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November 13, 2023

 

Good morning. We’re covering a change in America’s drug crisis — as well as Al Shifa Hospital, South Africa and Diana.

 
 
 
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In Kalamazoo, Mich.Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Narrow focus

When political leaders talk about America’s current drug crisis, they are typically referring to opioids like painkillers, heroin and fentanyl. And when they have passed laws to deal with the problem in the past decade, those policies have centered on opioids. They have, for example, focused on boosting access to medications that treat only opioid addiction or reverse only opioid overdoses.

That narrow focus has neglected the rise of other drugs, as my colleague Jan Hoffman reports today. In the last five years, overdose deaths involving methamphetamine have tripled. Those linked to cocaine have doubled. People addicted to opioids increasingly use other substances, including meth, cocaine and prescription medications like Valium and Xanax.

Meth use, in particular, has also made it difficult to stabilize patients and keep them in treatment for any drug, as one addiction doctor explained to Jan:

The paranoia and hallucinations caused by meth disorient them, he said. One patient threw himself in a river to escape nonexistent people who were chasing him. Others insisted that dumpsters were talking to them, that color-coded cars were sending them messages.

These types of problems are why experts have long urged policymakers to take a comprehensive approach to drug addiction. More support for opioid addiction medications is important, but so is funding underused treatments that address meth and cocaine addiction (such as paying people to stop using drugs).

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Treating a patient.Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Revolving door

The changing nature of the drug crisis was predictable, because drug use is historically faddish. In the 1970s, America struggled with heroin. In the ’80s, it was cocaine. In the ’90s and early 2000s, meth. Since then, opioids have taken off.

One explanation for this is what’s known as generational forgetting: Young people tend to avoid the drug that is currently causing a crisis. But because they don’t have personal experiences with the drugs that caused harm before their time, they are more willing to use those substances.

Different drugs can also complement each other, and so their popularity can rise simultaneously. Opioids, for example, often cause users to doze off, which can leave those who live on the streets vulnerable to theft or rape. So opioid users sometimes use stimulants, like meth and cocaine, to stay awake. And if they receive treatment for opioid addiction, they may continue using stimulants.

All of this leads to a revolving door for different kinds of drug crises. It has happened before, and it is happening again.

Read Jan’s full story, which includes details about the rise of a kind of meth so pure that some are calling it “super meth.”

Related: Arizona rehab centers provided shoddy or nonexistent addiction treatment to Native Americans that cost the state as much as $1 billion, officials say.

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-Hamas War
  • Israeli forces are closing in on Al Shifa, a major Gaza hospital. Israel accuses Hamas of building a command center underneath it. Hamas and hospital officials deny this claim and say Israel is risking innocent lives.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against the idea that the Palestinian Authority, the Western-backed government in the occupied West Bank, could run Gaza after the war.
  • “It’s only going to get worse”: As fighting rages on in Gaza, Israeli military raids and violent protests are on the rise in the West Bank.
  • More than 100,000 people marched in cities across France to support Jewish citizens and protest antisemitism.
 
Britain
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David CameronSuzanne Plunkett/Reuters
  • David Cameron, the former British prime minister, is returning as foreign secretary.
  • Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is rearranging his cabinet after firing a minister who accused the police of favoring pro-Palestinian protesters.
 
More International News
 
Politics
  • Senator Tim Scott suspended his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination.
  • The F.B.I. is investigating whether Mayor Eric Adams pressured officials to sign off on a new Turkish consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns.
  • Representative Brian Higgins, a New York Democrat, said he would leave the House early after 19 years, citing institutional dysfunction.
  • An Alabama mayor killed himself after a news website published a photo of him in makeup and reported that he wrote erotic fiction.
 
Demographics
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In Midland, Texas.Desiree Rios for The New York Times
  • The children of immigrants, predominantly Hispanics, make up the fastest-growing demographic group in Texas, a Times analysis found.
  • In Vermont, baby boomers are aging out of the work force and subsequent generations aren’t large enough to fully replace them.
 
Business
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

Society wants women to get married. But the growing culture of commitment-averse men makes marriage a lofty goal, Anna Louie Sussman writes.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Israel and the Republican debate.

Here are columns by David French on abortion and Jamelle Bouie on Republican culture wars.

 
 

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

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A Burmese Python in the Everglades.Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Less than charming: Meet the people whose job is to find and euthanize invasive pythons in Florida.

Treasure: Billions in gold and jewels sank in 1708. Colombia’s government wants them found.

A morning listen: One Tennessee county arrested and illegally jailed children. Listen to the four-part story, “The Kids of Rutherford County,” from “Serial.”

Metropolitan Diary: I have a strange request.”

Lives Lived: Karen Davis was a fierce animal-rights activist who led campaigns to recognize the dignity of chickens, turkeys and other farmyard fowl. She died at 79.

 

SPORTS

Sunday Night Football: The New York Jets failed to score a touchdown for the second straight game in a 16-12 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders.

Around the N.F.L.: The Houston Texans upset the Cincinnati Bengals, 30-27, thanks to the rookie phenom C.J. Stroud. And the Detroit Lions outlasted the Los Angeles Chargers in a 41-38 shootout. Here are takeaways.

Superstar: Caitlin Clark became Iowa’s all-time points leader in women’s basketball during the Hawkeyes’ win over Northern Iowa.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Elizabeth Debicki as Diana.Daniel Escale/Netflix

Recent history: Most of Netflix’s “The Crown” has felt quaint and far away in its dramatization of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. But the latest season — the first part of which arrives on Thursday — will tackle one of the most analyzed eras in recent British history: the final days of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the fallout from her death.

The show’s depiction of the period has already set off conversations about accuracy and sensitivity. “People who lived through Diana’s death feel a sense of ownership over that history,” Annie Sulzberger, the head of research for the show, said.

More on culture

  • Programs teaching children how to be YouTubers are popping up everywhere, The Washington Post reports.
 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

Make-ahead recipes are key to a stress-free meal. This year Melissa Clark created a truly delicious make-ahead turkey that travels well, too.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Skip takeout and cook your own delicious sesame chicken.

Start your day off right with a drip coffee maker.

Take our news quiz.

 

GAMES

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

 
 

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

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

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

 

Good morning. We’re covering the debate over Al-Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital — as well as a Supreme Court ethics code, elder care and fake online reviews.

 
 
 
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Al-Shifa Hospital last month.Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

Brutal trade-offs

The battle over Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza highlights a tension that often goes unmentioned in the debate over the war between Israel and Hamas: There may be no way for Israel both to minimize civilian casualties and to eliminate Hamas.

The reality of this trade-off still doesn’t answer the question of what should happen in Gaza. Some people will conclude that the human cost, in the lives of innocent Palestinians, does not justify removing Hamas from power — or that Israel may be undermining its own interests by trying to dismantle Hamas. Others will conclude that Hamas’s recent killings of innocent Israelis and its repeated vows to destroy Israel represent a threat that no country would accept on its border.

Nonetheless, Al-Shifa — a major hospital that includes a neonatal department — highlights the lack of simple answers in Gaza, and I want to use today’s newsletter to explain.

Hamas and hospitals

There is substantial evidence that Hamas has used the hospital for military operations and has built a command center underneath it as part of Gaza’s tunnel network:

  • A New York Times journalist in 2008 watched armed Hamas militants walking around Al-Shifa Hospital in civilian clothes and witnessed Hamas execute a Palestinian man accused of collaborating with Israel.
  • Amnesty International concluded that in 2014 Hamas used parts of Al-Shifa “to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical center.”
  • More recently, Israel has released audio recordings that purport to contain conversations in which Hamas fighters discuss tunnels under Al-Shifa as well as videos of interrogations in which captured militants discuss the tunnels.
  • Israeli officials allowed Times reporters to view photographs that appear to show secret entrances inside the hospital that lead to a military compound underneath.
  • U.S. officials say their own intelligence also indicates Hamas has built a tunnel network under Al-Shifa that includes command and control areas as well as weapons storage.
  • Hamas has a long history of placing its operations in hospitals, mosques and other civilian areas so that Israel must risk killing innocent bystanders — and thereby damage its reputation — to attack Hamas fighters. “I’ve seen these things for myself,” Steven Erlanger, a longtime Times correspondent, has said on “The Daily” podcast.

Hamas denies that it uses civilians as shields, and two Norwegian doctors who have worked in Gaza have backed its denials. The head of Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, has also said Hamas does not operate there. He told The Times last week that Israeli allegations were “untrue.”

