trophy for Marta, one of the game’s great stars, who at age 37 is playing in probably her final World Cup. And the team looks sharp. (Watch this incredible goal against Panama.) France’s squad is talented, but has had a bumpy path. The team recently replaced its head coach to appease players who had threatened to sit out the World Cup, then lost a veteran midfielder to injury. “France’s hopes, now, rest on the new coach’s being able to get the best out of a team he has only just encountered,” The Times’s Rory Smith wrote. Re-airing at 10:30 a.m. Eastern on FS2.

More coverage

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was baptize.

See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 30, 2023

 

This week, our colleagues at Serial will publish the final episode in their podcast series “The Retrievals.” It’s recently been among the most popular podcasts in the country, and it covers a topic that the media often ignores: women’s pain. We’re turning over the rest of today’s newsletter to Susan Burton from Serial. — David Leonhardt

 
 

Good morning. For many women, tolerating pain is the only choice they have.

 
 
 
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Erik Tanner for The New York Times

Minimized complaints

In medical settings, it is common for women’s pain to be ignored or dismissed. In other cases, it is not properly treated.

This phenomenon is particularly agonizing for women in some of their most vulnerable moments.

If you have been a gynecological patient, maybe you have felt unprepared for the pain of a procedure like an IUD insertion. Wondered why you were not offered a better option to control your pain before the HSG, a pelvic X-ray in which dye is shot into your uterus. Or been told, in any number of situations, that “you will feel pressure,” or “this will pinch,” or “take Tylenol.”

“To be honest, evidence suggests that Tylenol doesn’t likely work, even Advil doesn’t likely work, in many of those settings,” says Sara Whetstone, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the University of California, San Francisco. “So are we lying when we tell people ‘it’s just a cramp’?”

The pain that women experience in medical settings is common, often preventable and routinely ignored. I explored some of this in “The Retrievals,” a podcast series about recent events at the Yale Fertility Center.

The women I reported on experienced an extreme version of procedure pain. They underwent egg retrievals at a clinic where a nurse was stealing the fentanyl they should have been administered to manage the pain of the surgeries. Their pain control was missing entirely. Some of the women screamed out that they felt everything during their retrievals, in which a long needle is inserted through the vaginal wall and into the ovary.

For months, patient after patient complained about pain, and they say the clinic dismissed their complaints. One reason their complaints did not raise more alarm is that members of the medical staff expected that patients could feel pain with this procedure. Under the drug protocol the clinic had offered for years, some patients felt even severe pain. Pain had been normalized.

Not believing a patient is one way of dismissing pain. Offering inadequate pain control is another way of dismissing pain — another way of saying, this doesn’t matter.

Whetstone told me that she realized early in her career that pain control would be important in building trust with her patients, who include many women of color. Patients often tell her about past procedures in which their pain was not properly treated — and nobody listened to them. It’s a double trauma: pain being considered unworthy of adequate treatment in the first place, and then dismissed.

Why wouldn’t a doctor listen to a patient who complains about procedure pain? Whetstone had a reflective response. “I sometimes wonder if people internalize it as a failing that they as a provider did,” she told me. “That’s how I internalize it. When people have more pain than I want them to, I feel like I haven’t done a good job as the provider. So I wonder if not really engaging allows people to emotionally separate from their failure to control pain.”

Just because pain is acute also doesn’t mean it’s only a short-term problem. It can change health outcomes — alter the course of your life. You might avoid going back to the doctor for birth control. You might not get that endometrial biopsy. Or, like a patient I interviewed and others I have heard from since the series began, you might not go back for another egg retrieval and lose a chance to have a child.

All of the women in “The Retrievals” suffered lasting effects from their inadequately treated and unacknowledged pain. One of the most profound is a loss of trust in the medical system. One patient, Esha, who, for privacy, requested to be identified by only her first name, became pregnant with twins during her fertility treatment. She went into labor eight weeks early, and at the hospital, when it became clear that delivery was imminent, a provider approached Esha to talk about anesthesia.

Up until that moment, Esha had been calm. “The minute he said ‘anesthesia,’” she said, it was “pure panic.” Now the word raised a trauma. Esha looked at her husband and started crying.

For more

 

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NEWS

War in Ukraine
 
Politics
  • China embedded malware in networks controlling power grids and communication systems used by the military, U.S. officials said.
  • A political action committee supporting Donald Trump requested a $60 million refund, showing the financial pressure from his legal bills.
  • A small group of lawmakers, led by a prominent Democrat, expanded the N.R.A.’s power over decades. Read this secret history of the gun lobby.
 
