Members phkrause Posted October 19, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 19, 2023 October 19, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the great American investment slump — as well as world leaders in Israel, the House speaker race and Barnes & Noble. The lounge on a Pan Am Boeing 707 in 1958. Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images From A to B The next time you take a trip within the U.S., I encourage you to try a thought experiment: Imagine how long the same trip might have taken a half-century ago. Chances are, it would have taken less time than it does today. The scheduled flight time between Los Angeles and New York, for example, has become about 30 minutes longer. Aviation technology has not advanced in ways that speed the trip, and the skies have become so crowded that pilots reroute planes to avoid traffic. Nearly every other part of the trip also lasts longer than it would have a few decades ago, thanks to traffic on the roads and airport security. All told, a cross-country trip could take a few more hours today than it would have in the 1970s. Shorter trips also take more time. Auto traffic in almost every metro area has worsened, and the country has done little to improve its rail network. In 1969, Metroliner trains made two-and-a-half-hour, nonstop trips between Washington and New York. Today, there are no nonstop trains on that route, and the fastest trip, on Acela trains, takes about 20 minutes longer than the Metroliner once did. The speed at which people can get from one place to another is one of the most basic measures of a society’s sophistication. It affects economic productivity and human happiness; academic research has found that commuting makes people more unhappy than almost any other daily activity. Yet in one area of U.S. travel after another, progress has largely stopped over the past half-century. This lack of recent progress is not a result of any physical or technological limits, either. In other parts of the world, travel has continued to accelerate. Shanghai’s airport is almost 20 miles from its city center, and the trip on a high-speed train takes less than 10 minutes. La Guardia Airport and Times Square are significantly closer together — yet good luck making the trip in less than 30 minutes. Why is it more difficult to get around the U.S.? Above all, it’s because our society has stopped investing in the future as we once did. For decades, government investment in highways, mass transit, scientific research, education and other future-oriented programs has grown more slowly than it once did — and has often failed to keep pace with economic growth. And the private sector tends to underinvest in these same areas because any individual company has a hard time making a profit from early-stage investments. Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis | By The New York Times This shortfall of investment affects far more than travel. It affects economic growth, public health and both racial and gender inequities. The long American investment slump is one of the causes of our modern malaise, with rising income inequality, declining life expectancy, and deep frustration about the economy even when it’s growing. Interstate 90 in 1972.Associated Press I explain the connection in a new Times Magazine article that goes into much more detail about the investment slump. The article also explains why there are some signs — albeit early ones — that the U.S. is rethinking its recent approach. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR World Leaders Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister, is in Israel to express support and push for a humanitarian aid route in Gaza. He is expected to visit other nations in the region. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, called for a cease-fire and said Beijing still supported the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Biden’s Visit President Biden on Air Force One.Kenny Holston/The New York Times President Biden departed Israel after meeting with victims of the Hamas attacks, including a grandmother held at gunpoint who offered food to her captors. He sympathized with Israelis’ pain, The Times’s Peter Baker wrote, but also offered a gentle warning that they not be consumed by rage. “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States,” Biden said. “While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.” Biden said he had secured a commitment from Israel to allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza through Egypt. He also announced $100 million in U.S. aid for Palestinian civilians. Hospital Explosion The details of the Gaza hospital blast — including the cause and death toll — are still unknown. See images of the aftermath. U.S. intelligence officials say their early analysis points to an armed Palestinian group, but cautioned that they were still gathering evidence. Protests continued over the explosion, and the police in Berlin arrested 174 people overnight. See videos of the demonstrations in The Wall Street Journal. MORE NEWS House Speaker Tracking votes. Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times Representative Jim Jordan again fell short of becoming House speaker, losing even more Republicans on a second vote. These graphics from The Washington Post show who voted against him. Some members fear the infighting will hurt their party in 2024. Lawmakers in both parties are considering giving the interim speaker, Representative Patrick McHenry, the power to run the House until a speaker is chosen. More on Politics A Trump lawyer charged in the Georgia election case argues that he was just offering legal advice. His emails may undercut that defense. The first deportation flight to Venezuela in years arrived in Caracas after the U.S. lifted a suspension on returning migrants home. War in Ukraine The Ukrainian economy is expected to grow this year, driven by domestic spending and foreign aid. Ukraine’s use of American-made missiles could undermine Russian operations, analysts say. Vladimir Putin has downplayed the weapons’ impact. International China is trying to steal technology from Silicon Valley, the U.S. and other Western countries’ intelligence agencies warned. Liberia’s closest election in two decades is heading to a runoff after neither the president nor his main opponent secured a majority. The front-runner in Argentina’s presidential election owns five genetic copies of his former dog. Many voters are fascinated by them. Violence Against Women A woman in New York is in critical condition after a man pushed her into a subway train in what the police called a random attack. A man confessed to killing Natalee Holloway, an American teenager, in Aruba after she rejected his advances. Other Big Stories California has banned four common food additives that have been linked cancer and reproductive issues. The law will go into effect in 2027. Researchers say guardrails meant to prevent chatbots from generating harmful material aren’t as strong as some companies say. Opinions McHenry, the temporary speaker, has an opportunity to consolidate power and get the House back to business, Brendan Buck argues. Here are columns by Charles Blow on young Americans’ sympathy for Palestinians, Ross Douthat on Israel and the lessons of 9/11 and Gail Collins on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all by subscribing today. MORNING READS A Barnes & Noble in Manhattan.Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times Making a comeback: Barnes & Noble is redesigning its stores to attract more customers. Tall, hairy tale: A couple claims to have spotted Bigfoot in Colorado. See the photo and judge for yourself. Social Qs: “Should we keep paying for our ungrateful son to join us on family vacations?” Snooze you … win? A new study suggests smashing that alarm button may not be all that bad. Lives Lived: Burt Young was best known for playing Paulie in the “Rocky” movies. But his bulldog build and doleful countenance also appeared in harrowing dramas and comedies. He died at 83. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT SPORTS The Las Vegas Aces.Sarah Stier/Getty Images W.N.B.A.: The Las Vegas Aces won their second straight championship after a 70-69 win over the New York Liberty. N.B.A.: James Harden of the Philadelphia 76ers continues to miss team events as trade talks with the Clippers have stalled. M.L.B. playoffs: The Houston Astros beat the Texas Rangers, 8-5, cutting the Rangers’ A.L.C.S edge to 2-1. ARTS AND IDEAS A scene from “All the Light We Cannot See.”Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix, via Associated Press Breaking barriers: “All the Light We Cannot See,” a Pulitzer-winning novel, tells the story of an amateur radio enthusiast named Marie-Laure who lives in occupied France during World War II and is blind. On a new Netflix series based on the book, the two actors who play Marie-Laure are blind themselves — a first for a major TV series. The Times visited the film set, in Budapest, to see how the production changed to accommodate the actors. More on culture The British Museum revealed a plan to stop thefts, months after it fired a curator suspected of stealing artifacts. The late night hosts joked about Biden’s trip to Israel. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Roast broccoli, then top with lemon juice. Don’t rake leaves. They’re home to an entire ecosystem. Clean your hairbrush. Here’s how to do it. Buy a winter coat that keeps your dog dry and warm. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was hawthorn. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 21, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 21, 2023 October 20, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the evidence related to the Gaza hospital explosion — and we’re also covering Jim Jordan, gun safes and Britney Spears. An aerial view after the hospital explosion.Shadi Al-Tabatibi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Trudeau problem The explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday evening — the source of which remains unclear — hasn’t been the only international mystery in recent weeks. Last month, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, suggested that Indian government agents had helped murder a Canadian citizen near Vancouver in a political attack. The course that story took offers some insights into how the world might get some clarity about the Gaza explosion. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain — and update you on the latest news from Israel and Gaza. Canada’s failure On Sept. 18, Trudeau delivered a speech from the floor of the Canadian Parliament in which he talked about “credible allegations of a potential link” between India’s government and the shooting of a Sikh nationalist. Trudeau cited Canadian intelligence agencies. But he offered no evidence that outsiders could evaluate on their own — no photographs, no video, no financial transactions, no narrative of the events leading up to the shooting. Indian government officials strongly denied the allegation, and almost everybody else was left uncertain about what had happened. Other governments — including Canadian allies like the U.S. — did not publicly support Canada or criticize India. “They’re not coming out as unequivocally as Canada would have hoped,” as my colleague Mujib Mashal, who covers South Asia, said. The aftermath of the Gaza explosion has been different in some important ways. Intelligence agencies released information much more quickly than usual, hoping to avoid what you might call the Trudeau problem. But they have not avoided it — because they did not release the kind of information, like satellite images or videos, likely to clear up confusion and sway undecided people who are open to empirical evidence. There are reasons that officials are hesitant to do so. Releasing information can expose its source, like a spy or a hidden surveillance camera. Yet the stakes seem high enough that the side that’s telling the truth could gain a huge diplomatic advantage through transparency. The basics After the explosion happened, Palestinian officials quickly said that an Israeli airstrike was the cause. Some media organizations — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CNN and BBC — prominently reported the claim without caveats. But Israeli officials soon told a very different story. The explosion was the result of a malfunctioned rocket — intended for Israel — launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group tied to Hamas, the Israelis said. U.S. officials have since said that their own intelligence supports the Israeli version of events. Below are the arguments that each side has made so far. The Palestinian case Gaza officials and their supporters have three main arguments, all circumstantial. The first claim is that Israel previously targeted the same hospital. It was hit by rocket fire last week, independent observers agree (although the source remains unclear), and hospital managers said they had later received texts and calls urging them to evacuate. Palestinian officials say the warnings were specific to the hospital compound; Israeli officials say they were general warnings for northern Gaza. The second argument is that Israel has previously dissembled about civilian casualties. Last year, after Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, was killed in the West Bank, Israeli officials said that a Palestinian gunman might have shot her. A later New York Times investigation suggested that the bullet had come from an elite Israeli military unit. The third argument is that Israelis changed their story of the hospital bombing in the hours after it. For example, Israel’s official government Twitter account posted a video on Tuesday purporting to show a Palestinian rocket barrage near the hospital. In truth, the video’s time stamp was too late to be showing the source of the hospital explosion, and Israel removed the video from the tweet. The Israeli case Israel and its supporters have pointed out that Hamas and its allies have their own history of dissembling about violence, including about rockets that killed Palestinians last year, as The Associated Press has explained. But the Israeli case also includes more current and detailed arguments than the Palestinian case does. First, U.S. officials say that infrared data, including from satellites, shows the launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza on Tuesday evening. Open-source video — recorded by journalists and others — also shows that the launch did not come from the direction of Israeli military positions, the officials say. (In an Oval Office address last night, President Biden said that the hospital attack “was not done by the Israelis.”) Second, the Israeli military argues that its missiles cause large craters when they land, and photos of the area show no such crater. As a U.S. intelligence report wrote, “There was no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters.” Third, Israeli military officials released a recording that they said contained a conversation in Arabic between two Hamas members. One says that he has heard the missile “belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” “It’s from us?” the other asks. “It looks like it,” the first replies. He then adds that shrapnel appears to be “local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel.” At the site of the hospital.Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Bottom line None of this evidence is definitive. Even U.S. officials, as my colleague Julian Barnes wrote yesterday, say that there is “significantly more work to be done to determine what precisely happened.” Still, it seems likely that Israeli or Palestinian officials (or their allies) have stronger evidence — like satellite images, which government have released in other circumstances — than they have offered so far. Until they release it, much of the world will remain confused, and few people seem likely to change their initial opinions. More on the war In an Oval Office address, Biden asked Congress to approve additional military aid for Israel and Ukraine, and called on Americans to reject antisemitism and Islamophobia. Biden’s deep involvement in both wars shows his conviction that, in times of chaos, the U.S. is still the only country that can mold global events, David Sanger writes. Diplomats have been pushing for humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, but they are pessimistic it will happen today. Trucks with food and medicine are waiting at the border. Without power, Palestinians have been relying on a hospital’s backup generator to charge their phones and medical devices. See images from inside Gaza. A State Department official resigned in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to send weapons to Israel. The Senate voted unanimously to declare U.S. support for Israel. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Congress Representative Jim JordanKenny Holston/The New York Times Representative Jim Jordan will continue his bid to become House speaker. He rejected a plan to empower the temporary speaker. His reversal followed a tense House Republican meeting. Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, yelled at Matt Gaetz, who led the push to oust him. More on Politics Sidney Powell, a lawyer who aided Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors in Georgia and will cooperate with prosecutors. Laphonza Butler, the California Democrat who replaced Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, said she won’t run for the seat next year. The Army charged an American soldier who crossed into North Korea with desertion. Mike Pence’s campaign is low on cash and more than $600,000 in debt. “Prima donna,” “lap dog,” “scary”: A coming biography of Mitt Romney reveals his private assessments of fellow Republicans. International Canada withdrew two-thirds of its diplomats based in India after the country said it would revoke their diplomatic immunity. The police in Haiti arrested a former government official in the investigation into President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination. China has probably added 100 nuclear warheads to its arsenal since last year, the Pentagon said. Other Big Stories The police arrested a man accused of shoving a woman into a moving subway in Manhattan and breaking a man’s jaw minutes before. The U.S. government recalled more than 60,000 gun safes after a 12-year-old reportedly died after obtaining a firearm. U.S. forecasters said they expect El Niño to bring a warmer winter in the North and a wetter one across the South. Opinions A bill to protect children in psychiatric institutions is making its way through Congress. Without enforcement measures, it will only legitimize abuse, Maia Szalavitz writes. Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg on the Gaza hospital explosion. Gain unlimited access to The Times — with just one subscription. Independent reporting. Recipes. Games. Product reviews. Personalized sports journalism. Enjoy it all by subscribing today. MORNING READS Mushrooms are having a moment.Ye Fan for The New York Times Fungus festival: Mycophiles gathered to drink mushroom ale and sniff soil-scented perfume. I❤️NY: A logo helped repair New York City’s public image. Can a new tourism campaign do the same for San Francisco? Modern Love: She saw in his search history he wanted to break up. Lives Lived: The publisher Stephen Rubin helped make John Grisham and Dan Brown famous and was the commercial mastermind behind Michael Wolff’s chronicle of the Trump White House, “Fire and Fury.” Rubin died at 81. SPORTS M.L.B.: The Astros trounced the Rangers for a second straight night to even their series 2-2. The Diamondbacks beat the Phillies on a walk-off single to narrow Philadelphia’s series lead to 2-1. College football: The NCAA is investigating Michigan for allegedly stealing opponents’ signals. N.F.L.: The Jacksonville Jaguars won on the road in New Orleans, 31-24. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Britney SpearsValerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A memoir: After 13 years in a strict conservatorship overseen by her father, Britney Spears is free to speak out. She’s doing so in a memoir titled, “The Woman in Me.” The book has already made news for revealing that Spears had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake, but it also covers her relationship with her parents and with fame. It comes during a “collective reckoning” with how the public has treated her, Leah Greenblatt writes in The Times, “an acknowledgment of the almost gladiator-like glee with which celebrities, particularly female ones, were ritually dismantled and assailed.” More on culture The Van Gogh Museum stopped giving out Pokémon cards inspired by the Dutch artist after a frenzy at the gift shop. Late night hosts joked about Trump’s former lawyer. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Add peanuts to this herby sweet potato soup. Buy these gifts for your toddler. Play scary video games for Halloween. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was ingenuity. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 22, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 22, 2023 October 21, 2023 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Very short, slow runs can lead to better health. But that doesn’t lessen the timeless allure of being a “real runner.” María Jesús Contreras Running for our lives Why run? I ask myself this question as I lace up my shoes, as I confront an approaching hill, as I coax one more lap out of my aching calves. The obvious answer is that we run to be healthy, to improve our cardiovascular systems and our moods, to become fitter and stronger. But sometimes it feels like the real reason that I run is to get better at running. I run so that I can run more. That’s why it knocked me for a loop when I read about recent studies showing that you don’t have to run very much, or very fast, in order to get major health benefits. “Running, even 5 to 10 min/day and at slow speeds <6 miles/h, is associated with markedly reduced risks of death from all causes and cardiovascular disease,” one study, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, concluded. I shouldn’t be surprised at this. In August, a study found that walking fairly short distances was associated with reduced mortality risk. We’ve been talking for a long time about six-minute workouts and 11-minute workouts and how to do the shortest workout humanly possible and still reap benefits. But running in particular seems intricately linked to questions of endurance, of grit and commitment and even moral rectitude. “Running is more than a sport or a form of exercise, a passion or a pastime. It’s about identity,” one runner declared in an essay in Runner’s World, a sentiment expressed in nearly each of the one million essays I read while mulling this topic. I run pretty regularly, but it’s certainly not central to my identity. This isn’t, I hasten to add, for lack of trying. I started running because I wanted to reclaim the practice from my elementary school days, when the Presidential Fitness Test — and its crowning glory, the mile run — was accepted as a meaningful measure of a child’s worth. I kept running because I wanted to access the enlightenment that runners seem to achieve, to cultivate a low-tech solo activity that would improve every aspect of my being and, perhaps, entitle me to some of the smugness so many runners radiate. The necessity of running faster and longer has always seemed a given if one wanted to assume all of the activity’s attendant advantages. After learning of the virtues of the short run, I set out this week to run short and slow. It felt silly to kit up in “performance” attire for a performance that was unlikely to elicit a sweat. I trotted around the park for a cool 20 minutes, my gait so languid that I nearly tripped over a root. I progressed so slowly that I was able to make prolonged eye contact with a woman sitting on a bench holding a baby. “Why are you running at this undistinguished pace?” her gaze seemed to ask. “Why can’t she see that I’m effectively reducing my mortality risk?” I asked myself, inanely. I didn’t feel particularly accomplished after my slog (a slow jog). I did, however, see how meaningful these studies’ findings could be for those who might be avoiding all running because they’re not able to sustain it for long periods. Beginner running programs like Couch to 5K and None to Run assume a 5K, or running for 25 minutes, are sensible, achievable goals. But a Couch to 5 Minutes program would be even more achievable, a salutary way point, or even a goal unto itself. And for those who already run regularly, who might still berate themselves for not being fast enough or strong enough or committed enough, these studies’ conclusions could lessen some of that psychic freight. For more Carry your groceries, and take the stairs: Even two-minute exercise bursts can have benefits. How painful should your workout be? “That he is not made for the workaday world, that his essential nature and the law of his being are different from the ordinary and usual is difficult for everyone, including the runner, to comprehend.” From 1976, “Why a Runner Runs: He Must.” Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE Britney Spears in 2000.Hulton Archive, via Getty Images In her new memoir, “The Woman in Me,” scheduled for release on Tuesday, Britney Spears shares plenty about life in the spotlight. It’s nearly impossible to emerge from it without feeling outrage on her behalf, our critic writes. Here’s what the memoir reveals about her rise to fame, her past relationships and the conservatorship that controlled her life for over a decade. A Times writer seeking a dose of nostalgia wanted to rewatch the 2002 movie “Crossroads,” the first feature film Spears starred in. Her challenge: How does one watch a DVD nowadays? Ann Philbin will step down as director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles next year. Over 25 years, she transformed it into a destination for contemporary art. The Herbie Hancock Competition, a prestigious showcase for young jazz musicians, crowned Jahari Stampley, an electrifying new talent from Chicago. The actress Suzanne Somers died this week at 76. She was an influencer long before that term was coined, pushing her fans toward supplements, exercise fads and sexual wellness. The brain-twisting architecture of Joshua Ramos is finally lifting off, with groundbreaking new buildings in New York City and Providence, R.I. It’s a big weekend for video games. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, out now on PlayStation 5, is “easily the most fun superhero game ever made,” The Washington Post writes. And Nintendo has released Super Mario Bros. Wonder for its Switch system. NPR calls it “a pristine extravaganza designed to appeal to nostalgic players and newcomers.” THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War Trucks crossing into Gaza on Saturday.Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images Trucks carrying food, water and medicine entered the besieged Gaza Strip from Egypt. Hamas released two American hostages — a mother and teenage daughter — who were among the 200 people abducted during the Oct. 7 attack. Ten Americans are still missing, the U.S. said. Biden asked Congress to pass $105 billion in aid, mostly for Ukraine and Israel, plus humanitarian assistance for Gaza. U.S. officials have been working behind the scenes to dissuade Israel’s leaders from attacking Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon. Other Big Stories After Representative Jim Jordan lost a third vote for House speaker, Republicans dropped him as their nominee. They plan to pick a new nominee next week. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer accused of helping Donald Trump try to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, pleaded guilty to a felony charge and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. A New York judge fined Trump $5,000 for breaking a gag order in his civil fraud trial and threatened to jail him for future infractions. CULTURE CALENDAR 🎬 “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (Friday): Based on a popular indie horror video game, this movie, which will be released simultaneously in theaters and on Peacock, arrives with a lot of hype among younger viewers. (Gameplay videos posted on YouTube have amassed millions of views.) The plot follows Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), who begins working as a nighttime security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a restaurant reminiscent of Chuck E. Cheese. The complication? The establishment is home to homicidal animatronic animals. 📺 “Fellow Travelers” (Friday): Another adaptation out next week is this Showtime limited series based on a 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon. The show charts a four-decade romance between two men, Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey). They first meet in 1950s Washington as political staffers during the McCarthy era’s vilification of homosexuality. The series illustrates “how basic human needs can be undone by political expediency,” Noel Murray wrote for The Times. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK David Malosh for The New York Times. By Melissa Clark Twice-Baked Potatoes Swathed in sour cream and Cheddar cheese, Ali Slagle’s twice-baked potatoes are a classic, like eating cheesy mashed potatoes spooned into a salty, crisp skin. Perfect as it is, her recipe is also easy to tweak to your liking. Add bacon, scallions, other cheeses or spices like cumin to the potatoes to round them out. Or top with a scoop of chili or roasted vegetables to make them more of a meal. You can even make these vegan by skipping the dairy and mashing the potato with olive oil, black pepper and a dash of nutritional yeast. Twice-baked potatoes is the kind of dish everyone can get behind. For a limited time, you can try our recipes for free by downloading the New York Times Cooking app. Apple iOS users can download the app here, while Android users can use this link. REAL ESTATE Kyle Lux/Prspctv Media What you get for $2 million: An 1867 house in Doylestown, Pa.; an Edwardian home in Livingston, Mont.; and a Tudor Revival house in San Francisco. The hunt: An American expatriate in London bought a Manhattan home for less than $400,000 — sight unseen. How did she do it? Play our game. Ask Real Estate: He lives in a subdivided apartment and a roommate refuses to pay rent. Can the landlord be made to evict him? LIVING The cave in Turkey where some believe the biblical prophet Abraham was born.Nicole Tung for The New York Times Stone Age to Silk Road: Sanliurfa, in southeastern Turkey, resounds with music, food and culture — and echoes with 11,000 years of human history. Spilling over: War in the Middle East has led to demonstrations in Paris, Rome and beyond. Here’s what to expect amid the disruptions. Getting a grip: The muscles in the wrist and hands have been tied to longevity and quality of life. Here’s how you can strengthen yours. Bad for you: Four additives, found in foods like candy corn, sodas and tortillas, have been banned in California. Here’s what to know. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Alternative Halloween treats Trick-or-treating can be extra tricky for kids with food allergies. To help them enjoy a happier Halloween, make sure your candy stash has brands that are known to be free of many, or even all, major allergens. Examples include Smarties, Skittles and Dum Dums. Offer up chocolate goodies, too, which are more palatable for kids with braces and (in some cases) diabetes. It’s also a good idea to keep allergen-free treats in a separate container, and to keep the bags they come in, in case kids or parents want to verify ingredients. — Rose Lorre GAME OF THE WEEKEND Globe Life Field, the Texas Rangers’ home stadium.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Texas Rangers vs. Houston Astros, American League Championship Series: Despite the long-simmering feud between Dallas and Houston, their local baseball teams have never had much reason to care about one another. They played in different leagues until 2013, and since then they generally haven’t been competitive at the same time. The Astros have been baseball’s best team, reaching the World Series four times, while the Rangers have mostly languished. Now, finally, the two are meeting in the playoffs, giving Texas its first great baseball rivalry. “I’ve been in San Antonio, Austin and Houston, and everywhere I’m going, that’s all people are talking about right now,” Reid Ryan, the former Astros president, told The Athletic. 8 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on FS1. For more The series has been tight: Texas jumped out to a two-game lead, and Houston won the next two to draw even. Last night, the Astros won Game 5 with a thrilling ninth-inning home run. (See the highlight.) In the N.L.C.S., the Philadelphia Phillies and the Arizona Diamondbacks are tied, two games apiece, after Arizona came back to win Game 4. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was unlatch. See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 22, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 22, 2023 October 22, 2023 By Desiree Ibekwe Good morning. We’re covering Martin Scorsese’s new film — as well as the latest news from the Israel-Hamas war. Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone.Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple Original Films Adapted with care It’s not your imagination: Movies really are getting longer. The average blockbuster now runs thirty minutes more than films did in the 1990s, a recent Economist survey found. Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is in theaters this weekend. And at three-and-a-half hours long, it serves as further proof of the swelling moviegoing experience. In this case, though, fretting over the run-time might belie the thoughtfulness of Scorsese’s creation. The film, adapted from a best-selling nonfiction book by David Grann, is about the murders of members of the Osage Nation, a Native American tribe in Oklahoma, in the 1920s. The Osage became extremely wealthy after oil was discovered on their land — placing them on a receiving end of a rapacious conspiracy. The Times’s chief movie critic Manohla Dargis calls it a “heartbreaking masterpiece.” Yet the adaptation is not an exercise in strict fidelity. Both the book and movie tell a story of violence, and of the ensuing investigation by an F.B.I. agent dispatched by J. Edgar Hoover. But Scorsese and his collaborators wanted to examine more closely the heart of the story: the Osage. The shift away from straight police procedural came two years into the writing process, after a discussion with Leonardo DiCaprio. “I think Marty and I just looked at each other and we felt there was no soul to it,” DiCaprio told The Times. Or, as Scorcese put it in a Time interview: “I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.” The perspective switch prompted Scorsese to meet with the Osage nation. “I got them to understand that I wanted to do the best I could with them and the story, and that they could trust me, I hoped,” he told The New Yorker. At the center of the narrative is a love story at once warm, complicated and dark. DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a white World War I veteran, who is encouraged to marry into the Osage at the instruction of his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro). Burkhart weds an Osage woman named Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) and starts a family with her. All the while, he is involved in Hale’s plan to murder Kyle’s family members in pursuit of land rights. “With grace, sorrow and sublime filmmaking clarity,” Dargis writes, Scorsese turns a true crime story into “a requiem for the country.” Read her full review here. For more The movie showcases the luxe wedding wear and culture of the Osage tribe, once the richest community in the world, Melena Ryzik writes. The book that inspired the movie tells an “appalling” crime story. Read Dwight Garner’s review from 2017. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR Regional Conflict Israel is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza, but many are worried about a wider war after violence on the border with Lebanon and in the West Bank. President Biden has urged Israeli leaders not to strike Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon, to avoid escalation. A Palestinian Israeli paramedic was killed by Hamas. After his death, peace activists — including his cousin — have renewed calls for a solution to the conflict. The Latest Aid in Gaza.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times The 20 trucks of aid allowed into Gaza were insufficient, relief workers say. Many more are waiting at the border. Israel is continuing to strike Gaza, including in the south, to which it has told people to evacuate. See maps of the strikes. Qatar helped free two American hostages held by Hamas. Here’s how it got involved. MORE NEWS Politics The chair of the speaker of the House.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters At least 10 Republicans have announced that they will run for speaker, including House veterans and a sophomore. See who’s running. Representative George Santos swore he’d never speak to a Times reporter. Then he called her. Other Big Stories Shanta Thapaliya holds a photograph of her brother, Sandip.Uma Bista for The New York Times Poverty has driven Nepalis to join the war in Ukraine as contract soldiers, most often fighting for Russia. College football now has wages for athletes over $100,000. The payments are from controversial groups called donor collectives. Bad Bunny hosted “Saturday Night Live,” with a cameo from Mick Jagger. The show mocked the House speaker race. FROM OPINION Teachers who stay with students from grade to grade teach better, Adam Grant argues. “I know I look like a man,” Caster Semenya writes. “But I’m not.” She argues that sports officials are shutting women with high testosterone out of competition. Here are columns by Ross Douthat on China, Thomas Friedman on U.S. support for Israel, and Jamelle Bouie on House Republicans. The Sunday question: Are Trump’s gag orders the right call? The limited gag orders imposed by judges in two Trump cases forbid him from criticizing witnesses and other trial participants, which poses “an immediate danger to the targets of his rage,” Jeffrey Toobin writes for The Times. But offensive criticism, especially against government officials, “is simply not a basis for restricting speech,” Erwin Chemerinsky writes for The Los Angeles Times. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT MORNING READS Dip-dyed locs.Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times Fashion month: See the best hairstyles from fans outside the shows. Stealing secrets: Computers of the future could one day break our digital locks. Can we stop them? Serial killer tours: London visitors and residents are following Jack the Ripper’s path through the city. Vows: She had a dream about him. Lives Lived: Bobby Charlton, one of soccer’s greatest players, won the World Cup with England in 1966. He led the Manchester United team after surviving a plane crash that killed many of his teammates. He died at 86. TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times By David Marchese I spoke with hospice nurse Hadley Vlahos, whose book, “The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life’s Final Moments,” has been one of the year’s surprise best-sellers. What should more people know about death? They should know what they want. Do you want to be buried or cremated? The issue is a little deeper here: Someone gets diagnosed with a terminal illness, and we have a culture where you have to “fight.” No one wants to say: “You are going to die. What do you want us to do?” It’s against that culture of “You’re going to beat this.” “The In-Between” also has to do with the experience of being in between uncertainty and knowing. But you write, “I do believe that our loved ones come to get us when we pass.” So where is the uncertainty? The uncertainty I have is what after this life looks like. I feel like there is something beyond, but I don’t know what it is. So the conclusion I’ve come to is whatever is next cannot be explained with the language and the knowledge that we have here on Earth. Have you thought about what a good death would be for you? I want a living funeral. I don’t want people to say, “This is my favorite memory of her,” when I’m gone. There have been times when patients have shared with me that they don’t think anyone cares about them. Then I’ll go to their funeral and listen to the most beautiful eulogies. I believe they can still hear it and are aware of it, but I’m also like, Gosh, I wish that before they died, they heard you say these things. That’s what I want. Read more of the interview here. More from the magazine Why did it take so long to find the man accused of the Gilgo Beach murders? Eat fresh green beans. Read the full issue. BOOKS A stressful vacation: For one author, reality inspired a horror story. Our editors’ picks: “Collision of Power,” in which the former executive editor of The Washington Post delivers a gripping account of his tenure, and eight other books. Times best sellers: “Zilot and Other Important Rhymes,” poems with humor and quirks from Bob and Erin Odenkirk, is new on the children’s picture book list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Play Mahjong. Perch your laptop on the best stand. Buy these cat litter boxes. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Argentina’s presidential election is today. Javier Milei, a far-right “mini-Trump,” is the front-runner. Venezuela’s opposition primary elections are today. What to Cook This Week Christopher Testani for The New York Times In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Fleischaker went looking for meals inspired by pizza. Her picks include Ali Slagle’s pizza beans, a cheesy white bean-tomato bake and Sohla El-Waylly’s New York slice-inspired pizza salad. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was oxidizing. Can you put eight historical events — including the first known medical prescription, the sitcom “Cheers” and the oil riches of the Osage — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 23, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 23, 2023 October 23, 2023 By David Leonhardt and Lauren Jackson Good morning. We’re covering the latest from the Israel-Hamas war — as well as the House speaker race, A.I. and Halloween. Families of hostages.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times Waiting for an invasion For more than a week, an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza has seemed as if it might begin any day. Troops and tanks have crowded the border. Israel has ordered Gazans to evacuate south. The military has showered missiles on Hamas bunkers to weaken the group. But no ground invasion has begun. Why the apparent delay? One part of the answer is that Israel’s allies, led by President Biden, have asked for a pause, as our colleagues reported yesterday. Biden spent much of yesterday on calls with Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of several European countries. Western leaders have made clear that they support Israel invading Gaza to destroy Hamas, after an Oct. 7 terrorist attack that killed more than 1,400 people, but the leaders also hope to shape the coming invasion in four main ways: Hostages: The U.S. wants more time for hostage negotiations. On Friday, the U.S. secured the release of two American hostages, with Qatar’s help. Israel believes Hamas may release about 50 hostages who are citizens of another country as well as Israel, but a ground invasion could make hostage releases less likely. Defense: Biden is worried about a wider regional conflict, potentially including Iran. American officials want more time to prepare for attacks from Iran-backed groups, which they believe will intensify after the invasion. The State Department has ordered some government employees and family members to leave the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and the Pentagon is sending more missile defense systems to the region. Aid: U.S. officials have stressed the importance of getting more food, water and medicine to Palestinian civilians in southern Gaza. Over the weekend, two aid convoys passed into the territory. On a call yesterday, Biden and Netanyahu agreed that “there will now be continued flow” of humanitarian aid into Gaza, according to the White House. Humanitarian aid arriving in Gaza. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Strategy: Biden has advised Israel to avoid the mistakes that the U.S. made after 9/11 — when, enraged after an attack, American officials pursued a war in Afghanistan (and later one in Iraq) with flawed strategies. And urban warfare in Gaza’s streets is notoriously difficult. U.S. officials hope Israel first takes the time to weaken Hamas through airstrikes and plan a successful campaign that minimizes civilian casualties, as our colleague Steven Erlanger said. “It’s been nearly a decade since ground troops went into Gaza in even a significant way,” Steven pointed out. In the rest of today’s newsletter, we walk through the latest information on the hostages that Hamas is holding, last week’s explosion at a Gaza hospital and more. Gaza Hospital Explosion The Associated Press, CNN and The Wall Street Journal each published video analyses this weekend concluding that the cause of the hospital explosion last Tuesday was a misfired rocket from Gaza, not an Israeli airstrike. Many details are still unknown. Channel 4, a public television station in Britain, published an audio analysis that suggested the source of the explosion came from a different direction than the other analyses found. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Israel was not responsible for the explosion. The officials are still trying to determine whether the cause was an errant Palestinian rocket. Canadian and French officials also say Israel was not responsible and a Palestinian rocket likely was. Despite controlling the area where the explosion happened, Hamas has produced no evidence to support its claims. The U.S. says Gaza officials appear to have exaggerated the explosion’s toll when they announced 500 or more deaths. The true toll was “probably at the low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum,” U.S. officials say. Hostages Rut Hodaya Perez, a 17-year-old Israeli girl held by Hamas, uses a wheelchair. Her sister worries she isn’t strong enough to survive captivity. Other hostages require daily medicine. Their families don’t know if they are getting care, the BBC reports. The families of the hostages in Gaza have set up a long Shabbat dinner table in Tel Aviv with challah, wine — and more than 200 empty chairs, CNN reports. Haaretz has published a list of the hostages, with photos. Other Stories Israel intensified its airstrikes in the Gaza Strip and struck a Hezbollah position that Israeli officials said was planning to fire anti-tank missiles on a town in Israel’s north. Weapons makers are thriving because of the war, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of China. They wished to be buried in Israel, but they died on the eve of war. “I love you. I am sorry”: The war has tested the friendship of a Muslim and a Jew who lead an interfaith community in L.A. The Times published an editors’ note about its early coverage of the explosion at the Gaza hospital. See maps of the intensifying clashes on the Israel-Lebanon border. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics House Republicans plan to meet today to hear from the candidates for speaker. Some representatives worry the turmoil is hurting their party’s reputation. One of Australia’s wealthiest men is in Donald Trump’s inner circle. Prosecutors are interested in what he’s heard. International Ukrainian commandos.Nicole Tung for The New York Times Ukraine has stepped up commando raids on Crimea, aiming to weaken both its defenses and the morale of Russians living there. In Argentina’s presidential election, a far-right candidate who had led in the polls finished second. He will face the economy minister in a runoff. In Spain, people are getting water from trucks during a drought. This could be a glimpse of the country’s future. Olive oil prices have more than doubled after extreme weather in Europe. The next crop isn’t looking much better. Health Care Weight-loss drugs are making drug companies billions. But Ozempic and Wegovy likely cost less than you think they do. Oregon has pioneered a therapeutic market for psychedelic mushrooms. Read about the treatment. Anxiety about climate change is transforming the practice of psychotherapy. Other Big Stories Few poor students are getting top SAT scores, and new data highlights the inequalities in American education. Despite talk of an A.I. revolution, scientists are still trying to discover how the technology works, The Wall Street Journal reports. Opinions Gershon Baskin, who negotiated Israel’s most complex hostage deal, says this time there are very few options — and none of the old rules apply. Here’s a column by David French on Liberty University. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS At the parade.John Taggart for The New York Times Dog parade: Hundreds of dogs waved to their cheering subjects as they walked and rode on floats in New York City. Halloween: Brace yourself for a lot of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift costumes. Metropolitan Diary: A holiday invitation from a cabby. Lives Lived: Betsy Rawls won eight major golf championships, including four U.S. Women’s Opens, then became a golf executive. She died at 95. SPORTS M.L.B.: The Texas Rangers forced a Game 7 in the A.L.C.S. with a 9-2 win over the Houston Astros. They play tonight to decide who goes to the World Series. N.F.L.: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Miami Dolphins, 31-17. Sunday football: The Patriots scraped past the Bills, winning 29-25 with 12 seconds left. And after two penalties in the final minute, the Colts lost to the Browns, 38-39. F1: Max Verstappen won the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, but his latest victory came with slight controversy: Two prominent drivers were disqualified. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Photographs via Adam Bierton Professional carver: Adam Bierton is allergic to pumpkins. Still, he carves them for a living. Using a tool that resembles a carrot peeler and a lemon-juice spritzer, Bierton whittles intricate faces, some snarling or wailing with bulging eyeballs. Unlike hollowed-out jack-o’-lanterns, most of his carvings have their guts intact and are not lit from within. See photos of his demonstrations at the New York Botanical Garden. More on culture Kansas City is enjoying Taylor Swift’s spotlight, The Cut reports. Harry Houdini, Julia Child and other celebrities worked as spies, according to The Washington Post. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times. Add tahini butter to steamed sweet potato. Pick an air mattress that won’t deflate. Buy these gifts under $100. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was embanked. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Lauren Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 24, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 24, 2023 October 24, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the state of the American dream — as well as Israeli hostages, the House speaker race and climate change. A former glass factory in West Virginia being converted to a battery factory.Andrew Spear for The New York Times Grass-roots successes Many Americans have come to see the political system as rigged. They worry that grass-roots political movements are powerless to overcome entrenched interests, whether those interests are self-serving politicians, large employers or dominant social media platforms. And I understand why this cynicism exists. For most Americans, progress has slowed to a crawl in recent decades. Income and wealth inequality have both soared. The top 1 percent have pulled away from everyone else, while working-class Americans often struggle to afford the best health care and homes in good school districts. The clearest sign of our problems is this statistic: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, we have the lowest such life expectancy, worse than those of Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Japan or South Korea, as well as some less rich countries, like China or Chile. The main reason is the stagnation of life expectancy for working-class people. Source: World Bank | By The New York Times For nearly a half-century, our economy has failed to deliver on the basic promise of the American dream — that living standards meaningfully improve over time for most citizens. These themes will probably sound familiar to regular readers of this newsletter. The Morning often covers them because I believe that they shape so many parts of American life, including our polarized politics and angry national dialogue. I have just written a book — my first, called “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream” — that tries to explain how we got here. (For the New York Times Audio app, I read part of the introduction, including my own family’s story.) In today’s newsletter, I want to tell you why I nonetheless emerged from writing the book with hope about the country’s future: In short, the American political system helped create today’s problems, and only the American political system can solve them. When inequality fell For all the cynicism about politics today, it is worth remembering how often grass-roots political movements in the U.S. have managed to succeed. In the 1920s and 1930s, the country had a highly unequal economy and a Supreme Court that threw out most policies to reduce inequality. But activists — like A. Philip Randolph, a preacher’s son from Jacksonville, Fla., who took on a powerful railroad company — didn’t respond by giving up on the system as hopelessly rigged. They instead used the tools of democracy to create mass prosperity. They spent decades building a labor movement that, despite many short-term defeats, ultimately changed public opinion, won elections and remade federal policy to put workers and corporations on a more equal footing. The rise of the labor movement from the 1930s through the 1950s led to incomes rising even more rapidly for the poor and middle class than for the rich, and to the white-Black wage gap shrinking. One big lesson I took from my research was the unparalleled role of labor unions in combating inequality (a role that more Americans seem to have recognized recently). There are plenty of other examples of grass-roots movements remaking American life. The civil-rights and women’s movements of the 1960s also overcame long odds, as did the disability-rights movement of the 1970s and the marriage-equality movement of the 2000s. Other examples come from the political right. In the 1950s and 1960s, a group of conservatives, including Milton Friedman and Robert Bork, began trying to sell the country on the virtues of a low-tax, light-regulation economy. For years, they struggled to do so and were frustrated by their failures. Friedman kept a list of newspapers and magazines that did not even review his first major book. But the conservatives kept trying — and the oil crisis that began 50 years ago last week eventually helped them succeed. A politician who embraced their ideas, Ronald Reagan, won the presidency and moved the U.S. closer to the laissez-faire ideal than almost any other country. The conservatives who sold this vision promised it would lead to a new prosperity for all. They were wrong about that, of course. Since 1980, the U.S. has become a grim outlier on many indicators of human well-being. But the conservatives were right that overhauling the country’s economic policy was possible. This history does not suggest that the political system is hopelessly broken. It instead suggests that the U.S. doesn’t have a broadly prosperous economy largely because the country has no mass movement organized around the goal of lifting living standards for the middle class and the poor. If such a movement existed, it might well succeed. It has before. The central lesson I took from immersing myself in the past century of the American economy is that it can change, sometimes much more quickly than people expect. When it has changed in a major way, it often has been because Americans have used the political system to change it. The future can be different from the past. (You can read more about the book here.) Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR The Latest in Israel Hamas released two more hostages, Israeli women aged 79 and 85 whose husbands remain captive. The older of the two said she was held in a tunnel but given medical care and hygiene products, the BBC reports. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, arrived in Israel. He is expected to push for the release of more hostages and aid to Gaza. Israeli officials showed raw footage from Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack to a group of reporters, including images of bloodied corpses in a bedroom, brutalized young women and soldiers without heads. The Latest in Gaza While Israel delays its ground invasion, it continues to attack from the sky. Israeli officials said the military had hit more than 400 targets in the past 24 hours. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 5,000 people have been killed there since the start of the war. The Times could not verify the total. The aid convoys entering southern Gaza include emergency delivery kits for pregnant women who will likely give birth on their own as hospitals shut down. U.S. officials are concerned that Israel has not sufficiently prepared for a ground war in Gaza, where Hamas maintains intricate tunnel networks under densely populated areas. MORE NEWS Congress House Republicans heard privately from eight candidates for speaker and a ninth dropped out. They plan to pick a nominee today. All but two of the candidates — Tom Emmer and Austin Scott — objected to certifying President Biden’s 2020 win. Jim Jordan’s bid for speaker failed, but anti-establishment outsiders like him appear close to becoming the dominant Republican faction in the House, Nate Cohn explains. Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, pleaded not guilty to a charge that he plotted to act as an agent of Egypt. Latin America María MachadoAdriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times María Machado, a center-right candidate, is leading in Venezuela’s opposition presidential primary, highlighting voters’ dissatisfaction with years of authoritarian rule. After fleeing Venezuela and attempting to cross the Darién Gap, a mother and daughter followed Biden’s rules and applied for legal asylum. A year later, they’re still waiting. An armed group killed 13 law enforcement officers in the Mexican state of Guerrero, where cartels fight turf wars. War in Ukraine The war has disrupted the coming of age of many young Ukrainians, exposing them to death, depression and displacement. The battlefield has a cruel math: Kill or be killed. Climate In Enterprise, Canada, after the wildfires.Brendan George Ko for The New York Times “It’s like our country exploded”: The scale of Canada’s wildfires this year was without precedent. After a drought, Maine tried to restrict bottled water companies that draw from local sources. The maker of Poland Spring stepped in to kill the bill. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is touting his climate policies — including an effort end oil drilling — as he considers a future run for president. Other Big Stories In Sterling Heights, Michigan.Paul Sancya/Associated Press The United Automobile Workers union expanded its strike to a Ram pickup truck plant in Michigan, owned by Stellantis. An off-duty pilot accused of trying to cut fuel to the engines during an Alaska Airlines flight was charged with attempted murder. A “super fog” hit New Orleans, causing traffic pileups that killed at least seven people. Opinions Teachers want to give their students high letter grades out of kindness. But tougher grading helps them improve in the long run, Tim Donahue argues. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on Gazan children and Michelle Goldberg on Palestinian authors. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Health: It’s the season of pumpkin flavor everything. But is pumpkin actually good for you? Call that crazy? She made a TikTok video about pesto. It inspired people to spill their secrets. Walkout: Women in Iceland are taking the day off to protest gender inequality. Lives Lived: The historian Natalie Zemon Davis wrote about peasants, unsung women and Martin Guerre, a 16th-century village impostor recalled in a 1982 movie. She died at 94. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT SPORTS World Series bound: The Texas Rangers crushed their in-state rivals, the Houston Astros, 11-4, to reach their first World Series in over a decade. One more game: The Arizona Diamondbacks staved off elimination in the N.L.C.S., beating the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1. Game 7 is tonight in Philadelphia. Monday Night Football: The Minnesota Vikings beat the San Francisco 49ers. N.B.A.: The superstar forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks agreed to a three-year, $186 million max extension. The league’s season tips off tonight. Pink wave: Lionel Messi has made Inter Miami’s eye-catching jersey the hottest piece of sports merchandise on the planet. ARTS AND IDEAS The cast of “Here We Are.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Sondheim’s final note: Shortly before Stephen Sondheim’s death two years ago, he gave a team of collaborators permission to complete his last, unfinished musical. The show, “Here We Are,” premiered this week in New York, and it’s a worthy send-off for Sondheim’s career, the Times critic Jesse Green writes. The surrealist story, inspired by two Luis Buñuel films, finds a group of obnoxious high-society types searching for an elusive meal. “It is never less than a pleasure to watch as it confidently polishes and embraces its illogic,” Jesse writes. More on culture Caster Semenya, the Olympic runner, explains how she has coped with being banned from the sport in an interview with The Cut. Late night hosts joked about the lack of diversity in the House speaker race. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Make sopa de fideo, a Mexican staple great for a chilly night. Shower as often as you need — which might not be every day. Buy a piano on a budget. Give these great presents under $25. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was hologram. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David P.S. New York Magazine named Carolyn Ryan, a Times managing editor, and Mara Gay, a Times Opinion writer, on its list of powerful New Yorkers. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 26, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 26, 2023 October 25, 2023 By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering the continuing chaos in the House of Representatives — as well as the Israel-Hamas war, Trump’s trials and witches. A House hearing room.Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times G.O.P. in disarray In the past three weeks, House Republicans have dumped their party leader — Speaker Kevin McCarthy — and repeatedly failed to elect the candidate whom they had nominated to replace McCarthy. They can’t seem to find anyone who can win the 217 votes needed for a House majority. There are currently 221 Republicans in the House, and at least a handful has opposed every candidate so far. The result is a political mess with little precedent in the U.S. Congress. Yesterday afternoon, Republicans nominated Tom Emmer, a relative moderate from Minnesota, to be the next speaker, choosing him from a field of seven candidates. But Emmer dropped out of the race hours later, an acknowledgment that he too lacked the votes to become speaker. Too many right-wing members objected to him, and Donald Trump attacked him on social media as “totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters.” Last night, Republicans chose yet another nominee: Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a hard-line conservative. Johnson will now try to win enough support to become speaker. He is Republicans’ fourth nominee in recent weeks, after Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise and Emmer. The main explanation for the chaos is that the Republican Party’s growing radical faction and its still substantial mainstream wing can’t find common ground. “When your party doesn’t agree on much, it’s really hard to do things,” James Wallner, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute who has worked for Republicans in Congress, told us. There is an old joke among political journalists about the media constantly writing about “Democrats in disarray.” But the Democratic Party in recent years has been remarkably functional, at least in Congress. Despite their ideological differences, the party’s moderate and progressive factions have compromised on legislation and had little trouble choosing their leaders. These days, it’s the G.O.P. that’s in disarray. Today’s newsletter goes into more details on the splits inside the Republican Party and on what may happen next. The shift The Republican Party was long dominated by establishment figures friendly to big business while also being the home of religious conservatives and foreign policy hawks. In recent years, though, the junior members of the coalition — more conservative on policy, more extreme about process and more aligned with Trump — have increased in number and, as a result, in power, as The Times’s Nate Cohn explains. “I don’t recognize my party in some respects,” Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, says in a new biography. Our colleague Luke Broadwater, who covers the House, writes: “Republicans have made no secret of their divisions. They openly refer to their various factions as The Five Families — a reference to warring Mafia crime families.” Those “Five Families” are: The Freedom Caucus, a hard-right faction made up of lawmakers who formed the Tea Party movement and strongly back Trump. The Republican Study Committee, an older conservative group and the largest G.O.P. ideological faction. The Main Street Caucus, made up of pro-business Republicans. The Republican Governance Group, which comprises many fiscally conservative but socially moderate members. The Problem Solvers Caucus, which includes both Republicans and Democrats and focuses on policies with bipartisan support. The divisions in the speaker’s race don’t perfectly match the five factions, but they do overlap. Hard-right lawmakers helped topple McCarthy, frustrated by a bill he passed with Democratic votes to fund the government. Several of them also blocked Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, because they preferred Jordan for speaker. Then more mainstream lawmakers blocked Jordan. And now Trump loyalists have retaliated and forced Emmer to withdraw. One reason each faction can block others’ preferred candidates is that the Republican majority is so small that just four lawmakers can prevent someone from becoming speaker. “What’s unique about today’s situation is the combination of deep intraparty conflicts and a really narrow majority,” Ruth Bloch Rubin, a University of Chicago political scientist who studies Congress, told us. “If you have any kind of divisions, they become more salient.” What’s next Johnson, a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, is a socially conservative lawyer, an evangelical Christian and a Jordan ally. Johnson energetically defended Trump during his first impeachment and, unlike Emmer, tried to overturn the 2020 election results. He hopes to hold a House vote to become speaker today. One other factor is the Democratic Party. Some Democrats could plausibly help elect a new speaker by voting for a relatively moderate Republican. But that outcome doesn’t look likely now. Democrats seem happy to let the other party try to solve its own mess. Another option is to give Patrick McHenry, the North Carolina Republican serving as temporary speaker, the power to run the House and bring legislation to the floor. But because McHenry is a McCarthy ally, the hard-right lawmakers who unseated McCarthy oppose that option. Empowering McHenry, which some more centrist Republicans have supported, could require Democratic votes. Related: The G.O.P.’s right flank has turned against the very idea of governing, Rich Lowry, a conservative writer, argues in Times Opinion. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR The Latest in Gaza Nuseirat market in Gaza on Monday.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Israel said it had bombed several Hamas positions in wide-scale strikes in Gaza. UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children’s welfare, said that 2,360 children had been killed in Gaza since the war began. U.S. officials said they now have “high confidence” that a Palestinian rocket that broke up midflight caused last week’s blast at a Gaza hospital. Heavy fire from rooftops and booby-trapped apartments: Experts say an invasion of Gaza would lead to fierce urban combat. United Nations Meeting António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said that the “appalling” Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas could not justify “collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” He called for a cease-fire. Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. accused Guterres of showing “compassion for the most terrible atrocities” and said that he should resign. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the Security Council member nations, some of which are close with Iran, to help ensure that the war doesn’t spread. Hostages “I went through hell”: An 85-year-old woman released by Hamas offered the first public account of how the group is holding its hostages, describing a large underground hall and a smaller room. The hostages in Gaza include about 20 children, the Israeli military said. Some are as young as 6 months old. Aid The White House supports pauses in the fighting to let aid into Gaza, but said that a cease-fire would benefit only Hamas. Six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have had to shut down operations because they are out of fuel, the World Health Organization said. MORE NEWS Trump Trials Jenna Ellis in Atlanta.John Bazemore/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer, pleaded guilty to taking part in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. She plans to cooperate with prosecutors. In a separate federal trial over Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack, his lawyers filed four motions asking the judge to dismiss the case. At Trump’s civil fraud trial in Manhattan, his former fixer Michael Cohen described him as a criminal and a cheat. Trump, seated nearby, scoffed and shook his head. More Politics Legal abortions in the U.S. rose slightly in the year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, driven by increases in states where abortion remained legal. The Senate confirmed Michael Whitaker to run the Federal Aviation Administration, which had lacked a permanent leader for more than 18 months. China Li Shangfu, the former defense minister, in June.How Hwee Young/EPA, via Shutterstock China dismissed its defense minister, who disappeared from public view weeks ago. He was the second senior official purged without explanation this year. President Biden is hosting Australia’s prime minister, wooing an ally he sees as key to countering China. Business Dozens of states sued Meta, saying that it had designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive for kids. The United Automobile Workers union again expanded its strike, telling 5,000 people at General Motors’ largest U.S. plant — in Texas — to stop working. Other Big Stories Hurricane Otis hit Acapulco, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, as a Category 5 storm. Forecasters expect devastating flooding and mudslides. Women will vote at a Vatican meeting for the first time. Opinions It’s inhumane and inefficient that the U.S. allows people to lose health insurance because of paperwork mistakes, Dr. Danielle Ofri writes. Here’s a column by Bret Stephens on Hamas’s misinformation. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS A paddler in Colorado.Eli Imadali for The New York Times Halloween on the water: Covens of witches on paddle boards are appearing on lakes and ponds. But don’t worry, they won’t melt. Win the reservation game: Getting a table in New York City might not be as tough as you think. Lives Lived: Richard Roundtree redefined African American masculinity when he played one of the first Black action heroes in the 1971 movie “Shaft.” He died at 81. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT SPORTS M.L.B.: The Arizona Diamondbacks shocked the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 7 of their N.L.C.S., advancing to face the Texas Rangers in the World Series. N.B.A.: The Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers, while the Phoenix Suns impressed with a late victory against the Golden State Warriors. ARTS AND IDEAS A luxury apartment tower rises in front of the Empire State Building.George Etheredge for The New York Times Ever-changing city: New Yorkers have long known that one of the city’s great vistas was Madison Square Park, where you could get a pristine view of the Empire State Building, then spin around to see the Flatiron Building. But a new luxury tower has blotted out that view of the Empire State, leading some to ask if New York should regulate its skyline. “A healthy city is an evolving organism,” the Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes. Impose too many restrictions, he adds, and you might just turn New York into “Colonial Williamsburg on the Hudson.” More on culture Jimmy Kimmel joked the House is “ungaveling before our eyes.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Breakfast potatoes.Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Roast breakfast potatoes. Clean your pillows. It’s probably overdue. Print photos with an instant camera. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was imputed. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Ian P.S. The Connections Companion now offers hints to the Connections puzzle. Wyna Liu, a puzzle editor, will answer readers’ questions in the comments today. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 27, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 27, 2023 October 26, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY Apple Card By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering the new speaker of the House — as well as an overnight lockdown in Maine after a shooting and tanks briefly entering Gaza. Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson.Kenny Holston/The New York Times A man and a plan Matt Gaetz’s gamble appears to have paid off. Gaetz, a far-right House Republican who viewed Speaker Kevin McCarthy as too willing to compromise with Democrats, started a process three weeks ago to unseat him. Not only did that effort work, but House Republicans emerged from their recent chaos yesterday to elect Mike Johnson as the new speaker. And Johnson is much closer to the House’s hard-right faction than McCarthy was. “I believe history will assess these three weeks as the most productive weeks of the 118th Congress,” Gaetz told The Wall Street Journal yesterday. “Because now we have both a man and a plan.” Johnson had little national profile until he emerged as the leading candidate for speaker on Tuesday night. Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said yesterday morning that she would have to Google him. This obscurity became an advantage for him. Unlike the three failed speaker candidates who came before him, Johnson has few enemies among House Republicans. His hallmark in Congress, our colleague Annie Karni wrote in a profile of Johnson, “has been combining his hard-line views with a gentle personal style.” But Johnson’s affable nature does not mean that he is a consensus candidate. He is a man of the right. “In the end, Republican hard-liners got their man,” as Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, put it. Johnson may be the most conservative speaker in U.S. history. He opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage. He proposed a bill to block the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children younger than 10 at any federally funded institution. In a statement yesterday President Biden’s 2024 campaign labeled him “MAGA Mike” while Donald Trump said that Johnson would “do a great job.” Beyond his conservatism on policy issues, Johnson closely aligned himself with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results based on false claims of election fraud. Johnson played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief seeking to overturn the results. Why, then, did more mainstream Republicans vote for Johnson yesterday after blocking Jim Jordan, a previous hard-right speaker nominee, partly because of his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election? In part, they saw no other way out of their party’s recent turmoil, given their own limited numbers. “They got tired of the squabbling and dysfunction and wanted to get back to work,” Catie Edmondson, a Times congressional reporter, told us. Mike Lawler, a relative moderate from New York, posted a photo on social media yesterday of him and Johnson shaking hands. “While there are issues where we differ, we must get back to governing for the good of the country,” Lawler wrote. In today’s newsletter, we’ll tell you more about Johnson — who, less than seven years removed from being a state legislator in Louisiana, is suddenly the top-ranking Republican in Washington — and the challenges he will likely face in managing the unruly Republican caucus. Who is Mike Johnson? Johnson, 51, grew up in Shreveport, La. His father was a firefighter who in 1984 was nearly killed in a plant explosion that disabled him. “It changed the course of our family’s lives,” Johnson told his hometown paper. He said that he had dreamed of being a firefighter but instead attended Louisiana State University and became a constitutional lawyer. “I’m the first college graduate in my family,” Johnson said yesterday, in a speech after being elected speaker. (In that speech, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote, “he came off as gracious, funny and smart.”) Before running for office, Johnson successfully defended the state’s ban on same-sex marriage before the Louisiana Supreme Court. He served briefly in the Louisiana State Legislature and was elected to Congress in 2016. He is an evangelical Christian. He and his wife, Kelly, who have four children, host a podcast about religion and politics called “Truth Be Told.” Mike Johnson at the roll call vote.Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times 2020 election denial Johnson is one of the congressional Republicans who worry many democracy experts because they rejected a core tenet of the American system: the willingness to accept the defeat of their own party. The political scientist Juan Linz described figures like him as “semi-loyal actors”: politicians who don’t initiate attacks on democracy but do go along with them. Johnson devised a legal theory to justify Trump’s objection to the 2020 results, and many of his House colleagues endorsed it. Johnson also rallied support for a Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the results in four Biden-won swing states. The Supreme Court rejected that case. (Here’s a Times story with more details). “When it came to overthrowing the election, he was not a backbencher,” Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, told us. “He was a strategist.” If Trump again loses in 2024 and falsely claims fraud, Johnson may be in a better position to help him. As Waldman asked, “Is this guy going to stand up for the Constitution? Or is he going to do what he did last time?” What’s next? The first issue Johnson may have to confront as speaker is funding for Ukraine. He has opposed spending more money on the war. Others in his party continue to call for more funding. The matter will likely be at the center of the negotiations to fund the government and avert a shutdown next month. The Ukraine issue is a reminder that Johnson, like McCarthy, may have trouble managing his colleagues. And despite Johnson’s background, his biggest threat may come from hard-right members like Gaetz, given that Johnson will likely need to compromise at times with Senate Democrats and Biden. “If they think of Mike Johnson as one of them, well, maybe that’s the longer leash that he’ll need,” Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told us. “But the challenges are still there.” For more In his speech, Johnson described his priorities as aiding Israel, fixing the southern border and cutting federal spending. After Johnson’s election, the House passed a resolution, its first legislation in weeks, declaring solidarity with Israel. “Who’s Mike Johnson?” Foreign diplomats are Googling him, Politico reports. Late night hosts roasted Johnson as “generic.” Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Apple Card The perfect card for when you are on the go. Earn Daily Cash all over the world without paying any fees. No fees at all. Terms apply. Apply now THE LATEST NEWS Maine Shooting People are locked down in Southern Maine as police search for a gunman who killed at least seven people at a bowling alley and a bar in the town of Lewiston. Follow our updates. The youngest confirmed victims were teenagers, but the number of dead and injured is not yet clear. The police named a 40-year-old man as a suspect. He was seen in a hoodie carrying a military-style rifle. As of this morning, he is still at large. One man at a bowling alley said he ran down a lane and hid in the pin machines until the police arrived. At Bates College, the active shooter alert interrupted a birthday celebration in a dorm room. Tanks in Gaza The Israeli military said it conducted a brief raid with tanks in northern Gaza overnight. Officials said the raid was preparation for the next stage of fighting, presumably a reference to a ground invasion. More on the War A damaged gas station in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Since the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, the Israeli military says it has struck more than 7,000 targets in Gaza — more than in any previous Israeli military campaign in the territory. Gaza is running short on fuel. The W.H.O. said a third of hospitals in the territory had shut down, and a U.N. relief agency said it would soon have to ration supplies. In determining who was responsible for last week’s Gaza hospital explosion, Israeli and U.S. officials pointed to a video of a projectile flashing in the night sky. But a Times investigation has determined that the video was likely unrelated to the blast. Biden said he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” for the death toll in Gaza. A Gazan teenager has captured the war around her in voice notes. Listen to them. Auto Strikes United Auto Workers negotiators and Ford Motor tentatively agreed on a new labor contract. The union is still negotiating with General Motors and Stellantis. Politics An AIDS clinic in South Africa, in 2012. Foto24/Gallo Images, via Getty Images Congressional authorization for George W. Bush’s global AIDS relief program, which has saved around 25 million lives since 2003, has lapsed. The New York judge overseeing Trump’s civil trial fined him $10,000 for verbally attacking a court employee. “I don’t want anybody killed,” the judge said. A wealthy friend lent Justice Clarence Thomas $267,230 to buy a luxury R.V. Years later, the debt was forgiven — despite Thomas not paying much, if any, of it back, a Senate inquiry found. Other Big Stories Japan’s Supreme Court.Jiji Press, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Japan’s Supreme Court rejected a national law requiring transgender people to undergo sterilization to legally change their gender identity. Hurricane Otis went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in a day. See how that happened. Opinions To protect dwindling benefits programs, older Americans should contribute more and retire later, C. Eugene Steuerle and Glenn Kramon write. Here’s a column by Gail Collins on House Republicans. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS The hidden room.Clara Vannucci for The New York Times Medici tombs: A hidden room in Florence is covered in sketches that some believe are by Michelangelo. Now, for the first time, it will be open to the public. A suspicious death: A doctor was charged with murder after investigators discovered that his wife was poisoned with a drug he had researched online. Lives Lived: Robert Irwin, a Southern California artist associated with the Light and Space movement of the 1960s, created ephemeral and sometimes intangible art environments. He died at 95. SPORTS N.B.A.: Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks spoiled Victor Wembanyama’s debut, but the 7-foot-4 rookie still performed. Michigan scandal: A new report claims the Michigan football team kept detailed travel budgets for its sign-stealing operation. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Apple Card The perfect card for when you are on the go. Earn Daily Cash all over the world without paying any fees. No fees at all. Terms apply. Apply now ARTS AND IDEAS “The Nightmare Before Christmas”Touchstone Pictures An anniversary: Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is back in theaters for its 30th anniversary. The movie is more popular than ever: The Hollywood Bowl is holding a series of live concerts around it and Disney is decorating its theme parks with the characters. But the film wasn’t a guaranteed success: Before release, Disney executives worried it might hurt their brand. Read more about how it became a hit. More on culture The stage adaptation of “Sabbath’s Theater,” Philip Roth’s raunchiest novel, seeks to preserve “the nasty side of existence” evoked in the book. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Bake focaccia at home. Forage in New York City. Buy the best notebook. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was fivefold. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Ian Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 29, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 29, 2023 October 27, 2023 My colleague Megan Twohey has spent the past seven months reporting on the business relationship between Kanye West and Adidas, and The New York Times has published her investigation this morning. I’m turning over today’s newsletter to Megan so she can tell you about her findings. — David Leonhardt By Megan Twohey Investigative Reporter Good morning. In addition to West, we’re also covering the Israel-Hamas war, the manhunt in Maine and candy corn. Kanye West in 2019.Nina Westervelt for The New York Times Looking past misconduct When Adidas ended its wildly lucrative shoe deal with Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, a year ago, the breakup appeared to be the culmination of weeks of his inflammatory remarks about Jews and Black Lives Matter. But our examination found that behind the scenes, the partnership was fraught from the start. Interviews with current and former employees of Adidas and of West, along with hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records, including contracts, text messages and financial documents, provide the fullest accounting yet of the relationship. Here are seven takeaways. For almost 10 years, Adidas looked past West’s misconduct as profits soared. The partnership, which began in 2013, boosted company profits and made West a billionaire. But West subjected employees to antisemitic and other abusive comments. And though their contract for years had a clause allowing Adidas to end the agreement if West’s behavior harmed the company’s reputation, it’s not clear that executives ever considered invoking it before terminating the deal last year. West showed a troubling fixation on Jews and Hitler. At a 2013 meeting with Adidas designers at the company’s headquarters in Germany, he drew a swastika on one of their sketches. He later told a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a portrait of Hitler every day. And West told Adidas colleagues that he admired Hitler’s command of propaganda. He brought pornography and crude comments into the workplace. Weeks before the swastika episode, West made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment. Last year, he ambushed Adidas executives in Los Angeles with a pornographic film. Staff members also complained to top executives that he had made angry, sexually offensive comments to them. Trying on Yeezy shoes in 2020.Seth Wenig/Associated Press Big demands and mood swings weighed on the relationship. West, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, at times rejected the assessment and resisted treatment. Tears were common; so was fury. In 2019, he abruptly moved the operation designing his shoes, called Yeezys, to remote Cody, Wyo., and ordered the Adidas team to relocate. In a meeting with company leaders that year to discuss his demands, he hurled shoes around the room. Adidas adapted to West’s behavior. Managers and top executives started a group text chain, called the “Yzy hotline,” to address matters involving West. The Adidas team working on Yeezys adopted a strategy they likened to firefighting, rotating members on and off the front lines of dealing with the artist. As the brand grew more reliant on Yeezys, it sweetened the deal for West. Under the 2016 contract, he received a 15 percent royalty on net sales, with $15 million upfront along with millions of dollars in company stock each year. In 2019, Adidas agreed to another enticement: $100 million annually, officially for Yeezy marketing but, in practice, a fund that West could spend with little oversight. The sales continue. After the relationship between West and Adidas ruptured a year ago and Yeezy sales stopped, the company projected its first annual loss in decades. West’s net worth plummeted. Still, they had at least one more chance to keep making money together. In May, the company began releasing the remaining $1.3 billion worth of Yeezys. A cut of the proceeds would go to charity. But most of the revenue would go to Adidas, and West was entitled to royalties. You can read the full investigation here. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR The Latest A funeral in Israel for a mother and two daughters killed in the Hamas attacks. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Military and government leaders in Israel are divided over whether to invade Gaza. Troops are waiting at the border. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza released the names and ID numbers of 6,747 people it said had been killed in Israeli strikes. Many water faucets have run dry and food is increasingly scarce in Gaza. See photos from inside the enclave. American Response The U.S. hit targets linked to Iran in eastern Syria. The airstrikes were intended to deter both attacks on American forces in the region and a wider war. An empty Shabbat table in Times Square had a space for each of the around 200 hostages held by Hamas. In an essay that went to press before the war began, President Biden’s national security adviser called the Middle East “quieter than it has been for decades.” Critics have pounced. University of Pennsylvania alumni are pulling their donations, angry over the school’s perceived leftward shift and response to Hamas’s attacks. MORE NEWS Maine Shooting State and federal authorities combed the countryside around Lewiston, Maine, in search of the gunman who killed 18 people in a mass shooting on Wednesday night. The suspect, a 40-year-old Army reservist named Robert Card, has not been found. Thousands of Maine residents are locked down. A survivor of the bowling alley attack described the shock as the shooting began. “This stuff doesn’t happen in Maine. Everybody’s nice,” he said. Representative Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat whose district includes Lewiston, urged Congress to ban assault rifles, reversing his earlier opposition. New House Speaker Mike Johnson has doubted climate science, opposed clean energy and received campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Johnson suggested that he was skeptical of aiding Palestinians in Gaza and dismissed calls for more gun control. Voting A federal judge struck down Georgia’s Republican-drawn voting maps, saying they disempowered Black voters. He ordered the legislature to redraw them. Republicans in North Carolina, a closely divided state, approved a gerrymandered congressional map that favors their party. More Politics The Texas House voted to allow local police agencies to arrest migrants, a challenge to the federal government’s power over immigration. Representative Dean Phillips, a moderate Minnesota Democrat, is running for president in a challenge to Biden. International Stocking up in Acapulco, southern Mexico, after Hurricane Otis.Marco Ugarte/Associated Press Otis was one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Because the storm cut off travel and communication, the extent of its destruction is still unclear. A government program in Denmark is using demolition and relocation to remake neighborhoods with “non-Western” immigrants, poverty or crime. Twitter Anniversary When Elon Musk bought Twitter one year ago, he said the site “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.” Experts on misinformation say it has become just that. How do users feel about the new Twitter — or X, as Musk has rebranded it? Many have abandoned the site, saying its quality and safeguards have deteriorated. New York New York banned corporal punishment in private schools after a Times investigation revealed its widespread use in Hasidic schools. An N.Y.P.D. tow truck hit and killed a 7-year-old boy as he was crossing a street in Brooklyn, police officials said. Other Big Stories The U.S. economy surged last quarter, growing 4.9 percent as a strong job market and falling inflation fueled consumer spending. A woman in Ohio fatally drugged four men she met for sex, according to officials. Opinions The Israel-Hamas war distracts from Ukraine and undermines U.S. dominance in the Middle East, Hanna Notte argues. Who benefits? Russia. Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on the survivors of the Hamas attacks. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Andria Lo for The New York Times Candy corn: Do you love it or hate it? A Morning listen: Try “The Kids of Rutherford County,” a new podcast from Serial Productions. Modern Love: When breaking up is an act of love. Lives Lived: Rock Brynner built a varied career as road manager for the Band, bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, professor of constitutional history and more. He died at 76. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT SPORTS N.F.L.: The Buffalo Bills beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 24-18, withstanding a last-second Hail Mary attempt. Soccer stalemate: The U.S. women’s team was held to a 0-0 draw by Colombia in the first of two friendlies this week between the sides. They play again Sunday. Dame time: Damian Lillard scored 39 points in his Milwaukee Bucks debut, leading his new team to a 118-117 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. Boxing: These women are fighting by men’s rules. ARTS AND IDEAS A wedding in the Stanley Hotel.Shea McGrath Photography Till death do us part: The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining.” And while that may not sound like the most romantic getaway to some, the hotel has become a hot spot for horror-loving couples seeking a spooky setting for their wedding. One couple, who married there on a recent Friday the 13th, said the hotel matched their ideal wedding vibe: “an elegant Victorian funeral.” More on culture A recently finished recording billed as the “last song” by the Beatles will be released on Nov. 2, half a century after the group broke up. The comedian Hasan Minhaj addressed claims he embellished his stand-up, saying he thought “the lines between truth and fiction were allowed to be a bit more blurry.” Stephen Colbert spoke about gun violence and the failures of Congress. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Mark Weinberg for The New York Times Bake Nigella Lawson’s monster cookies. Clean your sofa. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was cottonmouth. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 29, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 29, 2023 October 28, 2023 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. In a time when everything’s gone virtual, Halloween costumes represent an old-fashioned commitment to the physical world. María Jesús Contreras Ghostly presence Tombstones are planted in the flower beds. A witch appears to have flown into a tree and is suspended there, broom sticking out from the trunk. An undead crone, motion sensitive, accosts passers-by from the hedge. On my otherwise very quiet, very nothing-to-see-here Brooklyn block, there’s a lot to see this time of year. I arrive home to tourists taking pictures with the skeletons. This spectacle is aggressively, delightfully low-tech. I asked a six-year-old who was talking to the talking crone if he was scared of her, and he looked at me with pity, as one does at a fraidy cat who’s got to toughen up or the world will swallow her whole. But in spite of the ghouls and revenants and other morbid players from the sidewalk boneyard, Halloween is a holiday for the living. In a world that feels irretrievably online, where our every interaction is mediated by technology, Halloween, weirdly, is not. Trick-or-treating is an embodied activity. You have to show up. A Halloween costume is a physical get-up: You wear it out into the real world, where you interface with real people and get real candy. How quaint it seems when you think about it! For all the ways in which we might find legitimate fault with Halloween — it’s too commercial, it’s culturally insensitive, it promotes greed and tooth decay — it’s a refreshingly mundane celebration. Virtual worlds have their virtues. Video games like Minecraft and Roblox can be refuges, realms for creative expression and imaginative play. But the more beguiling our digital diversions, the more it seems essential to look for, and to insist on, activities that require our physical presence. So much of the way we interact with one another is asynchronous: text messages, voice memos, social media comments; we’re in our own orbits, colliding occasionally. On Halloween we have a script for deliberate connection: I knock on the door, you answer the door, we connect in real time. We’re wearing disguises, but actually, for tonight at least, we show up as ourselves. For more Meet a professional pumpkin carver. Halloween is for kids — and “kidults,” too. The cheapest and creepiest Halloween décor is a bunch of old dolls, decrees Wirecutter. “That is the promise of a virtual world: that you get to be anybody you want, unhampered by flesh, gravity, environment, expectations and economics.” How will we dress in the metaverse? Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE Dave Chappelle at Madison Square Garden in August.Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Dave Chappelle, who has made a career of courting controversy, did so again this week when he commented on the war between Israel and Hamas during a stand-up set, leading some in the audience to walk out. That Chappelle would wade into such a fraught topic was not surprising, the Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman wrote: “He has embraced the sober truth-teller role, telling magnetic stories that sometimes end in lessons, not punchlines.” “Tommy,” the rock opera by The Who, is returning to Broadway next year. The original stage production opened in 1993 and won five Tony Awards. Silvio Berlusconi bought some 25,000 paintings, many on TV-shopping binges, before he died this year. His heirs don’t know what to do with them. On Francesca Scorsese’s TikTok page, her dad, Martin — yes, that one — is a budding social media star. In “Priscilla,” the director Sofia Coppola re-examines Elvis Presley from the perspective of the woman he married. Our critic calls it “stealthily devastating.” Taylor Swift released “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of her blockbuster 2014 album. Lindsay Zoladz wrote about “Slut!,” a never-before-heard song from that era. Do you remember your first scary movie? Times readers told us about the films that freaked them out as kids — everything from “The Exorcist” to “The Wizard of Oz” to “Air Bud.” THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War The northern Gaza Strip on Friday.Abed Khaled/Associated Press The Israeli military made incursions into the Gaza Strip overnight, after launching an intense bombardment with artillery and missiles. Details from the fighting were scarce because Gaza’s internet and cell service were down. An Israeli military spokesman said troops had crossed the border, but he declined to say if the incursion was the start of a full-scale ground invasion. U.S. airstrikes on weapons stockpiles in Syria were meant to deter attacks by Iran and its proxies. Hours later, those proxies launched a drone attack on U.S. troops in Iraq. Hundreds of protesters crowded into Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan last night calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. Other Big Stories The gunman suspected of killing 18 people in Lewiston, Maine was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, ending a two-day manhunt. The suspect’s body was found on Friday night at a recycling center southeast of Lewiston where he used to work. But it’s unclear when he died. Maine authorities identified the shooting victims, who ranged in age from 14 to 76. They include a bowling alley employee and a deaf man who was playing cornhole with his friends. Testifying at his federal criminal trial, Sam Bankman-Fried denied committing fraud but acknowledged “mistakes” at FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 📺 “The Gilded Age” (Sunday): Dust off your top hats and feathered headdresses. After much delay, HBO’s sumptuous upstairs-downstairs ensemble drama, created by Julian Fellowes, returns for a second season. Set among old money and new in 1880s New York, the first season of this period piece sometimes struggled to deliver compelling characters and narratives beyond all that embroidery and lace. But what embroidery! What lace! 