But it’s worth remembering that officials with the Gaza Health Ministry have had a problematic record in recent weeks: On Oct. 17, they claimed that Israel was responsible for an explosion at another hospital and said the explosion killed about 500 people. Both claims appear to be false, as I have explained. A Palestinian rocket was the likely cause, according to U.S., Canadian and French officials, and the death toll appears to have been much lower.

The situation with Al-Shifa seems similar: Outsiders cannot know the truth for certain (at least until cameras are allowed inside the hospital and the tunnels underneath it), but the Israeli claims have much more evidence behind them than Hamas’s claims.

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Sheltering outside Al-Shifa Hospital.Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.S. position

The likelihood that Hamas is operating inside and underneath Al-Shifa creates the trade-offs that I described above. If Israel is committed to ending Hamas’s rule of Gaza, it almost certainly needs to attack Hamas’s major command centers — and destroying the Al-Shifa operations puts patients, doctors and nurses there at mortal risk.

“The Israeli government says it will not allow any political or security role for Hamas in ruling Gaza, but Hamas has firm control of Gaza now,” my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence from Washington, told me. “The problem is that the tactics Israel is using to destroy the tunnels, eliminate the weapons and force Hamas out of power is causing huge civilian suffering, which in turn is putting pressure on the government to stop. And it is increasing pressure on Israel’s allies to make the government change tactics.”

There is a potential middle ground in which Israel tries to root out Hamas while also reducing civilian casualties. (Israel says it is pursuing this strategy; Gaza officials say Israel has shown a disregard for Palestinian lives.) One way for Israel to do so would be to use more ground troops around hospitals, Julian says, but that approach would have its own downside by exposing Israeli troops to more danger.

U.S. officials have advocated a version of this middle ground. It would involve allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza than Israel has allowed so far and not attacking hospitals where patients are still receiving treatment, U.S. officials say. “Hospitals must be protected,” President Biden said yesterday.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has gone into more detail: “The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals, where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire.” But Sullivan also said that Hamas continued to use hospitals and other civilian buildings as “human shields” — which underscores that war often involves horrific trade-offs.

More war news

 

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THE LATEST NEWS

The Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court justices. Erin Schaff/The New York Times
  • The Supreme Court adopted an ethics code for its nine justices after some took undisclosed gifts and property deals.
  • The code prohibits justices from letting “family, social, political, financial or other relationships” influence their conduct and says they must recuse themselves from a case if they have a personal bias or financial interest.
  • But many of the rules are “not new,” the court said, and it didn’t say how they would be enforced.
  • The court rejected an appeal from an Illinois prisoner in solitary confinement who argued that denying him outdoor exercise was cruel and unusual punishment.
 
Congress
 
More Politics
 
Other Big Stories
 
Opinions

This photo from Gaza is hard to look at. But it’s important that you see it, Lydia Polgreen writes.

Here are columns by Paul Krugman on immigration and Thomas Friedman on a two-state solution.

 

MORNING READS

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A microdistillery in Santiago.Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Boom time: Chile is known for its wines, but in recent years the country has turned to gin.

Insta medicine: Patients are sending selfies and getting dermatology prescriptions.

Stolen stars: Fake online reviews are a billion-dollar industry.

Lives Lived: After an acting career that included playing an Olympic sprinter, Shirley Jo Finney directed award-winning plays about the Black experience in America. She died at 74.

 

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Broncos beat the Bills, 24-22, handing Buffalo another devastating loss in a season full of them.

M.L.B.: Arizona’s Corbin Carroll and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson are Rookies of the Year.

 

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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Auguste Toulmouche, via Wikipedia

A timeless stare: In the 1866 painting “The Hesitant Fiancée,” three well-dressed Parisian women surround a bride who glares straight at the viewer, clearly upset. The work, by Auguste Toulmouche, was unusual for its time in depicting a woman reluctant to be wed.

The painting has found a new audience on TikTok, where women are repurposing it to express their own moments of outrage — including as a response to being told, “You should smile more.”

Related: The Cut looked back on a year of trends and drama on TikTok.

More on culture

  • CBS said it would have new scripted shows again in February.
  • Late night hosts joked about Tim Scott’s decision to drop out of the presidential contest: “The announcement has really shaken up the race for fifth place.”
 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

Homemade stock is the secret to delicious Thanksgiving side dishes. Make chicken or veggie stock now, freeze it and use it in our favorite gravy and stuffing recipes.

 
 

The Holiday Sale is on. Subscribe to Cooking and save.

A Cooking subscription answers “What’s for dinner?” deliciously, every day. Explore more than 4,000 five-star recipes. Save 50% on your first year of Cooking.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Green bean casserole.David Malosh for The New York Times

Upgrade your green bean casserole with Eric Kim’s new recipe.

Buy one of Wirecutter’s favorite advent calendars.

Keep warm using a space heater. Here’s how to use one safely.

 

GAMES

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

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

 
 

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

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

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

phkrause

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

 
 
 
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In Los Angeles.Mark Abramson for The New York Times

‘Generational disruption’

Streaming technology has allowed people to spend much more time watching entertainment than they did in the past. They can binge entire shows if they enjoy the first episode. They can watch almost any movie on an airplane flight or a subway ride.

Normally, a big increase in the use of a product also increases the profits of the companies that make that product. But something strange has happened in Hollywood lately: Even as Americans spend more time watching movies and television shows, the studios that produce this entertainment are struggling.

Disney’s stock price has fallen more than half from its 2021 peak, and the company fired its C.E.O. last year. Shares of Paramount Pictures’ parent company are worth less than they were 25 years ago. Warren Buffett recently described streaming as a particularly difficult environment in which to make money.

How could this be?

I asked my colleague Jonathan Mahler — the co-author of a new Times Magazine article about the problems at Warner Brothers — how Hollywood could simultaneously be booming and suffering. I found his explanation clarifying, and I’m devoting today’s newsletter to it.

Cords cut

As Jonathan pointed out, streaming has both expanded the entertainment business and undermined its old model.

Perhaps the most important disruption has been the decline of cable television. For years, studios made large profits through cable television. They licensed their old movies and shows for rebroadcast, and the studios’ parent companies, like Disney and Paramount, owned cable networks themselves.

“These networks were bundled into expensive packages, forcing consumers to pay for dozens of channels they didn’t watch,” Jonathan notes. Families paid hundreds of dollars a year for their cable bundle, and the entertainment companies made additional money from advertising.

But then came Netflix. When it started a streaming service in 2007, Hollywood failed to recognize how much of a threat the service would be, and the studios sold Netflix the right to broadcast movies and shows at a relatively low price. Netflix used its new library of content to attract millions of subscribers.

“What these legacy companies didn’t realize until it was too late was that streaming wasn’t just going to become the dominant mode by which people watched movies, replacing DVDs,” Jonathan said. “It was also going to replace cable TV.” This cord-cutting revolution has led to a 40 percent decline in cable subscribers since 2014. As Clare Malone wrote in The New Yorker, “The advent of streaming video has demolished old business models.”

Studios have since started their own streaming services, and some have attracted a large number of subscribers. But in an effort to catch up to Netflix, other services have often charged less. Buffett, speaking at the most recent annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, his investment firm, said that this low-price model “doesn’t work.”

Adding to the financial pressures on the studios, all of them — including newer players like Netflix and Amazon — are spending money to create new content that can woo and retain subscribers. The movie theater business has also shrunk, because of both streaming and Covid. And the recent settlements of the actors’ and writers’ strikes mean that many of Hollywood’s workers are no longer as low-paid as they had been.

Eventually, a few successful companies will probably emerge. Americans spend more than enough money on movies and TV shows to create healthy profits. But not all the companies that thrived in the past are likely to do so in the future. The current turmoil is in many ways a fight for survival.

David Zaslav, the C.E.O. of Warner Bros. Discovery, has described the situation as a “generational disruption.”

Zaslav is the subject of the Times Magazine article by Jonathan, James B. Stewart and Benjamin Mullin. In the article, you will read about Zaslav’s enormous compensation, the renovation of his Beverly Hills home, his recent cuts to the studio’s budget, his role in the success of “Barbie” and his attempts to reverse the sharp decline in his company’s stock. It’s an entertaining Hollywood yarn.

 

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

Al-Shifa Hospital
 
Children’s Hospital Footage
  • The Israeli military released footage showing what it said were Hamas facilities below a different medical facility, Gaza’s main children’s hospital.
  • The footage showed items that appeared to be weapons and explosives. It also included a calendar that began on Oct. 7, the day of Hamas’s attacks in Israel, and contained the phrase, “Al Aqsa Flood Battle,” the group’s name for the assault.
  • The Gaza health ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, disputed the video and said the hospital basement had been used as a shelter, not a military facility. A Hamas spokesman called the Israeli presentation a “lie and charade.”
 