Other Big Stories
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Salt crystals on what was previously fertile agricultural land in Iraq.Bryan Denton for The New York Times
  • High temperatures and scarce water are drying out swaths of Iraq that were once part of a verdant region known as the Fertile Crescent.
  • New York City gave a medical services company a $432 million contract to move asylum seekers upstate. Many said they were lied to and mistreated.
  • A helicopter and a gyrocopter collided in midair at a Wisconsin airport, killing two people.
  • Trader Joe’s recalled some cookies and falafel because they “may contain rocks.”
  • Teenagers are getting in more e-bike accidents, highlighting the industry’s lack of regulation.
  • New Zealand, one of the hosts, was eliminated from the Women’s World Cup after a draw with Switzerland.
 

FROM OPINION

To find sanity in an overwhelming world, stop trying to multitask, Oliver Burkeman writes.

Being a student journalist means looking into stories other people won’t, Theo Baker argues.

Here are columns by Lydia Polgreen on war reporting and Ross Douthat on Tim Scott.

 
 

The Sunday question: Will “Barbenheimer” save the movie industry?

The films’ box-office success signals that audiences are craving fun, only-in-the-cinema collective experiences in which talented directors explore ambitious ideas, Time’s Eliana Dockterman writes. But after years of costly franchise films, few studios seem set up to reliably make those kinds of movies anymore, The Bulwark’s Sonny Bunch suggests.

 
 

All encompassing. Entertaining. Appetizing. Discerning. And sporting.

No matter what you’re into, it’s all in The Times. Subscribe with an introductory offer to enjoy everything we offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Charlotte Gale on her island.Greta Rybus for The New York Times

No indoor plumbing: Why did a New Jersey woman buy a remote island in Maine?

Legacy admissions: Alumni of many colleges are reconsidering the practice.

Vows: They found love in a pool in St. Lucia.

Lives Lived: Mari Ruti was a professor at the University of Toronto who wrote books about gender and sexuality. She died at 59.

 

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TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE

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Alok Vaid-MenonJosefina Santos for The New York Times

Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender-nonconforming activist and a prominent voice on issues of gender and sexuality. I spoke to them about new ways to think about transgender debates.

You write, “There is a shocking disconnect between the way the government and the media speak about gender-nonconforming people and the reality of our lives.” Tell me more.

There are no such thing as trans issues. There are issues that nontrans people have with themselves that they’re taking out on trans people. A great example is when they talk about our “agenda.” “The transgender agenda: It’s recruiting people.” My agenda is the ability to exist in public without the fear of being assaulted.

I think a lot of people have a sense that there is a true self inside them that gets boxed in by other people’s expectations. Do you have advice for people who might feel that way about how to be their true selves?

You’re pointing to exactly what’s behind all the anti-trans sentiment. The fundamental root of our problems is people living versions of who they’ve been told they should be, not who they are. The resentment that people have toward me and my community is because they’re looking at us saying, “What do you mean that we get to be free?”

But you don’t think people’s resentment is about their struggling to adapt to change more than feeling a comparative lack of freedom?

Of course. Things that are new are often jarring at first, but I want to tell you about the internet. I want to tell you about iPhones. These inventions fundamentally restructured how we related to one another, our self-conceptions, and there were not millions of people saying: “Abolish this! We are committed to our routine.”

More from the magazine

 

BOOKS

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Lara Love HardinCayce Clifford for The New York Times

Transformation: A felon and former addict spun her background as a pet cemetery owner into a lucrative publishing career.

First Amendment battle: Booksellers are fighting a Texas law that would require them to rate books based on sexual content.

Our editors’ picks: Colson Whitehead’s sequel to “Harlem Shuffle” and eight other books.

Times best sellers: “Jackie,” a biography of the former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by J. Randy Taraborrelli, is on the hardcover nonfiction list.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Try a 14-minute workout meant to help lower blood pressure.

Party in a hat you can make yourself.

Celebrate your cat with these 17 picks for feline gifts.

Play free video games you can download right now.

 

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For
  • Washington State will hold a statewide primary on Tuesday.
  • Pope Francis is scheduled to travel to Portugal on Wednesday to participate in World Youth Day.
  • Monthly U.S. employment numbers will be released on Friday.
  • Thailand’s parliament is scheduled to pick a new prime minister on Friday.
 
