Members phkrause Posted June 21, 2024 Author Members Posted June 21, 2024 June 21, 2024 Good morning. Today, two of my colleagues explain why you’re probably overpaying for medicines. We’re also covering 2024 fund-raising, Stonehenge and Taylor Swift. —David Leonhardt Photo illustration by Jens Mortensen Bad medicine By Reed Abelson and Rebecca Robbins We cover the business of health care. You probably already know some of the reasons prescription drugs are so expensive. Drugmakers charge as much as the market will bear. Health insurers and the government haven’t reined in prices. But there’s another reason: middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers, or P.B.M.s. Your employer or a government insurance program like Medicare hires these companies to negotiate a price with drugmakers and to pay pharmacies. P.B.M.s are supposed to save money by haggling favorable terms with those businesses in exchange for sending them large numbers of patients. But in their quest for higher profits, they are quietly driving up prescription drug costs. Your pharmacy benefit manager is often invisible to you unless you’re having trouble filling a prescription. (You probably rely on one of the big three: CVS Health’s Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts or UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx.) We spent the past year trying to understand them. Today, we published a story about these companies, how they affect drug spending and how they amassed so much control with so little transparency. Here’s what we learned. Source: Nephron Research | By Ella Koeze A middleman Employers and governments hire P.B.M.s because they need someone to handle the intricacies of paying for prescription drugs. Say your doctor prescribes a drug like Eliquis to prevent you from having a heart attack. She’ll send the prescription to your pharmacy, where you’ll pick it up. Behind the scenes, your pharmacy benefit manager is handling several tasks. It likely negotiated a price with Eliquis’s manufacturer. It helped determine how much you’ll have to pay out of pocket for the medicine. And it will pay your pharmacy for dispensing Eliquis to you. Sources: Blue Shield of California; online drug pricing tool; CivicaScript | By Ella Koeze At a number of points along the way, your P.B.M. may be overcharging. It might steer you toward pricier drugs or charge your employer much more for your medicine than the wholesale cost. Added up across more than 200 million Americans, that means big profits for the largest P.B.M.s and higher costs for the system. Consider the case of Kent McKinley, a cancer patient in Oklahoma who gets his health insurance through a program for state employees. His P.B.M., CVS Caremark, charged Oklahoma $120,000 per year more for his cancer drug than his local pharmacist would have charged. “We were getting ripped off,” McKinley said. Often, employers don’t know they’re being overcharged. Many admitted to us that they struggled to understand how the system works. Executives at the big three pharmacy benefit managers told us that they were not to blame for high drug prices. They say that when you consider all the drugs they oversee, they save substantial money for patients and clients. They say their size and scale are essential to counter the drugmakers, which they point to as the real culprits. They also say employers can be stingy in the benefits they offer to workers. New scrutiny If P.B.M.s charge too much, why haven’t competitors with lower prices swooped in to steal their business? The short answer is that these companies have gotten incredibly big, and the system is maddeningly complex. Note: CVS Health has additional units not shown. | By Ella Koeze The biggest three pharmacy benefit managers now process roughly 80 percent of prescriptions in the United States. After two major mergers in 2018, they are all now part of conglomerates that include insurers and pharmacies. This structure allows them to juice their own business — by pushing patients to use their pharmacies, for instance — and to discourage patients and employers from going elsewhere. That gives the conglomerates an enormous competitive advantage. The result is that smaller players can’t get a toehold. There are efforts to dislodge the pharmacy benefit managers — notably, the billionaire Mark Cuban created an online pharmacy to take them on. But such efforts have captured only a tiny share of overall prescriptions. Until recently, regulators had generally given P.B.M.s. a pass. That’s changing as high drug prices have prompted more scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission, lawmakers and state attorneys general have suggested that the P.B.M.s. may be abusing their power. “They’re seeking to extract from the system without creating any corresponding value for the system,” said Dave Yost, the Republican attorney general in Ohio who has sued Express Scripts and Optum Rx over their business practices. “The patients are the ones that are suffering.” For more: Read what to do if you’re overpaying for prescriptions. ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics The Supreme Court upheld a Trump-signed tax on money made overseas. The 7-to-2 decision reinforces Congress’s powers of taxation. The I.R.S. extended a pause on a pandemic tax credit after finding that most claims appeared to be fraudulent. After Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, Republicans opened their wallets. His campaign donations have boomed. International Volodymyr Zelensky with a Patriot air defense system in Germany. Jens Buettner/DPA, via Associated Press The U.S. will delay weapons shipments to other countries to rush air defense missiles to Ukraine. Palestinians say they are paying exorbitant fees to an Egyptian company or unofficial middlemen to help them escape Gaza. In fewer than five years, Britain’s main opposition party has gone from massive defeat to the favorite to win next month’s election. Read how the party did it. In France, boys allegedly raped a 12-year-old Jewish girl after hurling antisemitic abuse at her. The case has fueled a conversation about antisemitism in the country. In Japan, some women want to be sterilized to eliminate any chance of becoming pregnant. The country makes that extremely difficult. An ancient Roman beach was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. It just reopened, The Washington Post reports. Climate and Weather At Stonehenge, in England. Just Stop Oil/UGC, via Just Stop Oil, via Reuters Climate activists sprayed Stonehenge with orange powder shortly before the ancient site hosted its annual summer solstice celebration. Nearly 100 million people in the U.S. are sweltering under temperature advisories during a heat wave. Around the world, people are facing severe heat, floods and fire, aggravated by the use of fossil fuels. Officials in Hawaii have announced a legal settlement with a group of young climate activists over public transportation emissions, The Guardian reports. Other Big Stories Nico Nuño-Kelley Kirsten Luce for The New York Times A mother is asking questions about her son’s death, which involved a vape pen and a terrible fall. Read about the case. A judge found that New York State prisons routinely hold prisoners in solitary confinement beyond the maximum 15 days allowed by law. Target is testing a chatbot app that would provide workers guidance on how to help customers. A man who was wanted in connection with three killings — two in Oklahoma and one in Alabama — was arrested in Arkansas after a manhunt. Opinions Working in the heat in Arizona. Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times Workers shouldn’t have to risk their lives in heat waves. They should have adequate rest, shade and water, Terri Gerstein writes. Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on abortion and the Comstock Act and Jamelle Bouie on Donald Trump’s “lazy authoritarianism.” Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Donald Sutherland Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images Lives Lived: Donald Sutherland was an actor who could both charm and unsettle and played roles in “M*A*S*H,” “Ordinary People” and “The Hunger Games.” He died at 88. Beer: This is how it tasted 3,000 years ago. Going abroad: See where your dollar is worth more. Big move: These are the best cities for college graduates. Software updates: Welcome to the era of the A.I. smartphone. Viagra for women? Doctors have been prescribing the creams and pills. Modern Love: I was content with monogamy. I shouldn’t have been. SPORTS M.L.B.: The St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Giants in Birmingham, Ala., as the league honored Willie Mays and celebrated Rickwood Field’s Negro Leagues history. N.B.A.: The Los Angeles Lakers hired JJ Redick, a player-turned-broadcast analyst with no professional coaching experience, as the team’s head coach. Soccer: The Copa América began last night with Lionel Messi and Argentina’s 2-0 win over Canada. The U.S. men’s national team opens on Sunday against Bolivia. ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS A Taylor Swift concert in France. Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Taylor Swift’s concerts are an economic tour de force. European cities are benefiting this summer. This could influence how countries measure inflation and decide whether they should cut interest rates. It can “muddle the picture for central banks heading into these decisions,” one expert in London said. More on culture Kendrick Lamar onstage. Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times Kendrick Lamar, fresh from a high-profile diss war with Drake, hosted a Juneteenth concert. The rapper Travis Scott was arrested after a disturbance on a yacht in Florida. Katy Perry announced her new album’s lead single, “Woman’s World,” and shared a 10-second snippet, The Cut reports. In the 1960s and ’70s, Anouk Aimée could be described as “a thinking man’s sex symbol,” Glenn Kenny writes. Ms. Aimée died this week at 92. On late night, Jimmy Kimmel counted down the days to the first debate. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Yossy Arefi. Make berries and cream, the perfect cap to a summer meal. Find the best cheap sunglasses. Try a hard seltzer. Tackle any clothing stain with this advice. Charm your picnic guests with these chic tumblers. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was excelling. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 23, 2024 Author Members Posted June 23, 2024 June 22, 2024 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. With much of the U.S. experiencing a heat wave, let us consider the beach and all its promises and pitfalls. María Jesús Contreras Sea changes A friend and I like to send each other photos of the corniest beach house signs we encounter, those punny plaques that declare a Margaritaville state of mind rules in this house. The signs are made of painted driftwood and say stuff like “Sand by Me” and “It’s Always 5 O’Clock Here” and “If You’re Not Barefoot, You’re Overdressed.” These are all variations on the overarching theme, the through line of summer vacation: Life is a beach. You are hereby commanded to put on a brightly colored swimsuit, sip a frosty cocktail garnished with a slice of pineapple and relax. This is one of the problems I think non-beach people have with the beach. That mandate to hang loose, to be easy and fun and not care that invisible bugs are biting you all the time. Non-beach people lament that the beach is one of the few places where you can’t get everything you want at any time (this is precisely what recommends the beach to others). So you need to pack with provisions for any contingency, like you’re deploying for six months to a remote location of unpredictable climate and topography, perhaps the moon. As a child, the beach was uncomplicated. I loved nothing more than to sit in the sand all day in a damp bathing suit making drip castles and letting a soft-serve ice cream cone melt down my arm. But as a teenager, some combination of body shame and a desire to appear as vampiric and vitamin D-deprived as the goth musicians I idolized made me into a person who wanted nothing to do with the sun and therefore nothing to do with the brand of plastic fun that the beach was peddling. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood there are many different ways to be at the beach and many different ways to be a beach person. The beach can be a full-day family affair, with inflatable sea horses and economy-size bottles of SPF 75 and a cooler of soft drinks. It can also be a solo sojourn on a Tuesday afternoon with just a towel, a hat and a book. The beach is a site freighted with so much preparation and expectation that we forget it’s just a location. We project all kinds of meaning onto the place but really, it has no meaning that we don’t give to it. It doesn’t insist that a particular kind of good time be had there. It’s land and water, evidence of the earth’s functions, erosion and deposition, tides and currents. The beach for me these days is participatory performance art. I love to see people unfurl their beach selves under the sun’s spotlight. To see how they’re adorning themselves, the music they’re blasting, the way they stake their territory, their peculiar rituals and accessories. I like the community aspect of it all: Your music is, for better or worse, my music, for you are my neighbor for one brief day and this is our pop-up neighborhood. I like to eavesdrop on people’s conversations and observe how they discipline their children and, if they seem interesting, offer them some of my chips. I even like that moment of danger when a big breeze comes and someone’s giant, improperly anchored beach umbrella unmoors and comes soaring down the sand. We’re all in this together, I think, in my dopey sun-drunk stupor. Today, we live here, not in our houses or apartments with their climate control and Wi-Fi and roofs, but here, outside, exposed to the elements and the gulls and the gaze of others. Today, we agree, life really and truly is a beach, or at least this beach, and here we are, living that life as extravagantly as we can manage. For more Here are five cities with great beaches. 25 writers on their favorite beach vacations. “Beaches today are where we turn our backs not just on the world at large but also on our inland selves.” From 2012, “Life and Death of the Beach.” Wirecutter’s favorite beach gear. ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Ethan Miller/Getty Images After Justin Timberlake was arrested in the Hamptons for drunken driving, fans of Britney Spears, his ex-girlfriend, rushed to buy copies of her old song “Criminal,” People reports. Charli XCX just released a new album, “Brat.” She tapped Lorde to appear on a remix, Pitchfork reports. Movies The actor Donald Sutherland died on Thursday at 88. Celebrities, including his son Kiefer Sutherland, shared their sadness online, The Cut reports. Some of those who go to see the new Pixar film “Inside Out 2” in theaters are complaining about the post-credits scene, Vulture reports. Austin Butler, famous for “Elvis” and “Dune,” is playing someone closer to himself in “The Bikeriders.” Art Another shiny, mysterious monolith appeared, this time near Las Vegas. Lita Albuquerque recreated “Malibu Line,” her seminal 1978 earthwork, in which a long trench of blue pigment appears to connect the land to the sea. The choreographer and dancer Mayfield Brooks is doing a performance that explores grief and decomposition in the hull of a 19th-century cargo ship. Other Big Stories Elden Ring, the critically adored 2022 video game, has a new expansion. It carries over many of the elements that made the original a hit, our critic writes, including a profound sense of scale and remarkable challenges. The singer Chappell Roan appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show dressed as a bird, Vogue reports. THE LATEST NEWS Muslim pilgrims at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Tuesday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images At least 450 people have died during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, as temperatures around the holy city of Mecca rose to around 120 degrees. A blistering heat wave in the U.S. stretched to a fifth day, with nearly a third of the country under hot weather advisories. The Supreme Court ruled that the government can take guns away from domestic abusers. The 8-to-1 ruling broke a yearslong streak of major decisions expanding gun rights. “I just need to get away”: These are the stories of abuse survivors, gathered over one day at the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In a taped speech from a private event, an influential Israeli official said the government was engaged in a stealthy effort to cement control of the West Bank. Three people were killed and 11 others injured in a shooting at a grocery store in Arkansas. The police have the shooter in custody. Misleading online videos, spread by conservative news outlets and Republican officials, twist mundane moments to paint President Biden in an unflattering light. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. CULTURE CALENDAR By Desiree Ibekwe 📺 “The Bear” (Thursday): In the previous season of this Hulu show, Carmy Berzatto and his team had just a handful of weeks to open a high-end restaurant. It encapsulated the show’s raison d’être: depicting “the curse and blessing of having a calling,” as The Times’s James Poniewozik wrote in his review. “Fishes,” a flashback episode set at a stressful holiday dinner, was the show at its best. It features thrilling guest appearances from Jamie Lee Curtis, Bob Odenkirk, John Mulaney and Sarah Paulson, as well as heart-wrenching interpersonal dynamics, complex characters and a simmer, simmer, boil of a plot. It’s well worth rewatching before the new season arrives — or, at least, reading this recap from Vulture. ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. By Mia Leimkuhler Cherry Tomato and White Bean Salad This five-star recipe from Lidey Heuck knows you want to make some ingredient swaps and additions — and, judging by its reader reviews, it’s here for them. Throw in whatever soft herbs you have, add grilled chicken or canned tuna, serve it cold or at room temperature. Requiring just some assembly, it’s a breezy dish for these hot summer days. REAL ESTATE Rosaria Silvano and Douglas Ritter in Rome. Susan Wright for The New York Times The Hunt: They moved to Rome in search of a two-bedroom with a terrace in a central neighborhood. What would their $950,000 budget afford? Play our game. What you get for $1.5 million: In Prague, that buys you a three-bedroom loft in an revamped factory, a two-bedroom apartment in a 16th-century house or a detached villa in a leafy residential area. Cohabitation: An engineer who moved from London to New York was planning to live alone. Instead, he wound up with 23 housemates — and loved it. LIVING The LV Lovers fragrance. via Louis Vuitton Fragrance: Photosynthesis was the inspiration behind a new scent developed by Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton. Dental health: These five habits can cause a surprising amount of damage to your teeth, experts say. Travel: Spend 36 hours in Portland, Maine. Back pain: Walking can be a powerful remedy. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER 10 seconds to have a great hair day I think of a “mom bun” as a haphazard loop of hair secured up and off the neck, to be worn on days when there are more important things than hair. It’s fast and functional, and doesn’t look good or bad; it just is. But six years deep in parenting, sometimes I do want my hair to look like … something. Plastic claw clips and scrunchies are back in fashion, but I find them both clunky and overly casual. My solution is this affordable and sleek little hair pin. I just twist my hair into a low cluster with one hand. With the other hand, I jab the pin tines downward into the mass, nudging back and forth to get some hold. That’s it. Its steel core means it has absolutely no wiggle or give, so my updo is just as secure as a mom bun — but far more refined. — Hannah Morrill GAME OF THE WEEK Maddie Meyer/Getty Images U.S. Olympic swim trials: For the past week, the cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis has hosted the best swimmers in the U.S. as they race for spots on the Olympics squad. The U.S. regularly has the world’s best swim team, and it seems to be assembling another strong one this year: Seven-time gold medalist Katie Ledecky is back, as is Caeleb Dressel, who won five gold medals at the Tokyo Games. Two world records have been broken at the trials: Gretchen Walsh in the 100-meter butterfly, and Regan Smith in the 100-meter backstroke. Thomas Heilman, 17, won the 200-meter butterfly; he’s the youngest male swimmer to make the team since 15-year-old Michael Phelps in 2000. The highlight tonight may be the women’s 200-meter individual medley, featuring Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh, each of whom has won a world championship in the event. Tonight and Sunday, 8 p.m. on NBC NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was although. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 24, 2024 Author Members Posted June 24, 2024 June 23, 2024 Good morning. Today my colleague Katie Thomas is writing about the changing world of pet health care. We’re also covering an Arkansas shooting, chicken recipes and a mermaid parade. —David Leonhardt Claire Kirsch and her dog at home in Vassar, Mich. Brittany Greeson for The New York Times The new pet care By Katie Thomas I’m an investigative reporter with a focus on the intersection of money and health care. I have a dog named Gerald. Pets these days are just like us. They get birthday cakes, day care and rubber boots to wear in the snow. Their health care is becoming more human, too — for better and for worse. Decades ago, animal care was relatively rudimentary. Veterinarians usually owned their own clinics, and the options to treat a sick or injured pet were limited. Today, animal hospitals are equipped with expensive magnetic resonance imaging machines, round-the-clock critical care units and teams of specialists in cancer, cardiology and neurology. For pets and the people who love them, the advances are welcome. But as animals’ health care has changed to more closely resemble our own, it has also taken on some of the problems of the human system, including the biggest one: cost. The price of veterinary care has soared more than 60 percent over the past decade, outpacing inflation. Private equity firms have snapped up hundreds of independent clinics, in a trend reminiscent of corporate roll-ups of doctors’ offices. Veterinarians around the country told me that they worry this is changing the way that they practice, as they face growing pressure to push costly treatments and order more tests. The changed landscape means that even as veterinarians can do more for dogs and cats than ever before, pet owners face sometimes heartbreaking decisions about whether they can afford the care. (Read more in our story on the topic.) Changes in the industry About one-quarter of primary care clinics and three-quarters of specialty clinics are owned by corporations, according to Brakke Consulting, which focuses on the animal health industry. Sometimes, the corporate ownership is not obvious: Many private equity firms do not change the name of the vet clinic when they take it over. Most veterinarians are paid, at least in part, based on how much money they bring into a practice, whether that is by ordering tests, selling prescription dog food or performing procedures. One veterinarian said she quit her job after she was told her “cost per client” was too low; another said she was told she needed to see 21 animals a day, about a half-dozen more than her current workload. Retired veterinarian David Roos and his dog, Chester. Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times Other veterinarians said the pressure had no influence on the care they provided. In interviews, they said they bore the brunt of pet owners’ complaints, even when they have little to do with setting prices. Veterinarians make far less money than doctors for humans, and are also often in debt from years of education. Prices have gone up partly because of the rising cost of drugs, vaccines and other supplies, as well as worker salaries in a tight labor market. One veterinarian I interviewed, Dr. Pam Nichols of South Jordan, Utah, has seen the transformation firsthand. When she was starting out in the 1990s, she said she used to sneak dachshunds into the human hospital where her father was a radiologist to give them M.R.I. scans. If the dog needed surgery, the bill would be about $2,000. Now, she said, a similar dog might get an M.R.I. and a CT scan, and will probably be operated on by a specialist who is assisted by several nurses. The cost could reach $10,000. Tough choices for owners Veterinary care differs from human health care in one big way: Most pet owners pay out of their own pocket — and in full — before leaving the vet’s office. While pet insurance is available, only a small percentage of pet owners have it. A generation ago, pet owners with a seriously ill animal may have had little choice but to opt for euthanasia if they wanted to relieve their pet’s suffering. Now, they must choose between extending the animal’s life and going into what can be debilitating debt, or letting an animal die. I spoke to some pet owners who were still paying off credit card debt years after their animals had died. And animal welfare groups said owners frequently relinquished their pets to shelters because they couldn’t afford veterinary bills. For many people, though, the sacrifices are worth it. That was the case for Claire Kirsch, who was earning less than $10 an hour as a veterinary technician in Georgia when her own dog, Roscoe, and her horse, Gambit, each had medical emergencies, resulting in bills that totaled more than $13,000. The animals would have died if she had not opted for the additional care. She took a higher-paying job, maxed out a credit card and tapped into her husband’s retirement account to pay off the debt. “I knew I would never be able to forgive myself if we didn’t try,” she said. ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election Former President Trump and Joe Biden debating in 2020. Erin Schaff/The New York Times The presidential debate this week will be the earliest one in American history. Any potential missteps could shape the race for weeks or months. Campaigns have hired editors to cut videos of candidates into short clips and try to make them go viral. Donald Trump is heightening his false, inflammatory campaign messages to solicit donations, The Washington Post reports. President Biden has a diverse group of advisers, but few have the influence of three men in his inner circle. Read about them. Europe In Lyon, France. Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In France, as the far right surges, many voters feel nations need effective borders that can be sealed tight. President Emmanuel Macron is taking note. In Germany, Björn Höcke is tilting the mainstream toward the far right. Israel-Hamas War Israeli airstrikes shook Gaza City. Israel said its jets struck Hamas military infrastructure; Gazan rescue workers and residents said there were many killed. Columbia placed three deans on leave over their conduct during an antisemitism panel. Leaked images showed them sharing disparaging messages. Other Big Stories On the National Mall. Daniel Slim/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A heat wave is still covering much of the U.S., but it’s almost over. Forecasters predict it will cool early this week. Track the heat. A gunman at a grocery store in Arkansas killed four people and injured nine. It has shaken the small town of Fordyce. Mark Zuckerberg and his team tried to draw young users onto Meta platforms but misled the public about the risks, lawsuits by state attorneys general say. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Does Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law constitute an establishment of religion? Yes. The mandate that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools puts it on equal footing with documents like the Declaration of Independence. It treats them as “a mere historical document, eroding faith, mischaracterizing the origins of scripture and violating the Constitution,” Eli Federman writes for CNN. No. The Ten Commandments offer values and edicts that are universal across religions and faiths. “Prohibitions on murder, theft and false accusations hardly constitute controversial ‘religious’ ideas,” Miranda Turner writes for Patheos, a religion news site. FROM OPINION Camilla Gomes Charlotte Drury Years after losing her chance at the 2016 Olympics, Charlotte Drury photographs the leaps of faith trampolinists take to qualify for the Paris Olympics. The E.U. was built on the values of Europe’s prosperous 20th century. It has little to offer for the young people struggling in the 21st, Christopher Caldwell writes. There is no physical evidence connecting a Missouri inmate with the crime that’s put him on death row. The governor should pardon him to save his life, David French writes. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on Biden’s red line and Ross Douthat on the weaknesses of Trump and Biden. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. ADVERTISEMENT MORNING READS On the Coney Island boardwalk. Graham Dickie/The New York Times Coney Island: The annual mermaid parade brought rhinestones and shells to the boardwalk. Where to eat: New York Magazine has a list of the best eats this summer. Summer without sex: Celibacy is all the rage right now, The Cut reports. His father’s frontier: He was a Times bureau chief in China. Then he uncovered the full story of his dad’s role in Communist rule. Hidden stashes: Experts say you shouldn’t keep money secrets from a loved one. A tear-jerker: A movie from Thailand, “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies,” has become a surprise hit across the region. Vows: Their wedding became a music festival. Lives Lived: Ron Simons left a career in tech and found success as a Broadway producer, winning four Tonys. His mission: staging productions about underrepresented communities. He died at 63. THE INTERVIEW Gretchen Whitmer Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who is a co-chair of the Biden campaign. We talked about her new book, “True Gretch,” her hopes for her fellow Gen X politicians and President Biden’s challenges this election. Something you write a lot about in the book is the power of messaging. In 2017 and 2018, your slogan was “Fix the damn roads.” I learned a lot about Michigan roads reading your book. [Laughs.] But my editor had to Google to find out what Biden’s slogan is, and it’s “Finish the job,” which I have to say is not much of a humdinger. I’m curious if you have sharper ideas, because you seem to be good at this. And right now Democrats nationally are really struggling with messaging about where the party stands. National message is always a challenge. Washington, D.C., is so far away from the average person’s life that to conceptualize what a $3 trillion investment in onshoring supply chains means to your everyday life is darn near impossible to discern. That’s why I’ve always learned, when you show up and ask people, they’re going to tell you what they want. “Fix the damn roads” was not something that we poll-tested or focus-grouped. It was just conversation after conversation. What do you need me to do if I’m elected? Fix the damn roads. It’s ironic because President Biden passed an infrastructure bill. He is fixing the damn roads. And bridges! And internet! Right, but he’s not getting credit for it. Why do you think that is? For that same reason. I think the pandemic’s taken a toll. People are stressed out. They’re just trying to pay the grocery bill, get the kids off to school, show up at their job and maybe get a little bit of sleep at night. They’re not consuming everything. They can’t discern what the CHIPS Act has meant. And so we’ve got to tell that story better. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photograph by David Guttenfelder for The New York Times Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. BOOKS “There Is No Ethan”: Reading Anna Akbari’s memoir of online manipulation, you think you’ve seen it all — then you keep reading. Politics: A new book about “The Apprentice” paints Trump as wounded, forgetful and hung up on Hollywood. Our editors’ picks: “Fire Exit,” Morgan Talty’s first novel that follows a white man who was raised on and then later evicted from a Penobscot reservation, and six other books. Times best sellers: “Swan Song,” the last of the Nantucket novels by Elin Hilderbrand, is a No. 1 debut on the hardcover fiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Appreciate the kindness of strangers. Buy a good refrigerator when you renovate. Get a better hamper. Play one of these great two-player board games. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter, stands trial Wednesday in Russia on espionage charges. The U.S. presidential debate between Biden and Trump is on Thursday. Iranian presidential elections are on Friday. Voters will choose a successor to President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed last month in a helicopter crash. The Tour de France begins Saturday. Meal Plan Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Our readers have asked for more recipes with chicken breasts, not thighs. Emily Weinstein has some for this week: honey garlic chicken, chicken piccata and green masala chicken, to name a few. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were anonymity and antimony. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 24, 2024 Author Members Posted June 24, 2024 June 24, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleague Dani Blum writes about the intriguing promise of drugs like Ozempic. We’re also covering a shooting in Russia, abortion and male kindergarten teachers. —David Leonhardt A woman injects a dose of Wegovy. Cydni Elledge for The New York Times The new panacea? By Dani Blum I’ve covered Ozempic and similar drugs since 2022. In the past two years, Ozempic has become a synonym for weight loss. When celebrities slimmed down, tabloids wondered whether they were taking the drug. Activists argued that the drug entrenched old norms about body image — people still seemed to want to be thin. Ozempic was weight loss; weight loss was Ozempic. It’s like Kleenex or Scotch tape: totemic. Technically, while Ozempic is a diabetes drug, people can, and do, take it to drop weight. But the drug — and others in its class, such as Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound — is about much more. Scientists believe the drugs are about to revolutionize several fields of medicine, such as cardiology and endocrinology. Researchers are also running dozens of trials to see whether they might help with Alzheimer’s, liver disease, polycystic ovary syndrome and even skin conditions. If these trials prove successful, the drugs may extend many lives by years, save billions in medical costs and divide public health into before-and-after epochs. A researcher studying these drugs told me he felt like the scientist who first discovered antibiotics. Those are some sky-high hopes, and not all will be come true. But we’ve already seen a real-world impact. In March, the Food and Drug Administration said that doctors could use Wegovy to reduce the risk of heart problems. Last month, a trial showed that the compound in Ozempic reduced the risk of complications from chronic kidney disease. And last week, two trials found that tirzepatide, the substance in Mounjaro and Zepbound, could improve symptoms of sleep apnea. The idea that a single drug that could target so many kinds of disease might sound too good to be true. These drugs, called GLP-1s (glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists), mystify even the scientists who study them. When I asked researchers how it was possible that Ozempic might help with cognitive issues and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and opioid addiction, they gave the same answer: We don’t know! But we have early clues about where these drugs might take us — and what that means for medicine. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain. Ozempic injection pens on the production line. Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York Times Fighting inflammation Some researchers think Ozempic and drugs like it may have something of a medical superpower: lowering inflammation in the body. Inflammation is a key part of the body’s defense system. When we sense a threat, such as one posed by a pathogen, our cells work to help us fight off the intruder. But chronic inflammation contributes to heart disease, lung disease, diabetes and a host of other major illnesses. If new obesity drugs really do reduce inflammation, that could explain their effect across such a wide spectrum of diseases. Still, there are already limits. Not everyone responds to GLP-1s. Even those who slim down inevitably hit a floor, typically after losing about 15 percent of their body weight. And the drugs come with side effects (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation) and rare but serious risks: People can develop gallstones and an inflamed pancreas; they can eat so little they become malnourished; and, more commonly, they can lose muscle mass. Limiting urges We know that these medications target the areas of the brain that regulate appetite. But there are questions around what else the drugs do to the mind. I’ve interviewed dozens of people taking these medications who say they’ve lost all interest in alcohol. Could these drugs curb other compulsive behavior, too, the way they silence “food noise”? Studies in rats suggest that GLP-1s reduce cravings for cocaine. Scientists are examining whether these medications might even be able to alleviate gambling addictions and smoking. The great experiment Ozempic and drugs like it are considered “forever drugs” — that is, people are supposed to stay on them for the rest of their lives. They’re like statins or blood pressure medications. When you stop taking them, they stop working. A display at a GNC store. Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times But this class of drugs has existed for less than 20 years. Ozempic itself has been on the market for only six. We don’t know what happens after lifelong use of these drugs. Researchers point to past examples of drugs we once thought were miraculous, chiefly fen-phen. It, too, was astonishingly effective for weight loss. Then doctors learned that it damaged the heart and stopped prescribing it. It will take years, more diverse trials and much more data to determine the potential of these drugs. We are years away from solid evidence underpinning their use to treat Alzheimer’s disease, for instance. There’s a chance they won’t do what scientists hope. Researchers sometimes tell me that we’re living through the great Ozempic experiment. Hundreds of thousands of people across the globe are taking GLP-1s. The number will rise as they’re approved for other uses. It may be years or generations before we know their hidden limitations — or their full powers. For more We know where the new weight-loss drugs come from — but not why they work. These medicines are incredibly expensive. One state stopped covering some of them this year. ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Russia Shootings Law enforcement in images released by Russian authorities. National Antiterrorism Committee, via Reuters Gunmen attacked synagogues and churches in two cities in southern Russia. They used rifles and Molotov cocktails. The attackers killed police officers and a priest. Six of the gunmen died in shootouts, officials said. While the attacks appeared coordinated, the Russian authorities have not yet identified the gunmen or offered a possible motive. Israel-Hamas War Benjamin Netanyahu, in a television interview, said that the intensive phase of Israel’s war against Hamas would soon end. Israel bombed a U.N. compound near Gaza City, killing at least eight people, a Palestinian news agency said. The Israeli military said militants were using the compound, which Hamas has denied. Many people in southern Israel, still reeling from the Oct. 7 attacks, blame Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and struggle to sympathize. The Manhattan district attorney declined to prosecute most of the protesters charged with taking over a Columbia University hall, citing a lack of evidence. More International News Pilgrims shield themselves from the sun. Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More than 1,300 people have died during the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage, in Saudi Arabia’s heat. The temperature there recently passed 120 degrees. Explosions set a lithium battery factory on fire in South Korea, killing at least 16 people. Many countries in Africa resent France, a former colonial power. Not Rwanda: It is embracing French culture and courting French investment. With a general election next week, support for Britain’s governing Conservative Party is collapsing. These charts show why. Ukrainians marked midsummer with festivals, folk dancing and flowers, despite wartime restrictions, The A.P. reports. Abortion This week is the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. In ads and campaign events, Democrats will highlight Donald Trump’s role in ending the constitutional right to abortion. The public conversation about abortion has become increasingly focused on pregnancy complications. Politics Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, has turned his Trump-world celebrity status into a family business that deals in conspiracy theories. Trump, in an address to an evangelical group, said he’d suggested starting a sports league in which migrants fight one another. CNN has sole discretion over the look and cadence of Thursday’s presidential debate. In past years, an independent commission had oversight. Other Big Stories The heat wave that broke records in many parts of the U.S. is expected to subside today. After floods hit homes and farmland, the Midwest is strengthening levee systems. Opinions The gay marriage campaign changed the law. But it didn’t change many people’s minds, Omar Encarnación argues. Voters need politicians’ medical information to make informed choices, Dr. Daniela Lamas argues. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on Sean Penn and David French on Clarence Thomas. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS In Wynne, Ark. Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times Role models: Boys are struggling in education. Male kindergarten teachers can help. Community: Social media is a valuable resource for gay women who come out later in life. Solstice: When the seasons turn, Stonehenge lets visitors celebrate up close. Supplements: Is fish oil helpful or harmful for the heart? Secret beaches: Cap Ferret, on France’s western coast, is Paris’s answer to Montauk. Locals shared some favorite spots. Metropolitan Diary: Cashing in the tattoo fund. Lives Lived: Silvano Marchetto’s Greenwich Village trattoria, Da Silvano, became a star-studded canteen and a Page Six fixture over four decades. He died at 77. SPORTS W.N.B.A.: Angel Reese recorded her eighth straight double-double in the Chicago Sky’s big win over Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever. Soccer: The U.S. men’s team defeated Bolivia, 2-0, in its first game of this year’s Copa América. The captain, Christian Pulisic, scored one goal and assisted on the other. N.H.L.: The Oilers and Panthers play tonight in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times How high are your socks? It’s an intergenerational debate. Fashion-minded Gen Z-ers have declared a preference for crew socks, which generally rise midway up the shin, and thumbed their noses at the low-rise socks that were staples of the Millennial wardrobe. “I think part of growing up is people trying to separate themselves from what came before them,” said Night Noroña, 18, who recently threw away all of his socks that hit below the ankle. Related: Want to buy taller socks? See our favorite pairs. More on culture Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce in London. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management Taylor Swift brought her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, onstage in London, the BBC writes. (His mom posted about it on Facebook, Us Weekly reports.) The San Francisco Symphony’s music director is leaving over budget cuts. It’s evidence of the difficulties facing American classical music. How short is too short for a skirt? The Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman offers some advice. A celebrity-driven trend for “healing” crystals has created a risky mining rush in rural South Africa, The Wall Street Journal reports. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Pick a few ingredients off this list — maybe olives and anchovies — for a simple puttanesca. Ease your back pain by taking a walk. Resist this cute but disappointing viral oven. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was buoyant. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 26, 2024 Author Members Posted June 26, 2024 June 25, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering Biden’s recent progress in the polls — as well as Israel, Julian Assange and American pizza. Donald Trump Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times Trump’s narrow lead President Biden has narrowed the gap with Donald Trump in the past few months, but Trump still holds a small lead in the race for the presidency. That’s perhaps the most succinct way to summarize the race two days before the candidates’ first debate — a debate unlike any other in U.S. history. It will occur more than four months before Election Day and before either candidate has received his party’s formal nomination. All previous general-election presidential debates, dating to the first, in 1960, took place in October or late September. We’re devoting today’s newsletter to the campaign both because of the debate and because of the release this morning of The Times’s 2024 polling averages. Those averages combine survey results from many pollsters, both for the U.S. as a whole and for seven battleground states. I recommend reading my colleague Nate Cohn’s description of the averages in this article. As Nate explains, Biden began to rise in the polls around the time of his State of the Union address in March. He then rose further after Trump’s felony conviction last month. The two are now essentially tied in the national polls, around 46 percent, when Robert F. Kennedy is excluded from the question. With Kennedy included, Trump leads Biden, 41 percent to 40 percent, with Kennedy at 8 percent and the remaining electorate undecided. In both the two-way and three-way race, Trump leads in the states likely to decide the outcome. “While he often leads by only a point or two, he does nonetheless hold the edge in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — states that would be enough for Mr. Trump to win the Electoral College and therefore the presidency,” Nate writes. “Of course, the election will not be held today and the polls will not be exactly right.” Note: Averages may not add up to 100 because of support for other candidates or responses for “undecided.” Source: Polling averages by The New York Times as of June 24. As we’ve explained in past newsletters, the outcome will depend partly on voters who are skeptical of both Biden and Trump. Many of them — including Black, Latino and younger voters — belong to groups that lean Democratic. But they also tend not to have a college degree and to be more conservative than younger college graduates. Many are unhappy with the country’s direction and don’t follow politics as closely as committed Democrats or Republicans do. One reason that this week’s debate will be important is that it will focus these voters on the campaign in a way that few events have so far. A postscript I know that some Times readers believe the media shouldn’t spend much time covering the horse race of a campaign. I partly agree and partly disagree and want to spend a minute on this issue. Covering the stakes of the election does indeed deserve more attention than the horse-race polls. That’s why The Times spends so much time on the records and the campaign promises of Biden and Trump. My colleagues covering Trump have written in detail — and have broken news — about his plans for a second term. My colleagues in Washington have written about Biden’s climate record, his foreign policy and much more. This new project compares Biden’s and Trump’s records on several major issues. In The Morning, we’ve devoted newsletters to democracy, immigration, economic policy, health care, labor unions, global alliances and more. But the horse race and the polls deserve some attention, too. Polls shape how the two candidates run their campaigns — the issues they emphasize, the ads they run and the debate tactics they choose. To cover a presidential campaign while ignoring the polls would be a bit like covering the economy while ignoring the business cycle. It would miss crucial information that shapes people’s decisions. That said, we will continue to devote more attention to the campaign’s issues and the stakes than the horse race. President Biden heading to Camp David on Thursday. Al Drago for The New York Times More on the election Biden has spent several days at Camp David, the presidential retreat, preparing for the debate. Bob Bauer, his personal lawyer, is playing the Trump role. Aides to Biden are pushing him to present himself as vigorous, while advisers to Trump want to temper his excesses, The Washington Post reports. The Times has assigned 60 journalists to cover the debate. This article explains how they will do so, while this one explains how The Times approaches fact-checking. ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the military must draft ultra-Orthodox religious students, potentially overturning a longstanding exemption. Top American officials, including the C.I.A. director and the secretary of state, met with Israel’s defense minister in Washington. The U.S. is trying to dissuade Israel from expanding its fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon. An Israeli strike in Gaza City killed the region’s director of ambulance services, the health ministry said. Israel said it had killed a Hamas operative in the area. A pro-Palestinian protest outside a Los Angeles synagogue turned violent as demonstrators fought with pro-Israel counterprotesters. Biden and local leaders criticized the protest as antisemitic. Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the intense stage of the war will soon end. Read about four possibilities for what comes next. Iran Iranian presidential candidates have distanced themselves from harsh tactics enforcing the law that requires women to cover their hair. It’s a sign that female-led protests have gained ground. Iran’s Supreme Court overturned a death sentence imposed on an antigovernment rapper. Human rights groups and artists, including Sting, had criticized the sentence. More International News WikiLeaks released video of Julian Assange boarding a plane out of London. Wikileaks, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange left prison in Britain. He agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count, ending a long battle with U.S. prosecutors. China became the first country to retrieve rocks from the far side of the moon. They could offer clues about the origins of the moon and Earth. Russia has largely taken over the African operations of Wagner, the paramilitary group whose leader was killed after rebelling against Vladimir Putin. A Maryland couple died in the extreme heat while on pilgrimage in Mecca. Their daughter told The Washington Post that they were failed by a U.S.-based tourism company. Politics The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about a Tennessee law banning some medical treatments for transgender minors. The U.S. surgeon general declared gun violence a public health crisis and recommended a campaign like the ones against smoking and traffic deaths. A group of Louisiana parents filed a federal lawsuit to block a new state law that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Representative Jamaal Bowman faces George Latimer today in a closely watched New York Democratic primary. Here’s what to know. Other Big Stories In Iowa. KC McGinnis for The New York Times Severe flooding in the Midwest destroyed homes and left residents scrambling to evacuate. Read one couple’s story of wading through neck-high waters. Over the past two decades, extreme wildfires have become twice as intense and far more frequent, a study found. European Union regulators, under a new tech competition law, accused Apple of imposing unfair restrictions in its App Store. Opinions “It’s between chaos and competence”: Hillary Rodham Clinton offers three things to watch for during the debate between Biden and Trump. Policy solutions matter in presidential debates. Personality, relatability and dignity matter more, Frank Luntz writes. “Based,” “glazed” and “sus”: Stephen Marche praises the slang of his teenage son’s generation. Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on Jamaal Bowman and Jamelle Bouie on Republicans and Biden. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Illustration by Brian Rea Under our feet: Earth’s crust teems with ancient and slow microbes that we’re only beginning to understand. Menopause: Scientists are studying how to keep ovaries working longer, potentially preventing age-related diseases. Quiz: Can you tell the difference between real photographs and images made by A.I.? Aquarium crime: Animal smugglers are trafficking coral — yes, it’s an animal — into the U.S. Lives Lived: The literary critic, essayist and author Frederick Crews was a leading voice among revisionist skeptics who considered Sigmund Freud a charlatan and psychoanalysis a pseudoscience. He died at 91. SPORTS Champions. Sam Navarro/USA TODAY Sports, via Reuters N.H.L.: The Florida Panthers won their first Stanley Cup, defeating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in a thrilling Game 7. Connor McDavid: The Oilers’ star center won the Conn Smythe trophy for the playoffs’ M.V.P. — a rarity for a player from the losing team. N.B.A.: JJ Redick, the new Los Angeles Lakers head coach, acknowledged his lack of league coaching experience in his introductory news conference, but maintained that he was qualified. ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS In Minneapolis. Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times Wood-fire-oven pizzerias, once rare outside Italy, now dot the American landscape — not only in cities, but in small communities from Southern Illinois and coastal New England to rural Wisconsin and Oregon. The result, Brett Anderson writes, is that pizza in the United States is better than it has ever been, with a diverse array of toppings and styles. Try it for yourself: Here are 22 of the best pizza restaurants across the U.S. More on culture Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri in “The Bear.” Chuck Hodes/FX The third season of “The Bear” begins streaming tomorrow. Tejal Rao explores how the show has increased interest in restaurant workers. A trade group representing the major Hollywood studios has hired a former F.B.I. official to tackle online piracy. Visiting London this summer? Our critic has theater recommendations for audiences of all ages. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Save this recipe for strawberry lemonade cake for your weekend cookout. Stop breaking (or losing) your sunglasses with these tips. Free yourself from physical keys with a smart lock. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were hiccuped and hiccupped. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 27, 2024 Author Members Posted June 27, 2024 June 26, 2024 Good morning. Today, we’re covering a favorable development for U.S. labor unions — as well as protests in Kenya, primary elections and “White Chicks” at 20. At the Starbucks Workers United headquarters in Buffalo, N.Y. Libby March for The New York Times Coffee and a contract By Noam Scheiber I cover workplace issues and the labor movement. Labor unions have won some big victories in the past few years, including in the auto industry and Hollywood. But if organized labor is going to have a true resurgence in the United States, it can’t simply win raises for workers it already represents. It will need to organize new workers and reverse the decades-long decline in union membership. That’s why recent events at Starbucks have been so significant. The company and the union — which represents more than 400 of Starbucks’s 10,000 U.S. stores — appear on track to reach a contract that will cover wages, benefits and disciplinary policies. This would be a major milestone. Even after workers win a union election, companies often drag their feet when bargaining a contract. If years pass with little or no progress, union supporters may get demoralized and leave, causing the union to unravel. By contrast, a contract could encourage workers to unionize across Starbucks and other food and beverage chains, which are part of an industry that is overwhelmingly nonunion. What’s remarkable about the Starbucks development is that it comes after the company spent years resisting the union campaign, which began in Buffalo in 2021. Starbucks’s former chief executive, Howard Schultz, portrayed organizers as outside agitators. He warned employees not to be “distracted” by them. But in February the two sides announced that they would soon begin hashing out a framework for a contract. What explains the turnaround? In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain four key factors. In Seattle, Wash. Grant Hindsley for The New York Times 1. A winning streak. While unions are broadly popular with Americans, they tend to be especially popular among the young and politically progressive, which describes much of Starbucks’s work force. This made it difficult for Starbucks to contain the union’s growth. The campaign slowed down in mid-2022, when Schultz introduced benefits that did not apply to union stores. But organizers regained momentum as union supporters framed their campaign as a fight for liberal values like L.G.B.T.Q. rights. The union won roughly 100 elections in 2023, which kept the campaign in the news and made it tough for Starbucks to wait it out. 2. A new boss. Schultz, who spent decades at Starbucks before retiring in 2018, returned to the top job in 2022. He focused on fixing operational issues — like outdated equipment and store layouts, which he appeared to believe had fueled the union campaign — and promised to find a successor quickly. That turned out to be Laxman Narasimhan, the C.E.O. of Reckitt, a consumer products company based in England. Though little was known about Narasimhan’s feelings on unions at the time, Starbucks corporate officials who worked with him later told me that he took a pragmatic view — believing it could be less costly to engage the union than to fight it. His stance differed from that of Schultz, who viewed the union as a personal affront. It appeared to threaten his self-image as a generous boss. 3. External pressure. Socially minded investors pressed Starbucks to commission a report on its labor practices. It found that the company had fallen short of its commitments on labor rights. A coalition of unions spent heavily to back three labor-friendly candidates for seats on Starbucks’s board. And the company became a target of protests and boycotts tied to the war in Gaza, which escalated after Starbucks sued the union over social media posts supportive of Palestinians. In Oakland, Calif. Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times It’s hard to know how much these developments weighed on the company, but Starbucks appeared to take them seriously. It announced a new board committee to oversee employee relations shortly before it released the labor report. The company began talks with the union on how to bargain a contract a few weeks before the scheduled vote on the labor-friendly board candidates. And Narasimhan suggested on an earnings call that the protests and boycotts were having “a negative impact” on business even though they were “driven by misperceptions.” 4. Government help. U.S. labor law is relatively weak: If a company fires an employee for union organizing, the National Labor Relations Board can seek back pay. But it can’t fine the employer. And the process often takes years. Still, the N.L.R.B. tends to be more active and creative under Democratic administrations. It has been especially active and creative and under President Biden. The board issued more than 100 complaints against Starbucks and went to court to reinstate workers it deemed to have been wrongly fired (though the Supreme Court just reined in this practice). The board even said it would begin ordering unions into existence if an employer’s labor-law violations affected the outcome of a union election. Though Starbucks consistently denied wrongdoing and appealed findings against it, the board’s actions were another source of pressure that raised the cost of fighting the union. A programming note: David Leonhardt is off until next week, and other Times journalists will continue writing the newsletter until then. THE LATEST NEWS Primary Elections Jamaal Bowman Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times In New York, George Latimer, a centrist challenger, defeated the progressive congressman Jamaal Bowman. Bowman is the first of the “squad” — an influential group of left-wing House members — to lose a seat. Read takeaways. In Colorado, Lauren Boebert won a crowded Republican primary, nearly guaranteeing she will serve another two years in Congress. More on Politics The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial ruled that Trump can now criticize the prosecution witnesses. Oklahoma’s Supreme Court blocked state funding for what would have been the nation’s first religious charter school. Biden is expected today to pardon around 2,000 veterans convicted of engaging in gay sex, which was outlawed by a military code for more than 60 years. Biden administration officials urged medical experts to remove age minimums for surgeries from their transgender medical care guidelines, emails show. In more than 50 years in Washington, Biden has learned to make deals and work across the aisle. It is an old-school instinct rarely rewarded in today’s political climate, Peter Baker writes. Kenya Protesters in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Brian Inganga/Associated Press Crowds of Kenyans stormed their Parliament building and set fire to its entrance in protest against a bill raising taxes. President William Ruto called the protesters treasonous and deployed the military to quell the demonstration. At least five people were killed, human rights groups said. The tax bill would raise the price of diapers, eggs and phone data, among other things. Officials say it’s needed to pay off Kenya’s debt. Auma Obama, a Kenyan British activist who is a half sister of Barack Obama, was tear-gassed as she spoke about her opposition to the bill on CNN. See the video. Kenya is among Africa’s fastest-growing economies, yet the benefits have not reached many ordinary people. The unrest is a sign of a growing economic crisis across the continent. On the same day, 400 Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti — which has been plagued by gang violence — to restore order. Israel-Hamas War Waiting to receive food in southern Gaza. Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock An international group of experts said nearly half a million people in Gaza were at risk of starvation. Hamas said a sister of its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli strike on their family home. Haniyeh leads the group from exile in Qatar. The U.S. and Israeli defense secretaries met in Washington to discuss the intensifying conflict along Israel’s border with Lebanon. Russia The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich went on trial today in Russia on espionage charges. Russia has presented no evidence of his guilt, and the trial is being held in secret. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two top Russian security officials over strikes against Ukraine’s power plants. Other Big Stories The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Espionage Act, securing his freedom under a plea deal. He was sentenced to time served in Britain and has returned home to Australia. A new space race: The U.S. and China are competing to build permanent outposts at the moon’s most strategic location, the lunar south pole, The Wall Street Journal reports. Opinions What do Biden and Trump need to do to win the presidential debate? The most important thing is to be energetic, say Chris Whipple and Kristen Soltis Anderson. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and five other prominent Israelis urge Congress to disinvite Benjamin Netanyahu from its joint session next month. Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Jews and the Ivy League and Thomas Edsall on who gains from voting restrictions. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS In London. Andrea DiCenzo for The New York Times Kew Gardens: London’s famous botanical garden has deep ties to Japan. This week, the emperor comes to visit. A national obsession: In Jamaica, the popularity of lychee cake tells the history of Chinese immigration. Traveling in style: New York City is in a golden age of weird vehicles. Conversation: A government meteorologist explains what it takes to monitor and predict space weather. Lives Lived: Eric Hazan elevated many of France’s most provocative left-wing writers through his publishing house, La Fabrique, but he made his greatest mark as a politically engaged historian of Paris. He died at 87. SPORTS N.B.A.: The New York Knicks acquired Mikal Bridges, a Brooklyn Nets guard who looks like the star they need for a title run. The league’s draft starts tonight: See a mock draft. N.F.L.: A month before training camps begin, The Athletic explores the league’s underrated and overrated teams. Antonio Pierce: A bankruptcy filing revealed that the Las Vegas Raiders’ coach is subject to $28 million in judgments. ARTS AND IDEAS Craig Frazier It’s a hard time for wine: Sales are down, climate change threatens smaller producers and many in the industry worry about losing ground to legal marijuana. In a new story, Eric Asimov, The Times’s chief wine critic, defends “the beauty and joy of wine,” a drink that humans have embraced since the beginning of civilization. More on culture Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans in “White Chicks.” Joe Lederer/Columbia Pictures The Wayans brothers’ subversive comedy “White Chicks” came out in 2004. Twenty years later, the film is still a “culturally, racially and sexually savvy tale,” Robert Daniels writes. A wax statue of the Lincoln Memorial melted during the heat wave in Washington and turned into an online meme. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Enjoy this cooling gazpacho when it’s hot out. Stay safe while traveling with food allergies. Consider these things before buying solar panels. Elevate your coffee at home with a great milk frother. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was rankling. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 28, 2024 Author Members Posted June 28, 2024 June 27, 2024 Good morning. Today, we’re covering a surprising find by climate researchers — as well as a presidential debate preview, Bolivia and the N.B.A. draft. The island of Rakeedhoo in the Maldives. Jason Gulley for The New York Times Rising from the sea By Raymond Zhong I’m a climate reporter. We humans have settled in all sorts of precarious environments: parched deserts, barren tundra, high mountains. None are precarious in quite the same way as atolls, the tiny, low-lying islands that dot the tropics. As the planet warms and the oceans rise, atoll nations like the Maldives, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu have seemed doomed to vanish, like the mythical Atlantis, into watery oblivion. Of late, though, scientists have begun telling a surprising new story about these islands. By comparing mid-20th century aerial photos with recent satellite images, they’ve been able to see how the islands have evolved over time. What they found is startling: Even though sea levels have risen, many islands haven’t shrunk. Most, in fact, have been stable. Some have even grown. One study that rounded up scientists’ data on 709 islands across the Pacific and Indian Oceans showed that nearly 89 percent either had increased in area or hadn’t changed much in recent decades. Only 11 percent had contracted. Source: Paul S. Kench et al., Nature Communications. | By Jonathan Corum To understand why, I spent time this past spring with a team of researchers in the Maldives as they collected data on two key pieces of the puzzle: ocean currents and sand. Currents and waves can erode sandy shorelines, of course. But they can also bring fresh sand ashore from the surrounding coral reefs, where the remains of corals, algae, crustaceans and other organisms are constantly being crushed into new sediment. (Another source of sediment? Colorful parrotfish, which munch on coral and churn out white sand from their digestive tracts.) By examining how these interrelated and complex processes affected one particular island — Dhigulaabadhoo, an uninhabited curlicue of land a few miles north of the Equator — the scientists hope to better predict how other islands will change. Researchers on Dhigulaabadhoo. Jason Gulley for The New York Times The next century Though the research suggests that atolls aren’t about to wash away entirely, it hardly means they have nothing to worry about. Global warming is putting coral reefs under severe strain. If, say, the ice sheets melted faster than expected, then sea-level rise could accelerate sharply. Even so, scientists say, the revelation that atoll islands can adjust naturally to rising seas means the people who live on them have an opportunity to figure out how to cope with their changing environment. It means they have other options besides the most drastic one: abandoning their homelands altogether. “I’m confident that there’ll be islands in the Maldives” 50 or 100 years from now, one of the researchers on the team, Paul Kench, told me while we were on Dhigulaabadhoo. “They’re not going to look like these islands; they’re going to be different. But there will be land here. To me, that’s the challenge: How do you coexist with the change that’s coming?” The island of Himandhoo in the Maldives. Jason Gulley for The New York Times The Maldives needs to cultivate and recruit more scientific experts who can help guide the nation’s efforts to adapt, said Ali Shareef, the government’s special envoy for climate change. Without them, it’s hard to build infrastructure while minimizing harm to reefs, or to design towns that are resilient to flooding. Money is an issue, too. “If we have access to the technology and finance, I think we can save the Maldives. It is not all doomsday,” Shauna Aminath, a former environment minister, told me. “The problem is, we don’t have access to finance and technology.” If we humans can find a way to keep living and flourishing on atolls, it will bode well for our ability to continue doing so all across our warming planet. As Jon Barnett, a geographer at the University of Melbourne, put it: “If we can solve climate-change adaptation for atolls — ‘solve’ is the wrong word — then we can do it anywhere.” THE LATEST NEWS Supreme Court The Supreme Court rejected a Republican challenge to the Biden administration’s efforts to get social media companies to limit misinformation. The justices limited a federal anticorruption law, ruling that it didn’t apply to gifts and payments meant to reward officials’ actions. The court’s website posted and then quickly removed a document suggesting that a forthcoming decision would temporarily allow emergency abortions in Idaho, Bloomberg News reported. Presidential Debate Debate preparations. Kenny Holston/The New York Times President Biden and Donald Trump will meet onstage tonight in Atlanta for the first debate of the 2024 election. The debate begins at 9 p.m. Eastern on CNN. See the stage. Revisit memorable moments from past presidential debates, including Richard Nixon’s sweaty 1960 appearance and Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again” zinger against Jimmy Carter. See video of the evolution of Biden’s debate style. In 2008, he baited his rivals; in 2020 he cut his responses short. The candidates are likely to debate inflation and the deficit among other economic issues. Read what to know about the U.S. economy. You can watch the debate on The Times’s website, where a team of 60 journalists will add context, analysis and fact-checking. 2024 Election Trump is planning a bigger trade war in a second term. Economists say his past tariffs raised prices for shoppers and businesses. Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman who is a Trump critic, endorsed Biden for re-election, CNN reported. Trump leads Biden by three percentage points in the first New York Times/Siena College national poll since Trump’s conviction. Other polls shows a closer race. A Republican super PAC is trying to persuade Trump supporters to vote early or by absentee ballot, methods that Trump has criticized. More on Politics House Republicans advanced a bill that would cut funding to the Justice Department, an effort to punish law enforcement agencies they say are unfairly targeting Trump. Infant mortality increased in Texas after the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect. Patrick Braxton won the mayoral election in a small Alabama town in 2020. After a yearslong legal dispute, he could soon get to serve his first term. The Americas Troops in La Paz, Bolivia. Gaston Brito Miserocchi/Getty Images The Bolivian police arrested a top general after he and members of the military tried to storm the presidential palace. The country’s president denounced the apparent coup attempt. Brazil’s Supreme Court decriminalized possession of marijuana for personal use. Selling marijuana remains a crime. A U.S. court sentenced Honduras’s former president to 45 years for collaborating with cocaine traffickers. More International News In northern Israel. Atef Safadi/EPA, via Shutterstock Israel’s president and prime minister toured the border with Lebanon and met with military commanders as tensions escalate with Hezbollah. Kenya’s president withdrew a tax bill in response to violent protests that left at least 23 people dead. NATO plans to offer Ukraine a headquarters in Germany to manage military aid. That could help sustain the support even if Trump wins the presidency. Other Big Stories Julian Assange arrives in Australia. William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a hero to some, a reckless leaker to others. He has always been easier to caricature than characterize, Mark Landler and Megan Specia write. Identity theft has overwhelmed the I.R.S., causing a backlog of 500,000 unresolved fraud cases. Some victims wait years for refunds. Opinions International waters are ungoverned by any sovereign law. This means they’re also unprotected from the effects of global warming and pollution, David Wallace-Wells writes. If Sudan has a future, it’s through the community-based organizations saving lives, not the international community’s empty promises, Farah Stockman writes. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss the presidential debate. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on what he’d ask Trump and Biden about Gaza and Charles Blow on competing visions for the South. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS The Hamptons flamingo in Georgica Pond. Anastassia Whitty for The New York Times Local celebrity: Movie stars and musicians are a dime a dozen in the Hamptons. But one visitor has everyone buzzing: a wild flamingo. Keeping cool: Practical experiments — including apps and tiny insurance policies — have emerged to help protect people on a warming planet. Social animals: A scientist explains why your cat might actually like you. Space: Two killer asteroids are flying by Earth. You may be able to see one. Turkey leg and beef tongue: The Times asked readers to share their favorite New York City sandwiches. Read some of their picks. Lives Lived: George Floyd’s murder moved Tom Prasada-Rao, a contemporary folk veteran, to write a song. His “$20 Bill” — the police arrested Floyd for buying a pack of cigarettes with what might have been a counterfeit bill — became an online sensation. Prasada-Rao died at 66. SPORTS Zaccharie Risacher, right, and the N.B.A. commissioner, Adam Silver. Sarah Stier/Getty Images N.B.A.: The Atlanta Hawks chose a 19-year-old French forward, Zaccharie Risacher, with the No. 1 draft pick. Last year’s top pick came from France, too. Soccer: Alex Morgan won’t play in a fourth Olympics for the U.S. women’s national team. The shock has been looming. Euro 2024: Georgia upset the soccer powerhouse Portugal, 2-0. ARTS AND IDEAS The Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. David B. Torch for The New York Times Before a four-day visit to Norway, Ceylan Yeğinsu, a Times travel reporter, did away with her usual obsessive pre-vacation research and put her trip in the hands of three A.I. assistants (none of which, she writes, mentioned saunas or salmon). Ceylan combined their recommendations, and the result was a holiday that went beyond the predictable list of sites. More on culture Alec Baldwin is about to have his day in court. The road to his manslaughter trial has been a long and strange one. A new book by Emily Nussbaum, a New Yorker staff writer, explores the origins of reality TV with “an exacting eye for detail,” our critic writes. Read the review. Los Angeles designated Marilyn Monroe’s house a historic landmark, preventing a demolition project that neighbors supported. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Mark Weinberg for The New York Times. Swap out bread for fried gnocchi in this twist on panzanella, a Tuscan salad. Tame your hair with extra-large claw clips. Cool your house with these tips. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was beachcomb. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 29, 2024 Author Members Posted June 29, 2024 June 28, 2024 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering the debate, as well as the Supreme Court, Iranians voting and the N.B.A. draft. Donald Trump and President Biden Kenny Holston/The New York Times Affirming fears After last night, many Democrats are panicked. They hoped that President Biden, 81, could convince voters that his age was nothing to worry about. That he could counter Donald Trump’s wild accusations and relentless falsehoods with confidence. He didn’t. Biden’s voice was hoarse and halting. His answers were often unclear, and he struggled to finish his thoughts. “Rather than dispel concerns about his age,” wrote my colleague Peter Baker, Biden “made it the central issue.” Some Democrats are now pushing for him to drop out of the race. “Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” a Democratic strategist told Peter. “Joe had a deep well of affection among Democrats. It has run dry.” Donald Trump, 78, delivered his false statements with conviction, affirming many voters’ concerns about his character and the threat he poses for democracy. Trump claimed that immigrants had driven up crime; rates of crime and murder have dropped. He claimed that Iran was “broke” when he was president; it was not. He claimed that Biden would allow abortions even after the birth of a child; Biden doesn’t support that. (Read a fact-check of many more of Trump’s and Biden’s claims.) The debate at times turned ugly. Trump and Biden questioned each other’s competence. Each suggested that the other would start World War III. They even argued about their golfing skills. For 90 minutes in Atlanta, Biden and Trump “debated inflation and immigration, abortion and addiction,” wrote my colleague Lisa Lerer, who covers national politics. “Yet the extraordinary rematch between two presidents — two men who are the oldest candidates to ever seek the White House and who did nothing to conceal their hatred for each other — put on stark display the reasons the contest has repelled swaths of Americans.” The rest of today’s newsletter summarizes The Times’s coverage of the debate, including the biggest moments and the candidates’ policy differences. More on the debate Biden struggled to articulate policy specifics, statistics and rebuttals, often stumbling or misspeaking. (His campaign said he had a cold.) Early in the debate, Biden seemed to lose his train of thought and said, “We finally beat Medicare.” The Biden campaign’s demand that each candidate’s mic be muted when it wasn’t their turn to talk seemed to help Trump. He largely waited to speak and seemed to enjoy himself. Trump seized on Biden’s halting speech, saying at one point: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” Biden seemed to get steadier as the debate went on, saying Trump had “the morals of an alley cat” and calling him a convicted felon who “snapped” after losing the 2020 election. Trump refused to say that he would accept the results of the November election, saying he would do so only “if it’s a fair, and legal, and good election.” Read more takeaways. More Times coverage By The New York Times The candidates clashed over the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, climate change, Ukraine and more. See how long they spent on each topic. Asked to address voters’ concerns about their age, Biden called Trump “three years younger, and a lot less competent,” while Trump claimed to have aced cognitive tests. “It’s going to be a very scary November”: The debate left Democratic voters, including staunch Biden supporters, stunned and dispirited. Republicans were jubilant. Commentary Trump “won it by forfeit,” the Times Opinion columnist Carlos Lozada wrote. “The Biden of 2020, even the Biden of this year’s State of the Union, did not show up.” Dan McCarthy argued that “Trump won as the more commanding presence, with a tighter focus on his themes, particularly immigration.” Read other Opinion writers’ reactions. The Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who calls Biden a friend, argues that he should drop out. Biden “had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight,” former senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, said on MSNBC. “Almost every president loses the first debate of his re-election campaign,” the historian Brian Rosenwald wrote. “They’re used to being in a bubble where few people question them.” “Biden won the debate on policy but lost it on presentation,” 538’s G. Elliott Morris and Kaleigh Rogers wrote. “Trump was increasing incoherent and deranged as the debate went on, and Trump’s extremism was on full display,” the Democratic strategist Geoff Garin wrote. In a post-debate CNN poll, two-thirds of voters who watched said Trump had won, but few said it had changed their minds about which candidate to vote for. On late night, Jon Stewart was stressed about the debate. He said he needed “to call a real estate agent in New Zealand.” THE LATEST NEWS Supreme Court The Supreme Court ruled that a bankruptcy settlement with the Sackler family, makers of OxyContin, could not shield family members from opioid-related lawsuits. The decision upends a deal that would have given billions of dollars to the families of opioid victims. Separately, the court temporarily blocked a Biden administration plan to reduce air pollution while a lower court considers it, effectively suspending the policy for months or years. The court also weakened the Securities and Exchange Commission, ruling that a common way it enforces laws against fraud violated the right to a jury trial. The justices temporarily let women in Idaho get emergency abortions when their health is at risk, despite the state’s near-total ban. The court works largely in private. See behind the curtain. More on Politics Oklahoma’s state superintendent directed all public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments. The judge overseeing Trump’s classified-documents case said she would revisit a previous ruling that was important to the prosecutors’ case. The development will likely further delay a trial. Israel-Hamas War Israel ordered people in part of eastern Gaza City to evacuate as part of an operation against Hamas fighters who have returned there, Israeli media reported. Israel and Egypt agreed to let sick children, many of them cancer patients, leave Gaza for medical treatment. Iran In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Iranians will pick a new president today to replace Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month. Many plan to boycott the vote. Iran has expanded a major nuclear production site, and some of its leaders have publicly embraced building a bomb, citing recent missile exchanges with Israel. Other Big Stories An uninhabited island in the southern Maldives. Jason Gulley for The New York Times Scientists expected low-lying tropical islands to be among the first victims of rising seas. Instead, many are growing, as these maps show. Lightning near Fresno started wildfires that are spreading in California. Americans ages 6 months and older should get a Covid shot when a new one becomes available this fall, the C.D.C. said. Sudan’s civil war has left at least 750,000 people on the brink of starvation and millions more chronically hungry. The former school district police chief in Uvalde, Texas, was indicted and arrested over his actions during the school shooting there in 2022. The attack killed 19 children. Opinions For migrant children, public schools can be a lifeline, Bliss Broyard writes. You can’t stop people from using different pronouns, John McWhorter writes. Here are columns by Paul Krugman on crime rates and Pamela Paul on political labels. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Brutus, not Bruno! The etiquette of remembering pets’ names. Trauma: People say it’s always better to forgive. Some experts question that. Social Q’s: “Why do I have to choose between my grandmother’s funeral and a birthday party?” Lives Lived: Kinky Friedman’s idiosyncratic country music poked provocative fun at Jewish culture, American politics and more. Behind the jokes, Friedman had serious ideas — he once ran for Texas governor — and musical talent. He died at 79. SPORTS Soccer: The U.S. men’s national team lost 2-1 to Panama at Copa América, a bitter defeat that jeopardizes its chances of advancing out of the group stage. N.B.A.: The Los Angeles Lakers drafted Bronny James, LeBron James’s son. Don’t expect him to play significant minutes with his father next season. N.F.L.: A jury ordered the league to pay billions of dollars in damages for inflating the price of its Sunday Ticket subscription service. ARTS AND IDEAS André De Shields and Juliana Huxtable shared their stories. Justin French Thirty is a pivotal age. For Pride Month, T Magazine asked L.G.B.T.Q. artists, writers, actors and others — ranging in age from 34 to 93 — to look back on their own lives at that age. Together, their stories offer a history of queer life over the decades. More on culture Jeremy O. Harris discussed his artistic influences in “Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.” — a documentary about his acclaimed “Slave Play.” The original cover art for “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” painted in 1996 by a recent art-school graduate working at a bookshop, sold at auction for nearly $2 million. Vogue Germany’s latest cover star, Margot Friedländer, is a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Constantine Poulos for The New York Times. Combine fresh, seasonal ingredients and let them shine in this simple pasta. Test your fitness in three simple ways. Listen to new music from Cardi B and Soccer Mommy. Use a great citrus juicer. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were workman and workwoman. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —German P.S. Strands, our new word search game, makes its debut in The Times’s Games app today. Click the image below to play. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 30, 2024 Author Members Posted June 30, 2024 June 29, 2024 SUPPORTED BY APPLE TV+ By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Taking time to enumerate the things you like about yourself each day may sound terminally woo-woo or conceited, but in practice, the results can be pretty transformative. María Jesús Contreras Best practices I want to be a person with practices. A yoga practice, a mindfulness practice, a gratitude practice. I’m not totally sure when a nourishing activity passes into the realm of a practice, but I think it has something to do with intention and devotion. You prioritize doing this thing that has a positive effect on you or others or on the world you live in — say, sitting in quiet contemplation for 20 minutes each morning, or journaling every night before bed. You commit to doing it on a regular basis, and after enough reps, it becomes part of who you are. I’ve been hesitant to declare — to myself, never mind anyone else — that I’ve established any of the aforementioned practices because I’m skeptical of my ability to stick with them. I tend to burn hot in the initial phases of something that promises to improve my life, and then lose steam very quickly. I’ve done the first day of the “Yoga With Adriene” 30-day challenge at least 30 times. One need not be so doctrinaire about one’s practices, I know. The point is to do and feel better, not to get a gold star. I’ve wandered away from many practices only to return to them, usually because I miss them, because seeing the benefits of doing something is often not as powerful as experiencing its absence. That’s the case with something I’ve been doing for the past eight months or so — not every single day, but enough days to tentatively call it “a thing I do,” if not a thoroughgoing practice. At the end of the day, I try to write down as many things as I can think of that I appreciate about myself. It might be how I handled a difficult situation, or that I checked something off my to-do list that I’d been putting off. It might be something witty I said, or the way I reframed how I was thinking about a situation. Some days there’s not much content to work with, and I might just appreciate that I made the bed even though I really didn’t want to, or that my hair looked kind of good. When someone first recommended I try this, I thought it sounded very self-involved, maybe a little pathetic — was my self-esteem so impoverished that I needed to ply myself with compliments? (It turns out that some days, in fact, I do.) But over time I realized that what at first seemed facile was actually sort of revolutionary. I’d tried practicing gratitude before and found it quite effective. You take a few minutes to write down things you’re thankful for — the kindness of a stranger, the way your child looks at you while you’re reading a bedtime story, the smell of honeysuckle when you bike past that one tree. You remind yourself how lucky you are, that while you’ve been fretting or regretting or despairing, all these good things and people and possibilities are part of your story, too. With gratitude, you think about things outside yourself. You remember that you’re not alone, that there’s more going on in your life than what’s in your head, and this offers perspective. An appreciation practice entails thinking about yourself, but it’s not the opposite of gratitude; it’s a refraction of it. It’s expressing gratitude for oneself, which at first feels conceited, but eventually, for me, has come to seem anything but. Left to its own devices, my mind will take stock of the day like a detective, looking for things I did wrong, could have done better or left undone completely. With an appreciation practice, I start with, “What did I do right today?” These are the behaviors and moments we tend not to linger on because they’re usually the parts of the day with the least tension. They’re not the sort of headline stories you might think to tell someone when asked how your day went. They’re not amusing or annoying. They don’t really make for good cocktail party fodder. But the cumulative effect of memorializing these situations, day after day, is you start to see patterns in your behavior, to note the positive effect you’re having on those around you. And when you see that, you start to like yourself more. And who couldn’t stand to like themselves more? I’ve found myself behaving differently — more assertively, more compassionately — simply because I know that, tonight, I’ll sit down and look at my day, and I know how good it will feel to appreciate these things about myself. I want to make future me proud. And on bad days, when I’m less than thrilled about how I dealt with things, I have a log of all the things that I’ve appreciated about myself in the past. Once you start actively looking for things to appreciate about yourself, you realize how you’ve outsourced that task to other people. It feels wonderful when someone else tells you that you did a brilliant job in that meeting, that you really gave them solid advice, that you look great today. An appreciation practice enables you to bring that job in-house, to enlist yourself as your biggest fan. Other people are never paying as much attention to you as you are, so there’s a lot about you to appreciate that goes unremarked upon if you wait for someone else to acknowledge it. A MESSAGE FROM APPLE TV+ Presume Nothing. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Presumed Innocent, a gripping new series, now streaming on Apple TV+. Watch Now THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Jeremy Allen White stars in “The Bear.” Courtesy of FX Networks Season 3 of “The Bear” is out now. It has bitter screaming matches, elegant monologues and plenty of self-loathing, our television critic Margaret Lyons writes. Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” was released 20 years ago. It landed in a moment similar to our own, with wars abroad and division at home, Nicolas Rapold writes. The actor Bill Cobbs died at 90. He wasn’t a star, but his face was familiar to anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades. Martin Mull, a comedic actor whose work spanned decades from “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” to “Veep,” died at 80. Music Charli XCX Christopher Polk/Billboard, via Getty Images After years of flirting with mainstream success, Charli XCX has broken through with her sixth — and most daring — album, “Brat.” The hosts of “Popcast” explored why. “I Am: Celine Dion,” on Amazon, documents the singer’s struggles with stiff person syndrome. If her voice made her a star, “this film is keen on making her a person,” our review says. Fashion Chappell Roan Cheney Orr/Reuters “She wants to go as big as possible”: The stylist to the singer Chappell Roan discussed the joys and challenges of dressing the bombastic rising star. The Row, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s minimalist label, has opened an outpost in the Hamptons. Lanvin, the oldest French fashion house in continual existence, named Peter Copping as its new artistic director. Christie’s auctioned items from Vivienne Westwood’s personal wardrobe, the proceeds of which will go to charities, Women’s Wear Daily reports. Other Big Stories Matisse’s “Odalisque” Succession Henri Matisse, via Pictoright Amsterdam/Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam A museum in Amsterdam said it would return a Henri Matisse painting to the family of its previous owner, who had sold the artwork to escape Nazi occupation. “BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical” will open on Broadway next spring after its run last year in Chicago. THE LATEST NEWS The Supreme Court Eric Lee/The New York Times The court sided with a Jan. 6 Capitol rioter, ruling that federal prosecutors overstepped when they used an obstruction law to charge him for impeding a congressional proceeding. The ruling means that lower courts could dismiss charges against hundreds of other rioters. But it may not affect the Jan. 6-related obstruction charge against Donald Trump. In a separate case, the court’s conservative majority curtailed government agencies’ power, threatening regulations on the environment, health care, consumer safety and more. The court also upheld an Oregon city’s ban on homeless people sleeping outdoors, ruling it did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment. The decision will likely alter how cities address homelessness. Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump adviser, will go to prison on Monday after the court rejected his effort to avoid a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. 2024 Election Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times President Biden acknowledged his shaky debate with Trump in an energetic, defiant speech in North Carolina. “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he said, but added, “I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job.” Biden’s allies have rushed to assure worried Democrats that he should still be the nominee. Viewership for the debate was down 30 percent from the first Biden-Trump debate in 2020, and it was the lowest-rated general-election debate since 2004. Other Big Stories Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled that the state’s six-week abortion ban could take effect, sharply limiting abortion access there. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure cooled and consumer spending slowed last month, good news for Fed officials’ effort to lower prices. U.S. officials are scrambling to prevent full-on war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. They fear a wider war could draw in both Iran and the U.S. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 🎥 “MaXXXine” (Friday): Summer is of course a time for sweating. But some of us would rather shiver. In Ti West’s new movie, the third in a trilogy that began with “X” and continued with “Pearl,” Mia Goth stars as a mid-1980s porn actress looking to break into mainstream film. Critics diverge as to whether West has elevated the slasher genre. Is this, as one character puts it, a B movie with A ideas? Could be. But when sex, celebrity, sleaze and carnage collide, how much elevation do we really need? A MESSAGE FROM APPLE TV+ Presume Nothing. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Presumed Innocent, a gripping new series, now streaming on Apple TV+. Watch Now RECIPE OF THE WEEK Christopher Simpson for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Jalapeño Grilled Pork Chops As the heat dome lifts in many parts of the country, you can practically hear grilling enthusiasts let out a collective sigh of relief. If grilling is on your weekend agenda, and you’re craving something meaty, spicy and herby, you can’t do better than Eric Kim’s jalapeño grilled pork chops. Marinated in a pungent mix of cilantro stems blitzed with garlic, chiles and just enough sugar to encourage caramelization, the thin chops cook quickly, singeing appealingly at the edges. Eric tops them with a zippy onion and cilantro relish that makes good use of the leaves, and suggests serving rice (preferably cilantro rice) on the side — to which I’d add a ripe tomato salad for a touch of juicy sweetness on your plate. REAL ESTATE Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times The Hunt: Two software engineers wanted a home in Manhattan with enough space to start a family. Which did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $2.2 million: A 1929 Colonial Revival house in Greenwich, Conn.; a six-bedroom Prairie-style house in Chicago; or a 1901 Queen Anne Revival home in Houston. New York: The High Line, which opened 15 years ago, offers a master class in urban gardening. LIVING Albert Tercero Midlife: See how to navigate aches, weight gain, memory loss and more. Dating: X recently made “Likes” private. Keeping tabs on crushes and exes has become that much harder. The Berkshires: A writer shares his favorite ways to experience an often overlooked river in western Massachusetts. Health care: Contraception is free by law. So why are a quarter of women are still paying for it? ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER How to keep mosquitoes from multiplying Mosquitoes need just a few ounces of water for their eggs to hatch. Getting rid of standing water is the easiest way to prevent them from breeding. There are a few ways to do this: Stick to a weekly “dump and drain” schedule. Pay close attention to man-made items like pet bowls, tarps and toys that often become larval hot spots. Drill a few holes in the bottom of garbage cans and recycling containers to allow any water that collects in them to drain right out. — Rose Lorre Related: Create a robust bug strategy with spatial repellents — like these gadgets — and a great topical spray. For more expert advice, independent reviews and deals, sign up for Wirecutter’s daily newsletter, The Recommendation. GAME OF THE WEEK Eduardo Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images United States vs. Uruguay, Copa América: The U.S. men’s soccer team was an early favorite in this tournament, which features the best teams from North and South America. But a stunning loss to Panama on Thursday has put it at risk of elimination before the knockout rounds even begin. In the final match of the group round, they’ll face Uruguay, another favorite — and one that, unlike the U.S., has met those expectations with two dominant wins. “We have to go and play the best game of our lives,” Christian Pulisic, the U.S. captain, said. Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern on FS1 NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was voltage. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. (In case you missed it, Strands is now in The Times’s Games app.) Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted June 30, 2024 Author Members Posted June 30, 2024 June 30, 2024 Good morning. Today, Emily Anthes has a story about a boom in research into our furry friends. We’re also covering President Biden, Iran’s election and brain damage in troops. Pip, a very good boy to study. Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times Pup science By Emily Anthes I cover animal health and science. My career as a science journalist began with a story on canine genetics. It was the summer of 2004, and a female boxer named Tasha had just become the first dog in the world to have her complete genome sequenced. It was a major advance for an animal that, though beloved by humans, had been overlooked by many scientists. Over the two decades since, I have seen dogs transform from an academic afterthought to the new “it” animal for scientific research. In the United States alone, tens of thousands of dogs are now enrolled in large, ongoing studies. Canine scientists are investigating topics as varied as cancer, communication, longevity, emotion, retrieving behavior, the gut microbiome, the health effects of pollution and “doggy dementia.” The research has the potential to give dogs happier, healthier and longer lives — and improve human well-being, too, as I report in a story published this morning. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why dogs have become such popular scientific subjects. Big dog data First, an important clarification: Dogs have long been the subject of invasive medical experiments, similar to lab rats and monkeys. That’s not the research I’m discussing here. The studies that have exploded in popularity involve pets. They require the enthusiastic participation of owners, who are collecting canine saliva samples, submitting veterinary records and answering survey questions about their furry friends. One reason these studies have become more common: Scientists realized that dogs were interesting and unique subjects. Our canine companions have social skills that even great apes lack, for instance, and they happen to be the most physically diverse mammal species on the planet. (Consider the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane.) Dogs also share our homes and get many of the same diseases that people do, making them good models for human health. “Most of the questions that we have in science are not questions about what happens to animals living in sterile environments,” said Evan MacLean, the director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona. “They’re questions about real organisms in the real world shared with humans. And dogs are a really, really good proxy for that in ways that other animals aren’t.” Several other forces have helped fuel the canine science boom. The first is that research on nonhuman primates, especially great apes, has become increasingly contentious. For many cognitive scientists, dogs are a natural alternative: They’re quick learners. They’re cooperative. And they’re “just so readily accessible,” said Jennifer Vonk, a comparative cognitive psychologist at Oakland University. Max, a 2-year-old German shepherd. M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times Additionally, canine scientists do not need to house their subjects in the lab, which means that the barriers to entry are low. “A budget for an interesting dog experiment can be 20 bucks for a few bags of dog treats,” said Clive Wynne, a canine-behavior expert at Arizona State University. As a result, small colleges and universities that don’t typically get big research grants have embraced canine research. A pet-loving public has become highly motivated to participate in studies. Owners are spending more on their dogs, as well, which has allowed the booming pet industry to conduct and fund its own research. Then there is the media, which is generally happy to cover a good dog study. (Guilty as charged.) “Dog research is very easy to report on and understand,” said Alexandra Horowitz, a canine cognition researcher at Barnard College. Science probably has not yet reached peak pet. Many big canine projects are just starting to produce results, and the data will generate papers — and headlines — for years to come. And some researchers have started setting their sights on another creature companion: “I think growth prospects in dogs are solid,” Dr. Wynne said, “and the upside for cats is immense.” THE LATEST NEWS Politics President Biden and Jill Biden. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times After President Biden’s poor debate performance, his camp — with a rush of campaign events and private calls with donors and lawmakers — embarked on a multiday damage-control effort. Some major Democratic donors hoped Biden would leave the presidential race. Many have come to terms with the unlikelihood of an alternative. Republicans vying to be Donald Trump’s running mate are trying to prove that they have the financial backing to help swing the race. A federal judge temporarily blocked Oklahoma from enforcing an immigration law that would make it a crime to enter the state without legal authorization to be in the U.S. Israel-Hamas War Iran threatened an “obliterating war” if Israel launches a full-scale attack in Lebanon. Diplomats have been working to ease tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon. Israeli officials tentatively agreed to legalize five Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Read about the outposts. Many displaced Palestinians in Egypt have largely been left to fend for themselves, unable to access health care and other services, The Washington Post reports. More International News In eastern Ukraine. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times A new Russian tactic on the Ukrainian front line: Storming trenches by speeding across large open spaces on motorcycles and dune buggies. Iran’s election drew record-low turnout, and no presidential candidate secured the votes needed to win outright. Two establishment candidates will go to a runoff on Friday. Voters in France head to the polls today for the first round of a snap legislative election. The contest is a gamble for Emmanuel Macron. Read what to know. Officials in the Philippines are reckoning with the violence of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, years after he left office. India defeated South Africa to win the men’s T20 Cricket World Cup and end a yearslong dry spell in international tournaments. See video from The A.P. of celebrations back home in Gujarat. Other Big Stories David Metcalf served nearly 20 years in the Navy. Kenny Holston/The New York Times A military lab tested the brains of Navy SEALs who died by suicide and discovered blast damage in every one. Navy leaders were kept in the dark, a Times investigation found. Watch a two-minute video on how blast waves affect troops’ brains. The Detroit Police Department arrested three people after bad facial recognition matches. Now, it’s adopting policies endorsed by the A.C.L.U. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Should Biden step aside and let someone else be the nominee? Yes. The presidential debate put into stark relief how Biden’s candidacy helps Trump. “Mr. President, one way you can serve your country in 2024 is by announcing your retirement,” Times Opinion’s Nicholas Kristof writes. No. Trump didn’t do well just because Biden did terribly, and a single debate isn’t going to convince Biden to withdraw from the race. “Democrats have little choice but to dance with the candidate who brung them,” MSNBC’s Michael Cohen writes. FROM OPINION When returning stolen art like the Benin Bronzes, museums have a responsibility to make sure the receiving institutions are capable of caring for them, Adam Kuper argues. Here are columns by Ross Douthat and Maureen Dowd on Biden. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS El Grifo winery in the Canary Islands. Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times Volcanoes, vines, freedom: Lanzarote is a growing European destination for L.G.B.T.Q. people. Climate: Read about the surprising resilience of Earth’s most endangered islands. Egg freezing: Companies are paying for fertility services as part of benefit packages. Is it feminist dream or Silicon Valley fantasy? “Frozen”: Wearing an Elsa costume from the Disney movie in daily life has become a pastime for many children, regardless of gender. Archaeology: At Jamestown — the first permanent British settlement in America — scientists have found evidence of dogs as food. Vows: They first met as travel influencers in Thailand, got together in California and got back together in Bali. Lives Lived: Ann Lurie was a self-described hippie who went on to become one of Chicago’s most celebrated philanthropists, in one instance giving more than $100 million to a hospital where she had once worked as a pediatric nurse. She died at 79. THE INTERVIEW Eddie Murphy Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is Eddie Murphy, who is returning to the character that sent his career into the stratosphere with “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.” I caught him in a reflective mood. We talked about navigating Hollywood in the ’80s; his interactions with Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and Marlon Brando; and his movie highs (“The Nutty Professor”) and lows (“Pluto Nash”). I always wondered if Elvis was the influence behind some of the onstage stuff you wore when you were doing standup. Elvis had a huge influence on me: the leather suits; in “Raw,” I come out, I have a scarf. I was rolling like Elvis, too. I didn’t have the Memphis Mafia, but I had my little crew of dudes. And the same way you see me dressed in “Delirious” and in “Raw,” I used to dress like that on the streets. I was totally in my Elvis trip. And when I got older, it was like, oh, my God, Elvis wasn’t cool at all. Elvis was going through some [expletive]. Now, Michael Jackson, that whole red jacket thing in “Thriller”: “Thriller” is after “Delirious” when I owned the red suit. I’m not saying he was influenced, but I had on the red jacket before. [Laughs.] Elvis, Michael Jackson, these guys achieved the apex of fame. And there was a period when you were at that level. Yeah, I went through all of that. Those guys all came to tragic ends. Do you understand the pitfalls that present themselves at that level of fame? Those guys are all cautionary tales for me. I don’t drink. I smoked a joint for the first time when I was 30 years old — the extent of drugs is some weed. I remember I was 19, I went to the Blues Bar. It was me, Belushi and Robin Williams. They start doing coke, and I was like, “No, I’m cool.” I wasn’t taking some moral stance. I just wasn’t interested in it. To not have the desire or the curiosity, I’d say that’s providence. God was looking over me in that moment. When you get famous really young, especially a Black artist, it’s like living in a minefield. Any moment something could happen that can undo everything. It was like, all of this stuff is going on, and I’m totally oblivious. Now, at this age, I can look back and be like, “Wow, I came through a minefield for 35 years.” How do you make it through a minefield for 35, 40 years? Something has to be looking over you. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New York Times Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. BOOKS Emily Henry Madeleine Hordinski for The New York Times Best sellers: Emily Henry, author of “Funny Story,” released five consecutive No. 1’s. How did she pull it off? Hoot, howl and sneeze: These children’s picture books maximize read-aloud joy. By the Book: Gabrielle Zevin — author of “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” — loves Edith Wharton, but not “Ethan Frome.” Our editors’ picks: “The Silence of the Choir,” about 72 migrants who settle in a small Sicilian town, and five other books. Times best sellers: Anthony Fauci recounts his six decades of public service in “On Call.” It debuts at No. 1 on the hardcover nonfiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Share your favorite pizza spots with Times Cooking. Deal with erectile dysfunction. Listen to these classical albums. Become a homemade pizza pro with this outdoor oven. Extend your summer fruit bounty with a vacuum sealer. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For The first round of French parliamentary elections is today. The Wimbledon Tennis Championships begin tomorrow. Independence Day is Thursday. Britain holds elections on Thursday. Meal Plan Christopher Simpson for The New York Times In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein offers a number of remedies for sluggish heat: a salty and smooth gazpacho and, to drink, a very cold nonalcoholic salted-lemon ginger spritz. Emily also suggests making Dòuhuā (silken tofu with ginger syrup), and spicy tuna and avocado tostadas. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was glandular. Can you put eight historical events — including the first trees, Harry Houdini and “Rosie the Riveter” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 1, 2024 Author Members Posted July 1, 2024 July 1, 2024 By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering the week after the debate — as well as the French election, a Chinese rocket and ghosting. The debate stage last week. Kenny Holston/The New York Times America’s image Whatever its ultimate effect on the campaign, the first presidential debate of 2024 certainly did not cast the United States in a favorable light. It featured two elderly men — one 81, one 78 — who insulted each other and who most Americans wished were not the two major-party candidates for president. One candidate told frequent lies and portrayed the country in apocalyptic terms. The other struggled at times to describe his own policies or complete his sentences. The image of the nation as some combination of unhinged and doddering was especially striking at a time when the U.S. is supposed to be leading the fight against a rising alliance of autocracies that includes China, Russia and Iran. “I am worried about the image projected to the outside world,” Sergey Radchenko, a historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote on social media. “It is not an image of leadership. It is an image of terminal decline.” Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, seemingly compared President Biden’s performance to Marcus Aurelius’ failure to find a competent successor in ancient Rome, which hastened the empire’s decline. “It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset,” Sikorski tweeted. Russian officials — whose recent online behavior suggests that they are rooting for Donald Trump — portrayed the debate as a sign of American weakness and disarray. The result “is good for us,” Dmitri Novikov, a Russian lawmaker, said on state television. “Destabilization inside an adversary is always a good thing.” Where does the campaign go from here? That’s the subject of today’s newsletter. Solid vs. shaky Most Republicans are committed to Trump, even as he continues to tell lies and reject core principles of democracy. The situation with Democrats and Biden is obviously more uncertain. The Biden campaign and its allies have tried to describe the night as just another bad debate performance (as my colleague Michael Shear explains), not so different from weak showings by Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. But it was different. Biden seemed incapable of accomplishing basic political tasks, such as explaining what he had done in his first term, what he wanted to do in a second term and how his opponent’s policies could harm the country. Since the debate, Biden has looked more competent in public appearances. But his struggles during the debate will be hard to forget. Yes, he may sometimes be as sharp as ever. And, yes, he has accomplished a great deal during his first term. Nonetheless, he also sometimes appears to be a typical 81-year-old whose acuity is uneven and whose fitness for the presidency is questionable. In a CBS News poll conducted after the debate, only 27 percent of registered voters said that they thought Biden had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. By comparison, 50 percent of voters said Trump did. Biden and his aides insist he will not drop out. But the race is clearly more volatile than before the debate. We encourage you to watch three different areas in coming days to evaluate Biden’s position. 