American Response
 

MORE NEWS

Congress
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Speaker Mike JohnsonKenny Holston/The New York Times
 
More Politics
 
Climate
 
Other Big Stories
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In Buenos Aires.Sarah Pabst for The New York Times
 
Opinions

Some people question the worth of humanities majors. But the communication and critical thinking skills they teach are invaluable, Beth Ann Fennelly writes.

Here are columns by Thomas Edsall on affirmative action and Ross Douthat on religion.

 

MORNING READS

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
A classic lobster roll.Victoria Will for The New York Times

Rising costs: This New York City restaurant charges $32 for a lobster roll. The owner explains why.

Brain fog: More Americans say they have serious cognitive problems than at any time in the last 15 years. Long Covid is a factor.

“Metal for Orcas”: Sailors are blasting a special playlist to keep whales from ramming their boats.

Inverted Jenny: See what a $2 million stamp looks like.

Lives Lived: Maj. Gen. Roland Lajoie helped coordinate U.S.-Soviet relations in the last decade of the Cold War, then oversaw the destruction of nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics. He died at 87.

 

SPORTS

Soccer: Emma Hayes, a multi-championship-winning coach in the English Women’s Super League, will become the head coach of the U.S. women’s national soccer team.

N.B.A.: The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Golden State Warriors, 104-101. The Warriors’ forward Draymond Green was ejected from the game after putting the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert in a chokehold.

Golf: Rory McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour’s board, five months after the tour’s deal with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Lady Bird JohnsonABC News Studios

In her own words: The former first lady Lady Bird Johnson embodied contradiction. Even her name — a childhood nickname — belied her grit, intellect and ambition. “The Lady Bird Diaries,” a new Hulu documentary based on private tapes, tells her story without outside perspectives or critiques. What emerges is a picture of a loving wife — and a trusted adviser who had surprising influence.

“In an era when a woman’s power could generally find expression only through her husband,” the Times columnist Rhonda Garelick writes, “she found herself married to the most powerful man in the world. She seized the opportunity.”

More on culture

 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

Click around “The Ultimate Guide to Thanksgiving” and consider trying a new potato or sweet potato dish this year.

 
 

The Holiday Sale is on. Subscribe to Cooking and save.

A Cooking subscription answers “What’s for dinner?” deliciously, every day. Explore more than 4,000 five-star recipes. Save 50% on your first year of Cooking.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Bookmark these classic deviled eggs for the holiday season.

Read this before looking for Black Friday discounts.

Take these gadgets with you on a trip.

 

GAMES

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

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

 
 

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

P.S. At least 250,000 Americans rallied in Washington against the Vietnam War 54 years ago today.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

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

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The Morning

November 16, 2023

 
 

Good morning. We’re covering a surprising shift in economic thinking — as well as Al-Shifa Hospital, the Biden-Xi summit and football.

 
 
 
President Joe Biden giving a speech at a podium in front of workers and a large yellow construction crane.
President Biden Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

A new economics

A then-obscure think tank named the Roosevelt Institute released a report in 2015 that called for a new approach to economic policy. It was unabashedly progressive, befitting the history of the institute, which was created by trusts honoring Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The report called for higher taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation of Wall Street, more support for labor unions, more aggressive antitrust enforcement and more government investment in economic growth. National news outlets covered the report while also noting how much of a break it represented with decades of economic policy by both the Democratic and Republican Parties. There was ample reason to be skeptical that much would change.

But much has changed in the past eight years.

President Biden has enacted the biggest government investment programs in decades, two of which — in infrastructure and semiconductor development — received bipartisan support. Both the Biden and Trump administrations showed more interest in antitrust policy than their predecessors. Many states, blue and red, have increased their minimum wages. American workers have become more interested in unionizing, and labor unions in both the auto industry and Hollywood have recently won big victories. Even some Republican politicians speak positively about unions.

“It’s very surprising this all happened,” Felicia Wong, the longtime president of the Roosevelt Institute, told me. “For a long time, those of us who have been arguing for it were on the outside looking in.”

In today’s newsletter, I want to consider two questions: What explains the shift toward what Wong and her colleagues call (in a new report, released today) a New Economics? And is that shift likely to continue?

Unmet promises

The simplest explanation for the shift is that the old economic approach hasn’t worked very well for most Americans. Starting in the 1980s, the U.S. moved toward an economic policy that’s variously described as laissez-faire, neoliberal or market-friendly. It involved much lower taxes for the wealthy, less regulation of business, an expansion of global trade, a crackdown on labor unions and an acceptance of very large corporations.

The people selling this policy — like Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics — promised that it would bring prosperity for all. It has not.

Incomes for the bottom 90 percent of workers, as ranked by their earnings, have trailed economic growth, and wealth inequality has soared. For years, Americans have told pollsters that they were unhappy with the country’s direction. Perhaps most starkly, the U.S. now has the lowest life expectancy of any affluent country; in 1980, American life expectancy was typical.

Conventional wisdom rarely changes quickly. Friedman and his fellow laissez-faire intellectuals spent decades on the fringes, before the 1970s oil crisis and other economic problems caused many Americans to embrace their approach. But conventional wisdom can change eventually. And after decades of unmet promises about the benefits of a neoliberal economy, more people have grown skeptical of it recently.

Donald Trump also played a crucial role. He won the Republican nomination in 2016 while defending Social Security and Medicare and criticizing free trade and high immigration, two pillars of neoliberalism. By doing so, he proved that even many Republican voters had drifted from the views of Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan.

As president, Trump often contradicted his own populist rhetoric. (His one big piece of legislation was a tax cut that mostly benefited the rich.) But he shattered so many basic norms of governance that Democrats came to think they too could discard long-held beliefs. As Neera Tanden, who is now Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, said to me in 2018, “Donald Trump has widened the aperture for policy discussions in the United States.”

Still vulnerable

Where does the New Economics go from here?

For all the progress it has made, the movement remains far from its biggest goals. In many ways, Americans are still living in the Reagan era. Taxes on the rich remain low. Corporations are much larger than in the past, and they can often prevent workers from forming unions even when most employees at a work site want to join one. Many progressive proposals, like universal pre-K, remain dreams.

In the short term, the biggest question is probably whether Biden can win re-election, given Trump’s lack of a consistent economic policy. One threat to Biden’s re-election is voters’ unhappiness with the economy’s recent performance, especially inflation.

Today’s high prices are mostly not Biden’s fault, as my colleague German Lopez has explained; inflation has also been a problem in other countries, related to Covid disruptions, the war in Ukraine and other factors. But Biden has failed to persuade voters that he is sufficiently focused on high prices, and they give his overall economic policy much lower marks than they give his specific policies, like the investments in infrastructure and semiconductors.

For all these reasons, the New Economics both has made surprising progress over the past decade and remains vulnerable to reversal.

Related: After ignoring inequality for years, economists are now publishing books about it. They disagree on how to address the problem, The Times’s Jennifer Szalai writes.

Continue reading the main story

 

THE LATEST NEWS

Biden-Xi Summit

President Joe Biden greets President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China shake hands.
Biden and Xi Jinping. Doug Mills/The New York Times
  • President Biden and Xi Jinping met at an estate near San Francisco, reaching modest agreements to ease U.S.-China tensions. It was their first conversation in a year.
  • Biden said China would regulate chemicals that make fentanyl, which has fueled America’s opioid epidemic, and that the two countries’ militaries would resume talks to avoid accidents.
  • Xi criticized U.S. export controls on advanced computer chips and called for the U.S. to stop sending weapons to Taiwan.
  • The public exchanges were carefully choreographed. “We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict,” Biden said. “Planet Earth is big enough” for both superpowers, Xi replied.
  • Asked if he would keep referring to Xi as a dictator, Biden said, “Well, look, he is.”
  • Xi signaled that China might send new pandas to the U.S., The Washington Post reports. (The National Zoo in Washington had to return three recently.)
  • “He said, Xi said”: Late night hosts joked about the meeting.

Gaza Hospital Battle

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Sources: Photos and videos released by the Israeli military, statements from health officials in Gaza, Maxar Technologies (satellite image from Nov. 11) The New York Times
  • Israel raided buildings on the campus of Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, searching for evidence of a Hamas military presence. See where the troops were reported.
  • Israel released video of about 10 guns it said soldiers had found in a radiology building, as well as ammunition and body armor.
  • A senior Israeli official said troops were interrogating people inside the hospital. “Everyone is scared,” a witness said.
  • Israel believes the raid will pressure Hamas to finish a deal to trade dozens of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
  • What Israel finds — or doesn’t — in the hospital could affect international sentiment about the invasion, Patrick Kingsley and Iyad Abuheweila write.