What to Cook This Week
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Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell.

Looking for cooking skills to master? Try these two: cooking protein simply and making an easy sauce to go with it, Emily Weinstein writes. Among her suggestions for dinner this week are grilled steak with sauce rof, oven barbecue chicken and cashew celery.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were committed, decommit and decommitted.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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July 31, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the U.S.-Mexico relationship, a 2024 poll and mocktails.

 
 
 
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Members of the Texas Army National Guard.Todd Heisler/The New York Times

‘You do it or we do it’

Mexico has been one of America’s closest allies for years under both Democratic and Republican administrations, even Donald Trump’s.

That may be changing. Republican officials and voters have not only expressed criticisms of Mexico but also outright hostility against America’s southern neighbor.

The starkest example involves repeated calls by Republican presidential candidates to bomb Mexico or unilaterally send troops there to stop the illegal drug trade, which would be an act of war.

Trump led the way: He asked defense officials about striking Mexico with missiles while he was president, and during the 2024 presidential campaign he has supported military action. Ron DeSantis has called for using deadly force and a naval blockade of Mexican ports to stop drug traffickers. More moderate candidates, like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, have also backed using the military against drug cartels in Mexico.

“You know what you tell the Mexican president? ‘Either you do it or we do it,’” Haley said in March. “But we are not going to let all of this lawlessness continue to happen.”

These calls haven’t become a major focus of national attention because the Republican campaign remains in its early stages. But as the campaign picks up — including at the first debate, on Aug. 23 — you will probably hear more about this issue.

Taking cues from Trump’s 2016 campaign playbook and presidency, other Republicans have already translated his disparagement of Mexicans and other Latinos into policy, particularly on immigration. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott put razor wire, floating barriers and state troopers along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter people from coming into the country illegally. The federal government sued Texas last week to try to stop him.

What is going on? The posture represents a genuine shift within Republican politics. For most of the past few decades, Republicans have backed closer ties with Mexico. (The 1990s free trade deal, NAFTA, had bipartisan support.) And in the first days of Trump’s presidency, most Republican voters said in polls that Mexico was an ally of the U.S. Now, Republican voters are evenly divided on whether Mexico is an ally or an enemy, as this chart shows:

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: YouGov | By The New York Times

Extreme approach

Republicans often portray the idea of fully militarizing the war on drugs as an evolution in policy: treating Mexican cartels like ISIS or other terrorist groups. But unilaterally deploying the military to Mexico would be a significant escalation of U.S. policy.

I spoke to half a dozen drug policy and counterterrorism experts across the political spectrum. All of them criticized the approach as extreme, ineffective and self-destructive. “In 35 years, this takes the prize as the stupidest idea I have ever heard,” said Jonathan Caulkins at Carnegie Mellon University.

In addition to the likely humanitarian toll and the hit to U.S. standing in the world, any incursion into Mexico could worsen the same problems Republicans are trying to address. To the extent that the U.S. has succeeded in stemming illegal immigration and drugs in recent years, it has relied on Mexico’s close cooperation. Both Trump and President Biden have worked with Mexican officials to stop South and Central Americans from traveling to the U.S. through Mexico.

Mexico would almost certainly stop collaborating if the U.S. sent troops or let missiles fly. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has said that talk of sending the U.S. military south of the border is “irresponsible” and “an offense to the people of Mexico, a lack of respect for our sovereignty.”

Representatives of the Trump, DeSantis and Haley campaigns did not respond to questions about using the military against Mexican cartels. A spokeswoman for Scott restated his support for the idea, but didn’t respond to questions about whether he would ask for Mexico’s approval before deploying the military there.

Political talk

Some of the language can be pinned on the presidential primaries, when politicians tend to take more extreme stances on all sorts of issues before moderating themselves in the general election. That could be happening here.

Politicians are also desperate to look as if they are doing something about illegal immigration and the drug overdose crisis, often with deceptive promises of quick fixes and decisive action. But enduring solutions to these problems have eluded the U.S. for years.

 

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Times 2024 Poll
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Note: Candidates who received below 1 percent are not shown. Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of the likely electorate in the Republican primary, conducted July 23-27, 2023.By Ashley Wu
  • Trump is dominating the field for the Republican nomination, the first Times/Siena College poll of the 2024 campaign shows.
  • DeSantis is 37 percentage points behind. He would still lose even if every other Trump challenger disappeared, the poll found.
  • Despite his indictments, Trump’s loyal base of supporters is large enough to make him extremely hard to defeat, Nate Cohn writes.
 