📚 “Being Henry: The Fonz … and Beyond” (Tuesday): Ayyy! Despite career-best work in the recently concluded HBO comedy “Barry,” Henry Winkler remains inseparable from Arthur Fonzarelli, the sweet-hearted greaser of the TV classic “Happy Days.” In this new autobiography, he reveals the man beneath the leather. Celebrity autobiographies are a tricky proposition. We want the struggle, the agony. But when someone has made the cover of People more than once, we tend to doubt that agony. Still, Winkler, who’s been described to me on multiple occasions as one of the nicest men in Hollywood, has plenty of stories to tell — good, bad and shark-jumping. I’ll be reading. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. By Melissa Clark Chicken Parmesan When was the last time you baked a big, bubbling pan of chicken Parmesan? My recipe hits all the right notes: gooey, cheesy, rich but balanced. It’s a classic iteration that does involve a fair amount of work: You have to bread and then fry all the chicken cutlets before layering them in the casserole dish. But the results are well worth the effort, with the crisp cutlets holding their own against that pleasing onslaught of tomato sauce and two kinds of cheese. Make it for a festive weekend dinner, then save the leftovers to stuff into sandwiches for the best weekday lunches. REAL ESTATE Sara Stewart/Sarah Strunk Photography for Sage Sotheby's International Realty What you get for $400,000: A Craftsman house in Oklahoma City; a two-bedroom bungalow in North Charleston, S.C.; and a renovated 1850s cottage in New Orleans. The hunt: A pair of data analytics managers brought their Brooklyn budget to the New Jersey suburbs. Which house would be theirs? Play our game. Calculator: Qualifying incomes for standard mortgages on typical homes have gone through the roof. Here’s how much money you need to make. At home with: Roz Chast, the wry New Yorker cartoonist, says she is “terrible at decorating.” What do you think? LIVING A cable car overlooks the Muong Hoa Valley.Justin Mott for The New York Times Travel: Want to see the world in a new way? Visit Vietnam, where some of the world’s longest cable cars crisscross the country. Heels: Why do so many women still wear stilettos? Gardenheir: The brand’s mix of Martha Stewart-inspired clothes, heritage tools and colorful clogs caters to actual and want-to-be gardeners alike. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Consider a wearable sleeping bag For people who are always cold and who get frustrated with blankets slipping off their shoulders, a wearable sleeping bag might be a perfect, albeit silly-looking, solution. Shaped like a traditional sleeping bag but with a cinched hole at the bottom and zippered armholes, a wearable sleeping bag sits close to the wearer’s body and allows them to keep their hands free for all sorts of sedentary activities, like working at a desk in an underheated room, socializing outside on a crisp fall evening or reading a book in the early winter sunshine. — Annemarie Conte GAME OF THE WEEKEND Barcelona forward Marc Guiu.Josep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images F.C. Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, El Clásico: These two Spanish soccer clubs have been playing one another for more than 120 years. Somehow, after all that time, the record is nearly even — Madrid with 102 wins, Barcelona with 100. In the 2010s, the rivalry was a showcase for the world’s best players, with Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Madrid and Lionel Messi for Barcelona. But those stars have left Spain in the twilight of their careers. Now, a new generation is rising, The Times’s Rory Smith writes. Barcelona is particularly youthful — 17-year-old Marc Guiu scored in his debut match last week, and 16-year-old Lamine Yamal is the youngest player ever to score in Spain’s La Liga. 10 a.m. Eastern on ESPN Plus. For more The Athletic visited Rocafonda, the humble neighborhood where Yamal was raised. As part of Barcelona’s sponsorship deal with Spotify, the team will wear jerseys featuring The Rolling Stones’ logo. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were canonically, colonially, conically, iconically and laconically. See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 30, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 30, 2023 October 29, 2023 By The Morning Team Good morning. We’re covering Israeli troops in Gaza — as well as Matthew Perry’s death, the Maine shooting and TikTok. Northern Gaza. Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times The war’s ‘next stage’ Israel announced it will attack Gaza from the air, land and sea, expanding its war against Hamas days after its tanks began an intense ground operation. The military again urged civilians to move south as troops have entered Gaza from the north (see where troops crossed the border). Benjamin Netanyahu called the troops’ arrival the “second stage” of the war and warned Israelis to expect a long, difficult fight. But he did not say that Israel had launched a full ground invasion. While the number of soldiers in Gaza remains unclear, a more limited initial ground war would align with recent suggestions from the U.S. defense secretary, The Times’s Eric Schmitt reports. The first stage of the war has been a bombing campaign that Palestinians say has killed thousands of people, many of them children. Israel said its airstrikes were intended to hit military targets, like Hamas’s fighters and weapons stores. But experts say the majority of the group’s fighters and many of its weapons are underground in a vast network of tunnels, making it difficult for Israel to strike them from the air. In this next stage, the ground war, troops are expected to face bloody urban combat. Hamas is likely to booby-trap apartments and fire at Israelis from rooftops. Gaza’s densely packed streets are difficult to attack with tanks, which could help Hamas despite Israel’s stronger military. Details of the fighting are expected to become clearer today as phone and internet service begins to return to Gaza. The enclave was in a near-total blackout for much of the weekend. Palestinians said that airstrikes had cut off cell networks, making it harder for them to coordinate medical rescues, speak to family or share news about the fighting. The blackout also complicated evacuation efforts. For more than two weeks, Israel has been calling on Gazans to move south, closer to the border with Egypt, an order that has pushed hundreds of thousands to leave their homes. As desperation spread during the blackout, thousands of people broke into warehouses to take aid, like flour, according to the U.N. The Israeli military said, without giving details, that humanitarian efforts to send more aid to Gaza — led by Egypt and the U.S. — would be expanded tomorrow. The latest on the fighting The Israeli military said two of its soldiers were injured overnight in northern Gaza, its first reported casualties of the expanded ground incursion. Follow our updates. The Israeli military and Hezbollah clashed along the border with Lebanon, fueling fears of a wider war. Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, said Israel had crossed a “red line which may force everyone to take action.” “We are just waiting our turn”: Gazans say they worry they could die at any moment. More on the war In a social media post that was deleted after a fierce backlash, Netanyahu publicly blamed Israel’s failures on Oct. 7 on the country’s heads of military intelligence and its internal security agency. China is pitching itself as a neutral peace broker, but antisemitism is spreading across Chinese state media and social platforms. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched in several cities, including New York and London, calling for a cease-fire. See videos. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS Maine Shooting The man who killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, had been paranoid and made threats against his Army reserve base last month, prompting an alert to state police, officials said. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in America this year. Matthew Perry At home in 2022.Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times Matthew Perry, the witty Chandler Bing in the sitcom “Friends,” has died in Los Angeles. He was 54. Perry wrote a book last year discussing his struggles with addiction. Read about his memoir. Auto Strikes The United Automobile Workers union reached a tentative contract agreement with Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. Of the three big Detroit automakers, only General Motors has yet to make a deal. The union expanded its strike against G.M. to a plant in Tennessee. International In Senegal.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times By 2050, one in four people on Earth will be African. The youth boom is changing the continent, and the world. A monthlong meeting about the future of the Catholic Church ended with an agreement that women need a larger role, but few actual plans for change. Armita Geravand, a 16-year-old high-school student in Iran whose subway collapse fueled outrage against the country’s morality police, has died after weeks in a coma. Other Big Stories Mike Pence ended his 2024 presidential run. His campaign, which wavered between praising and condemning Donald Trump, never caught on with Republican voters. The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Texas Rangers in Game 2 of the World Series, 9-1. On “Saturday Night Live,” Mikey Day became the latest cast member to play President Biden. The comic Nate Bargatze hosted. FROM OPINION Ross Douthat reviews David Leonhardt’s book about the decline of the American dream. Here’s a column by Jamelle Bouie on Mike Johnson. The Sunday question: Is Speaker Mike Johnson too extreme? The House’s new leader, who has gone on the record supporting the criminalization of gay sex and dismantling the social safety net, goes beyond “trying to turn back the clock on decades of social progress,” The Times’s Paul Krugman writes. But Johnson is also principled, and his “rock-ribbed, if bland, conservatism might give him some space for some prudential deal-making,” Patrick T. Brown writes for CNN. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS The Scorseses.Francesca Scorsese TikTok duo: The director Martin Scorsese and his daughter Francesca are posting videos that show him in a different light. A weekend podcast: Listen to “The Kids of Rutherford County,” a new show from Serial. Vows: They fell in love over Nickelback. Lives Lived: Joanna Merlin played Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, in the hit Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” then became a renowned casting director. She died at 92. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE Marina Abramovic in the 1970s.From the Marina Abramovic Archives By David Marchese I spoke with the legendary and physically daring performance artist Marina Abramovic, subject of the new book, “Marina Abramovic: A Visual Biography.” She is also currently the subject of a solo show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. On social media, you can see people doing things that have the DNA of performance art. But that’s all about trying to monetize lives and become influencers. Do you see connections between what people do on social media and performance art? This has nothing to do with art. Instagram is not art. Social media is not art. These kids are not artists. I’m sorry, but they’re not. I was reading some Ernst Junger, and he has a line: “Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!” Wonderful. It is important not to fear pain, to understand pain and accept it. Then pain is much more bearable. But we’re talking about physical pain. Have you learned how to deal with emotional pain? No. This is the most difficult. The thing about emotional pain, just feel it. You have to feel it. That’s all we can do. You ever have love pain? Of course. It’s hell on earth, huh? Yeah. People say, “Oh no, I can deal with this.” That means they never feel love. There’s that cliché about how everyone has creativity in them, they just have to learn how to express it. Do you think that’s true? No. First of all, you can’t become an artist. You are or you’re not. But there are different categories. You could be a good artist. You can be a great artist. But there’s one category I’m interested in: wow artist. In every century is maybe two or three or one. Read more of the interview here. More from the magazine Redwoods, the largest trees on the planet, can’t really “migrate” — but in a warming world, some humans are trying to find them new homes. Read the full issue. BOOKS “The Roses of Heliogabalus,” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1888. Christie's Images, via Bridgeman Art Library Peel me a grape: The classicist Mary Beard examines the excesses and tedium of Roman imperial rule, sorting fact from gossip. Our editors’ picks: “Hunting the Falcon,” a history of the marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and eight other books. Times best sellers: “The Exchange,” John Grisham’s sequel to “The Firm,” makes its debut atop the hardcover fiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Give these gifts to runners. Secure your home with these cameras. Visit Dakar to hear music and see shows. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Biden is expected to issue an executive order to regulate artificial intelligence tomorrow. Tuesday is Halloween. Trick or treat! The Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday to decide whether to raise interest rates. Most experts expect them to remain the same. Trump’s children are scheduled to testify in his company’s civil fraud trial in New York: Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday, Eric Trump on Thursday and Ivanka Trump on Friday. The U.S. government releases its monthly jobs report on Friday. What to Cook This Week Christopher Testani for The New York Times Pasta is all Genevieve Ko wants for dinner. In the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, she suggests a few bowls of noodles to make this week. Spaghetti with butternut squash, kale and brown butter tastes special even if it comes together quickly. And stir-fry noodles with chicken, ginger and mushrooms taste best seared. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was fettuccine. Can you put eight historical events — including Mary Lou Retton’s Olympic gold, radio sounds from the Big Bang and the movie “Shaft” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 30, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 30, 2023 October 30, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY WICKED on Broadway By David Leonhardt and Lauren Jackson Good morning. We’re covering the crucial tunnel network under Gaza — as well as a Trump gag order, American gun violence and tributes to Matthew Perry. A Palestinian fighter in a Gaza tunnel last year.Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock A maze of tunnels There is a transportation network below Gaza, one that Israel is trying to destroy. The network is made up of tunnels, where most Hamas fighters are likely living alongside stockpiles of weapons, food, water and, now, more than 200 Israeli hostages. Parts of the tunnels are large enough for vehicles to drive in them. The Israeli military first launched an intense air attack targeting these tunnels and has now sent in ground troops to destroy them. Eliminating the tunnels would go long way toward breaking Hamas’s control over Gaza. In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain why the tunnel network is so important — and why Israel will not have an easy time dismantling it. ‘The metro’ Tunnels have existed under Gaza for years. But after Israel withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza nearly two decades ago, Hamas vastly expanded the underground network. Hamas has a long history of terrorist violence — both the U.S. and the European Union consider it a terrorist group — and the tunnels allow its members to hide from Israeli air attacks. Israel created further incentive for tunnel construction by tightening the blockade of Gaza after 2007. The main rationale for the blockade was to keep out weapons and related material, but Israel’s definition is so broad that the blockade also restricted the flow of basic items. In response, Gazans have used the tunnels — which extend south into Egypt — to smuggle in food, goods, people and weapons. Some people refer to the hundreds of miles of tunnels as “the metro.” (This story, by our colleagues Adam Goldman, Helene Cooper and Justin Scheck, has more details.) Egypt’s government has also viewed the tunnels as a security threat. A decade ago, Egypt tried to destroy some tunnels along its border with Gaza, by dumping sewage into them and leveling houses that concealed entrances, as Joel Roskin, a geology professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, told our colleagues. In the current war, Hamas will use the tunnels to hide and to attack Israeli soldiers from unexpected places. “By using the tunnels, the enemy can surround and attack us from behind,” said Col. Amir Olo, the former commander of the elite Israeli engineering unit in charge of dismantling tunnels. The civilian toll The battle over the tunnels is a major reason that this war already has a high civilian death toll. More than two million people live above the tunnels — a layer of human life between many Hamas targets and Israeli missiles. Hamas has hidden many weapons under hospitals, schools and mosques so that Israel must risk killing civilians, and face an international backlash, when it fights. Hamas fighters also slip above and below ground, blending with civilians. These practices mean that Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths, according to international law, as David French, a Times Opinion writer and former military lawyer, has explained. Deliberately putting military resources near civilians and disguising fighters as civilians are both violations of the laws of war. António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, has said Israel is also violating international law by continuing to bomb southern Gaza — partly to destroy tunnels — after first ordering people to evacuate there for safety. While Israel says its strikes are precise, Palestinians say that the bombing has felt vengeful and unfocused. One man lost 45 members of his extended family. Overall, Hamas says, at least 8,000 people have died in the war, and the U.N. has confirmed the deaths of at least 2,360 children. One issue is that bombs that hit tunnels can still kill civilians through a kind of aftershock. When bombs explode underground, buildings above can collapse into a crater. “The craters become mass graves,” said Eyal Weizman, the director of Forensic Architecture, a research group. Whatever the appropriate mix of blame between Israel and Hamas, the human toll has led to widespread criticism of Israel. And as its ground incursions continue, the toll will surely grow. The more than 200 hostages held by Hamas, likely in the tunnels, will also be at risk. Soldiers in southern Israel.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times Air, then ground The first stage of Israel’s campaign against the tunnels has been its air war. The military has launched more than 7,000 airstrikes on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. That air war continues, along with the ground operation. Israel has dropped special bombs that don’t explode until after they have burrowed into the ground. Another type of weapon, called “sponge bombs,” creates an explosion of hardening foam to seal off tunnels. If tunnel entrances are sealed, fighters can’t pop out of them in surprise attacks. The ground operation allows Israel to take additional steps to demolish tunnels. An Israeli reservist soldier described one technique, called “purple hair,” to our colleagues: Israeli troops drop smoke grenades into a tunnel, and then watch for purple smoke to come out of any houses in the area. The smoke, the soldier said, signals that a house is connected to the tunnel network and must be sealed off before soldiers descend into the tunnels. The smoke moves like strands of hair throughout the tunnel system, he said. This description helps make clear why urban warfare tends to be so deadly. “It will be bloody, brutal fighting,” said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former leader of U.S. military operations in the Middle East. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM WICKED on Broadway Celebrating 20 Years of 'Wicked' There's no place like Oz, and after two decades on Broadway, there's still no show like "Wicked." Get Tickets MORE ON THE WAR In Gaza Northern Gaza.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Israel said it struck hundreds of targets in Gaza this weekend. Health facilities were damaged. President Biden urged Benjamin Netanyahu to “immediately and significantly” increase the amount of humanitarian aid and to protect civilians. Thirty-three aid trucks crossed into the enclave. Many more are waiting at the border. Phone and internet connections partially returned after a near-total blackout. For 34 hours, most people in Gaza had no way to reach the outside world — or one another. In Israel Israel spotted Hamas gunmen early on Oct. 7, but expected a small attack at most. Read more about the intelligence failures that shattered the country’s sense of security. “I was wrong”: Netanyahu apologized for accusing military and security leaders of lapses that led to the Hamas massacre, but declined to accept responsibility himself. A group that led antigovernment protests in Israel before the attacks — even vowing to refuse military service — is now coordinating war efforts. Around the World The campus police at Cornell University guarded a Jewish center after online threats of violence against Jewish students. A mob stormed an airport in southern Russia when a flight arrived from Tel Aviv. The authorities arrested dozens. THE LATEST NEWS Donald Trump A federal judge reinstated a gag order on Donald Trump, limiting what he can say about witnesses and prosecutors in his federal elections case. Trump’s Republican rivals are pointing to onstage gaffes as signs he’s getting older. (He is 77.) Gun Violence The gunman in Maine who killed 18 people disclosed he had mental health issues, a gun shop owner said. More than a year after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the town broke ground on a new campus. International Dmytro, one of three friends from Lviv, planned to open a cafe.Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times They met as boys in western Ukraine. When Russia invaded, they went to war together. Our reporter followed their journey for a year. After a coup in Niger, Islamist militants have increased their attacks, The Washington Post reports. Climate change is transforming how the French make cheese — and how their regulators evaluate it. Other Big Stories A fisherman lost at sea off the Pacific Northwest for nearly two weeks was found on a raft about 70 miles from shore. He survived partly by catching and eating a salmon, the BBC reports. Shoppers are still spending on Halloween decorations, a sign that high interest rates haven’t slowed growth. Opinions Sickle cell encapsulates how our health care system has failed Black Americans. A gene therapy offers hope, Dr. Daniela Lamas writes. Here’s a column by David Brooks on the Israel-Hamas war. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS The New York Times Mental map: We asked New Yorkers to outline their neighborhoods. The result may be the most detailed map of the city’s districts ever compiled. Cavities: A dentist shares tips for protecting teeth on Halloween. Metropolitan Diary: A long trip to satisfy a cheesecake craving. Lives Lived: Robert Brustein was an advocate for nonprofit theater — as well as a critic, teacher, producer, director, playwright and even actor. He died at 96. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM WICKED on Broadway Celebrating 20 Years of 'Wicked' There's no place like Oz, and after two decades on Broadway, there's still no show like "Wicked." Get Tickets SPORTS Sunday football: The San Francisco 49ers lost to the Bengals, their third straight defeat after a 5-0 start to the season. Injury: The Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins will undergo tests today to confirm a possible Achilles’ tendon tear from the team’s win over the Packers. Soccer: The U.S. women’s team beat Colombia 3-0 in a friendly and showcased a potential new star: Mia Fishel. ARTS AND IDEAS The cast of “Friends.”NBCUniversal, via Getty Images A sitcom icon: Matthew Perry, who was found dead in his Los Angeles home over the weekend, will forever be tied to Chandler Bing, his character on “Friends.” That’s not an indictment of his career, The Times’s Alexis Soloski wrote, but rather a testament to the greatness of his biggest role. “Even among the irrepressible talents of his co-stars, Perry stood out, for a rubbery, heedless way with physical comedy and a split-second timing that most stopwatches would envy,” Alex writes. Perry’s co-stars and friends posted tributes, including Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who knew him from elementary school. More on culture Angelina Jolie’s fashion brand unveiled its first collection, a collaboration with Chloé, The Cut reports. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui. Stir chipotles in adobo into a rich vegetarian broth for a tortilla soup. Pick one of these stoves if you want to cook with gas. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was handbill. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Lauren P.S. Yesterday marked 2,000 days of Spelling Bee! Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted October 31, 2023 Author Members Share Posted October 31, 2023 October 31, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY Upway By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the autoworkers’ victories — as well as the invasion in Gaza, artificial intelligence and Halloween. Union members picketing General Motors in Tennessee.Seth Herald/Reuters Moving up the range If you want to understand why the United Auto Workers union has evidently won its strikes against Detroit’s Big Three, it helps to return to the work of a 20th-century economist named Richard Lester. Lester, a longtime Princeton professor, coined a phrase to describe wage negotiations between an employer and a worker: the “range of indeterminacy.” It captures the fact that wages are not a reflection simply of market forces, like a worker’s productivity or a company’s profits. In the real world, similar workers often earn different wages. Their wages fall somewhere in Lester’s range of indeterminacy. Why? Most workers don’t know exactly how valuable their contributions are and therefore what their true market wage should be. Company executives typically don’t know either, but the executives do have more information — about how much money different workers make and how productive each is. Employers also have more leverage. Companies employ many workers, and losing one of them is usually manageable. For most workers, by contrast, quitting over a pay dispute can create financial hardship. For these reasons, workers’ pay often settles at the low end of the range of indeterminacy. In the relationship between an employer and an individual employee, the employer has more power. But there is an important adjective in that previous sentence: individual. When employees band together, they can reduce the power imbalance. They can share information with one another and exert some leverage of their own on the bargaining process. A business that can afford to lose one worker over a pay dispute may not be able to lose dozens. Of course, there is a term for a group of workers who come together to increase their bargaining power: a labor union. Is Tesla next? Over the past week, the Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler) — have each agreed to wage increases that workers surely could not have received by asking nicely. The G.M. deal, announced yesterday, was the last of the three. After adjusting for inflation, many workers seem set to receive roughly a 10 percent raise over the next four and a half years. By 2028, when the contract expires, many workers will make between $30 an hour and $42 an hour, or between $60,000 and $84,000 a year for full-time work. The pay increases are the largest that autoworkers have received in decades, my colleagues Neal Boudette and Jack Ewing explain. The raises are also a reminder that organized labor has an unmatched record in reducing economic inequality. A large academic study, using Gallup surveys covering millions of workers over decades, found that unionized workers typically made 10 percent to 20 percent more than similar non-unionized workers. The extra pay generally does not harm economic growth, the economists found. It instead often comes out of executive salaries and business profits, reducing inequality. Unions alter the division of the economic pie more than the pie’s size. Or to put the idea in Lester’s terms, unions shift wages out of the low end of the range of indeterminacy. To be clear, unions sometimes do win pay increases so large that wages exceed a reasonable range and hobble an employer. Unions can also block necessary changes in a company’s operations. Such overreach happened in parts of the auto industry during the 1970s, contributing to Detroit’s decline. Today, auto executives warn of a similar risk. The unions counter that the recent raises make up for years of wage stagnation — and that Detroit’s executives have received even larger raises recently. I don’t pretend to know whether these wage increases will look reasonable in hindsight. It will depend partly on whether Chrysler, Ford and G.M. make more appealing vehicles in the years ahead than they did in the 1970s. But it would be a mistake to assume that the executives are automatically correct that the wage increases are excessive. Wages make up less than 5 percent of the cost of many vehicles. And company executives in almost every industry often claim that wages are too high. They prefer it when wages are on the low end of the range of indeterminacy — partly because it leaves more money for the executives to take home. A hat tip: I learned about Lester’s work from Lawrence Katz, a leading labor economist today. You can read The Times’s 1998 obituary of Lester. The U.A.W. leader Shawn Fain and President Biden.Evan Vucci/Associated Press More on the deals President Biden — who risked political capital by picketing with striking G.M. workers last month — called the deals “a testament to the power of unions.” The agreements include commitments by the companies to expand or reopen Midwestern factories that employ unionized workers. Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., signaled that the union could soon begin drives to organize U.S. workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda and BMW. Three young labor activists — who never worked in an auto factory — helped the union become more media savvy, The Wall Street Journal reports. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Upway Upway — Your Next E-Bike, Priced Just Right. Upway sells and buys e-bikes from top brands, all priced up to 60% off retail. Their master mechanics rigorously inspect and certify every Upway e-bike, backed by a one-year warranty and 14-day returns. Your Upway e-bike arrives 99% assembled at your doorstep within a week. Choose from a broad selection of e-bikes, including brands like Specialized, Giant, and Aventon. Upway's mission is to make electric mobility accessible for everyone. Buy an e-bike by 11/9 for a chance to enter a giveaway and receive your money back. Shop now ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR State of the War By The New York Times Israeli troops appear to be encircling Gaza City. These satellite images show how armored vehicles have approached the city’s outskirts. Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not consider a cease-fire: “Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas.” Hamas released a video of three female hostages who described “unbearable conditions” and criticized Netanyahu. It was not clear whether the three were forced to record the video; Israeli officials called it “cruel psychological propaganda.” The United Nations described a desperate situation in Gaza and said the aid arriving was insufficient. More Details Israel began its invasion in secrecy to surprise Hamas and buy itself time to determine its next move, Patrick Kingsley and Ronen Bergman write. The military said it had rescued its first hostage: Ori Megidish, a 19-year-old soldier. Hamas had captured her on Oct. 7. The U.N. agency that aids Gazans said 10 members of its staff had been killed in the past three days. International Reaction The Biden administration, which at first fully supported Israel’s war on Hamas, has grown more critical. Officials said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was a reason. In Las Vegas, a man was charged with threatening to kill Senator Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat who is Jewish; he also suggested she was complicit in the deaths of Palestinians. A wave of antisemitism in Europe has some Jews worried about their safety, The Wall Street Journal reports. MORE NEWS Artificial intelligence Biden signed an executive order on A.I. It requires companies to share information with the government about systems that might threaten national security, among other things. The executive order is an attempt to harness the technology’s economic potential while minimizing its risks, Kevin Roose, a Times tech columnist, writes. Politics A trial over whether Donald Trump should be disqualified from running for president because of his role on Jan. 6 began in Colorado. The Supreme Court seemed torn in a case about civil asset forfeiture — police officers’ seizure of property they suspect has been used in crime. Business Twitter is now worth $19 billion, the company said. Elon Musk paid $44 billion for it a year ago. Sam Bankman-Fried faced harsh cross-examination from federal prosecutors, who grilled him about contradictions in the way he spoke about and ran his crypto company. Other Big Stories In Nairobi, Kenya.Thomas Mukoya/Reuters In Kenya, King Charles is facing calls to answer for British colonial abuses. It is his first trip to Africa as monarch. Maine officials and the Army Reserve knew months ago about the deteriorating mental health of the gunman who killed 18 people in the state last week. Opinions Venezuela’s presidential election is the biggest threat to Chavismo in decades, Roberto Patiño argues. Jessica Grose offers a Halloween parenting hack: Back off. Here’s a column by Paul Krugman on the United Auto Workers. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Hannah Jackson is known as “theredshepherdess” on TikTok.Hannah Jackson TikTok famous: A trucker, a shepherd and a commercial fisherman have become celebrities on social media. Bird brains: Scientists say they have evidence that roosters can recognize themselves in mirrors. Lives Lived: Wanda Poltawska survived gruesome medical experiments in a Nazi concentration camp. She sought spiritual help from a Krakow priest who, decades later, became Pope John Paul II. She died at 101. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Upway Upway — Your Next E-Bike, Priced Just Right. Upway sells and buys e-bikes from top brands, all priced up to 60% off retail. Their master mechanics rigorously inspect and certify every Upway e-bike, backed by a one-year warranty and 14-day returns. Your Upway e-bike arrives 99% assembled at your doorstep within a week. Choose from a broad selection of e-bikes, including brands like Specialized, Giant, and Aventon. Upway's mission is to make electric mobility accessible for everyone. Buy an e-bike by 11/9 for a chance to enter a giveaway and receive your money back. Shop now SPORTS World Series: The Texas Rangers took a 2-1 lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks with a gutsy 3-1 road win. N.F.L.: The Detroit Lions are 6-2, riding high after a 26-14 blowout win over the Las Vegas Raiders. Sudden exit: Iowa informed the offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, son of the team’s head coach, Kirk Ferentz, that he would not return next season. That ends an absurd saga for the Hawkeyes. ARTS AND IDEAS A scene from the 1978 John Carpenter film “Halloween.”Compass International Pictures Now screaming: Looking for something spooky to watch tonight? Erik Piepenburg, a Times reporter and horror geek, lists 25 great scary movies you can stream, including: “Halloween” (1978), on Crackle. “When people ask me what my favorite horror movie is, John Carpenter’s groundbreaking shocker comes out on top,” Erik writes. “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), on Freevee. “The final minutes get my vote for the scariest horror movie ending.” “The Blob” (1958), on Max. “The era will look so foreign and the special effects so outdated that kids will find it to be just cartoony fun.” More on culture Experts say it may be weeks or months before Los Angeles officials can determine how the actor Matthew Perry died. He was found in a hot tub. An exhibition at the Getty in Los Angeles reveals the Egyptian Book of the Dead — a compendium of spells for navigating the afterlife. The late night hosts said goodbye to Mike Pence’s presidential campaign. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Make French onion grilled cheese on the stove. Visit Timisoara, Romania’s “Little Vienna.” Warm up your home with this smart thermostat. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were warping and wrapping. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David P.S. “Hard Fork,” the Times tech podcast, is now a YouTube show. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 1, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 1, 2023 November 1, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering a drop in American gun violence — as well as the latest from the war in Gaza. A vigil in Maine.Hilary Swift for The New York Times Perception and reality American gun violence can feel like an unsolvable problem, with every mass shooting, like last week’s killings in Maine, affirming that the situation is getting worse. But the U.S. has in fact made some progress over the past few decades, enacting policies that have saved lives. That is the conclusion of a new study by Patrick Sharkey and Megan Kang at Princeton. Stricter gun laws passed by 40 states from 1991 to 2016 reduced gun deaths by nearly 4,300 in 2016, or about 10 percent of the nationwide total. States with stricter laws, such as background checks and waiting periods, consistently had fewer gun deaths, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows: Source: Sharkey and Kang, Princeton University | Note: Gun death rates are averages from 2012 to 2016, and the gun regulation index is for 1991 to 2016. | By The New York Times Sharkey told me that the results had surprised him. He has studied violent crime for years, and did not believe that stricter gun laws had a major effect in reducing it. His new takeaway: “The challenge of gun violence is not intractable, and in fact we have just lived through a period of enormous progress that was driven by public policy.” The country’s progress on guns may surprise you, too. It certainly surprised me. It’s worth reflecting on why. If the data is clear, why haven’t we heard more about these outcomes? To my mind, the lack of attention shows the narrow view that many of us often take toward gun policy. The smaller things The national conversation about gun violence focuses on big federal policy ideas. Activists and pundits often speak about the need for a federal law enacting universal background checks or banning assault weapons. Anything short of action at the national level will fail to make the U.S. as safe as Canada, Europe or Japan, the argument goes. It’s true that guns kill many more people in the U.S. than in other rich countries, and America will likely remain an outlier for the foreseeable future. But the study by Sharkey and Kang shows that changes at the state level can have an effect. Even policies that seem limited, like safety-training requirements or age restrictions, add up. “There’s no single policy that is going to eliminate the flow or circulation of guns within and across states,” Sharkey said. “But the idea is these kinds of regulations accumulate.” After all, America’s gun problem is rooted in easy access to firearms. In every country, people get into arguments, hold racist views or suffer from mental health issues. But when these problems turn violent, quick access to guns makes that violence much more likely to become lethal. Anything that adds barriers to picking up a firearm in such moments reduces deaths, whether it’s incremental state policies or broader federal laws. The new study is one part of a broader line of research demonstrating that point. Among the many new laws put in place since 1991: California required background checks on private gun sales in 1991, Massachusetts tightened child-access laws in 1998 and Virginia restricted gun ownership by people with mental illnesses in 2008. Customers at Three Cousins Firearms, a gun shop in Lewiston, on Friday.Andrew Cullen for The New York Times After 2016 There is a major caveat to the progress that Sharkey and Kang documented: It seems to have ended. The new study cuts off in 2016 because later data was not available at the time of the research, Sharkey said. Since 2016, many states have loosened their gun laws, in some cases because Supreme Court rulings have forced them to do so. And firearms sales have surged, particularly during the Covid pandemic. Congress did pass a narrow gun control law last year that extended background checks and funded anti-violence policies, and some states have continued tightening gun laws. On net, though, U.S. gun laws have become looser in the past seven years. Gun deaths have increased over the same period, and mass shootings have become more common. These trends — a rise in deaths, looser laws and increased firearm purchases — are likely related, Sharkey said. He pointed out that the six states that had weakened their gun laws from 1991 to 2016 appeared to have experienced more gun deaths than other factors suggested they should have. As more states have loosened their laws in recent years, they have set themselves up for more gun deaths. “If states take basic steps to regulate guns, it will save thousands and thousands of lives,” Sharkey said. The opposite is also true. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR Border Crossing The authorities in Gaza let some foreign passport holders and seriously wounded Palestinians leave the territory and enter Egypt. Americans are expected to leave later this week. Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, blamed Hamas for blocking them from crossing the border. Jabaliya Strike In the Jabaliya refugee camp. Reuters An Israeli airstrike hit a densely populated neighborhood north of Gaza City called Jabaliya. Photographs showed a large crater and several demolished buildings. Israel said the strike killed Hamas fighters, including a commander who helped lead the Oct. 7 attacks. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza said it killed or wounded many people. The Times could not verify either claim. More on the War Israeli forces reached another neighborhood north of Gaza City. At least a quarter of buildings in northern Gaza are damaged, these maps show. Communication and internet services have been cut again in Gaza. American commandos are in Israel to help locate the more than 200 hostages seized by Hamas. Times videographers visited a U.N. camp in southern Gaza, where half the population is younger than 12, to understand what the war looks like through a child’s eyes. Threats Jews in Europe, living in a climate of fear, are experiencing “a fundamental shift in the terms of their existence,” Roger Cohen writes. The war has heightened the potential for attacks in the U.S., especially against Jews or Muslims, the F.B.I. director said. Diplomacy The Senate confirmed Jack Lew, a former Treasury secretary, to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The head of Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial criticized Israel’s U.N. ambassador for wearing a yellow Star of David at the Security Council. MORE NEWS Technology The Supreme Court heard arguments about whether elected officials’ social media accounts are allowed to block their constituents. Kamala Harris is pushing for global standards on A.I. at a summit in London this week. Orlando schools have banned phone use all day — even during free periods — and student engagement has increased. Health A new treatment that uses CRISPR gene editing to combat sickle cell disease is safe and effective, an expert panel said. If approved, it would be the first treatment for humans to use CRISPR. A terminally ill man who received a heart from a genetically modified pig has died, six weeks after the transplant. International Shipping containers.Nathalia Angarita for The New York Times A drought means the Panama Canal can carry fewer boats, disrupting trade. New immigration policies, global migration patterns and changing demographics help to explain the record number of illegal crossings into the U.S. from Mexico. The Venezuelan government is trying to annul the opposition’s primary election. Workers who left villages for big cities helped China rise as a superpower. Without a safety net or family nearby, the country’s economic downturn has left them vulnerable, Li Yuan writes. Other Big Stories The House speaker has proposed separating aid to Ukraine from aid to Israel, potentially weakening Ukraine. Some Senate Republicans want to keep them linked. Some pharmacy workers at CVS and Walgreens are calling in sick or walking out over job conditions. Read more about the latest labor protest. A court ruled that the National Association of Realtors and several large brokerages conspired to inflate agents’ commissions. A woman in North Dakota has been accused of fatally poisoning her boyfriend with antifreeze. She told investigators she was entitled to part of his $30 million inheritance. Opinions The skepticism people have over Hamas’s atrocities stems from the lies the U.S. told to justify the Iraq war, Zeynep Tufekci argues. Here are columns by Ross Douthat on Israel and the Palestinians and Jamelle Bouie on gun culture. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Heidi KlumKrista Schlueter for The New York Times Costume party: Heidi Klum, known for her elaborate Halloween outfits, enlisted Cirque du Soleil performers this year to transform her into a giant peacock. Too steep: A dad worried his rock-climbing adventure had pushed his son too far. Experts say it’s good to challenge our kids — within reason. Lives Lived: Bertie Bowman began his career in the U.S. Capitol in 1944, sweeping its steps. By the 1960s he was a clerk for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he eventually became the longest-serving Black staff member in congressional history. He died at 92. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT SPORTS N.F.L.: The Las Vegas Raiders fired their head coach, Josh McDaniels, and their general manager, Dave Ziegler. Trade deadline: Chase Young and Josh Dobbs found new homes as N.F.L. teams made last-minute changes to their rosters. M.L.B.: The Texas Rangers are one win away from their first World Series title after beating the Arizona Diamondbacks, 11-7. ARTS AND IDEAS Courtney BryanMaansi Srivastava/The New York Times Dreaming: Courtney Bryan, an American pianist and composer, recently received a MacArthur “genius” grant. But little of her work, lauded for being eclectic and adventurous, is publicly available. That’s about to change. Her new work “DREAMING” premieres today, presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble at New York City’s Merkin Hall. More on culture Tyler Christopher, who played Nikolas Cassadine on the soap opera “General Hospital” for two decades, died at 50. Charlamagne Tha God guest-hosted “The Daily Show” and made fun of Ron DeSantis’s heels. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Bake Claire Saffitz’s ultimate chocolate cake. Organize your work space and keep clutter to a minimum. Stock a guest room with these essentials. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was volatility. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 2, 2023 November 2, 2023 I’m turning today’s newsletter over to my colleague Emily Bazelon, who has been covering the political fight over abortion rights. Emily previews next week’s elections related to the subject. — David Leonhardt By Emily Bazelon Staff Writer, NYT Magazine Good morning. We’re covering an upcoming vote on abortion access — as well as the Israel-Hamas war, George Santos and groundwater in the U.S. Voting in Ohio. Madeleine Hordinski for The New York Times Another test On Tuesday, Ohio voters will decide whether to protect access to abortion in their state. The measure on the ballot, known as Issue 1, would change the state’s Constitution to provide the right for every person to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” before a fetus is viable outside the womb (usually around 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy). If Issue 1 passes, Ohio will become the latest state to vote to protect or expand abortion access. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, abortion rights have gone six for six in elections, including in red states, when voters have made direct decisions on the issue. A defeat for Issue 1, on the other hand, may suggest that abortion opponents have figured out a successful counterstrategy. In August, an Ohio elections board, which Republicans control, approved ballot language that differs significantly from the language that would appear in the Constitution if voters approve the measure. Among other changes, the board substituted the phrase “unborn child” for “fetus.” Opponents of Issue 1 have also recently suggested that the measure isn’t necessary because abortion rights are already protected in Ohio. “You can have an abortion up to and through the fifth month of pregnancy,” the president of Ohio Right to Life, Mike Gonidakis, has said. That is correct for now, but state legislators have passed a six-week abortion ban, and the temporary court order that is blocking it is being appealed to the conservative Ohio Supreme Court. The problem that Issue 1’s opponents are trying to solve is that most voters — including one-third of Republicans in Ohio — support access to abortion. “The pro-life side had it easy when abortion was legal,” Steven Mitchell, a Republican pollster who says he is pro-life, told me for a story in September for The New York Times Magazine. “But things went crazy when people saw that was taken away.” Recent polls have found that support for Issue 1 is between 52 percent and 59 percent. (The measure needs only a simple majority to pass because Ohio voters resoundingly rejected an August initiative, promoted by Republicans, that would have raised the threshold to 60 percent.) Opposition has ranged from 27 percent to 36 percent, with the remaining voters undecided. Abortion-rights advocates in Ohio have emphasized the message that a ban at six weeks, when many women don’t yet know they’re pregnant, is extreme. One recent ad features a father of three who says he grew up “in the church” and was raised to think abortion was wrong, but now thinks that it’s “insane” to ban abortion without providing exceptions for rape or the health of the mother (other than in a “medical emergency”). The results in Ohio will shape the political strategies of both sides. Campaigns to collect signatures for similar measures to protect abortion rights in 2024 are underway in Florida, Arizona and at least four other states. These initiatives could both expand abortion access and influence other races that determine who controls state governments, Congress and the presidency. Mitchell told me that he saw a broad threat to the Republican Party. In Michigan, where he lives, a successful campaign to pass an abortion-rights measure, much like the one in Ohio, appeared to increase turnout to the benefit of Democrats last year. The effect was especially pronounced among young voters — who will be voting for many years to come. It’s not surprising, then, that Republicans are trying to keep abortion-related measures off the ballot in 2024. The attorney general of Florida says she will argue that the proposed initiative language in her state is invalid. In Missouri, Republican officials have been trying to put roadblocks in the way of a 2024 measure — in the latest gambit, the attorney general says that his office will refuse to defend an abortion-rights initiative in court if it passes and that, as a result, he estimates taxpayers will have to pay $21 million in legal fees. Tuesday’s elections will also provide a signal about a different Republican strategy. In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has persuaded Republicans running for legislative seats to support a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and the life (but not health) of the mother. An October poll showed that Virginia voters were almost evenly split on the 15-week ban. National polls show that while more than two out of three Americans support abortion rights in the first trimester (when more than 90 percent of abortions take place), support falls to one in three in the second trimester. The New York Times Virginia Republicans “aren’t looking to win over abortion-rights supporters so much as they want to neutralize the party’s disadvantage with swing voters,” my colleague Trip Gabriel writes. While abortion rights helped flip the Michigan Legislature to Democrats last year, in Florida, Texas and some other red states, Democratic candidates failed to unseat Republican incumbents despite campaigning on the issue. Virginia Democrats are spending heavily to tell voters that Youngkin’s 15-week proposal would reduce access in the only remaining Southern state without a ban or severe restrictions in effect or awaiting court review. (This Times map shows which states have abortion bans.) The election results next week, in red-leaning Ohio and blue-leaning Virginia, will tell us a lot about whether abortion, post-Roe, will continue to be a boon for Democrats — or present more mixed prospects. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War Crossing into Egypt.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Hundreds of foreigners, aid workers and injured Palestinians left Gaza for Egypt. A few Americans were among the evacuees, officials said, and more are set to leave today. Israel struck the Jabaliya neighborhood again yesterday, videos verified by The Times show, flattening several buildings about half a mile from Tuesday’s strike. Israel’s military said it had broken through Hamas’s front lines in northern Gaza. It said at least 15 Israeli soldiers had been killed there so far. Response to the War President Biden has now made an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal one of his goals. He’s talking about a two-state solution. Bolivia cut diplomatic ties with Israel over the strikes in Gaza. Chile and Colombia said they were recalling their ambassadors to Israel. International financial institutions warned that a wider regional conflict could threaten the world economy. Student demonstrators at Columbia University walked out of a Hillary Clinton lecture. Many Republicans are denouncing campus protests as part of a “woke agenda.” Congress The House voted down a Republican-led resolution to expel George Santos, who faces federal fraud charges. A group of Senate Republicans confronted Tommy Tuberville, a fellow Republican, for blocking military confirmations over abortion policy, The Washington Post reports. Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey’s Democratic governor, is preparing to run for Senator Robert Menendez’s seat. Donald Trump Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyers. Anna Watts for The New York Times Donald Trump Jr. testified in the New York civil case accusing his father of fraud. Eric, Ivanka and Donald Trump are also expected to testify. Trump allies are drawing up lists of aggressive right-wing lawyers who could staff a second administration. The Supreme Court seemed skeptical of letting a California lawyer trademark the phrase “Trump too small,” a mocking reference to Trump’s hands. Climate Groundwater supplies in the U.S. are dwindling. A Times survey found that states are unprepared for the coming crisis. A Danish company canceled two multibillion-dollar wind farms off the New Jersey coast, a blow to the Biden administration’s climate plans. Business and Economy The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged but stayed open to a future increase. Disney will take full control of Hulu, buying out Comcast for more than $8.6 billion. Teachers in Portland, Ore. went on strike, demanding higher wages, a cap on class sizes and more. International China has a slowing birthrate and an unemployment crisis. Xi Jinping suggested the solution was for women to stay home and have children. Hundreds of Colombian veterans have volunteered to fight in Ukraine, motivated by economic pressures at home. Other Big Stories Relatives and friends of a gunman who killed 18 people in Maine were worried about his mental condition, according to police records. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. rose significantly last year for the first time in two decades. Opinions Republicans want to fight drug cartels by bombing labs in Mexico. That plan has failed before, Greg Grandin writes. Here are columns by Charles Blow on the new House speaker and Gail Collins on gun control in Maine. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In New York. Kirsten Luce for The New York Times Apple-picking apocalypse: Eight weekends of rain have hurt orchards in upstate New York. Bridgewater Associates: How does the world’s largest hedge fund really make its money? “La Monja de la Feria”: A scary nun has become a beloved icon in Mexico. Lives Lived: Across four decades on New York television, Arnold Diaz reported on — and shamed — business owners, scammers and bureaucrats who ripped off consumers. Diaz, who retired last year, died at 74. SPORTS Texas Rangers. Matt Kartozian/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters An M.L.B. first: The Texas Rangers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 to win the franchise’s first World Series title, a stunning turnaround for a team that lost 102 games two years ago. College basketball: Bobby Knight, the Indiana coach known for his tactical brilliance and his enraged outbursts, died at 83. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Michelle WilliamsSinna Nasseri for The New York Times A familiar voice: Listen to the audiobook of Britney Spears’s new memoir, “The Woman in Me,” and it’s not the singer you will hear; it’s the actress Michelle Williams. Many popular books now use A-list actors for their audio editions — other recent examples include Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Willem Dafoe. “It’s extremely intimate, and that’s what you want to get out of a performance,” said Lisa Hintelmann, the head of casting and talent at Audible. More on culture Keith Lee, a TikTok food critic with 14 million followers, reviewed restaurants in Atlanta. He didn’t like being charged extra for sauce. “The fraudigal son”: Jimmy Kimmel mocked Donald Trump Jr. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Roast these brussels sprouts with garlic, our most popular version. Elevate your shower routine with Wirecutter’s favorite towel. Keep these essentials in your car. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were panhandle and panhandled. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 5, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 5, 2023 November 3, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the evidence on the Gaza hospital explosion — as well as Sam Bankman-Fried, a stalemate in Ukraine and The Beatles. The site of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza.Shadi Al-Tabatibi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Four legs of a stool Last month, a few days after the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, I walked you through the debate over who was responsible. At the time, there wasn’t much evidence that outsiders could assess on their own. The dispute revolved around competing claims from Israel and Hamas. But more evidence has since emerged. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain it. The hospital explosion is important in its own right: It was the biggest news story in the world for days and sparked protests across the Middle East. The explosion also has a larger significance: It offers clues about how to judge the claims about civilian casualties that are central to Hamas’s war message. My colleague Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence from Washington, describes the explosion evidence as falling into four categories — akin to four legs of a stool. Let’s look at each of them: 1. Videos of the air The most complicated part of the evidence involves the various cameras that captured the sky above Gaza on the night of Oct. 17. The Associated Press, CNN and The Wall Street Journal each analyzed one set of footage and concluded that a malfunctioning rocket from Gaza — presumably from Palestinian fighters — caused the explosion. Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials have made the same argument. But an examination by The New York Times’s Visual Investigations team exposed flaws in the footage analysis. Times reporters used additional cameras to conclude that the projectile actually came from Israel — and did not land near the hospital, which means it couldn’t have caused the explosion. At least two independent analysts, as well as The Washington Post, agree. The Post’s analysis also explains that a separate video does show a barrage of rockets from Gaza, headed toward the hospital, just before the explosion. One of them could have been “a stray rocket launched by a Palestinian armed group,” The Post wrote. The Times analysis notes that Palestinian and Israeli forces were each firing weapons in the area around the time of the explosion. Bottom line: The video evidence remains murky. Near Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 2. Videos of the ground Israeli airstrikes tend to leave fingerprints. The bombs typically weigh 2,000 pounds and create huge craters. Shrapnel is extensive. Buildings are destroyed. None of these descriptions fit the hospital explosion, according to videos and photos. The hole in the ground resembles a large pothole. Cars are burned out, not flattened. Nearby buildings show little structural damage, and there is little shrapnel. “The damage is too light to be from a 2,000-pound bomb,” Julian says. This pattern doesn’t prove the explosion’s source was Palestinian; Israel does use smaller munitions, such as howitzer shells. But the explosion appears consistent with the rockets that Palestinian groups were launching toward Israel that night. One possibility is that the damage was limited because it came mostly from the leaking fuel of a malfunctioned rocket, ignited on impact, rather than from the explosion of the rocket head. Bottom line: The scene after the explosion is inconsistent with that of a typical Israeli airstrike. 3. Hamas’s case Hamas, not Israel, controls the area around the hospital and has had more than two weeks to scour it for the evidence, such as shrapnel, that even a smaller Israeli weapon likely would have left. “The evidence of an Israeli airstrike wouldn’t simply evaporate into the night,” Julian said. (In Ukraine, physical evidence is one way that Times reporters solved the mystery of a September explosion.) Yet Hamas has produced no signs of an Israeli airstrike, as my colleagues Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman have explained. Instead, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, said, “The missile has dissolved like salt in the water.” Bottom line: Hamas’s failure to produce evidence suggests the group may not want outsiders to see it. 4. The tapes Israel has released the recording of what it says is an Oct. 17 conversation in which one Hamas member tells another that a Palestinian rocket caused the explosion. “It’s from us?” one asks. “It looks like it,” the other replies. Israel has also shared at least three similar taped conversations with the U.S., and U.S. officials have judged them to be genuine. Bottom line: The conversations are relevant evidence, but they’re not proof. It’s possible that Hamas fighters were themselves confused. In the aftermath of the blast.Shadi Al-Tabatibi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The full picture I try to avoid the journalistic sin known as bothsidesism when information favors one version of events over another. And while much about the hospital explosion remains unclear, the available evidence points toward a Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike, as the more likely cause. “One of the legs of the stool — the videos of a rocket exploding in the sky — now looks a lot weaker than it did,” Julian said. “But the other pieces of evidence remain in place. And the overall conclusion of the American intelligence agencies appears sound: It was a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket that most likely hit the hospital.” This evidence, in turn, suggests that the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas, has deliberately told the world a false story. U.S. officials believe that the health ministry also inflated the toll when it announced 500 deaths; the actual number appears to be closer to 100. This episode doesn’t mean that Gazan officials always mislead or that Israeli officials always tell the truth. Even in this case, for example, Israeli officials have cited video evidence that Times reporting suggests does not support their argument. Both sides deserve continued scrutiny. But the hospital explosion offers reason to apply particular skepticism to Hamas’s claims about civilian deaths — which are an undeniable problem in this war. Hamas’s record on the war’s most closely watched incident does not look good. If more evidence becomes available, I will cover it in a future newsletter. More on the War Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, arrived in Tel Aviv to urge Israel’s government to pause the fighting to free hostages and distribute humanitarian aid. The Israeli military said that its soldiers, who have encircled Gaza City, were battling “face to face” with Hamas fighters. These maps show where Israel is advancing. The U.N. human rights agency said it had “serious concerns” that recent airstrikes on the Jabaliya area could constitute a war crime; Israel rejected that, arguing that Hamas bears responsibility for civilian deaths because it hides its commanders among everyday Gazans. A Hamas official vowed more attacks against Israel similar to those of Oct. 7. Violence has surged in the West Bank as Jewish settlers attack Palestinians who live there. The U.S. is flying surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip. Officials said the drones were helping hostage recovery efforts. “The Daily” explains how a war in 1948 shaped the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. International Response The House passed a bill, written by Republicans, to provide money for Israel. It also cuts I.R.S. funding and lacks funds for Ukraine — and faces bipartisan opposition in the Senate. Cornell University canceled classes for today after a 21 year-old computer science major was charged with threatening Jewish students. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Sam Bankman-Fried A jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried of stealing billions of dollars from customers of his crypto exchange FTX. He faces a maximum sentence of 110 years. “I am, and for most of my adult life have been, sad.” Read about his wild rise and abrupt crash. Politics F.B.I. agents raided the home of Mayor Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser as part of an investigation into whether his campaign had received illegal donations from Turkey. Donald Trump’s sons blamed outside accountants for any errors in company financial statements. The Senate confirmed three top military officials, maneuvering around Senator Tommy Tuberville’s blockade. Other Big Stories Ukrainian troops firing grenade launchers.Nicole Tung for The New York Times Ukraine’s top military commander said the war with Russia was at a stalemate. The front line has barely shifted for months. A former Memphis police officer charged in the January death of Tyre Nichols pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and using excessive force. The fire that destroyed Lahaina, Hawaii, went from a spark in the grass to an inferno. See how it spread. Opinions On the Matter of Opinion podcast, Times columnists drafted their dream presidential matchups. Here’s a column by Pamela Paul on the Democratic Party. Expand your understanding. Enhance your skills. Embrace your curiosity. A New York Times All Access subscription includes everything you need to make the most of every day. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Maine shooting: In a town touched by tragedy, a high school football rivalry became an opportunity to heal. Flying this week? Trans-Atlantic flights may land up to an hour early. Modern Love: After a death, when do you take off your wedding ring? Lives Lived: Ken Mattingly was bumped from Apollo 13 after being exposed to measles, then helped it avert disaster from mission control. He died at 87. SPORTS N.F.L.: Diontae Johnson of the Pittsburgh Steelers caught the game-winning pass in a 20-16 win over the Tennessee Titans. Sports diplomacy: Saudi Arabia is continuing its push into professional sports with a bid to buy two prestigious tennis tournaments. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS The Beatles in 1962.Getty Images A bittersweet goodbye: “If I make it through, it’s all because of you,” John Lennon sings on “Now and Then,” a new Beatles song released yesterday. The voice is authentically Lennon’s — he recorded it on a cassette tape not long before his death. George Harrison recorded a guitar part in the 1990s, and Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney recently completed the song, using technology from the filmmaker Peter Jackson to extract Lennon’s voice from the tape. You can hear it here. “For anyone who grew up on or came to love the Beatles,” the Times critic Jon Pareles writes, “there’s an extra pang in hearing the full band’s last work together, even as a digital assemblage.” More on culture Jeff Bezos has announced that he is leaving Seattle, home to Amazon’s headquarters, to move to Miami. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Make smoky lentil stew, which improves after a day in the fridge. Order your Thanksgiving turkey now if you want something other than a supermarket bird. Store photographs so they last generations. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was cocktail. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 5, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 5, 2023 November 4, 2023 Today I’m handing over the newsletter to my colleague Lyna Bentahar to discuss a new exhibition of Mark Rothko’s art. I’ll be back next week. — Melissa By Lyna Bentahar Good morning. We’re covering an illuminating retrospective, a new podcast for kids and the latest from the Middle East. Mark Rothko’s “No. 14” (1960).Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Rothko, in pain and glory You may recognize Mark Rothko’s paintings, even if you can’t recall the artist’s name: tall canvases of bold, floating blocks of color. Their titles, such as “No. 13,” “Red on Maroon,” even “Untitled,” are just as abstract as the paintings themselves. The Fondation Louis Vuitton art museum in Paris will host 115 of Rothko’s works in a blockbuster retrospective that runs through next spring. The exhibition, which fills four floors, proceeds in a somewhat chronological order. Paintings of city scenery from Rothko’s early career lead to his experiments with Surrealism; to the abstract, foggy rectangles he’s known for; and finally to the dark, colorless canvasses that embodied his later work. “Over and over, in soft-edged blocks layered on filmy backgrounds, he modeled a commitment to abstraction that charged at the hardest questions of life and art through refusal of the easy path,” my colleague Jason Farago, an art critic for The Times, writes in his review of the retrospective. Rothko preferred to show his paintings in low light, and away from the work of other artists. The show mostly stays true to those wishes, though it gives space in the final gallery to one artist Rothko at least approved of: Alberto Giacometti, whose spindly, bronze sculptures of attenuated human figures appear alongside a set of Rothko’s black-and-gray paintings. The retrospective is a success, Jason says, though he notes that one can only view so many Rothkos in a day before they start to merge together. “They are spectacular, even if they soon all became broadly similar,” he writes. And there’s more to appreciate about this show than just the paintings — particularly, the ordeal of getting them all to Paris. No museum has attempted a Rothko exhibition of this scale since the 1990s, and for good reason: Almost none could afford it. The paintings are not just expensive (one was up for sale for $40 million last month), but also difficult to move because of the fragile materials Rothko used in his paint. Moving so many Rothkos safely is something perhaps only a billionaire could afford. As it happens, the Louis Vuitton conglomerate’s chief executive, Bernard Arnault, is one of the richest people in the world. “In organizational terms,” Jason writes, “this show is a milestone.” If a trip to the Vuitton in Paris is out of reach, there are opportunities to see Rothko’s work in the United States. The National Gallery of Art in Washington is holding an exhibition of Rothko’s paintings on paper starting November 19. The Phillips Collection, also in Washington, is hosting an installation through the end of March. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has its own Rothko collection. And in Houston there is a permanent installation in a nondenominational church, aptly called The Rothko Chapel. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE LeVar BurtonAriel Fisher for The New York Times LeVar Burton helped a generation discover books with “Reading Rainbow.” Now he’s engaging young audiences again with “Sound Detectives,” a comic mystery podcast that teaches the art of listening. Heidi Klum drew a star-studded crowd to her annual Halloween gala in New York City. See photos of the costumes. Having grown up with Chandler on “Friends” makes it harder to say goodbye to Matthew Perry, our TV critic James Poniewozik writes. Irish Repertory Theater’s survey of Brian Friel’s work prompted a reporter to seek out the town that inspired Ballybeg, the mythical setting of many of Friel’s plays. In a solo show at Gagosian Beverly Hills, paintings by Ewa Juszkiewicz depict well-dressed women whose faces are concealed by textiles and wild hairdos. How did bronze statues from an ancient Roman shrine end up in museums around the world? They were looted by local farmers, a village admits. A foundation working on a museum to mark the Pulse nightclub shooting said the cost of building it had become prohibitive. DoorDash customers who don’t tip delivery drivers may have to wait longer for their food orders, CBS News reports. A legal battle between Robert De Niro and his former executive assistant went to trial this week. Now in its 10th year, “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” has become a showcase for magicians. It’s the rare competition show where kindness rules. Mint, one of the first budgeting apps, is shutting down. THE LATEST NEWS Christophe Ena/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, appeared to reject the Biden administration’s calls to pause the fighting in Gaza. He said any cease-fire would depend on Hamas’s freeing of Israeli hostages. An Israeli airstrike hit near a Gaza City hospital on Friday. A hospital official said the strike killed 13 people; Israel said it killed “a number of Hamas terrorist operatives.” The leader of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah stopped short of calling for a wider war with Israel. More than 130 people died and hundreds more were injured after a strong earthquake shook western Nepal late Friday. Officials said the death toll was likely to rise. An appeals court temporarily lifted the gag order on Donald Trump in his federal election case. President Biden mourned the victims of last week’s mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, and urged “reasonable, responsible measures to protect our children, our families, our communities.” A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR By Andrew LaVallee Arts & Leisure Editor 📚 “The Vulnerables” (Tuesday): This is a novel that reads like a Covid diary, but wait, don’t click away just yet! It’s by Sigrid Nunez, who won a National Book Award for “The Friend,” and like that book, “The Vulnerables” is a fast, absorbing read that will leave you with more to think about than you expected going in. As our book critic Dwight Garner puts it in his review, “Being told about life, by a perceptive writer, can be as good as, if not better than, being told a story.” 🎬 “The Holdovers” (Friday): Alexander Payne directs this dramatic comedy about the students and staff stuck at a 1970s-era New England boarding school over Christmas break. Paul Giamatti, who starred in Payne’s West Coast dramedy “Sideways,” plays a cranky, mephitic teacher charged with looking after the left-behind boys, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph (who plays one of the redeeming parts in “The Idol”) delivers a complex, poignant performance as a cook quietly mourning the loss of her son in Vietnam. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Joseph De Leo for The New York Times By Melissa Clark No-Knead Bread When Mark Bittman published Jim Lahey’s recipe for no-knead bread in 2006, it swiftly became one of the most popular recipes The New York Times had ever run. All you need is some bread flour, yeast, salt — and a trusty Dutch oven in which to bake your dough. True to its name, there’s no arduous kneading required, though you do need to let the dough rise for at least 14 hours (and preferably up to 24), so planning ahead is crucial. But it’s worth it for a loaf this good, bragging rights assured. REAL ESTATE Maria Hodge in her backyard pool.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times The youngest senior: A New Jerseyan in her 50s is enjoying early retirement in a community with an average age of 79. Doing it in style: Netflix’s “Selling Sunset” is ostensibly about real estate, but many viewers watch it just for the fashion. What you get for $1 million: An 1824 townhouse in New Castle, Del.; a three-bedroom Tudor Revival house in Boise, Idaho; and a Colonial Revival house in Swansboro, N.C. The hunt: When rental prices sagged in the Bay Area, two empty nesters searched for the ideal two-bedroom apartment. Which did they choose? Play our game. LIVING Kim Kardashian wearing clothes from Skims’s Swarovski collection.Shaniqwa Jarvis for The New York Times Bedazzled: Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims seems to be collaborating with everyone these days, including the N.B.A. and Swarovski. Unhitched: After a divorce that ended 15 years of marriage, a couple has developed a love akin to that of a brother and sister. Endurance training: You can prepare your body before pregnancy the same way you might train for an athletic event. Here’s how. School’s out: Traveling during the off-season means fewer crowds and reduced airfares, but can families with school-age children take advantage? ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER An alternative to air mattresses If overnight guests are headed your way for the holidays, folding mattresses are surprisingly comfortable. And while they’re more difficult to store than something inflatable, they can be sort of chic. I own two twin-size ones, perfect for pushing together and making a bed on the floor that’s as wide as king size. When just one guest is visiting, I stack the mattresses on a folding twin frame to create one 8-inch-thick mattress. When I cover them with sheets, they look like a normal mattress, which makes our guest space (a.k.a. my office) look far more polished than it would with a blowup one. — Christine Cyr Clisset For expert advice, independent reviews and deals, sign up for Wirecutter’s daily newsletter, The Recommendation. GAME OF THE WEEKEND Christopher Bell, in the white car, and William Byron, in the red, will compete for the NASCAR championship.James Gilbert/Getty Images NASCAR Cup Series Championship: NASCAR’s playoff rules are convoluted, but here’s all you need to know: In this race, the last of the season, four drivers will compete for the championship. Whoever finishes first among them wins. There will be 32 other cars in the race — a mostly empty racetrack would be boring — which means that drivers who have no shot at winning could still change the outcome. As one racing expert explained to The Athletic, “It would be like Patrick Mahomes getting tackled in the Super Bowl by a Houston Texans player who didn’t even make the playoffs.” 3 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on NBC. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was juvenile. See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. An update to yesterday’s newsletter: CNN has published an article that withdraws its original analysis of videos related to the Gaza hospital explosion on Oct. 17. CNN’s new analysis agrees with the findings by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 6, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 6, 2023 November 5, 2023 Good morning. Today, Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, takes over the newsletter to tell you about a new presidential poll. We’re also covering the Israel-Hamas war, the Golden Gate Bridge and Amazon drone delivery. — David President BidenHaiyun Jiang for The New York Times Biden is behind By Nate Cohn Chief political analyst When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he ran as the electability candidate — a broadly appealing, moderate Democrat from Scranton, Pa., who could defeat Donald Trump. There aren’t many signs of his old electoral strength in a new set of New York Times/Siena College polls of the six states likely to decide the presidency. Trump leads Biden in five of the six states — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Michigan — which would likely be enough to give him the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Biden leads in the sixth state, Wisconsin. Trump leads by at least four percentage points in each of the other five states: New York Times/Siena College polls The striking results seem to be more a reflection of Biden’s weakness than Trump’s strength. Trump is just as unpopular as he was when he lost the election three years ago, if not slightly more so. Instead, the change is the public’s view of Biden. During his time in office, attitudes toward him have turned decidedly negative. In the last election, voters judged him to be more likable than Trump, to have a better temperament and to have a more appealing personality. Those advantages have largely disappeared. Instead, voters say they are concerned about Biden’s handling of the economy and about his age. More than 70 percent of registered voters in the battlegrounds agree with the statement that Biden is “just too old to be an effective president,” up from around 30 percent in the run-up to the last election. Biden appears to be especially weak among young, Black and Hispanic voters. In a major departure from recent electoral trends, he and Trump are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-old voters, even though young voters have tended to back Democrats by a wide margin in recent cycles. Among Black voters, more than 90 percent of whom usually back Democrats, Biden leads only 71-22. He holds only 50 percent of Hispanic voters across the battlegrounds, down from more than 60 percent in the last cycle. A year to go With one year to go until the election, there’s still plenty of time for the race to change. In contrast with four years ago, the poll finds a disengaged, disaffected and dissatisfied electorate, setting the stage for a potentially volatile campaign. And historically, incumbent presidents have trailed at this stage of the race, only to rally their former supporters once the campaign is underway. If there’s good news for Biden, it’s that his path to re-election runs through traditionally Democratic constituencies, like young, Black and Hispanic voters. The poll suggests that these voters remain open to supporting a Democrat against Trump. It’s still possible that a polarizing campaign — focused on issues like abortion and democracy, which divide the electorate along familiar and favorable lines for Biden — will allow him to reassemble and re-energize the coalition of voters who brought him to the White House. Nonetheless, the poll suggests that Biden’s path will be challenging. Nearly half of registered voters (49 percent) in the battleground states say there’s “almost no chance” they’ll support him, an indication of the depth of their dissatisfaction. At this early stage, I’m not sure how seriously to take traditionally Democratic-leaning voters who say there’s “almost no chance” they’ll back Mr. Biden. As the race gets going, attitudes might change quickly. But one year out, Biden faces big challenges to his re-election. For more: If you’re interested in a deeper look, you can read my full analysis — including the potentially decisive role of voters who say they would vote for Kamala Harris, but not Biden. And here is my colleague Shane Goldmacher’s news article on the polls. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS Israel-Hamas War In the West Bank.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, made an unannounced visit to the West Bank to meet with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv called on the Israeli government to do more to rescue hostages in Gaza. Israel used at least two 2,000-pound bombs — the second-largest in its arsenal — in its airstrikes on Jabaliya, according to experts and Times analysis. A Biden administration official accused Hamas of delaying efforts to get foreign nationals out of Gaza by trying to put its wounded fighters on departure lists. Wrecked buildings and long lines of infantry: A Times reporter was among a small group of journalists who accompanied Israeli military leaders into northern Gaza. Politics “Like winning the lottery”: Conservative Christians are celebrating the unexpected rise of Mike Johnson, the House speaker. The F.B.I. is investigating whether Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, received disguised foreign campaign contributions. International Ukrainians are becoming increasingly pessimistic about a quick victory, polls say. A campaign to legalize divorce in the Philippines argues that it’s an issue of basic human rights. Nuns tackled and gave chase to climate protesters in France, in an escalation of a long-running clash over a proposed megachurch. Other Big Stories A special delivery.Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times A decade after it began talking about deliveries by drone, Amazon is finally making some. Customers are underwhelmed. The actors’ union said it was reviewing a final offer by Hollywood studios to resolve a monthslong strike. Workers in San Francisco have almost finished installing more than three miles of steel netting along the Golden Gate Bridge. Officials call it a “suicide deterrent system.” FROM OPINION Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s brand of conservatism in Virginia has an optimism that other Republicans lack, Michelle Cottle writes. The U.S. needs open communication with Russia and China to prevent another nuclear arms race, The Times’s editorial board writes. Here’s a column by Ross Douthat on liberal academia. The Sunday question: Could regulation have prevented Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud? The former crypto billionaire’s conviction is a cautionary tale that shows “regulation is better than criminal law at preventing harm,” Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman writes. But while regulation might have stopped Bankman-Fried from embezzling funds, it can’t “prevent someone who believes they’re uncatchable from doing wrong,” Ana Paula Pereira writes for Cointelegraph. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS In the Shetland Islands.Andrew Testa for The New York Times Wool week: Every year, knitters from around the world descend on a far-flung Scottish archipelago. Fall back: Many Americans bemoan the end of daylight saving time. Meet the ones who love it. Vows: As they supported each other through health crises, their relationship — and a “love plant” — flourished. Lives Lived: David Kirke was a flamboyant thrill-seeker who performed what is widely acknowledged as the first modern bungee jump. He died at 78. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE Cal Newport Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times By David Marchese Back in January, I spoke with the computer scientist, podcaster and author Cal Newport about why the digital workplace can be such a drag. When I mentioned to a few folks that I was talking to you and that you wrote about work and technology, every one of them said they had problems focusing in front of their computers. So for people who can’t help cycling through their open tabs every five minutes, what’s your biggest piece of advice? The critical mind-set shift is understanding that even minor context shifts are productivity poison. We used to multitask, and then research came out and said you can’t literally multitask. Your brain can’t have your inbox open next to the memo you’re writing while you’re also on the phone. So if you have to work on something that’s cognitively demanding, the rule has to be zero context shifts during that period. You’re working on a book about slow productivity. What is that? Traditional economic productivity largely requires people working toward a singular measurable output with a transparent process. None of that works in knowledge work. So we fell back to a proxy for productivity, which is visible activity. If I can see you doing work, it’s better than I can’t see you doing work. Slow productivity is all about identifying alternatives. Isn’t a large part of the reason that so many of us feel a need to look busy that our bosses require it? So the term “knowledge work” was coined in 1959 by Peter Drucker in “Landmarks of Tomorrow.” Drucker is saying that knowledge workers need to manage themselves. Managers just need to set them up to succeed. But then what do you manage? Visible activity as a proxy for productivity was the solution. But what’s tricky about it is that a manager can’t just change. We’re kind of in a mess that we can’t change on a dime. Read more of the interview here. More from the magazine For people in Bilozerka, Ukraine, the Russian invasion began a cat-and-mouse game of collaboration and resistance. If childhood obesity is an “epidemic,” how far should doctors go to treat it? Should bariatric surgery be an option? Read the full issue. BOOKS Marguerite HigginsYuichi Ishizaki/Associated Press Not invited: In “Fierce Ambition,” Jennet Conant recounts how the superstar war reporter Marguerite Higgins worked hard, late and dirty to thrive in a world rigged against women. Our editors’ picks: “Mapping the Darkness,” about the turbulent history of sleep science, and eight other books. Times best sellers: “The Woman in Me,” Britney Spears’s memoir, takes the top spot in its debut week on the hardcover nonfiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Open your curtains by tapping an app or talking to a smart speaker. Invest in a quality pen. See Southern California beyond the freeway. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For The New York City Marathon is today. Follow the race here. Donald Trump is expected to testify tomorrow in New York’s civil fraud case against him. China and the U.S. finish their weekend climate talks tomorrow. State and local U.S. elections are on Tuesday. What to Cook This Week Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. In her Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making meatballs, her go-to comfort food. Other ideas: one-pot chicken and rice with ginger and crisp gnocchi with brussels sprouts. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was bookmobile. Can you put eight historical events — including the first known sundials, Mayan team sports and Morgan Freeman’s breakthrough role — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 7, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 7, 2023 November 6, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering Biden’s strategic options for 2024 — as well as a large attack in Gaza, China’s economy and A.I. chatbots. President BidenTom Brenner for The New York Times One year away With President Biden having fallen behind Donald Trump in the early 2024 polls, Trump’s strategy seems fairly straightforward: more of the same. Trump will portray Biden as old, inflation as high, immigration as out of control and the nation as weak. All these arguments play into the concerns of many voters. But what might Biden do to improve his position over the next year? Today’s newsletter looks at four possibilities. 1. The ‘anti-MAGA majority’ Since Trump took office in 2017, the Republican Party has struggled nationally. In 2018, it lost control of the House. In 2020, Trump lost his re-election bid. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats did better than expected. Michael Podhorzer, a political analyst and a former A.F.L.-C.I.O. official, argues that this pattern stems from the emergence of “an anti-MAGA majority.” Americans under 30, for example, have been voting at higher rates since 2016, partly because of their opposition to Trump, Podhorzer notes. Other analysts have pointed to suburban voters who are turned off by Trump’s attacks on democracy. This pattern helps explain why Trump-endorsed candidates in swing states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania did so poorly in the 2022 midterms. Today, Trump is leading in most swing states, according to the latest Times/Siena College poll. Once the campaign picks up, though, Trump’s behavior will get more attention, partly because some of his criminal trials will likely have begun. In the Times poll, about 6 percent of voters in battleground states — enough to swing the result — said they would abandon their support for Trump if he were convicted on charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and sentenced to prison. 2. The Roe factor Another cause of Democrats’ recent election wins is the unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. That ruling has allowed Republicans to nearly ban abortion in many states, and most voters oppose those bans. I do think Democrats sometimes exaggerate the political impact of abortion. In 2022, many Democratic candidates tried to beat Republican incumbents by emphasizing the issue. In red states like Florida and Texas, the strategy generally failed — a sign that most Americans don’t vote based on only one issue. That said, in swing states like Michigan, the Republican Party’s extreme abortion position did apparently influence enough voters to decide some close elections last year. And Biden needs to win states like Michigan, not red states, to be re-elected. Perhaps Biden’s biggest advantage is that he could overtake Trump simply by winning back disaffected voters who normally support Democrats, as my colleague Nate Cohn explained in yesterday’s newsletter. Beyond abortion, a populist campaign — emphasizing the low taxes that many rich people pay — might also help Biden, given that many disaffected Democrats have modest incomes, Nate says. 3. Issue weaknesses A pound of bacon costs an average of $7.08 in the U.S., 21 percent more than when Biden took office. The price of coffee beans has risen 33 percent. A gallon of gas is 72 percent more expensive. And because inflation affects everyone, it can damage the public mood more than almost anything else. (Yes, inflation has fallen sharply this year, but most prices have not fallen. Only their rate of increase has.) A president can’t do much to bring down prices in the short term, yet Biden has taken steps to reduce energy prices. He approved an enormous new oil project on federal land in Alaska, while enacting billions of dollars of subsidies for clean energy. He is pursuing the sort of all-of-the-above energy policy that many Americans favor. But he has been strangely unwilling to brag about the Alaska project, as Matthew Yglesias noted in a recent Substack newsletter. Biden seems more focused on avoiding criticism from climate activists than on winning over swing voters who can help re-elect arguably the most climate-friendly president ever. There is a similar dynamic on immigration. Undocumented migration to the U.S. surged after Biden took office, partly in response to his welcoming campaign rhetoric, and many Americans are unhappy about the surge. Although Biden has since taken steps to reduce the surge, he rarely emphasizes these popular steps. Again, he seems more focused on progressive activists than on swing voters. Immigration is indeed a problem for his campaign. In the Times poll, 53 percent of voters in battleground states said they trust Trump to do a better job on the issue, compared with 41 percent who trust Biden. When respondents were asked if they supported building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 53 percent said yes. 4. The age problem Another major concern among voters is Biden’s age. He can’t make himself younger, but he could spend more time in public, demonstrating his energy and engagement. Instead, his staff has kept him cloistered and fed impressions that he isn’t up for the job, as Maureen Dowd, the Times Opinion columnist, has written: “There’s something poignant about watching a guy who used to delight in his Irish gift of gab be muzzled.” Of course, there is one other potential strategy for Democrats who are panicked about a second Trump presidency. Other Democrats could challenge Biden for the nomination. Time is running out, though. The deadlines for getting on the ballot in seven early primary states, including California and Florida, arrive this month. More on 2024 “We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down”: The Biden campaign shrugged off the results of the Times/Siena College Poll. Some Democrats expressed anxiety about the poll. “No one is going to have a runaway election here,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Trump’s support has surged among Black men. Overall, about 20 percent of Black voters say they would back him over Biden. Biden is struggling with young voters and those concerned about the economy, Politico writes. Have a question about the Times poll? Ask it here and our reporters will answer. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Amazon Small businesses are making it big More than 60% of products sold on Amazon.com come from independent sellers. Like Pawstruck. Learn more THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War In Gaza City.Abed Khaled/Associated Press Israel said its military had encircled Gaza City and was conducting a large attack above and below ground. Gaza is again in a blackout, and it is unclear where Israeli forces are fighting. A BBC journalist reported intense strikes and the main Palestinian news agency said Israel was conducting raids near hospitals. Israel accused Hamas of operating out of more hospitals. The World Health Organization said Gaza’s health care system had been struck more than 100 times. A photographer lost four of his five children in a strike. His surviving son, who is 1, was being treated in a crowded hospital corridor. Benjamin Netanyahu quickly suspended a minister who suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. In the north, at its border with Lebanon, Israel is fighting with Hezbollah. See maps of the escalating clashes. American Response Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, made unannounced visits to the West Bank and Iraq. He is working to prevent wider war and to protect U.S. troops in the region. Some American officials are concerned Israeli settlers could use U.S. weapons to force Palestinians from land in the West Bank. Politics Donald Trump will take the witness stand today at his civil fraud trail in Manhattan. Brandon Presley, Elvis’s second cousin, is campaigning to become the first Democratic governor of Mississippi in over 20 years. International A Russian strike on Ukrainian soldiers at a military awards ceremony was a war crime, Volodymyr Zelensky said. A top Haitian police official was grocery shopping when he recognized a fugitive linked to the president’s assassination. He summoned armed officers, who arrested the suspect. China is investing in manufacturing instead of real estate. A far-right candidate in Argentina needs the youth vote to win a runoff election. The fans of Taylor Swift and BTS stand in his way. Other Big Stories Javier OrtizMatthew Callahan for The New York Times U.S. troops who fought the Islamic State returned with shattering mental and physical problems that the military has struggled to understand. A.I. chatbots invent information at least 3 percent of the time, and some as much as 27 percent of the time, research from a start-up found. Tyson Foods recalled nearly 30,000 pounds of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets after people said they found small metal pieces in them. Some psychiatrists are prescribing weight-loss drugs like Ozempic to counteract weight gain from mental health drugs. Opinions Eric Adams’s hires have brought corruption and scandal to New York City, Mara Gay argues. Here are columns by David French on Speaker Mike Johnson and Nicholas Kristof on the West Bank. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Illustration by Daniel Zvereff, Photo by NASA Space: The James Webb telescope has made stunning discoveries, including about the birth of planets like ours. English mysteries: Who killed the innkeeper with a sword in 1315? Climate change preparation: Hoboken, N.J., is building for a rainy day. Metropolitan Diary: Living out a Macy’s fantasy. Lives Lived: Helen Marcus was a late-blooming photographer whose evocative portraits of literary figures and film and television personalities graced book jackets and magazine covers for decades. She died at 97. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Cincinnati Bengals surged past their A.F.C. rivals the Buffalo Bills, 24-18, for their fourth straight win. N.B.A.: James Harden, traded to the L.A. Clippers last week, will make his debut tonight. U.S.C.: The Trojans fired their defensive coordinator, who oversaw a disappointing two-year stretch in Los Angeles. ARTS AND IDEAS At Sotheby’s.via Sotheby's “Must-See TV”: Ahead of major auctions, teams at Sotheby’s and Christie’s prepare roving cameras and sophisticated lighting to broadcast the bidding to the world. It began as a way to do business during the pandemic lockdowns. Now, millions watch live online, riveted by how the one percent spends its money. “Twenty years ago, people thought you had to be the member of an elite club to walk through an auction house door,” said Adrien Meyer, one of Christie’s chief auctioneers. “Now you can see a sale sitting on your couch in your underpants.’’ More on culture Missy Elliott and Sheryl Crow are among the latest inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Joe Lingeman for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Bake this spiced cake for Election Day tomorrow. Embrace the morning light now that the days are shorter. Find the perfect winter boots. Here’s how. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were goodnight and hotdogging. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 8, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 8, 2023 November 7, 2023 By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering today’s elections — as well as Donald Trump’s testimony, the Israel-Hamas war and WeWork’s bankruptcy. Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s Democratic governor.Jon Cherry for The New York Times It’s Election Day Today is Election Day, and we are using this newsletter to give you a guide. One theme is that Democrats are hoping to continue their strong recent electoral performance despite President Biden’s low approval rating. Why have Democrats done so well in elections since 2022? In part, it’s because voter turnout is modest in off-year elections like today’s. The people who vote tend to be engaged in politics. They are older, more affluent and more highly educated than people who vote only in presidential elections. As the Democratic Party becomes more upscale — the class inversion of American politics that this newsletter often discusses — the party will naturally do better in lower-turnout elections than it once did. But these victories do not necessarily foreshadow presidential elections. The other side of the class inversion is that Democrats are increasingly struggling with lower-income and nonwhite voters, many of whom vote only in presidential elections. Today’s elections still matter for their own sake, of course. Below, we list the questions that can help you make sense of the results. Seven questions 1. Will abortion rights keep winning? At least three states are worth watching: Ohioans will vote on a referendum to protect abortion access until about 23 weeks of pregnancy. If it passes, it will be the seventh straight victory for abortion rights in state referendums since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat running for re-election, is focusing on his support for abortion rights (while also trumpeting the fruits of Biden’s economic policies without naming Biden, as our colleague Reid Epstein explains). In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, is trying to give his party a model for the post-Roe world by backing a 15-week limit as a middle ground. All of Virginia’s state legislature seats are on the ballot. 2. Can a Democrat win in the Deep South? No Democrat has been elected governor or senator in Mississippi in more than 20 years. But Brandon Presley, a state official and second cousin of Elvis Presley, seems to have an outside chance. Gov. Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent, has been hurt by a corruption scandal in which, according to court documents, a state official directed welfare funds to the pet projects of wealthy, connected Mississippians. Presley is running the kind of campaign that was once normal for Democrats: moderate on social issues, progressive on economics. He calls himself pro-life, emphasizes his religious faith and supports gun rights, while promising to expand Medicaid and help rural hospitals. “The fight in politics in Mississippi is not right versus left,” Presley said. “It’s those of us on the outside versus those of them on the inside.” Recent polls have shown him trailing by between one and eight points. 3. What happens with schools? Conservatives and liberals are running against each other for school boards in suburban Philadelphia, Northern Virginia and elsewhere — with gender issues often central. One example: In Pella, Iowa, a Des Moines suburb, voters will decide whether to give the City Council more control over the public library after the library’s board recently rejected the effort of some residents to ban the memoir “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe. 4. How will cities deal with rising homelessness? Voters in Spokane, Wash., will decide whether the police can issue tickets to people who camp within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds and child-care facilities. In Boulder, Colo., voters will decide whether to prioritize the removal of encampments near schools and sidewalks. 5. Will affordable-housing efforts grow? Voters in Boulder County will also decide whether to address a major cause of homelessness: high real-estate costs. Boulder, Seattle and Santa Fe, N.M., will each vote on initiatives to fund affordable housing. In Tacoma, Wash., voters will decide whether to restrict landlords’ ability to evict tenants during the winter and the school year. 6. How will changes to criminal justice fare? In several counties — including those that encompass Pittsburgh and Jackson, Miss. — prosecutor races pit a progressive against a tough-on-crime candidate. In Jackson, District Attorney Jody Owens — who views drug addiction as largely a public health issue and has pledged not to prosecute abortion cases — is running for re-election against Darla Palmer, an independent who has criticized the amount of violent crime. 7. What else is on the ballot? Ohioans will vote on whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Rockville, Md., a Washington suburb, will vote on a nonbinding initiative on whether to lower the voting age to 16. Three Michigan cities, including Kalamazoo, will decide whether to adopt ranked-choice voting. And more than a dozen cities, — including Houston, Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla. — will vote for mayor. In Uvalde, Texas, the mother of one of last year’s shooting victims is running for mayor. (Thanks to Daniel Nichanian of Bolts magazine, whose election guides are always useful. And here are the other races Times reporters are watching today.) More on politics Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, endorsed Ron DeSantis for president. Donald Trump’s spokesman called it a “Hail Mary pass at the end of a blowout game.” The Biden campaign’s own polls have shown him trailing Trump in key states. But past presidents with low approval ratings have gone on to win. Some voters, wary of a Trump-Biden rematch, are now curious about independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to Times/Siena College polls. Biden, a famous Amtrak rider, announced more than $16 billion for train projects funded by his infrastructure law. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel could oversee the security of Gaza “for an indefinite period” after the war. Israeli strikes have killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. The figures could not be independently verified but a Pentagon spokesman said “the numbers are in the thousands.” Netanyahu rebuffed Biden’s push to protect civilians. Israeli officials are citing U.S. wars in Iraq and Japan to defend the civilian toll. Israel’s military said it had split the Gaza Strip in two, north and south, to isolate Hamas and make the enclave harder for it to govern. American Response The U.S. State Department approved a large sale to Israel of kits that add guidance systems to bombs. Many progressive protesters are calling for a cease-fire, but few Democrats in Congress have joined them. “I don’t know how you can have a cease-fire” with an organization like Hamas, Senator Bernie Sanders said. A Jewish man died after an altercation at dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Southern California. The activist group Jewish Voice for Peace led a protest at the Statue of Liberty calling for a cease-fire. Trump Trial In Manhattan.Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times At a civil trial in Manhattan, Donald Trump testified that he helped assemble financial documents that the New York’s attorney general said had overvalued his properties. On the stand, Trump called the attorney general “a political hack” and derided the trial as “very unfair.” The judge repeatedly chided Trump for going off-topic, at one point asking his lawyers, “Can you control your client? This is not a political rally.” Business WeWork filed for bankruptcy. Its stock has fallen more than 98 percent this year. “The Pentagon needs to accelerate”: A.I. start-ups are pitching their products to a cautious defense department. International Tuberculosis is once again the world’s deadliest disease, displacing Covid. One problem: Though it’s curable, many people don’t know they have it. China has lent more than a trillion dollars to developing countries. Now, it’s bailing them out. The Iranian activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year began a hunger strike after she was denied hospital treatment for a heart condition. Other Big Stories A second police officer was acquitted in the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old unarmed Black man. Solar plants are coming back to the U.S., attracted by billions of dollars in tax credits and trade protections. Opinions Republicans running against Trump need to toughen up if they want to win, and criticize him the way the voter base criticizes him, Kristen Soltis Anderson writes. Here is a column by Paul Krugman on conservative pessimism. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Fiona in lonelier times. Animal Rising Loneliest sheep: After two years alone, Fiona was rescued from a Scottish cliff. The other half: An ultraexclusive private world is emerging for New York City’s richest inhabitants. Skull for sale? A Florida store owner said she didn’t know it was illegal to sell human remains. Still sick: Why your symptoms may linger in the weeks after a negative Covid test. Lives Lived: Zdenek Macal led the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, but his reach was international: He also conducted orchestras in Berlin, London and elsewhere. He died at 87. SPORTS N.F.L.: The New York Jets lost to the visiting Los Angeles Chargers, 6-27. Baseball stunner: The Chicago Cubs hired the manager Craig Counsell away from their division rival Milwaukee. No. 1 upset: No. 20 Colorado beat top-ranked L.S.U. — the defending women’s college basketball national champion — in the season opener. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS “Dead City III” by Egon Schiele. Leopold Museum, Vienna Stolen Schieles: For years, museums denied that their Egon Schiele paintings had been stolen by Nazis from Fritz Grünbaum, a cabaret performer who died in a concentration camp. Many have since changed their position. New York City prosecutors recently returned nine Schiele works, valued at $10 million, to Grünbaum’s heirs. Now they’re trying to reclaim 13 more works, from museums in Austria and Chicago. More on culture Taylor Swift had the biggest opening sales week of her career — for her rerecording of “1989,” an album that is almost a decade old. The late night hosts joked about Trump’s lead over Biden in a poll. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Julia Gartland for The New York Times Braise a big pot of beans and greens. Upgrade your notebooks. Get your kids cooking with these tools. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were haunted, headhunt, headhunted and unheated. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Ian Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 8, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 8, 2023 November 8, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY Apple Card By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering last night’s election results — as well as the Israel-Hamas war, wildfires and “The Simpsons.” Gov. Andy BeshearJon Cherry for The New York Times The streak continues Yesterday’s elections went well for the Democratic Party. Gov. Andy Beshear won re-election in normally red Kentucky, 53 percent to 48 percent, by emphasizing his support for abortion rights and the economic benefits of Biden administration policies. In increasingly red Ohio, voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment that keeps abortion legal until roughly 23 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 57 percent to 43 percent. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, all seven states to have voted on abortion rights have chosen to protect or expand them. In Virginia, Democrats flipped the House of Delegates and kept control of the State Senate, albeit narrowly. That will likely doom Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hopes of passing a 15-week abortion ban. It may also quiet some Republicans’ calls for Youngkin to run for president, given that he had trumpeted his approach to abortion as a sensible middle ground for his party. “Democrats, to their credit, made this their signature issue of this campaign,” J. Miles Coleman, an election analyst at the University of Virginia, said of abortion. “It’s still a very potent energizer.” In New Jersey, Democrats are expected to keep their comfortable majorities in the state legislature, with Republican candidates losing even in more conservative parts of the state. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won a seat on the state Supreme Court, padding their majority. The court would have jurisdiction over lawsuits related to the 2024 election in a key swing state. It wasn’t a perfect night for Democrats. In Mississippi, Brandon Presley, a state official who ran for governor on a platform of expanding Medicaid, lost to Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent. In New York, a Republican flipped the Suffolk County executive’s office for the first time in two decades. A Republican-backed candidate also flipped the mayor’s office in Manchester, N.H. Nationwide, though, Democrats continued a strong recent electoral run that dates to last year’s midterms and has continued through most special elections (which are held to fill unexpectedly vacant posts) this year. Democrats have done well despite President Biden’s low approval ratings for several reasons. One, Donald Trump and the so-called MAGA movement are also unpopular, and candidates aligned with him have fared poorly. Two, the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe — and subsequent Republican-passed abortion bans — have upset many voters. Three, college graduates and affluent professionals increasingly vote Democratic and also have higher turnout in off-year elections. Four, many Democratic politicians — like Beshear in Kentucky — have managed to remain more popular than Biden. In the rest of today’s newsletter, we’ll walk through other results from last night. Notable races Marijuana: Ohio became the 24th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Voters approved the initiative 57 percent to 43 percent. Mayoral races: Cody Smith, a former mayor of Uvalde, Texas, won the office again, defeating the mother of a girl killed in last year’s school shooting there. Philadelphia and Des Moines elected their first female mayors. And two Democrats — a liberal and a moderate — will compete in a runoff next month for Houston mayor. Affordable housing and homelessness: Voters in Seattle and Santa Fe, N.M., passed initiatives to fund affordable housing. In Spokane, Wash., voters approved a measure to let the police issue tickets to people who camp near schools, parks and playgrounds. Education: Liberals led school board races in suburban Philadelphia and Northern Virginia, where gender issues have been central. In Pella, Iowa, voters narrowly rejected a measure that would have given the City Council more control over the public library, which had resisted efforts to ban an L.G.B.T.Q. memoir. Criminal justice: In Allegheny County, Pa., Stephen Zappala, a Democrat-turned-Republican, defeated a progressive candidate in the district attorney race. Democracy: Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state easily won re-election; he previously rejected Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. And in Derby, Conn., a Republican charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 lost his race for mayor. For more “The night’s results showed the durability of Democrats’ political momentum,” our colleagues Jonathan Weisman and Reid Epstein write. Read their other takeaways. Politico described the results as a “banner year” for Democrats. “They really needed it,” The Washington Post wrote. Republican attacks on transgender rights appeared to fizzle. In Virginia, voters elected the South’s first transgender state senator. Ohio’s referendum on abortion won outright in 18 counties Trump won in 2020. Democrats hope abortion will energize their base in 2024. Republican donors hoped Glenn Youngkin would enter the presidential race, taking control of the party from Trump. Virginia’s elections were a dose of reality. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Apple Card A cash back rewards program unlike others. Earn up to 3 percent unlimited Daily Cash on every purchase and receive it daily. Apply Now THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War A month into the fighting, Israel said its ground forces have reached deep into Gaza City. Northern Gaza, including the city, still contains hundreds of thousands of people. Hamas’s leaders said the group attacked on Oct. 7 because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away. “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table,” one told The Times. Response to the War Foreign ministers from G7 countries, including the U.S., called for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting. Leaders from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have asked the U.S. to help broker a cease-fire. They fear the war could destabilize their countries. The White House cautioned Israel against reoccupying the Gaza Strip. The House of Representatives censured Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, for comments that seemed to call for the eradication of Israel. More than 20 Democrats voted against Tlaib. South Africa has recalled all its diplomats from Israel. Politics Questions asked by Supreme Court justices suggested that they are likely to uphold a federal law meant to stop domestic abusers from getting guns, despite the conservative majority’s friendliness to gun rights. The Senate confirmed Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon, to lead the National Institutes of Health. Climate Wildfires are burning across the South, caused by drought, warmer-than-normal temperatures and possibly arson. Nations that have promised to address climate change are expanding fossil fuel drilling. Other Big Stories Lessie Benningfield RandleMichael Noble Jr. for The New York Times Lessie Benningfield Randle survived the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. At nearly 109, she’s still waiting for her day in court. The prime minister of Portugal resigned unexpectedly after police officers on a corruption inquiry put out an arrest warrant for his chief of staff. The number of infants born with syphilis is growing, the C.D.C. says. The journal Nature retracted a high-profile paper claiming to have found a superconductor that worked at room temperature. A pod of orcas sank a boat for the fourth time in two years, this one near Morocco. Sailors are worried. Opinions The American left’s celebration of Hamas’s atrocities has shown Jewish people who their friends are not, Bret Stephens writes. Here is a column by Thomas Edsall on the Democratic Party and Israel. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Galaxies belonging to the Perseus Cluster.European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi Starry skies: The first images from Euclid, the European Space Agency’s new telescope, offer ethereal views of the cosmos. Health: Many popular nicotine vapes look like toys. Experts worry that could entice young users. Eruption: An undersea volcano is building a new island in Japan. Lives Lived: Mortimer Downey helped revive New York City’s subway, bolstered Amtrak and secured federal funds for public transit. He died at 87. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Dallas Cowboys signed the receiver Martavis Bryant, recently reinstated after serving a five-year suspension for substance abuse issues. Michigan: The Wolverines told the Big Ten yesterday that they had evidence of other teams sharing information on their own signs. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Apple Card A cash back rewards program unlike others. Earn up to 3 percent unlimited Daily Cash on every purchase and receive it daily. Apply Now ARTS AND IDEAS This was in 2018.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated Press 21st-century Springfield: Over its three decades on the air, “The Simpsons” has changed to meet evolving sensibilities. The show stopped making fun of gay characters, for instance, and stopped using a white actor to voice Black and Indian characters. Now, it is abandoning the long-running joke in which Homer Simpson strangles his son, Bart. “I don’t do that anymore,” Homer said on a recent episode. “Times have changed.” A recent article in Vulture — titled “The Simpsons” Is Good Again — argues that such willingness to change has made the show fresh and funny for the first time in years. More on culture Climate protesters took hammers to the glass covering an 18th-century painting by Diego Velázquez at the National Gallery in London, causing “minimal damage” to the canvas. Jimmy Fallon mocked tonight’s Republican debate. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Ryan Liebe for The New York Times Browse the best Thanksgiving recipes. Set a beautiful table. Secure early Black Friday deals on Wirecutter-approved items. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were hometown and townhome. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Ian Correction: Monday’s newsletter misstated the Ukrainian president’s response to a Russian attack on a military ceremony. He called it a crime, not a war crime. P.S. Erica Green, who has covered education and domestic policy for The Times, is now a White House reporter. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 9, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 9, 2023 November 9, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering abortion politics in Ohio and beyond — as well as the Republican debate, Hamas’s hostages and panda diplomacy. In Columbus, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times All the evidence Many Democrats have come to believe that abortion access is the solution to their political problems. This week’s election results — with Ohio guaranteeing abortion access in a landslide and Democrats winning in both Virginia and Kentucky — support this notion. But I continue to think that recent elections offer a more complex picture, and I want to use today’s newsletter to explain. I know that some readers are skeptical. Widespread abortion access is clearly popular, even in many red states. When Americans have voted directly on the issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, abortion rights have gone seven for seven. What’s less clear is how much abortion politics affect general elections between a Democrat and a Republican. Is the effect large — or usually only enough to tip very close races? Ohio, the center of the abortion fight in this year’s election, offers a useful case study. ‘It is the issue’ A year ago, the Democratic Party set out to turn Ohio blue by emphasizing the Republican Party’s opposition to abortion. Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate nominee, protested outside the Supreme Court the day it eliminated the constitutional right to abortion access. “J.D. Vance wants a national abortion ban,” Ryan said about his Republican opponent later in the campaign. “I think we go back to Roe v. Wade.” In the Ohio governor’s race, Nan Whaley, the Democratic nominee, went further than Ryan and organized her campaign around the topic, as Jessie Balmert of The Columbus Dispatch reported. “It is the only thing we’re really talking about,” Whaley said three weeks before Election Day. “We think it is the issue.” None of this worked. Ryan lost to Vance by six percentage points. Whaley lost to Gov. Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent who had signed abortion restrictions, by 25 points. These failures were part of a pattern. In Texas, Beto O’Rourke focused on abortion in his campaign for governor last year. So did Stacey Abrams in Georgia, as well as the Democrats trying to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio in Florida. All these Democrats lost, some of them by double digits. Nationwide, not a single Republican governor or senator has lost re-election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That pattern might seem to conflict with this week’s election results, but I don’t think it does. Most Americans support widespread abortion access and will vote for ballot initiatives that protect or establish abortion rights. Yet in an election between two candidates, only a tiny slice of people is likely to vote differently because of any one issue, including abortion. That slice can still decide some elections. In Virginia this week, Democrats won several swing districts in the state legislature (although not as many as they had hoped, the political analyst J. Miles Coleman says), partly by emphasizing abortion rights. Similarly, two of the few Republican House incumbents who lost last year — one in Ohio, another in New Mexico — struggled to defend their abortion opposition. But many other examples that Democrats cite as proof of abortion’s political potency are weaker. Yes, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky emphasized abortion during his successful re-election campaign this year, much as Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan did last year. Here’s the thing, though: Almost every incumbent governor, from both parties, who ran for re-election this year or last year won. The only exception was Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Nevada Democrat. To argue that abortion has become a dominant factor in U.S. politics requires ignoring the results in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere. Spinning oneself Perhaps the most common mistake in politics is to believe that one’s own views are more popular than they in fact are. This mistake leads parties and candidates to focus too little on persuading undecided voters and to lose winnable elections. The Republican Party has certainly damaged itself with its unpopular opposition to abortion, and Democrats can help themselves by highlighting the issue. Many other high-profile issues today — like inflation, immigration and crime — are much less favorable to Democrats, as Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, told me. If the Supreme Court hadn’t overturned Roe v. Wade, maybe Republicans would be enjoying a winning streak right now. Nonetheless, Democrats have not been able to use the popularity of abortion to defeat many Republicans since 2022. And Nate’s latest article offers reason to think that the issue’s effect on the 2024 elections may be even more modest. The electorate next year — for a presidential campaign — is likely to be larger, less liberal and less engaged in politics than this year’s electorate, he explains. It will include more people who vote as much on gut instinct as on policy positions. To put it another way, if Democrats want to expand abortion access in the U.S., they almost certainly need to win more elections than they have in recent years. And to win more elections, they will probably have to campaign on a popular agenda that includes abortion yet is much broader. More on the elections Democratic ads on abortion rights before this week’s election spoke starkly about rape and sexual abuse, a new tone in the party’s messaging. Suburban voters largely rejected Republican candidates on Tuesday. They sided with Democrats on abortion and social issues. A Republican won a Bronx seat on the New York City Council for the first time in 40 years after campaigning on crime. Some New York Democrats see “yellow lights blinking.” Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, should run Gaza after the war. Blinken’s plan isn’t as simple as it seems, Steven Erlanger and Isabel Kershner explain. As Israeli troops battled Hamas in Gaza City, tens of thousands of civilians fled south. While official information about the fighting is limited, Gazans are documenting the war on social media. Hamas is discussing the release of a small number of hostages, including some Americans, in return for a short pause in Israel’s offensive, officials say. Republican Debate Five Republican presidential candidates, minus Donald Trump, debated in Miami. Ron DeSantis criticized Trump for skipping the event, telling the crowd, “He owes it to you to be on this stage.” The candidates expressed support for Israel and lamented setbacks in Tuesday’s elections. “We’ve become a party of losers,” Vivek Ramaswamy said. Nikki Haley and DeSantis called each other soft on China. Tim Scott backed a federal abortion ban, while Chris Christie said the issue should be left to the states. Here’s a fact-check. In the night’s most tense exchange, Ramaswamy mocked Haley’s daughter for using TikTok, leading Haley to call him “scum.” After the debate ended, Scott’s girlfriend — whom he’s spoken about but never campaigned with — joined him onstage. Late night hosts mocked the candidates. More on Politics House Republicans subpoenaed Hunter and James Biden, the president’s son and brother, as they try to build an impeachment case. Ivanka Trump testified in the New York civil fraud case against her father, answering questions about his business’s bank loans. Read takeaways from her testimony. Climate America’s first commercial plant that can pull carbon dioxide from the air has opened. Climate change is causing extreme drought in Iran, Iraq and Syria, scientists say. Other Big Stories Erin Schaff/The New York Times The National Zoo in Washington is without pandas for the first time in half a century, after China recalled them. U.S. warplanes bombed a Syrian weapons facility linked to Iran in retaliation for attacks against American forces in Iraq and Syria. Russia is trying to recruit veterans of the Wagner group, months after the force marched toward Moscow. The Justice Department has charged three people accused of running a brothel network used by politicians in Washington and Boston suburbs. The F.D.A. approved another drug for weight loss: Zepbound. Here’s a guide. Mark Zuckerberg says Meta’s “next chapter” will focus on WhatsApp. Opinions If young voters view the U.S. as a peacemaker in the Israel-Hamas war, President Biden will benefit, writes John Della Volpe. Journalists should stay focused on Ukraine, where Russia’s invasion threatens the security of the Eastern Hemisphere, Sasha Dovzhyk argues. Nikki Haley knows how to work insults like Donald Trump’s to her candidacy’s advantage, Katherine Miller argues. Here are columns by Charles Blow on Biden, Thomas Friedman on how Israel has changed and Nicholas Kristof on peace activism. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Precious snacks.Adam Amengual for The New York Times Gimme a break: The long, criminal trail of 55,000 rare Japanese Kit Kats. How to be hot: Young men on TikTok are seeking answers to an age-old question. Lives Lived: Domenico Spano outfitted billionaires and Hollywood stars, and his own dandyish style made him a highly recognizable peacock on New York’s streets. He died at 79. SPORTS M.L.B.: The Los Angeles Angels hired the 71-year-old Ron Washington as their new manager. Name, image, likeness: Biden met with prominent former college football players to discuss athletes’ rights. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Picketing in Los Angeles.Mark Abramson for The New York Times Hollywood returns: After 118 days, the Hollywood strike is coming to an end — the actors’ union and entertainment companies have reached a tentative deal. (The union will vote in the coming days.) The deal addressed some of the big issues driving the labor stoppage: The studios agreed to increase streaming-service compensation, and promised not to use actors’ A.I. likeness without payment or approval. Analysts expect the studios to make up for higher labor costs by cutting production. Related: The industry will be stretched trying to make up for months of lost work. More on culture A musician accused Neil Portnow, the former head of the Grammy Awards, of drugging and raping her in 2018. A representative for Portnow said the allegations were false. In a separate lawsuit, a former employee accused the record executive L.A. Reid of sexually assaulting her in the early 2000s. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Christina Lane. Stuff onions with beautiful saffron-tinged rice. Bring these three items to Thanksgiving dinner. Roast chicken in a convection toaster oven. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was celibacy. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 11, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 11, 2023 November 10, 2023 By Lauren Jackson Good morning. We’re covering Israel’s strategy in Gaza — as well as Joe Manchin, the Vatican and love letters. Citizens of Gaza City evacuating toward the south on foot.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times Stops and starts The invasion seemed imminent. In the hours after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu appeared ready to send his troops storming into Gaza. Instead, he chose a different strategy. Israel’s initial ground invasion was slow and secretive, more of a crawl than a sprint. Gaza is tiny, about the size of Las Vegas. But Israel took days to cross the border, surround Gaza City and move in — a strategy that the country’s defense minister called “tightening the noose.” Even that fight has been halting, and White House officials said yesterday that Israel had agreed to allow daily four-hour pauses so civilians could evacuate. (Read what we know about the battle for Gaza City so far.) Israel has slowed down to develop a plan that could accomplish two difficult — and competing — goals. First, it wants to eliminate Hamas. The Israeli government sees the group as an intolerable threat on its border after the Oct. 7 attack, which officials say killed roughly 1,400 people. Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction; one of its leaders recently promised to keep attacking until Israel was destroyed. Second, Israel’s leaders need to protect their international standing and maintain their allies’ support. Israel’s attacks, which have killed thousands of civilians, have already hurt its reputation and its relationships. Many countries have recalled their ambassadors or condemned Israel at the United Nations. They say Israel has gone too far — and the war has only just started. “Israel set itself some pretty tight objectives,” Lawrence Freedman, an expert on military strategy, told me. “It did not say degrade or reduce Hamas. It said eliminate or crush. That’s actually quite hard to do.” This tension — between Israel’s vow to crush Hamas and also find a long-term solution to a notoriously intractable conflict — explains why the military has slowed down. It has taken time to consult with allies, determine its strategy and try to weaken Hamas. But now, U.S. officials are getting impatient. They want Israel to complete its mission before the anger over the war destabilizes the Middle East, meaning the country’s slow approach may have reached its limit. Below, we explain Israel’s strategy in more detail. Tactical benefits The encirclement of Gaza City highlights Israel’s slow approach. Over the course of two weeks, Israeli tanks and troops entered Gaza from three directions, surrounding Gaza City. Israel has described Gaza City as a major hub for Hamas’s military. But instead of immediately entering the city’s dense maze of streets on foot to seal off tunnels, find weapons stores and kill fighters, Israel waited on the outskirts. Based on analysis of satellite imagery on Nov. 1. | By The New York Times During this time, Israel took precautions to protect its troops. The military moved hundreds of armored vehicles and thousands of troops into northern Gaza, essentially creating a giant military camp, which my colleague Ronen Bergman visited, on Gaza’s coast. It also combed Gaza’s northern land for mines, tunnels and militants as it took control of territory. In doing so, Israel signaled that it was preparing for a long, difficult war. Israel also used this time to weaken Hamas before troops entered Gaza City. It continued to strike Gaza, destroying many of the buildings Hamas could use as bunkers and sniper locations. (See maps of the strikes.) “It’s what we call a shaping operation,” Alex Plitsas at the Atlantic Council explained. “They’re going to hit as much of the infrastructure, weapons and military targets as they can from the air so they reduce the risk to the troops on the ground.” By waiting to invade, Israel also gave its blockade of resources time to take effect, allowing food, fuel and water to dwindle for both fighters and civilians. Food and clean water are now nearly nonexistent in Gaza City, forcing people to ransack bakeries for the last of the flour. Experts say the blockade will force Hamas to draw down on the supplies it has stockpiled underground for years. Political constraints Israeli officials said their slow approach was intended to help their military, my colleague Mark Landler reported. But the delay has also served another purpose: It has given Israel time to consult with its allies, many of whom are facing extraordinary pressure from their citizens to de-escalate the conflict. Israel’s attacks, with their high civilian death toll, have prompted protests in cities around the world; one shut down traffic in New York City last night. The country’s allies, including the U.S. and Britain, have urged restraint. The Group of 7 nations asked Israel to pause its fighting to protect civilians and to ensure that they have humanitarian assistance. Israel can’t just ignore these requests. It needs to keep its powerful allies on its side because they offer Israel weapons, legitimacy and deterrence against hostile neighboring countries that are threatening regional war. Yesterday, Israel appeared to relent: The U.S. said that Israel had agreed to stop fighting in some areas for several hours each day to give civilians more time and routes to flee northern Gaza. The pauses will not stop the clashing entirely, and civilians have reported coming under fire during the evacuation windows. Still, the delays will slow the battle further. While the pauses will help Israel appease its allies, the country still wants to accomplish its military goal of defeating Hamas. In the process, civilians will continue to die, both in airstrikes and in the ground war. Videos from the conflict, spreading in social media posts, will continue to outrage people. And if the war drags on, American officials have warned, the high civilian death toll will only encourage more militants to join Hamas’s fight. There isn’t an immediate solution to Israel’s dilemma, and its leaders will struggle to maintain international support while the military grinds toward its goal of defeating Hamas. In the meantime, the clock is ticking. More on the war Illustration by Marco Hernandez See illustrations that show how the network of tunnels snaking under Gaza works. The Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, said it would be open to governing Gaza if the U.S. committed to a two-state solution. In Gaza, the death toll could be higher than previously thought, a Biden administration official told Congress. The C.I.A. director and the chief of Israel’s spy agency met in Qatar to discuss a possible deal for Hamas to release hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting. Israelis who survived the Holocaust found themselves again fighting for their lives when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7. “I was scared then, and I was scared now,” Zvi Solow, 89, said. The chant “from the river to the sea” is a fixture at pro-Palestinian protests. Times reporters explain its history, and how it came to represent two very different ideas — a call for peace, or a call for genocide. Sending voice notes in the dark, people in Gaza City told The Washington Post about life during the battle. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Joe Manchin Joe ManchinHaiyun Jiang for The New York Times Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia, won’t seek re-election next year. Republicans are heavily favored to win the seat, increasing their chances of taking control of the Senate. Some are speculating that Manchin is planning a run for president as a third-party candidate. More on Politics Government funding lapses next week. House Republicans, who canceled votes on two spending bills this week, are divided over how to avert a shutdown. President Biden wore a red United Automobile Workers shirt in Belvidere, Ill., to celebrate the union’s contract agreements with carmakers. He also directly criticized Donald Trump. Jill Stein, the two-time Green Party presidential nominee, is running again in 2024. She could pull voters from Biden. The Biden administration picked Greenbelt, Md., a Washington suburb, to be the site of the F.B.I.’s new headquarters. The F.B.I. director criticized the selection process as flawed. International GreenlandDanish National Archives Greenland’s mountain glaciers and floating ice shelves are melting faster than they were a few decades ago. The Vatican said transgender people could be baptized and become godparents. Ukraine is trying to draw more women into its army. Other Big Stories At least two million low-income children in the U.S. have lost health insurance after the end of a policy guaranteeing Medicaid coverage earlier in the pandemic. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, suggested another interest rate hike wasn’t imminent, but added that the central bank would adjust if inflation didn’t keep falling. Jezebel, the pioneering feminist news and commentary site, is shutting down after 16 years. Its parent company cited “economic headwinds.” Opinions No, Israel’s bombing of Gaza isn’t a genocide. But the international community has a duty to prevent it from becoming one, Omer Bartov, an Israeli Holocaust expert, writes. The type of practice that led to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange has become normalized in the industry, Molly White argues. Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Israelis and Pamela Paul on phones in schools. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Making yakitori.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Udon and sushi: Explore Tokyo’s food scene. Love letters: A bundle of notes to French sailors were never delivered. Nearly 250 years later, a historian read them. Modern Love: Nothing could happen between them. But it did. Lives Lived: Frank Borman was the commander of the Apollo flight that was the first to orbit the moon. He died at 95. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Chicago Bears beat the Carolina Panthers, 16-13. Soccer: The U.S. women’s league announced a major broadcast rights deal. Connor Bedard: The N.H.L. rookie recorded his first four-point game, becoming the youngest player since 1944 to accomplish the feat. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS BeyoncéThe New York Times The next best thing: This has been a blockbuster of a year for the live-music business. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé circled the globe. Bruce Springsteen, Drake, Morgan Wallen and others filled arenas. But as it becomes more complex — and expensive — for fans to actually score concert tickets, a bootleg solution is emerging: Audience members are streaming the shows on TikTok and Instagram, allowing friends (and sometimes thousands of strangers) to watch from home. More on culture More than three decades after its release, Tracy Chapman’s folk ballad “Fast Car” won song of the year at the Country Music Awards. The late-night hosts spent another night riffing on the Republican debate, which Jimmy Fallon described as “unhinged.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Laurie Ellen Pellicano. Pick out a new pie for Thanksgiving. Use the best tote bag. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was luncheon. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — Lauren Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 12, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 12, 2023 November 11, 2023 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. What do the bands and brands whose merch we buy say about who we are and what we value? María Jesús Contreras Commodities trading If you want to recreate the 1960s winged eyeliner that Cailee Spaeny wears in “Priscilla,” you’ll have to do so without the aid of the limited-edition makeup kit produced by the film’s studio, A24. It’s sold out. Ditto the dark gray sweatshirt with tonal “Priscilla” embroidery across the front. You can, however, still purchase a baby-doll T-shirt bedizened with the film’s title in rhinestones. And the heart-shaped locket by the jewelry designer J. Hannah, inspired by the one Priscilla wears in the movie, which was in turn inspired by one Priscilla Presley actually wore, is still available, in sterling silver ($400) or 14-karat gold ($1,280). I was chatting this week with some colleagues about the locket, about what animates someone to buy a pricey piece of jewelry that’s being sold as a merchandise tie-in for a movie. Is it love for the “stealthily devastating” film “Priscilla”? For Priscilla Presley herself, or Elvis, or the film’s director, Sofia Coppola? Perhaps one just likes the necklace. A24, the studio behind films like “Hereditary,” “Midsommar,” “Uncut Gems” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” knows it’s probably some combination of these factors, mixed with love for the studio itself. A24 is known for its canny collaborations with hip designers — a “Hereditary” tee, designed by the trippy design studio Online Ceramics, originally $65, now sells for at least double that if you can track one down on a resale site. You can also buy hoodies, half-snap fleeces, dog leashes and dopp kits featuring the A24 logo. Our conversation quickly turned to questions of identity. Why do we buy merch, or shy away from it? What does the merch you wear say about who you are, what you believe in? You might buy a sticker from your local bakery to support the business, or wear a Renaissance tour shirt to declare yourself a member of the BeyHive. “If I ever move away from New York, I’d buy a tote bag from my favorite Brooklyn sandwich shop,” one of my colleagues declared. Carrying the bag in your own city seemed too boosterish, too earnest for a New Yorker, whereas outside the city, the local merch telegraphs your hometown pride and N.Y.C. pedigree. Once you leave the place, the merch becomes a souvenir, a nostalgic keepsake. Another colleague, an avowed merch skeptic, got her daughter an Los Angeles Dodgers shirt when her family relocated from L.A. to New York, memorializing the matrix of allegiances the move evoked. Perhaps we were overcomplicating it, getting too Gen X in our obsession with authenticity. Justin Bieber famously ignited the ire of indie-rock snobs when he wore a rare Nirvana T-shirt to the American Music Awards in 2015: How dare a purveyor of pop hits appropriate the cred of a beloved countercultural institution! Why does merch have to mean so much? Of course, it doesn’t. Debating the laws of merch is a diversion, an amusing exercise in questioning our own pieties. I made no fewer than two friends in college because one of us was wearing a Pixies T-shirt: “I’m into this band, you’re into this band, let’s see if that’s enough to fuel a meaningful relationship.” (In both cases, it was.) We’re heading into an election year. The merch machine’s transmission is shifting into overdrive, raring to emit its bumper stickers, buttons and lawn signs. I’m trying to stay focused on the things that I love, the bands and books that have shaped me, and how those enthusiasms are the easiest way I know to connect with other people. One of my colleagues told me how excited he was to buy a Taylor Swift Eras Tour tee for his daughter, a memento to remind her of this delirious season of Swiftie mania, of friendship bracelets, deep belonging and lyrics belted in collective joy. That’s the type of connection I want to cultivate: the impulse to bond over the things that light me up, that bring me closer to other people. That sentiment doesn’t make for a particularly cool or catchy piece of merch, but communicating it plainly seems a project crucially worth investing in. For more “Coastal elites who think lit-mag tote bags are basic started ’gramming themselves in A24 snapbacks and hoodies with the earnestness of a Knicks fan wearing blue and orange to the Garden.” From Vanity Fair, how an indie film studio became a merch powerhouse. Fans waited overnight in the rain to score Swift merchandise last spring. “Repping the city by repping its establishments — forestalling their bankruptcies one T-shirt purchase at a time — has become a big part of street style.” Stella Bugbee, The New York Times’s Styles editor, on the pandemic rise of “Zizmorcore” in New York City, from 2021. The modern merch market: Lexapro sweatshirts and Gwyneth Paltrow trial mugs. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and SZA.Mohammed Badra/EPA, via Shutterstock; Chantal Anderson for The New York Times; Nina Westervelt for The New York Times SZA, Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo — along with the “Barbie” soundtrack — are among the top nominees for the 66th annual Grammy Awards. Here’s the full list. Our critics picked their biggest Grammy surprises, including a strong showing by the indie-rock group boygenius. People magazine announced Patrick Dempsey, the actor known for playing Derek Shepherd on “Grey’s Anatomy,” as this year’s Sexiest Man Alive. The Trump family coordinated their looks as they took the stand in New York, our fashion critic writes — lots of navy, with no red or flashy displays of wealth. “Sleep No More,” the Off Broadway production that helped alter the landscape of immersive theater, will close after more than a decade. Paramount released the trailer for a musical remake of “Mean Girls.” Gannett hired a 35-year-old journalist to be a full-time Swift reporter. A researcher in England discovered the identity of the man on the cover of the 1971 album “Led Zeppelin IV” — a Victorian-era roof thatcher named Lot Long. The EZ Band’s blend of norteña and pop offers some Americans a way to connect with their parents’ culture. A museum in Switzerland said it must sell its Cézannes to survive, but critics say it is violating industry guidelines. Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, a famous tourist attraction, temporarily closed after earthquakes. Davide Renne, the Italian fashion designer, died just days after becoming Moschino’s creative director. He was 46. THE LATEST NEWS Eric AdamsStephanie Keith for The New York Times F.B.I. agents stopped New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, on the street and seized his electronic devices, an escalation of the investigation into his campaign finances. Israeli troops battling Hamas fighters have surrounded hospitals in Gaza. Sick and injured Palestinians, as well as civilians taking refuge, are stuck on the hospitals’ grounds. Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said that “far too many Palestinians have been killed,” the closest he’s come to criticizing Israel’s conduct in the war. Hamas and Israel are negotiating a possible deal to release hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a pause in the fighting, more aid and the release of women and children held in Israeli prisons. President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea is cracking down on journalists who cover him critically, calling it “fake news.” Critics accuse him of suppressing free speech. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR By Desiree Ibekwe 🎧 “Heaven Knows” (Out Now): PinkPantheress is the quintessential Gen Z pop star. The 22-year-old British singer and producer got her start on TikTok, where videos featuring her songs have amassed billions of views, and her aesthetic is influenced by eminently popular 2000s revivalism. The Times critic Lindsay Zoladz describes the new album as “an effervescent collection of infectious hooks” that blends her characteristic Y2K-era influences with hyperpop to invoke themes about death and the afterlife. 🎬 “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” (Friday): It’s been eight years since the final installment of the “Hunger Games” movies, adapted from Suzanne Collins’s novels, but the franchise is back. This is a prequel that tells the origin story of Coriolanus Snow, whom we met in the first four movies as the president of the dystopian republic that makes entertainment out of young people killing each other in an arena. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Bobbi Lin for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Crispy Mustard Chicken By Melissa Clark Turkey may reign supreme when it comes to November poultry, but let’s never forget its equally feathery cousin, the chicken. Perfect for any weeknight, my crispy mustard chicken with bread crumbs is an updated classic that’s homey and full of tangy flavor. Adding garlic and Worcestershire sauce to the mustard coating, and plenty of butter to the bread crumb topping, makes for a dish at once crowd-pleasing and satisfying. The recipe calls for chicken thighs, but if you’re a white meat household, bone-in breasts work well, too. Just watch them carefully so they don’t overcook. REAL ESTATE A cottage in Upper Arlington, Ohio.LeSha Thorpe and Kari Heidl-Teske What you get for $800,000: A 19th-century house in North Kingstown, R.I.; a two-bedroom condominium in Portland, Ore.; or an English country-style home in Upper Arlington, Ohio. The hunt: Three friends sought a Brooklyn townhouse offering communal living space but separate apartments. Which was the right fit? Play our game. Renter for life? Switzerland offers a glimpse of a post-ownership society. The easiest houseplant: Bromeliads can flourish in low light with infrequent watering. LIVING The moon, as seen from the Lick Observatory in California.Special Collections, University Library, University of California Santa Cruz, (Lick Observatory Records) Future past: As new telescopes are launched or built, old observatories still have wonders to share. Better workouts: Treat soreness after exercising. Taste of home: Food delivery apps catering to Chinese-speaking communities are growing in popularity. Skibidi: Gen Alpha — the cohort that follows Gen Z — have begun a rite of passage: confusing their elders with new slang terms. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER A game changer for Thanksgiving pies If you’re inclined to reach for a hand-held peeler to knock out pounds of apples for pie, might we suggest an old-fashioned rotary peeler instead? All it takes is 10 seconds and some hand cranking to have a peeled and cored (!) apple, sliced into perfect, juicy rings. It’s exponentially faster than any other method. So speedy, in fact, that even if you only whip it out a few times a year, the investment is still worth it. And on a day like Thanksgiving, when all burners are firing and every saved second counts? It’s essential. — Sofia Sokolove GAME OF THE WEEKEND Megan Rapinoe, left, and Ali Krieger.Stephen Brashear/USA Today Sports Gotham FC vs. OL Reign, National Women’s Soccer League final: This isn’t just a championship game. It’s also the final match for two American soccer greats, Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger, who won back-to-back World Cup titles for the U.S. in 2015 and 2019. Rapinoe, 38, is now a forward with OL Reign, based in Seattle; Krieger, 39, leads the defense for New Jersey’s Gotham FC. Both announced that they would retire after this season. Expect a fierce farewell match — neither team has ever won the N.W.S.L. title, and both players would surely love to end their careers with one last milestone. 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was chalked. See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted November 13, 2023 Author Members Share Posted November 13, 2023 November 12, 2023 By Desiree Ibekwe Good morning. We’re covering Barbra Streisand’s new memoir — as well as Gaza hospitals, Africa’s baby boom and the U.S. Space Force. Barbra StreisandKobal/Shutterstock Barbra, in her own words This year’s memoirs have kept ravenous consumers of celebrity culture well fed. Prince Harry plumbed his royal life in “Spare,” and Britney Spears told her own story for the first time in years with “The Woman in Me.” There have been autobiographies from Elliot Page, Patrick Stewart, Henry Winkler, Kerry Washington, Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton. Now, Barbra Streisand joins their ranks with “My Name Is Barbra,” a memoir released on Tuesday. At almost 1,000 pages, “it’s not a book you inhale,” the Times critic at large, Wesley Morris, writes. “The bigness of it makes literal the career it contains,” he adds. “Streisand is poring over, pouring out, her life.” Her childhood, in a Brooklyn housing project, was emotionally fraught. Her father died when she was just over a year old; her mother was emotionally unavailable, and her stepfather was distant. She left home at 16, driven to create a life in the arts. After performing in a talent show at a Greenwich Village gay bar, her success snowballed, leading to her big break: a celebrated turn on Broadway, as Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl.” (Read a Times review of the show from 1964.) There are, of course, juicy highlights from the book: Her relationship with Marlon Brando, laden with sexual tension; her admiration for the former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau (whom she watched dive naked into an icy lake); her account of why she had her dead dog cloned. But what gives the story its heart is Streisand’s perseverance. In recalling her career, Streisand calls out bad behavior — comments by the media about her physical appearance; bullying by her “Funny Girl” co-star Sydney Chaplin; the director of “A Star is Born” taking credit for production choices she had made. “That’s the sort of blood that gives this book its power,” Wesley writes. “It’s that Barbra Streisand endured a parade of harsh workplaces yet never stopped trying to make the best work.” Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS Israel-Hamas War Outside a morgue at a southern Gaza hospital.Yousef Masoud for The New York Times Power, water and medicine are running low in Gaza’s main hospital, Al-Shifa, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City is “no longer operational,” the Palestinian Red Crescent says. An estimated 300,000 people marched through London in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. Thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to urge the government to do more to rescue the hostages captured by Hamas. During the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, Hamas assailants sought out bomb shelters where Israelis were taking refuge. Politics Speaker Mike Johnson pitched House Republicans on a plan to avoid a government shutdown next week. Donald Trump asked the judge in his federal election case to allow the trial to be televised. Trump plans to deport millions of people each year if he wins the next election, as part of a significant expansion of the hard-line immigration policies of his first term. International Icelandic authorities evacuated a town of about 4,000 after earthquakes that could herald a volcanic eruption. Ukraine has shifted the naval conflict with Russia without having warships of its own. The Times spoke with Ukraine’s navy commander about its tactics. “The opportunities are unlimited”: As birthrates fall in richer nations, Africa is experiencing a baby boom. Other Big Stories At the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant.Emily Rhyne/The New York Times An ammunition plant in Missouri, built to supply the military, has pumped billions of rounds into the commercial market. Its ammunition is tied to at least a dozen mass shootings. Pope Francis fired a bishop in Texas, Joseph Strickland, who had accused him of undermining the Catholic faith. A pond in Hawaii turned bubble-gum pink. Experts say it’s an indicator of environmental stress. The weight-loss drug Wegovy could cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes among overweight or obese people with heart disease, according to a new study. FROM OPINION Senator Joe Manchin’s moderate views make him the perfect third-party candidate to challenge Trump and President Biden, Ross Douthat writes. Biden should demand that Israel restrain settler violence in the West Bank, which has worsened since it began its war on Hamas, Serge Schmemann writes. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on Biden and Israel and Paul Krugman on the U.S. economy. The Sunday question: Should Biden be worried about his re-election chances? A Times/Siena poll shows that a majority of swing states favor Trump over Biden. If Democrats don’t break with the president, “Biden’s party will sleepwalk with him for 12 months toward defeat,” The Washington Post’s George Will writes. But while the polls look bad for Biden overall, voters do trust his defense of democracy and abortion, offering “some hope and a road map” to victory, Dean Obeidallah writes for CNN. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Dom FlemonsJustin French “This is our music also”: Black folk singers are reclaiming the genre. Welcome to Hochatown: A tiny town in Oklahoma was created almost entirely because of Airbnb. Vows: Zeke Smith of “Survivor” and Nico Santos of “Superstore” describe themselves as “cartoon characters that live with one another.” Lives Lived: David Ferry was a poet and translator whose direct and emotionally resonant work won him broad praise and honors late in his career. He died at 99. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE Andrew WylieMamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times By David Marchese I spoke with the legendary (and prickly) literary agent Andrew Wylie, whose clients include some of literature’s brightest luminaries, about changes in the publishing industry. Are there ever instances in your work where advocating for the writer is at cross purposes with things that might lead to their books being more widely read? An example might be, I don’t know, the writer wants a particular cover or title, but the publisher says other ones would be better for sales. No disrespect intended for my brilliant colleagues in the business, but usually what happens is the publisher puts forward a ghastly and inappropriate cover design. Then you say: “Thank you, that’s ghastly and inappropriate. Could you either hire someone with a brain or attempt to redesign?” What’s an example of when a publisher or someone else in the business disagreed with you and they turned out to be right? I don’t think that’s ever happened. Is there anything, in a longer-term, strategic way, that you find yourself puzzling over in the way that maybe 15 years ago you were thinking about authors’ digital rights? Not really. The battles have remained quite the same for a number of years. It’s all about the exaggerated favor that accrues to the distribution piece. You don’t have to kowtow to Amazon. And yet, “Well, how do we not?” What’s the answer to that? It’s like your dinner party: You want everyone to come? Or do you want to have fewer but better people? But publishers do want everyone to come, right? Yeah. They’re greedy. The best-seller list is an example of success and achieving the broadest possible readership. But who’s reading you? A bunch of people with three heads and no schooling. You want to spend the day with these people? Not me, thank you. Read more of the interview here. More from the magazine The race is on to put hotels in space and homes on the moon. Here’s what living in space would be like. What goes on inside the U.S. Space Force? Why some people decide to send their remains into orbit. Read the full Space Issue. BOOKS Rebecca Clarke By the Book: The Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux has no guilty reading pleasures. “I admit without shame,” she tells The Times. Our editors’ picks: “Joanna Russ: Novels & Stories,” a collection of works by a science fiction pioneer, and eight other books. Times best sellers: “Dirty Thirty,” the 30th book in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, debuts at No. 1 on the hardcover fiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Drizzle brown butter onto mashed potatoes, inspired by our comments section. Add these nonalcoholic wines to your Thanksgiving table. Replace slippers with cushy grip socks. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Today is Diwali, the South Asian festival of lights. Biden and Xi Jinping of China are expected to meet on Wednesday in California. Winners of the National Book Awards will be named Wednesday. The deadline to avert a government shutdown is Friday. What to Cook This Week Ryan Liebe for The New York Times Emily Weinstein has been on a chickpea kick recently. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, she suggests using them in a coconut curry with pumpkin and lime (a reader favorite). Some other recipe ideas: ginger-scallion steamed fish and crispy mustard chicken. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was lifelong. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Editor: David Leonhardt News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote 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} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.