More on the War

Congress

  • The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to extend government funding into next year. Biden is expected to sign it, averting a shutdown.
  • Hard-line House Republicans blocked a separate spending bill, protesting Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to pass the bill to avert a shutdown with Democratic votes.

More on Politics

International

Climate

A woman stands by a water tank.
In Louisiana. Emily Kask for The New York Times
  • Southeastern Florida is preparing for up to 10 inches of rain. That could cause flash floods in and around Miami.

Other Big Stories

Opinions

Any calls for a cease-fire in Gaza must also include a demand for the release of hostages, Moshe Emilio Lavi, whose brother-in-law was kidnapped, writes.

The West Wing may believe Bidenomics is working, but it hasn’t improved most voters’ lives. That’s a problem for the president in 2024, Karen Petrou argues.

Here are columns by Pamela Paul on liberalism, Gail Collins on Trump, Charles Blow on anti-Zionism and Bret Stephens on antisemitism.

 

MORNING READS

A close-up view of a small yellow and black bird perched on a hand.
A hooded warbler. Micah Green for The New York Times

Bird watching: The narrow peninsula of Fort Morgan, Ala., is a crucial pit stop on migration flights.

Helicopter parenting: Facebook groups for parents of children in college have become mainstream, The Cut reports.

Iceland: A volcano may soon erupt. Here’s what to watch for.

Lives Lived: Joe Sharkey advised business travelers in hundreds of New York Times columns, and survived a midair jet crash in 2006. He died at 77.

 

SPORTS

N.H.L.: An arrest has been made over the death of Adam Johnson, a former Pittsburgh player whose neck was cut by a skate during a match in England.

M.L.B.: Major League Baseball is likely to shorten the pitch clock to 18 seconds from 20 with runners on base next year, to limit game times.

Soccer: Megan Rapinoe underwent successful surgery to repair the Achilles’ tendon that she tore in her final professional game.

Basketball: The N.B.A. suspended Draymond Green for five games over a fight during which he put the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert in a chokehold.

Continue reading the main story

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

An animation of a football player on a horse pretending to walk in the desert.
James Kerr/Scorpion Dagger

Football everywhere: The N.F.L. is already a broadcast juggernaut — its games accounted for 83 of the nation’s 100 most-viewed telecasts last year. To reach viewers who don’t watch broadcast TV — many of whom are young — the league is expanding onto streaming services with documentaries that show its personal side. It has more than 50 productions in the works, Emmanuel Morgan writes in The Times, including a Netflix documentary on the Dallas Cowboys’ famously ornery owner, Jerry Jones.

More on culture

 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

Watch a step-by-step pie dough tutorial, then make and freeze your own. Have you seen our glorious collection of Thanksgiving pies?

 
 

Curious about Cooking? The Holiday Sale is on.

Readers of The Morning can save 50% on a Cooking subscription for the first year. Search by ingredient or explore editors’ collections to easily find the right recipes.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A side view of Cranberry Lemon Bars
Johnny Miller for The New York Times

Bake cranberry lemon bars, perfect for a potluck Thanksgiving.

Keep clothes looking new with a fabric shaver.

Buy an office chair that feels “like going to a spa.”

 

GAMES

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

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.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

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

November 17, 2023

 
 

Good morning. We’re covering football’s young victims — as well as Al-Shifa Hospital, Xi Jinping and accusations against Diddy.

 
 
 
A collage of children playing different sports.
The New York Times

Demons of our culture

I want to make clear that the subject of today’s newsletter is especially difficult.

It involves a Boston University study of athletes who played contact sports — like football — as children and died before turning 30, many by suicide. The Times has just published an interactive article about the study, including childhood videos of the athletes and filmed interviews with their parents.

The article begins with a heartbreaking recording that Wyatt Bramwell, who was 18 at the time, made minutes before shooting himself in 2019. “The voices and demons in my head just started to take over everything I wanted to do,” Bramwell tells the camera as he sits in the driver’s seat of his car. He goes on to ask his father to donate his brain to be studied. Bramwell then tells his family that he loves them and says goodbye.

He was one of the 152 athletes whose brains the Boston University researchers studied. More than 40 percent — 63 of the 152 — had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head. Of the 63, 48 had played football, while others had wrestled or played hockey or soccer. Some had never played beyond high school.

In the interviews with parents, they talk about what they would — or would not — have done differently.

“There is a line between the love of a game and the dangers it presents, and even those who have lost a child cannot agree where it is,” writes the team of Times journalists who produced the article — Kassie Bracken, John Branch, Ben Laffin, Rebecca Lieberman and Joe Ward. “But as we learn more about what contact sports can do to the brain, it may be harder to justify letting children play.”

Although much about C.T.E. remains unclear, the risks clearly seem to rise with time spent playing football or another contact sport. For that reason, many C.T.E. researchers recommend that young children play only touch or flag football. Some experts believe tackle football should not start until high school.

Other people, no doubt, will ask why tackle football exists at all. It almost certainly isn’t going away, however. N.F.L. games made up 82 of the 100 most watched broadcasts in the U.S. last year. Both college and high school football are beloved rituals. Several holidays, including Thanksgiving, revolve partly around football.

But if football is the country’s leading form of popular culture, it is also one that kills some of the people who play and love it. Figuring out how to make it safer remains an urgent matter of public health.

You can read my colleagues’ story and watch the embedded videos here.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 for help or visit SpeakingofSuicide.com.

Continue reading the main story

 

THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-Hamas War

A hole in the ground surrounded by dirt and stones. Cords and metal pieces poke out in the area.
On the grounds of the Al-Shifa Hospital. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
  • The Israeli military showed Times journalists a shaft that it said was evidence of a Hamas facility under Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Electrical wiring and a staircase were visible inside.
  • It was unclear where the shaft led or how deep it was, and its existence does not prove Israel’s claim that Hamas has used Al-Shifa to hide command centers. Hamas and hospital officials reject the accusation.
  • Gaza was in a communications blackout yesterday during a fuel shortage.
  • The U.N. said Gaza’s entire population was at risk of starvation.
  • In response to a post that accused Jews of “dialectical hatred against whites,” Elon Musk described it as “the actual truth.” IBM reacted by pausing its advertising on X, Musk’s platform.
  • Jewish celebrities and influencers confronted TikTok executives in a private call, urging them to address antisemitism on the platform. “Shame on you,” Sacha Baron Cohen said.

Asia-Pacific Summit

President Biden sitting at a large circular table with other people in suits and ties.
The APEC Summit. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Politics

George Santos talking into reporters’ microphones in the dark.
Representative George Santos Kenny Holston/The New York Times

New York City

  • F.B.I. agents searched the homes of an aide to Mayor Eric Adams and a former Turkish Airlines executive this month as part of a corruption inquiry into Adams’s 2021 campaign.
  • Adams announced budget cuts that would freeze New York City police hiring and close libraries on Sundays. He cited the rising costs of the migrant crisis as one reason.

International

Other Big Stories

Sean Combs in a white suit and shirt, looks at the camera.
Sean Combs. Nina Prommer/EPA, via Shutterstock

Opinions

Orchestras have the power to revive cultural diplomacy between the U.S. and China, Matías Tarnopolsky, the head of the Philadelphia Orchestra, argues.

House Republicans’ fights over spending have nothing to do with policy; the fighting is the point, Molly Reynolds writes.

Here are columns by David Brooks on antisemitism and Michelle Goldberg on Representative Jamaal Bowman.

 

MORNING READS

Close up of cannabis CBD gummies used by Steve Hickerson, 79, to aid with sleep.
CBD gummies. Jackie Russo for The New York Times

Pot over pills: Many seniors are using cannabis instead of prescriptions to sleep and manage pain.

Health: Protein is essential for every function in the body. Are you getting enough? Take our quiz.

Modern Love: Fancy cheese — or what it represented — came between them.

Lives Lived: Sally Darr achieved culinary renown in the 1980s when she opened La Tulipe in Greenwich Village. It offered exquisite yet homey French cooking — and agonizing delays resulting from Darr’s perfectionism. She died at 100.

 

SPORTS

Sideline reporter: Charissa Thompson, a Fox Sports and NFL on Prime Video host, said that she made up some quotes from coaches in halftime reports in the late 2000s.

N.F.L.: The Baltimore Ravens beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 34-20, in a big divisional matchup, but Joe Burrow’s wrist injury was the story of the night.