International
 
Climate
  • Extreme heat has cost the U.S. economy billions in lost productivity as it has made it harder for people like delivery drivers to do their jobs.
  • Temperatures have been at least 110 degrees in Phoenix for 31 straight days. Patients with heat stroke and asphalt burns are filling hospitals.
  • German shepherds on their way to police training in Indiana died in the heat after an air-conditioning unit failed.
 
War in Ukraine
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The body of a Russian soldier outside a village in Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Anorexia runs in families, but passing it to one’s child is far from inevitable, Jillian Weinberger writes.

New Mexicans are still living with the fallout from the first atomic test, Tina Cordova writes.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Hunter Biden.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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A collection of Superman memorabilia.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Lucrative collectors: When they die, who gets the comic books?

A husband with a Parisian pied-à-terre: Together this couple fixed it up.

Metropolitan Diary: Hung over and waiting for the No. 1 train.

Lives Lived: Hugh Carter Jr. helped run his cousin Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. As an aide, he helped trim the White House budget and was called “Cousin Cheap.” He died at 80.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Australia, a co-host, faces Canada with its fate on the line.

Colombia beat Germany with stunning goals, including a header in stoppage time.

The American superstar Megan Rapinoe has been sitting on the bench while her team plays, and she’s not happy about it.

 

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OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Losing a star: The Mets agreed to trade Max Scherzer to the Rangers.

Going to the Dodgers? Justin Verlander could be heading west before tomorrow’s trade deadline.

Firing back: Aaron Rodgers slammed the Denver head coach Sean Payton, saying his comments about the Jets offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett were “out of line.”

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Nonalcoholic alternatives. Photograph by Anthony Cotsifas

Hold the shot, please: The word mocktail once sounded like a joke, underscoring the mild embarrassment that came with ordering a virgin mojito. But as more people cut back on alcohol, mocktails have become a regular, and often inventive, feature of bar menus.

Distillers have developed new nonalcoholic spirits to meet the demand. This guide highlights the best for making zero-proof cocktails at home.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Julia Gartland for The New York Times

Shop for early back-to-school deals.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was payphone.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

P.S. Simon Romero is joining The Times’s Mexico City bureau to cover migration, climate change and more.

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Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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August 1, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering a new Biden-Trump poll, a drone in Moscow and the U.S. women’s soccer team.

 
 
 
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
President Biden and Donald Trump.Desiree Rios for The New York Times; Saul Martinez for The New York Times

The decisive NOTA vote

The first Times poll of the 2024 election cycle shows a dead heat between President Biden and Donald Trump. If those two men are the presidential nominees next year, 43 percent of registered voters say they will support Biden, and 43 percent say they will back Trump.

But 43 plus 43 obviously does not equal 100. There are also 14 percent of registered voters who declined to choose either candidate. Some of them said that they would not vote next year. Others said they would support a third-party candidate. Still others declined to answer the poll question.

You can think of this 14 percent as the Neither of the Above voters, at least for now. In the end, a significant number of them probably will vote for Biden or Trump and go a long way toward determining who occupies the White House in 2025.

In today’s newsletter, I will profile this Neither of the Above — or NOTA — group, with help from charts by my colleague Ashley Wu.

Unhappy with Trump

Perhaps the most notable characteristic of NOTA voters is that they are highly critical of Trump. By definition, they are also unenthusiastic about Biden. But they are considerably less happy with Trump:

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
New York Times/Siena Poll, July 23-27

NOTA voters are more likely than all registered voters to say they believe Trump “has committed serious federal crimes” and more likely to say his behavior after the 2020 election “threatened American democracy.” On both questions, a majority of all registered voters give these anti-Trump answers, but an even larger majority of NOTA voters do:

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: New York Times/Siena Poll, July 23-27

These patterns are a reminder that most voters have never supported Trump. He won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote, and he generally became less popular during his presidency. His unpopularity helped Democrats retake control of the House in 2018, oust him from the presidency in 2020 and fare much better than expected in the 2022 midterms.

Both turnout and persuasion have played important roles. Trump and his closest allies in the Republican Party have alienated swing voters, especially in the suburbs. Trump has also helped inspire a continuing surge of turnout among Democratic-leaning young voters in swing states.