Michigan scandal: Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh decided to accept his three-game suspension rather than fight the Big Ten in court, as both he and the university signaled earlier in the week.

M.L.B.: League owners unanimously approved a plan for the Oakland Athletics to move to Las Vegas.

Continue reading the main story

 

ARTS AND IDEAS

A blurry figure accompanied by the text, "Camille walks a diagonal. Her gaze toward the ceiling falls."
How some visually impaired people see dance. 

New art form: Audio descriptions help blind and visually impaired people experience dance performances, narrating the show through a headset. But they can often be stale, lacking the emotion of the choreography.

Recent experiments, like the film “Telephone,” are changing that. They are turning audio descriptions into a space for artistic exploration. The audio is rich and evocative, matching the power of the dance. Listen to an example.

Related: The artist Christine Sun Kim relies on closed captions, but thinks most of them “suck.” She rewrote some in this video for Pop-Up Magazine.

More on culture

 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

Clean out your fridge (not fun) and consider a few Thanksgiving desserts beyond pie (fun).

 
 

Curious about Cooking? The Holiday Sale is on.

Readers of The Morning can save 50% on a Cooking subscription for the first year. Search by ingredient or explore editors’ collections to easily find the right recipes.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A sushi bake from above.
Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Change the menu with a sushi bake for Friendsgiving.

Recover from a bad night’s sleep with these tips.

Grab these gifts for Secret Santa.

Send a holiday card. There is still time.

Take our news quiz.

 

GAMES

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

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were adaptation and adoption.

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.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

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

November 18, 2023

 
 

Good morning. We have a plan to help you prepare for Thanksgiving — and stay sane.

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

A guide to Thanksgiving

Last Thanksgiving, just as a jubilant Santa Claus was making his way across 34th Street on TV, I noticed something alarming in the kitchen of my childhood home. The oven I had preheated for my stuffing had not, in fact, heated.

My dad, flashlight in hand and flanked by a gaggle of panicked observers, crouched down on the floor, removed the oven drawer and began troubleshooting.

My mom and I took stock of our uncooked dishes. The turkey was safe: My family has been deep-frying our holiday bird for decades, a beloved if controversial method. But the fate of my stuffing, my mom’s sweet potato casserole and cornbread, and the rather gratuitous glazed ham my brother requests every year all hung in the balance like a bloated Snoopy parade balloon.

 
 

Featured Recipe

Sweet Potato Casserole

View this recipe →

 
 

At 1:38 p.m., with guests scheduled to arrive at 4, we called it: The oven was toast. We quickly devised a plan to spread out the remaining cooking across all our other appliances. The stovetop was still working, sparing us a frantic course correction on the sautéed green beans, gravy and wild rice. My parents’ new toaster oven could miraculously fit a cast-iron skillet inside, so in went the cornbread, followed by the sweet potato casserole. We’d treat the gas Weber grill like an oven, closely monitoring the lid thermometer as the stuffing and ham baked inside.

That chaotic day helped inform NYT Cooking’s Ultimate Guide to Thanksgiving, an interactive planner that distills the holiday into four big decisions: how to cook the turkey, which side dishes to make, what to prepare ahead of time and how to end the meal. The guide steers you toward the perfect recipes based on the size of your party and your favorite flavors.

There is value in preparing as much as you can ahead of time. Doing so provides not just an insurance policy should your most important appliance fail; advance work is good for your sanity, which, on a holiday that can be emotionally taxing, deserves safeguarding. In the rest of this newsletter, I’ll be giving my recommendations for what you can do over the next few days.

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

Thanksgiving road map

Tomorrow: If you haven’t already gotten ahead on a chicken or vegetable stock to fortify your stuffing, gravy and soup (assuming that’s your kind of thing), the time to do so is now. You also don’t need to fuss with gravy on the day itself. Claire Saffitz’s white wine gravy and Eric Kim’s vegetarian umami gravy, bolstered with nutritional yeast, are both excellent make-ahead candidates.

Later in the evening, roast some sweet potatoes, scoop out the flesh and prep it for pie filling or a casserole (though you’ll want to hold off on topping a casserole with nuts, brown sugar or marshmallows until just before baking).

Monday: Assemble, cook and cool creamy casseroles like scalloped potatoes, which will hold up texturally, thanks to their high fat content. It’s also a fine time to make cranberry sauce, which benefits from a few days in the fridge.

Tuesday: It’s time to tackle vegetable prep. Blanch green beans for casseroles, trim your brussels sprouts to glaze with cider, and peel and prep butternut squash to glaze with ginger beer. And don’t forget to leave your stuffing bread out on a baking sheet overnight, to dry out the bread sufficiently before storing it in an airtight container.

Wednesday: Tend to delicate tasks that you might otherwise put off until the big day, like washing and drying leafy herbs and salad greens, and whisking together salad dressing. You can also make your mashed potatoes, then cool and refrigerate them. “When mashed potatoes chill, their starches firm up,” my colleague Genevieve Ko writes in her recipe, “and when reheated gently, they relax into a mash with an even silkier texture.”

And, of course, bake apple pie, red wine-pear cardamom cake or Basque cheesecake the day before. When your oven goes kaput, for that foresight you’ll be oh so thankful.

See more recipes in this guide to Thanksgiving.

 
 

Last chance before Thanksgiving to save on Cooking.

Less mess, less stress. A Cooking subscription brings you easy recipes plus step-by-step guides, videos, photos and more. Subscribe and save 50% on your first year of Cooking.

Continue reading the main story

 
 

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THE WEEK IN CULTURE

A man in a tuxedo stands onstage.
Sean Combs Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock
  • Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul known as Diddy, reached a settlement with the singer Cassie one day after she filed a lawsuit accusing him of rape and abuse.
  • André 3000 released his first album in almost two decades, but it’s not a rap record. It’s instrumental and centered on woodwinds.
  • The new “Hunger Games” movie came out. Amy Nicholson writes in her review that the film so echoes our own world that it “moves us to spend its gargantuan running time reflecting on contemporary headlines.”
  • The singer Pink will give away 2,000 banned books at her upcoming Florida concerts in collaboration with PEN America and a local bookstore, NBC News reports.
  • Comedian and actor Kevin Hart will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at a ceremony in March.
  • A musical based on the trial involving Gwyneth Paltrow over a 2016 skiing accident is being staged in London.
  • The rappers Drake and J. Cole plan to tour together next year, Pitchfork reports.
  • Season 6 of “The Crown” was released on Netflix. The show’s depiction of Princess Diana’s death and its aftermath, a writer for Vulture says, is “careful to fault.”
  • The so-called puking bird won New Zealand’s “Bird of the Century” poll. The comedian John Oliver led the campaign, NBC reports.
  • “There was this riotous sense of fun”: Read an oral history of Jezebel, the feminist website that is shutting down.
  • A.S. Byatt, a British critic and scholar whose 1990 novel, “Possession,” won the Booker Prize, died at 87.
  • George Brown, a founding member and drummer of the group Kool & the Gang, died at 74.
 

THE LATEST NEWS

The head and shoulders of Sam Altman, wearing a beige crew-neck sweater and looking at the camera.
Sam Altman. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
  • The board of directors of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company, pushed out Sam Altman, its high-profile chief executive, accusing him of not being “consistently candid.”
  • Donald Trump can remain on Colorado’s 2024 Republican primary ballot, a judge ruled, rejecting an effort to bar him over Jan. 6.
  • Israel said it had found weapons at a school in Gaza and would let fuel into the enclave to run desalination and sewage plants.
  • More companies, including Apple and Disney, suspended advertising on X after Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, endorsed a post accusing Jews of “hatred against whites.”
  • A top House Republican launched a new push to expel Representative George Santos from Congress after an ethics report accused him of campaign fraud.
  • Rosalynn Carter entered hospice care alongside her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, at their Georgia home. She is 96 and has dementia.
 

CULTURE CALENDAR

📺 “Squid Game: The Challenge” (Wednesday) An anticapitalist satire in which playground contests are played for deadly stakes might not seem like an obvious fit for reality television, but Netflix has taken the “Squid Game” phenomenon and made it real. In this new 10-episode series, 456 sweat-suited candidates vie for a $4.5 million prize, playing games like Red Light, Green Light. Some small comfort: In a bold departure from the series, the losers don’t actually die.

🎬 “Wish” (Wednesday) When you wish upon a star, the song says, your dreams come true. And if you’ve been wishing for an animated movie to whisk the children off to when the tryptophan haze of Thanksgiving has passed, congratulations. This new Disney musical, voiced by the Oscar winner Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine (wait, can Chris Pine sing?), is a tale of a dreamer who opposes a sorcerer king. Alan Tudyk plays a goat.