Most NOTA voters are part of the nation’s anti-Trump majority. More of them identify as Democrats than Republicans, and more voted for Biden in 2020 than for Trump. “Clearly it’s a better group for Biden than Trump,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, told me. “It’s relatively young and diverse.”

NOTA voters are disproportionately Catholic and disproportionately nonreligious. Many are between ages 30 and 44. About one in five is Hispanic. More broadly, the poll suggests that Hispanic voters — who still lean Democratic but have shifted right in the past several years — will be a crucial swing group in 2024: Biden leads Trump just 41 percent to 38 percent among Hispanic registered voters, with the rest undecided.

In several other demographic categories — gender, income, education — NOTA voters look similar to the rest of the country.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: New York Times/Siena Poll, July 23-27 | Some respondents declined to answer these questions.

NOTA isn’t liberal

The anti-Trump quality of the undecided vote is one reason that Nate said he considered the race to lean toward Biden despite the headline 43-to-43 tie. But Nate also emphasized that Biden could still lose, including to Trump.

How? For one thing, many in the NOTA crowd mean it when they say that they don’t plan to vote next year. Only 62 percent of the group did so in 2020, according to election records that The Times and Siena College paired with the poll results.

Nate did a calculation in which he assumed that these voters would turn out at a similar rate next year and then assigned them to either Biden or Trump based on their reported vote in the 2022 midterms. In that scenario, Biden would receive 49 percent of the popular vote while Trump would receive 47 percent. The remaining 4 percent would support third-party candidates.

Biden’s margin in this scenario is clearly small and vulnerable. An economic downturn could narrow it further, as could a late campaign stumble by Biden. Or a third-party candidate — like a No Labels nominee or Cornel West, the scholar and activist who hopes to be the Green Party nominee — could steal more votes from Biden.

I also want to point out that most NOTA voters are not liberal. Many more identify as either moderate or conservative. It’s easy to imagine how some of them might sour on a Democratic president.

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Source: New York Times/Siena Poll, July 23-27

Even if Biden does win the national popular vote by two percentage points, he will not be assured of re-election, of course. He could lose the Electoral College if undecided voters in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin drift toward Trump while Biden wins landslides on the coasts. That’s how Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016.

The bottom line

Biden enters a potential rematch with Trump as a modest favorite. He effectively has a small lead today, and Trump’s growing list of indictments may aggravate his problems with swing voters. Yet the race is extremely close. Anybody who assumes that the 2024 outcome is sure to repeat the 2020 outcome — even in a rematch campaign — is making a mistake.

More on the election

  • In a shift from last year, Biden’s approval rating is inching upward and his party has broadly accepted him as its nominee, the poll found.
  • More Republicans think Trump has committed “serious federal crimes.” But the charges against him seem to have cost him few, if any, votes going into 2024.
  • The Biden campaign may need to work on mobilizing a winning coalition instead of relying on anti-Trump sentiment alone, Nate Cohn writes.
  • A political action committee paying Trump’s legal fees is nearly broke.
 

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Cutting pieces of coral.Jason Gulley for The New York Times
 
Other Big Stories
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Paul Reubens, in character as Pee-wee Herman, in 2010.Charles Sykes/Associated Press
 
Opinions

Flights and cruises are packed because Americans, after a difficult few years, long to escape, Ezra Dyer says.

Here is a column by Michelle Goldberg on young Republicans.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Top brass, top gun: Some executives think of work as warfare. So they’re getting in the cockpit.

Fines for fentanyl: Oregon has decriminalized some drugs. Is that leading to more overdoses?

Not just gatherers: Anthropologists are finding evidence of women hunting throughout history.

Lives Lived: SunRay Kelley was a maverick builder of handmade castles, yurts, temples, spirit lodges and more. He died at 71.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

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Diana Gomes of Portugal tackling Sophia Smith of the U.S.Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.S. advanced to the round of 16 after a draw with Portugal.

As the sport has become more competitive for women, some players are asking: How much room is there in elite soccer for mothers?

 

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OTHER SPORTS NEWS

Deshaun Watson fallout: Under new N.F.L. rules, the league can impose harsher penalties for sexual misconduct.

Ultimate control: The Mets could trade Justin Verlander today, but he’ll determine his destination.