Continue reading the main story

 
 

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REAL ESTATE

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Chris Mottalini/Clarkson Potter

Living small: A South Korean ceramist taught himself design and construction to create a collection of small buildings.

What you get for $1.8 million: A 2023 house in Tivoli, N.Y.; a 19th-century Shingle Style home in Signal Mountain, Tenn.; or an 1891 limestone three-bedroom house in Denver.

The hunt: A retired second-grade teacher wanted to find a home with mystery and character in Colorado Springs. Which did she choose? Play our game.

 

LIVING

A person’s feet in red tights and red clogs adorned with charms shaped like a Big Mac, a carton of French fries and the golden arches logo.
McDonald’s/Crocs

Fast (food) fashion: McDonald’s, through its collaborations with brands like Crocs, is becoming an unlikely source of style.

“It never fails”: Five chefs and food-obsessed locals debate the 25 essential dishes to eat in Mexico City.

Girl meets dog: For some without partners, pet ownership is helping to fill a romantic void.

 

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Gift season is upon us

As we barrel toward the holiday season, it’s time to consider gifts for those lucky recipients on your list. Start here, with New York Times and Wirecutter editors’ ultimate gift guide, which you can easily sort by category and price. The nearly 400 gifts range from the unnecessary but amazing (tomato candle, anyone?) to the exceptionally luxe, including a beautifully built record player. And if you’re eager to get started, Wirecutter has a running list of the best early Black Friday deals. — Jason Chen

 

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%
Josh Dobbs Matt Krohn/Associated Press

Minnesota Vikings vs. Denver Broncos: This is a matchup of two teams on hot streaks. Both started the season 1-4, only to go unbeaten over the last month.

The Broncos’ defense has been their strength. They twice held the Super Bowl champion Chiefs to fewer than 20 points. But tomorrow, the Broncos will face a pass-heavy offense led by an exciting new starting quarterback: Josh Dobbs. Dobbs, 28, has spent most of his career as a backup or practice squad player; he is also an aerospace engineer who interned for NASA. After the Vikings lost their quarterback, Kirk Cousins, to injury, they picked up Dobbs. He quickly led the team to two wins. 8:20 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on NBC.

For more

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

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

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.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.

Continue reading the main story

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

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

November 19, 2023

 
 

Good morning. We’re covering the rise of good-looking comedians — as well as the Israel-Hamas war, Sam Altman and Pablo Escobar’s hippos.

 
 
 
A man with brown hair, wearing a gray shirt, light blue jeans and white sneakers, sits on a stage with a spotlight on him.
Matt Rife Courtney Asztalos and Michael W. Hicks for The New York Times

Beauty and the bit

A beautiful person is so often a confrontation. Even in silence, symmetrical features announce their presence and elicit a reaction: desire, admiration, curiosity, resentment, belittlement, rage or envy. The response is rarely neutral.

In this way, beautiful people are different from comedians who have to work for a crowd’s attention. Comics choreograph their lines, pauses and gestures to get a laugh. Then they practice, and fail, and practice more. Why would an attractive person toil for a reaction if they don’t have to?

This is why my colleague Jason Zinoman, The Times’s comedy critic, recently chose to disclose a bias of his: He is skeptical of attractive men in comedy. And he isn’t alone. The conventional wisdom is that male comics need to be relatable, not hot, lest their beauty distract from the bit. But that may be changing.

Stand-up stages are crawling with beautiful men. Chris Rock is showing off his abs. Jimmy Fallon smiles boyishly on late night. Trevor Noah and his dimples date actresses. An industry once known for nerdy, affable guys — Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Newhart, Jim Gaffigan — is becoming another venue for charmers. One annoyed late night writer complained to his peers: “You’ve let the popular kids appropriate the very art form that helped you deal.”

No one represents this shift better than Matt Rife, a cartoonishly hot man who became famous by posting his comedy on TikTok. The platform’s algorithms, which funnel attention toward people who could be in perfume ads, led to more viral videos. On Wednesday, he made his comedic debut on Netflix, with a special entitled “Natural Selection.”

An illustration of a well-toned naked man sitting on a stool and holding a microphone in front of a brick wall.
Brandon Celi

Rife leans into his sex appeal. He styles his hair like a member of BTS, posts workout clips online and uses a shirtless photo on his website.

But his beauty doesn’t only explain his popularity; it’s become part of his act. In the trailer for “Natural Selection,” he smiles for photos with screaming women and is mock arrested by police officers who, like Zinoman, are skeptical of his mixing of cheekbones with comedy. “Why did the algorithm choose you?” one asks. “I heard he got lip filler,” another replies.

In another video, Rife laments his good fortune: “I can’t even hang myself because my jawline will cut the rope,” he said, adding a curse word.

Like a tyrant, Rife’s beauty rules his comedy. But he’s not a victim — the day after his special was released, it became the No. 1 TV show on Netflix in the U.S. Royalties have a way of taking the sting out of envy.

Read more of Jason’s critique and our story on how Rife blew up.

More on beauty

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NEWS

Al-Shifa Hospital

  • U.N. workers who visited Al-Shifa, the major Gaza hospital that the Israeli military stormed four days ago, called it a “death zone.”
  • The team said several patients had died because of a lack of medical services, and reported signs of gunfire inside the hospital.
  • Israel’s seizure of Al-Shifa is central to its plan to eradicate Hamas. So far it is not clear the strategy is working, write Eric Schmitt, Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman.

More on the War

  • Parts of southern Gaza were hit by airstrikes, according to the U.N. and a Palestinian news agency, even as the Israeli military warns residents to evacuate from the north to the south.
  • President Biden used an opinion piece in The Washington Post to call for an end to extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. He said the U.S. was prepared to issue visa bans against attackers.

Politics

International

A hippopotamus in water opens its mouth wide.
In Doradal, Colombia.  Raul Arboleda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tech

  • Sam Altman, the chief executive pushed out at OpenAI two days ago, is reportedly in discussions about returning to the post.
  • Warner Bros. and Sony paused ad spending on X, formerly Twitter, after Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the platform. Several other big advertisers had already pulled back.
  • Musk’s spaceflight company, SpaceX, launched a test flight of its Starship rocket. It failed, but showed progress from a previous test.

Other Big Stories

An older man, wearing a plaid shirt, is tended to by two workers.
In Minnesota.  Tim Gruber for The New York Times
 

FROM OPINION

Students are experiencing a learning loss crisis. All levels of government need to devote substantial resources to make up for lost ground, the Times editorial board writes.

Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on David Axelrod vs. Biden and Ross Douthat on Nikki Haley.

 
 

The Sunday question: Is the Supreme Court’s ethics code a step in the right direction?

Recent reports about the justices’ conduct caused many Americans to lose trust, and the new code they have adopted will allow the court to regain that trust if they “show they are following the new rules they have set,” The Washington Post’s editorial board writes. But no one besides the justices themselves can hold them accountable, and “‘trust us’ is never an adequate answer, especially when dealing with matters of ethics,” Erwin Chemerinsky writes for The Los Angeles Times.

 
 

Last chance before Thanksgiving to save on Cooking.

Less mess, less stress. A Cooking subscription brings you easy recipes plus step-by-step guides, videos, photos and more. Subscribe and save 50% on your first year of Cooking.

 

MORNING READS

A blurry photo of Princess Diana in a pink swimsuit embracing Dodi Fayed, who is shirtless and wearing sunglasses, on a yacht.
Diana and Dodi Fayed in 1997.  Mario Brenna

“The Crown”: Read the story behind a photo of Diana and Dodi Fayed — and the true history behind Season 6.

Dorothy loves New York: Meet the 98-year-old who has found fame on Instagram.

Happy New Year? With six weeks of 2023 left, some on social media are popping the champagne and jump-starting their resolutions.

Visiting Havana: Read about a Cuban tattoo shop in The Miami Native.

Vows: A bite of bruschetta laid the foundation for their relationship.

Lives Lived: Viktor Belenko was a lieutenant in the Soviet Union’s elite Air Defense Forces who defected to the West in a fighter jet. He died at 76.

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TALK | FROM THE TIMES MAGAZINE

A woman with short brown hair, wearing a dark denim shirt and light blue jeans. She sits in front of a red background.
Emma Chamberlain  Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times

Earlier this year I spoke with Emma Chamberlain, a pioneer of YouTube virality, about the psychological costs of online fame.

Do you think there’s a natural shelf life to being a YouTube star? Both in terms of the star’s ability to keep doing it and the audience staying interested?