TV shake-up: Mark Jackson is out at ESPN as the network reorganizes its N.B.A. broadcasting team.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Late summer reads: Two new novels have excited our critics. In Ann Patchett’s “Tom Lake,” three adult sisters spend the pandemic at the family cherry orchard, learning about their mother’s long-ago relationship with a famous actor. And in “Whalefall,” by Daniel Kraus, a scuba diver is swallowed by a whale and must escape before his oxygen runs out. The Times review calls it a “crazily enjoyable, beat-the-clock adventure story.”

More on culture

  • Angus Cloud, a star of HBO’s “Euphoria,” died at 25.
  • Italy is loving “Mare Fuori,” a show about young inmates who fight and make out.
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Armando Rafael for The New York Times

Grate tomato into your pasta.

Carry on these travel backpacks.

Roll on this workout ball (and try our other favorite gear).

Guess the killer in these true crime shows.

 

GAMES

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was carrying.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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August 2, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering Trump’s latest indictment, a Ukrainian port and Lizzo.

 
 
 
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Donald TrumpHaiyun Jiang for The New York Times

‘Fueled by lies’

The two previous indictments of Donald Trump focused on his personal conduct, one involving a sex scandal and the other his handling of classified documents. Yesterday’s indictment is different. It involves arguably the most central issue in a democracy: an attempt to subvert an American election.

“At the core of the United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed” by the founders, our colleague Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, wrote. “Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ his government’s power to overturn the will of the voters without consequence?”

In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain the details of the indictment and focus on the new information that prosecutors released yesterday.

The charges

The new indictment lays out a scheme that, by now, is widely known: Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election results were rigged and tried to rally federal officials, state lawmakers and his supporters, including rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn his loss to President Biden.

The indictment accuses Trump of four crimes: conspiracy to violate Americans’ right to vote, conspiracy to defraud the government, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to do so. Unlike the previous indictments, the charges stem primarily from actions Trump took while he was president.

“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the Justice Department investigation in the case, said yesterday. “It was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

In a statement, Trump called the new charges “election interference” and compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

What’s new

Much of the indictment builds on the work of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. But the indictment also presents some new information. Examples include:

  • Trump tried repeatedly to persuade Mike Pence that the vice president had the power to overturn the election results in Congress. When Pence said that he did not believe he had that authority, Trump allegedly responded, “You’re too honest.”
  • The indictment said that Trump had six co-conspirators, but it did not name them. The Times reported several likely candidates, including the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Prosecutors could charge co-conspirators in the coming weeks.
  • A deputy White House counsel warned one alleged co-conspirator, believed to be Clark, that if Trump tried to stay in office, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” That co-conspirator’s response seemed to suggest that Trump could use his power as commander in chief to crush the protests: “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
  • The top charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

What’s next

Trump will be arraigned in federal court in Washington in the coming days and will likely be asked to enter a plea to the charges.

The federal judicial system uses a random system for assigning cases to judges, and Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee based in Washington, will oversee this case. She has overseen trials of the Jan. 6 rioters, issuing harsh sentences against them. Previously, she also rejected Trump’s attempt to avoid disclosing documents to the House’s Jan. 6 committee, writing, “Presidents are not kings.” (Read more about Chutkan in The Washington Post.)

The timing of a trial remains uncertain, but it could be next year, when Trump is also set to face trials for his handling of classified documents and his attempt to hide a sexual encounter. Separately, a Georgia prosecutor is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results there and may soon file charges.

Will these cases hurt Trump’s 2024 campaign? So far, they have not. If anything, Republican primary voters have rallied to support him. Still, polls suggest that many swing voters believe Trump has committed crimes, and the spectacle of multiple trials could damage his general election campaign. For now, he and Biden are running very close to one another in the polls.

“Trump likes to project bravado, but he is extremely angry and unsettled about this indictment, according to people who have spoken with him,” our colleague Maggie Haberman, who covers Trump, wrote. “This particular indictment touches a lot of people in his orbit in a way the previous two do not.”

More on Trump

 

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The port of Izmail, Ukraine.Odesa Regional Military Administration
 
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  • U.S. energy rules have effectively outlawed traditional incandescent light bulbs in favor of efficient LEDs.
  • Iran announced a two-day public holiday as extreme heat strained its power grid. Temperatures have topped 120.
  • New York City has run out of room in shelters for migrants. Many are sleeping on the street.
  • The family of Henrietta Lacks — the Black woman whose cells, taken without consent, became a keystone of medical research — settled a suit against a biotech company.
 
Opinions

They were barely adults when they were sentenced to life in prison. Decades later, about two dozen inmates ask in a video: How much punishment is enough?

Here is a column by Tish Harrison Warren on the state of evangelical America.

 
 

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No matter what you’re into, it’s all in The Times. Subscribe with an introductory offer to enjoy everything we offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Beyoncé fans on their way to MetLife Stadium.Amir Hamja/The New York Times

Beyoncé Express: Fans heading to her concerts have filled public transit with chrome bikinis and manicures.

“Date-me docs”: Tired of dating apps? Some people are instead trading long self-descriptions.

Zoo conspiracy: A sun bear’s suspiciously humanlike movements set off speculation in China.

Lives Lived: Edward Sexton and his business partner, Tommy Nutter, upended staid British fashion with swaggering suits made for rock ’n’ roll icons and pop stars, including John Lennon and Harry Styles. Sexton died at 80.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Sweden will play the U.S. in the round of 16. The Athletic looks at the U.S. team’s challenges in the next stage.

South Africa also joined the knockout round with a late goal to beat Italy.

 

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OTHER SPORTS NEWS

A concession: Tiger Woods will join the PGA Tour’s board after a player rebellion over its Saudi deal.

Back to the Astros: The Mets traded Justin Verlander hours before the deadline.

Gambling problems: Iowa State’s starting quarterback is accused of engaging in a scheme to disguise his identity while making illegal sports bets.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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The Guggenheim raised its adult entrance fee to $30.Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Rising ticket prices: Running a museum is getting more expensive. The cost of air conditioning, shipping and more has risen, while attendance remains below prepandemic levels. To stay afloat, some big institutions — including the Met, the Art Institute in Chicago, and now the Guggenheim — are increasing ticket prices. Some experts worry that could worsen their problems: “When the price goes up, attendance goes down,” one noted.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Quickle cucumbers or shallots in just a few minutes.

Chop with the sharpest knives.

Strum a ukulele, even if you’re a beginner.

Explore your sexuality through audio apps.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were include and included.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German and Ian

P.S. Times coverage won three awards for its coverage of L.G.B.T.Q. issues, including threats to gay life in Russia.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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August 3, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering the Trump evidence, Niger and Gwyneth Paltrow’s home.

 
 
 
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
John Tully for The New York Times

The path not taken

It is the biggest what-if of the latest indictment of Donald Trump: What if Republican leaders in Congress had supported impeaching Trump and barring him from holding future office as punishment for his role in the Jan. 6 attack?

In the days after the attack, those leaders seemed ready to do so. Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy told colleagues that they were repulsed by Trump’s actions. Trump had egged on a Jan. 6 rally with false claims of election fraud and told the crowd to “fight like hell.” Later that day, he praised the rioters.

Soon, though, Republican leaders changed their minds. They feared that banning Trump from future office would anger their own voters. The leaders knew that Trump would be leaving the White House by Jan. 20 regardless and chose to focus on resisting the agenda of his Democratic successor, Joe Biden.

There was little question that members of Congress had the authority to ban Trump permanently from federal office. But once they chose not to do so, the legal consequences for Trump’s actions became much murkier.

This is the challenge that Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigations of Trump, has taken on this week.

Strong or weak?

Shocking as it was, Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 did not violate any laws in obvious ways.

He never directly told those at the Jan. 6 rally to attack Congress. During his speech that day, he even said he knew the protesters would behave “peacefully and patriotically.” It was part of a longstanding Trump pattern, in which — as my colleague Maggie Haberman puts it — “he is often both all over the place and yet somewhat careful not to cross certain lines.”

As for Trump’s broader effort to overturn the election result, no federal law specifically bars politicians from attempting to do so.

Without such a law, Smith has relied on a novel approach. He has charged Trump with committing criminal fraud and violating conspiracy laws that were not written to prevent the overturning of an election result.

A key part of these laws is that they revolve around a person’s intent. Intent is core to the notion of fraud: Only if somebody is knowingly trying to deceive others can he be committing a fraud. If he is spouting falsehoods that he genuinely believes, he isn’t participating in an illegal conspiracy.

That’s why this case seems likely to revolve around Trump’s state of mind. The first page of the indictment, referring to his claims of election fraud, states, “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.” By contrast, Trump’s defense lawyers are likely to argue that he truly believed he had won. By airing his honest views, the lawyers will explain, he was exercising his right to free speech, The Times’s Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman write.