Yes. This schedule that YouTubers put themselves on is rigorous. There’s pressure to be producing at a level that is unrealistic. Inevitably people burn out or they become too obsessed with being consistent, and they never take time off to evolve their creative side, so it becomes stale.

Your life is different from what it was when you started on YouTube: You’re in Lancôme campaigns. You’re at the Met Gala. Do you worry that the rarefied circumstances of your life now might chip away at your relatability?

I have thought about this a lot. And guess what? People who have one follower on Instagram? There is no difference between me and those people. I think a lot of celebrities don’t feel that way. There are some who have this experience, and they feel immortal, unstoppable. I know that’s not true.

Unlike movie stars or reality-TV stars or even online influencers, the YouTube celebrity is still such a new phenomenon that we don’t have much in the way of templates for what a career that started in that space tends to look like. But do you have any sense of what your arc might look like?

I have vague ideas of things that I might want to pursue when I’m older. Also, if I want to quit, maybe I quit! Maybe when I’m 30, I’ll be like, I’m done. I’m going to open up a tiny coffee shop and work there and get married and have babies. No one knows!

Read more of the interview here.

More from the magazine

 

BOOKS

A black-and-white photo of two little girls sitting on short stools facing away from the camera toward racks of children’s books in a library.
Donnell Library  Siegelman — PIX

From the archive: A look at the literary lives of New York City’s children through the years.

Our editors’ picks: “Absolution,” about two American women who try to help people in Vietnam, and eight other books.

Times best sellers: Barbra Streisand’s memoir, “My Name Is Barbra,” makes a first appearance on the hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.

 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

If you have a frozen turkey, allow one day of thawing in the refrigerator for every four pounds of bird, and choose from our best turkey recipes. Today is a good day to plan your table setup and pick out serveware, napkins, unscented candles and drinking glasses.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Get ahead with this mashed potato casserole, which can be made two days before Thanksgiving.

Stop bedbugs from coming home with you from vacation.

Add warmth to your home with these Christmas lights.

 

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For

  • Argentina is holding a runoff presidential election today.
  • Biden will turn 81 and pardon two turkeys tomorrow.
  • The Netherlands has elections on Wednesday.
  • Thursday is Thanksgiving.

What to Cook This Week

A white ceramic dish holds a ricotta pasta bake showered with golden bread crumbs.
David Malosh for The New York Times

Fresh ricotta is one of those magic ingredients that elevate a dish, Emily Weinstein writes in the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter. She recommends mixing it into a pasta bake, dolloping it on a charcuterie board or using it as a cloudlike base for squash on toast — a great Thanksgiving appetizer.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

Can you put eight historical events — including the creation of the Silk Roads, the painting of “The Hesitant Fiancée” and the amendment of the Clean Air Act — 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.

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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

phkrause

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

November 20, 2023

 
 

I’m turning over today’s newsletter to Amanda Taub, who is part of a Times team that has spent the past two years reporting on a major economic challenge for India: gender inequality. — David Leonhardt

 
 

Good morning. We’re also covering Rosalynn Carter, Argentina’s election and OpenAI.

 
 
 
A woman enveloped in orange Indian attire, with henna on her hands, sits in quiet repose.
Arti Kumari Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

India’s daughters

There is one change, so simple it can be described in just six words, that could lift millions of people out of poverty and expand the world’s fifth-largest economy: Get more Indian women paid jobs.

In many other countries, female labor-force participation has propelled economic growth. But India has one of the world’s lowest rates of formal employment for women. The percentage of women doing paid work has dropped sharply in recent years. Last year, 24 percent had a paid job, down from 29 percent in 2010. In China, by comparison, that rate is about 60 percent.

“Every month, I read a statistic somewhere about how our G.D.P. is losing out because we don’t have ‘productive workers’ in the work force, and by that they mean women,” said Shrayana Bhattacharya, an economist at the World Bank.

But changing that is easier said than done.

Risk vs. reward

One problem is India’s “jobless growth”: Although the country has some big companies, especially in technology, they are clustered in a few large cities. Much of the country’s recent economic growth has been concentrated in small, family-owned firms that employ few outsiders.

That has had pronounced effects for women because it reinforces the patriarchal norms that keep them at home.

In societies like India’s that place a high premium on family “honor” — which depends on female members’ reputations for chastity — letting an unmarried daughter work outside the home can seem risky because unsupervised contact with men could jeopardize her reputation.

The result is what Alice Evans, a lecturer at King’s College London, calls the “patrilineal trap”: Even many families that would like their daughters to have jobs are afraid of the reputational cost of being the first to try.

In many countries, Evans said, the patrilineal trap breaks when the economy creates enough well-paying, reliable jobs to make paid work extremely attractive. As more young women move to cities for jobs, the norms shift, and letting a daughter work no longer seems as risky. That’s what has started to happen in Bangladesh, for instance.

But in India, the trap is still too powerful for most to escape. That can have catastrophic consequences. Without a way to earn a living, many women cannot escape violent marriages. Marital rape is not criminalized in India, and thousands of women are killed each year by their husbands or in-laws.

Uncertainty’s cost

If you were going to bet on a young woman to make it out of the trap, you might think Arti Kumari, the academic superstar of her village in Bihar, a rural state on the border with Nepal, would be a good one to back. When she was growing up, her friends and relatives used superlatives to describe her: the smartest, the strongest, the most determined.

While other girls in her village married in their late teens, Arti finished high school and enrolled in college. But there were few jobs near her home. And traveling to another city for work seemed too precarious: She and her family worried that she might be left with nothing if she took the financial and reputational risks of moving but then couldn’t land a good job or was fired.

Only federal government jobs, which effectively offer lifetime tenure in India, seemed to offer enough security to counterbalance the risks. Arti set her sights on winning one, but many other young people had the same idea. Since 2014, there has been an average of only three government jobs for every thousand young Indians pursuing one.

Arti took exam after exam, but she didn’t make the cut.

Meanwhile, the pressures of the trap grew stronger. Her family insisted on an arranged marriage. Her future mother-in-law, she knew, would expect her to stay home and care for the household.

But Arti pushed back. She negotiated delays to the wedding so she could study for more exams. Then, after the string of disappointments continued, she secured her fiancé’s promise to let her keep trying for a job after marriage.

When her wedding day dawned, Arti remained unemployed but determined.

“I want to get the job as soon as possible, so that I can be independent and stand on my own feet,” she said. “I won’t have to be dependent on my husband.”

For more: You can read India’s Daughters, a continuing series on this subject. And to receive the series’s final chapter and find out how Arti’s story ends, sign up for the Interpreter newsletter.

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THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-Hamas War

  • Israel’s military released videos of what it said was a fortified tunnel beneath the Shifa Hospital complex, bolstering its case that Hamas used the hospital for military operations.
  • Israeli also released videos that it said showed two hostages being taken inside the hospital on Oct. 7, the day of Hamas’s major attack.
  • Aid workers evacuated 31 premature babies in precarious health from Al-Shifa to a hospital in southern Gaza.
  • Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia hijacked a ship in the Red Sea, hours after threatening to target Israeli vessels. Israel’s military said no Israelis were on board.
  • Israel and Hamas are close to agreeing a pause in fighting of several days so hostages can be released, a White House official said.
  • For almost two decades, an Israeli peace activist and a Hamas official quietly maintained an informal line of communication. The Oct. 7 attacks ended that.
  • “They are alive, but they are not OK”: A Palestinian filmmaker in the U.S. is trying to keep in touch with his family in Gaza through communication blackouts. Watch our video.

Rosalynn Carter

Mrs. Carter waves to supporters while standing before microphones at a podium. Mr. Carter, beaming, stands beside her with one arm around her waist.
Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter in 1976. Mikki Ansin/Getty Images
  • Rosalynn Carter helped propel her husband, Jimmy Carter, from rural Georgia to the White House. They were from the same small Georgia town and spent eight decades together. She died at 96.
  • “White House aides consider her the most influential First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt,” The Times wrote in 1978. She attended cabinet meetings and security briefings.
  • Michelle Obama said Rosalynn Carter “reminded me to make the role of first lady my own.” Bill and Hillary Clinton said she would be remembered as “the embodiment of a life lived with purpose.”
  • See her life in photos from CBS News.

Politics

  • Greg Abbott, Texas’ governor, endorsed Donald Trump at an event near the southern border. “We need a president who’s going to secure the border,” Abbott said.
  • At a hearing today, Trump’s lawyers will challenge a gag order placed on him in his federal election case.
  • President Biden turns 81 today. Another birthday may offer a reminder of his age to an already skeptical electorate, writes Peter Baker.