Legal experts are divided over the strength of the evidence on intent that Smith has presented. Some experts consider it strong, noting that the indictment cites repeated examples of White House aides and state officials telling Trump that he lost. Other legal analysts are more dubious because there is no testimony or recording in which Trump himself acknowledges the reality of his election loss. (Of course, Smith may have additional evidence that he did not include in the indictment.)

For now, you can think of the new charges as being both more important and less solid than Trump’s previous federal indictment, which involved his refusal to return classified documents. In the latest case, he was subverting the very foundation of democracy — the peaceful transfer of power after an election. Yet it remains unclear whether he broke any specific law when he tried to do so.

The most straightforward punishment — impeachment, conviction and a ban on future office — was one that only Congress could have imposed. And congressional Republicans prevented that from happening. “Smith has brought a difficult case. But it’s a necessary case,” David French, a Times Opinion columnist, argues. “This is the trial America needs.”

In the rest of today’s newsletter, you’ll find excerpts from helpful legal commentary, collected by my colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick, as well as summaries of the latest Times coverage.

Legal analysis

Noah Feldman, in Bloomberg Opinion: “Trump was not deluded. He was aware of his defeat. His goal was to delude the rest of us.”

Kim Wehle of The Bulwark: “Beginning on page 6 of the 45-page indictment, Smith’s team knocks the state-of-mind factor out of the park, underscoring the ludicrousness of the suggestion that Trump was oblivious to what he was doing.”

Sarah Isgur and Michael Warren, The Dispatch: “This is a much less clear-cut case than the one down in Florida about the documents and obstruction. These charges are broad and vague at times.”

Editors of National Review: “Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable — and, again, impeachable — but it’s not criminal fraud, although that is what Smith has charged.”

Harry Litman, in The Los Angeles Times: “Smith could have gone for broke by charging Trump with seditious conspiracy. He chose not to — wisely in my view. The crimes he has charged will be simpler to prove.”

More from The Times

 

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Politics
 
Climate
 
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Opinions

Prison music gives inmates hope and the rest of us a way to see them as people, Maurice Chammah argues.

Here are columns by Katherine Miller on Mike Pence and Jamelle Bouie on Supreme Court ethics.

 
 

All encompassing. Entertaining. Appetizing. Discerning. And sporting.

No matter what you’re into, it’s all in The Times. Subscribe with an introductory offer to enjoy everything we offer.

 

MORNING READS

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Members of The Roots in Chicago in 1998.Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

Fifty years of hip-hop: Listen to a love letter to the genre.

Tweet to “xeet”: After a rebrand, what do we call Twitter?

Switched at birth: They were given to families of different ethnicities. At 67, they’re discovering their roots.

Lives Lived: Lois Libien broke ground in the 1960s as a female journalist, but attracted her widest readership with household tips in books and a nationally syndicated newspaper column called “How.” She died at 87.

 

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Brazil drew with Jamaica, ending the World Cup career of Marta, the team’s superstar.

Marta elevated the players around her and asked audiences to appreciate the quality of women’s soccer, Steph Yang writes.

 

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OTHER SPORTS NEWS

More expansion: The Big Ten is discussing adding even more teams, including Oregon and Washington.

M.L.S. dominance: Lionel Messi scored two goals in Inter Miami’s win last night. That makes five in just three games.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

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Objects that have recently landed onstage.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photos via Getty Images

What gets thrown at concerts: An audience member struck Bebe Rexha in the head with a cellphone, giving her a black eye, because he thought it “would be funny.” A woman in Las Vegas splashed Cardi B with a drink. At a Pink concert in London, the ashes of an audience member’s mother came flying onto the stage. “This recent cluster of incidents feels like a game of stuntlike one-upmanship, designed to go viral,” Jon Caramanica writes.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Julia Gartland for The New York Times

Slow-cook honey chipotle chicken for tacos.

Bring a portable power station camping.

Dive into an open-water workout, an alternative to your usual pool routine.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was ejectable.

 
 

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

Correction: In yesterday’s newsletter, an item on private gun sellers mistakenly linked to a 2019 article. Here is the correct article.

P.S. The Times received 16 Emmy nominations for videos including an investigation of Tucker Carlson and a feature on living with a stutter.

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Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lauren Hard

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

phkrause

By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1}
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