Tech

  • OpenAI’s board of directors stood by its decision to push out its former chief executive, Sam Altman. Microsoft, an investor in the company, said it was hiring him to lead a research lab.
  • Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of the driverless carmaker Cruise, resigned. The company pulled its autonomous cars off the road last month after a series of problems.

New York

Other Big Stories

Javier Milei reaches down to grab hands in a crowd of supporters.
Javier Milei, Argentina’s president-elect. Cristina Sille/Reuters

Opinions

We need to recognize Malcolm X as a human being with flaws and vulnerabilities to truly understand his revolutionary legacy, Peniel E. Joseph writes.

Here are columns by David French on antisemitism and Jane Coaston on abortion.

 
 

Last chance before Thanksgiving to save on Cooking.

Less mess, less stress. A Cooking subscription brings you easy recipes plus step-by-step guides, videos, photos and more. Subscribe and save 50% on your first year of Cooking.

 

MORNING READS

Two people stand in a lake at sunset.
At Badwater Basin. 

Sudden life: Visitors flock to Death Valley for its heat and barren landscape. This fall, they’ve been drawn in by something else: a lake that appeared almost overnight.

Anxiety: It’s a good time to be a professional bedbug killer in Asia.

Last wish: A cancer patient wanted to help pay others’ medical debt. She has posthumously raised enough to erase $20 million.

New housing: In New York City’s financial district, families are filling empty offices.

Metropolitan Diary: Good shoes, good deed.

Lives Lived: Karel Schwarzenberg was a Czech prince who twice served as his country’s foreign minister, and quietly subverted aristocratic expectations. He died at 85.

 

SPORTS

Sunday Night Football: The Denver Broncos extended their winning streak with a comeback to beat the Minnesota Vikings, 21-20.

Around the N.F.L.: The Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Bears and improved their record to 8-2. And the San Francisco 49ers’ Brock Purdy had a perfect quarterback rating in his victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Here are takeaways.

M.L.B.: The Phillies re-signed the pitcher Aaron Nola in a seven-year, $172 million contract, taking a top pitcher off the free-agent market early.

U.N.C.: The North Carolina field hockey team won its second straight national title, this one with a 23-year-old first-time head coach who played on the team last year.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

Travis Kelce (left) and his brother Jason, both wearing sports jerseys, sit in chairs with coffee cups between them. Jason is pointing at Travis.
Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce. Wave Sports + Entertainment

Helmets off, mics up: The N.F.L. often suppresses individuality — players wear helmets, there’s a strict uniform policy and extravagant celebrations risk a fine. But an influx of more tolerant coaches, and more business-conscious players, has fostered a surprising trend: the football player podcast.

On shows like Travis and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” and Von Miller’s “The Voncast,” players have a direct line to fans — and a way build their brands. “I think it’s fun and guys will keep doing it as long as there’s a thirst from the audience,” Jason Kelce said.

More on culture

 

THANKSGIVING PREP LIST

If you’re cooking a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving, pick it up today. Or browse our nonturkey mains and vegetarian centerpieces. Make apple pie filling, if that’s on the menu. Shop for perishables.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Top down view of a person's hands holding a spoon in one hand and chopsticks in the other. Both utensils are in a bowl of pho.
Jason Henry for The New York Times

Pick an easy dinner for the night before Thanksgiving.

Read books that experts say can make your relationship stronger.

Navigate Thanksgiving air travel chaos this Thanksgiving with this gear.

Clean your luggage. Here’s how.

Take our news quiz.

 

GAMES

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

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.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

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

November 21, 2023

 
 

After another dizzying day of news from Silicon Valley, I asked my colleague Kevin Roose to make sense of the fight over OpenAI. The piece he wrote below is the most clarifying thing I’ve yet read on the topic. — David Leonhardt

 
 
Author Headshot

By Kevin Roose

Technology Columnist

Good morning. We’re also covering the Israel-Hamas war, migrant stories and David Letterman.

 
 
 
A portrait of Sam Altman in a tan sweater.
Sam Altman Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Fight for the future

If they had been the plot of a science fiction movie, or an episode of “Succession,” the events at OpenAI last weekend would have seemed a little over-the-top.

A secret board coup! Fears of killer A.I.! A star C.E.O., betrayed by his chief scientist! A middle-of-the-night staff revolt that threatens to change the balance of global tech power!

If you haven’t been paying attention to all the twists and turns in the saga, that’s OK. It’s been a confusing ride, with lots of complex jargon and hard-to-follow details.

But it’s an important story, even if you’re not particularly interested in A.I. If you’ve ever used ChatGPT or drawn a picture with DALL-E 3, or if you care about whether powerful A.I. systems might someday threaten human survival, all of that is wrapped up in the drama at OpenAI, the country’s most prominent maker of artificial intelligence.

Here’s what you need to know:

Why did this happen?

OpenAI’s board fired its chief executive, Sam Altman, in a surprise on Friday. The board’s explanation — that Altman had not been completely candid with them — was vague and opaque.

We still don’t know exactly what happened between Altman and the board. But OpenAI’s unusual governance structure — it is run by a nonprofit board that controls a for-profit subsidiary and can vote to replace its leaders — allowed the board to fire Altman without explaining itself.

What was the coup about?

The coup was led by Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, who had butted heads with Altman. Sutskever wants the company to prioritize safety and was worried that Altman was more focused on growth.

Sutskever is among a faction of A.I. experts who are fearful that A.I. may soon surpass human abilities and become a threat to our survival. Several of OpenAI’s board members have ties to effective altruism, a philosophical movement that has made preventing these threats a top priority. Altman has concerns about A.I. risks, too. But he has also expressed optimism that A.I. will be good for society, and a desire to make progress more quickly. That may have put him at odds with the safety-minded board members, whose job is to see that powerful A.I. is developed responsibly.

A portrait of Ilya Sutskever in a blue shirt.
Ilya Sutskever Jim Wilson/The New York Times

What’s happened since the coup?

Over the weekend, it looked as though Altman might return to OpenAI, under the condition that major changes were made to the board. That didn’t happen. Instead, late on Sunday night, the board affirmed its decision, writing in a memo to employees that Altman’s “behavior and lack of transparency in his interactions with the board undermined the board’s ability to effectively supervise the company in the manner it was mandated to do.”

The board then appointed Emmett Shear — the former chief executive of Twitch, a livestreaming company — to be OpenAI’s second interim C.E.O. in just a few days. (Mira Murati, the chief technology officer, had been given the job, only to lose it after signaling her support for Altman.)

In response, Microsoft — OpenAI’s biggest investor and a major strategic partner — offered to give Altman and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, a job running a new A.I. lab. Nearly all of OpenAI’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit and go work for the new Microsoft team, unless the start-up’s board resigned and brought back Altman and Brockman.

In another surprise twist, Sutskever then had second thoughts. He wrote in a post on X on Monday that he deeply regretted having taken part in the ouster and that he had “never intended to harm OpenAI.” He also signed the letter pledging to follow Altman and Brockman to Microsoft unless the board reversed its decision.

That sounds messy! But why does this matter to the rest of us?

Corporate infighting is not new. But what makes the OpenAI story stand out is the stakes. OpenAI is no ordinary company. It built ChatGPT, one of the fastest-growing tech products of all time, and it employs many of the top A.I. researchers.

The company is also unusually ambitious and saw its role as building a digital superintelligence that would eventually become more powerful than humans. In addition, Altman was a well-liked leader and a figurehead for the A.I. industry, making the board’s decision to oust him even more of a mystery.

In a larger sense, what’s happening at OpenAI is a proxy for one of the biggest fights in the global economy today: how to control increasingly powerful A.I. tools, and whether large companies can be trusted to develop them responsibly.

More on OpenAI

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THE LATEST NEWS

Israel-Hamas War

Politics

Election officials taking down a polling site in Iowa this month. A table has several white placards with “vote” written on them next to depictions of the American flag.
Election officials in Pella, Iowa. Jordan Gale for The New York Times
  • A federal court effectively blocked civil rights groups from suing under the Voting Rights Act, which would weaken the law. The plaintiffs are likely to appeal the ruling.
  • “Vermin,” “sick”: Donald Trump’s verbal attacks on his political opponents are alarming autocracy experts.
  • Americans are angry about more than just inflation. Those broader frustrations, more than their own financial situations, may be driving their unhappiness with the economy.
  • President Biden pardoned two turkeys — Liberty and Bell — and joked about his age. “This is the 76th anniversary of this event. And I want you to know I wasn’t there for the first one.”

War in Ukraine