1. Polls Biden at a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., the day after the debate. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Several major pollsters are likely to release post-debate polls in coming days, and they will shape political discussions this week. Before the debate, Trump had a very small lead in national polls and a slightly larger lead in most swing states. If the polls remain similar after the debate, Biden’s aides will be able to argue that it didn’t alter the race’s dynamics. The aides probably won’t put it this way, but it would suggest that swing voters already understood Biden’s age was a problem before the debate. If Biden lost meaningful ground, however, the political atmosphere could change quickly. More Democrats who now support Biden — or who at least haven’t called on him to drop him out — could begin to oppose him publicly. (You can follow the polls this week through The Times’s polling averages.) 2. Donors A key group to watch will be Democratic donors. Without the money that Biden’s campaign expected to raise in coming months, it may struggle to run enough advertisements to frame the election as it hoped — as a choice between a decent man who cares about Americans and a selfish man who cares only about himself. During and just after the debate, many donors felt panic, and many still do. But Biden’s campaign has kept the criticism from spiraling over the past few days, as this Times story documented. When polls come out this week, it will be worth watching the reaction of major Democratic donors, including those who speak to the media anonymously. They are likely to react more quickly, and more candidly, than senior Democratic politicians. 3. Democratic leaders Ultimately, the response of Democratic politicians will probably be decisive. So far, top Democrats, including Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, congressional leaders and governors, have publicly backed Biden. In private, some have been more alarmed. Top House Democrats — including Hakeem Jeffries, the party leader, as well as Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn — have questioned his viability in private, according to NBC News. If Democrats do mount a serious effort to persuade Biden to step aside, politicians who have worked with him for years are likely to be the messengers of doom. The chances that Biden quits the race seem small this morning — significantly smaller than they did during the debate on Thursday night. But the situation is less settled than Biden’s aides have tried to suggest. And the next several days will matter much more than early July usually does in a presidential campaign. More on the campaign Biden’s family is urging him to stay in the race. His son Hunter has been vocal about it, Katie Rogers and Peter Baker report. Some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for the debate. Top Democrats followed a concerted effort by Biden and his team to dismiss concerns about his candidacy. THE LATEST NEWS French Election Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte. Pool photo by Yara Nardi President Emmanuel Macron’s snap election in France appears to have backfired: The far-right party was well ahead in the first round of voting. If a new majority of lawmakers opposed to Macron wins, he will be forced to appoint a political adversary as prime minister. That could be Jordan Bardella, a 28-year-old who has become the new face of France’s far right. France will return to the polls on July 7 for a second round of voting. The turnout was unusually high. Read more takeaways. More International News Thousands of soldiers are expected to die this summer in the war in Ukraine. But neither Moscow or Kyiv are likely to make significant gains, The Wall Street Journal reports. Many Iranians said they didn’t vote in the first round of the country’s presidential election because all the candidates had been vetted by the government. Myanmar’s currency is plunging and inflation is soaring. The ruling junta has arrested shop owners for raising wages. A Chinese commercial rocket accidentally launched during a test. It crashed into a nearby mountain and exploded, the company said. Weather Hurricane Beryl is moving west through the Atlantic as a Category 3 storm. Caribbean islands are bracing for impact later today. Tropical Storm Chris made landfall in eastern Mexico. It’s expected to dissipate soon. Boeing Boeing agreed to buy a longtime supplier. It’s an attempt to manage quality problems. The Justice Department is said to be seeking a guilty plea from Boeing to avoid a trial over two fatal 737 Max crashes. Other Big Stories A vigil for the 13-year-old boy. Adrianna Newell for The New York Times People in Utica, N.Y., are grieving for a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a police officer. Recent court rulings have changed how institutions — including the government and universities — assess disadvantage. Many people now have to write essays explaining how they faced obstacles in life, which is changing their self-conception, The Washington Post reports. Opinions There aren’t enough pediatricians in the United States. Medical students need a financial incentive to join the practice, Aaron Carroll writes. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens ask: Will one bad debate night for Biden mean one bad Election Day? Here are columns by David French on emergency abortion in Idaho and David Brooks, who interviewed Steve Bannon. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS A beach home in Stone Harbor, N.J. Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times Flying high: It’s fitting that a Supreme Court flag controversy arose in New Jersey, because down the shore, there are flags for everything. Los Angeles: Street vendors can now operate legally on Hollywood Boulevard. Making a living remains a challenge. Cool down, glow up: As climate change brings hotter summers, manufacturers are positioning air-conditioners as lifestyle accessories. Metropolitan Diary: Rock, paper, scissors, tacos. Lives Lived: Soma Golden Behr, a longtime senior editor at The New York Times, was a centrifuge of story ideas — they flew out of her in all directions. Her journalistic passions were poverty, race and class, which led to reporting that won Pulitzer Prizes. She died at 84. SPORTS Simone Biles Matt Krohn/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Olympics: Simone Biles will headline the U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team in Paris after comfortably winning the trials. She’ll be joined by three other repeat Olympians, plus a 16-year-old rookie. Soccer: Mexico was eliminated from the Copa América with a 0-0 draw against Ecuador. The U.S. men’s national team will try to avoid the same fate against Uruguay tonight. N.B.A.: The Los Angeles Clippers plan to re-sign their star guard James Harden, the splashiest news to come on the first night of the league’s free agency period. Fit check: 24 rookies shared their draft day outfits. ARTS AND IDEAS Alexis Jamet Some experts say ghosting — a complete cutoff in communication, without explanation — can be harder to deal with than explicit rejection. In the fast-paced world of modern dating, is it ever OK to ghost someone? Elizabeth Earnshaw, a therapist, says it’s permissible in some cases. She offers some questions to ask yourself: Am I thinking about ghosting this person simply because I want to avoid an unpleasant conversation? If the answer is yes, it is kinder to offer a goodbye and even a brief explanation. Read more about ways to get around ghosting, and how to handle it when it happens to you. More on culture “The Boyfriend” Netflix The producers of “The Boyfriend,” Japan’s first same-sex dating reality series, hope that the show will encourage broader acceptance of the nation’s L.G.B.T.Q. community. Explicit books for women are all over TikTok and Instagram feeds. The Cut has a guide. At the Olympics, a small Black-owned fashion label — Actively Black — is dressing Team Nigeria. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Try a light and refreshing potato salad, an antithesis of the usual mayonnaise-based recipes. Celebrate July 4 on these beaches. Prepare for a roadside emergency with this gear. Drink enough water (with some nudges). Protect yourself from the sun with UV-blocking clothing. Toast the newly betrothed with a great engagement gift. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was rainbow. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 2, 2024 Author Members Posted July 2, 2024 July 2, 2024 SUPPORTED BY UPWAY By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity — as well as President Biden’s age, Israel and the Rubik’s Cube. Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images ‘Immune, immune, immune’ The Supreme Court has concluded that the president of the United States is above the law — at least sometimes. Yesterday, the court issued a ruling in Trump v. United States. The case sought to determine whether prosecutors could seek charges against Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election or if he was immune from prosecution because he was president at the time. But the Supreme Court’s actual decision went beyond Trump. The court ruled that presidents are presumed to be shielded from prosecution for official acts. That includes policy changes, military decisions and discussions with other administration officials. It doesn’t include, for example, private acts taken exclusively as a political candidate. On specific legal questions concerning Trump’s role in election interference and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the Supreme Court was less clear. It largely punted to the judge in the federal case to decide which of Trump’s actions qualify as an official act or a private one. “That analysis ultimately is best left to the lower courts to perform in the first instance,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. (Read highlights from the court’s opinions.) The practical effect is that the decision will delay Trump’s election interference trial — reducing the chances that it will happen before Election Day in November, if it happens at all. Today’s newsletter will explain what this new precedent means for Trump, and how it may reshape presidential power for years to come. On the Trump charges Since prosecutors filed charges against Trump, he has followed a strategy of delay, delay, delay. If he wins the election before the remaining criminal cases against him conclude, he could use the presidency to prevent the trials from moving forward. The Supreme Court’s ruling helps Trump achieve that goal. First, the judge in the federal election interference case, Tanya Chutkan, will have to hold hearings and decide which parts of the case violate the Supreme Court’s new immunity standard. Then, either side could appeal Chutkan’s decisions. The appeals could once again go all the way to the Supreme Court, producing more months of delays. The Supreme Court Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The Supreme Court ruling makes it all but certain that Trump “will not stand trial on charges of seeking to overturn the last election before voters decide whether to send him back to the White House in the next one,” wrote my colleague Alan Feuer, who’s covering the case. It does, however, give prosecutors a chance to publicly show their evidence against Trump, as they present it in court for inclusion in the trial. The ruling also could apply to the state charges against Trump, in Georgia and New York. Trump already filed a motion yesterday to overturn the conviction against him in New York, citing the Supreme Court. On presidential power When the Supreme Court first heard the case in April, Justice Neil Gorsuch said, “We’re writing a rule for the ages.” The court would decide what legal protections apply not just to Trump, but to future presidents as well. The majority opinion, which Roberts wrote, does just that. It says presidents must be able to make difficult decisions without worrying that someday they could be criminally punished for their choices. “A president inclined to take one course of action based on the public interest may instead opt for another, apprehensive that criminal penalties may befall him upon his departure from office,” Roberts wrote. Some legal scholars believe the decision goes too far in expanding presidential power. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the ruling would enable presidents to do things that, before now, might have seemed clearly outside the law. “Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune,” she wrote. “Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.” The decision doesn’t shield presidents from all consequences. They must still win elections, and Congress can still impeach them. Future rulings could draw clearer boundaries around presidential immunity. Still, for now, the Supreme Court has extended sweeping legal protections to presidents that apply to no one else in the country. More on the court Trump celebrated the ruling. “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” “Any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,” President Biden said in a speech from the White House. He called the ruling a “dangerous precedent.” Republicans celebrated the ruling, while Democrats worried for the future of American democracy. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pledged to file articles of impeachment against the justices. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito participated in the decision, rejecting ethics experts’ calls for their recusal over their wives’ partisan activities. In a concurring opinion, Thomas suggested that Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Trump, was appointed illegally. Separately, in two cases concerning regulations on social media companies, the court sidestepped a definitive ruling and returned them to lower courts. The court also gave companies more time to challenge government regulations, another blow to federal agencies’ authority. A MESSAGE FROM UPWAY E-Bikes up to 60% off retail Get top-tier e-Bikes at unbeatable prices! Visit Upway and use code SUMMER for $150 off. Get your e-Bike now! THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election Biden boarding Air Force One. Al Drago for The New York Times Biden’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, is trying to reassure donors that the president can still win despite his shaky debate with Trump. The Biden campaign is discussing having him participate in an interview or news conference to address voters’ concerns about his age. If Biden were to end his re-election bid, Kamala Harris would be the likeliest alternative, despite her own political weaknesses, The Wall Street Journal reports. On social media, Trump circulated posts that called for the jailing of Biden, Harris, Mike Pence and others. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign is running out of cash and laying off staff. An allied group is raising money to help get him on state ballots. Trump’s family business signed a deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a residential tower in Jeddah, extending its ties with Saudi Arabia. More on Politics Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump adviser, began his four-month prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. House Republicans sued Attorney General Merrick Garland and asked a federal judge to force him to turn over audio of Biden’s interview with the special counsel who investigated his handling of classified documents. Hunter Biden sued Fox News and said that its mini-series shared explicit images of him without his permission. Israel-Hamas War Israeli tanks near the border with Gaza. Amir Cohen/Reuters As Israel’s military runs low on munitions, some top generals want a cease-fire in Gaza — even if it leaves Hamas in power for now. The generals say that a truce would be the best way of freeing hostages. The director of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, was released from Israeli detention after more than seven months. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, some Palestinian fighters in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have switched allegiances to more hard-line groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. More International News In the Kyiv region of Ukraine. Sasha Maslov for The New York Times Large flows of investment have helped turn Ukraine into a Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and fueled a potential new era of killer robots. Hurricane Beryl is headed toward Jamaica as a Category 5 storm. The storm has already caused extreme damage to islands elsewhere in the Caribbean. North Korea said that it had tested a new ballistic missile with a “super-large warhead,” a development in an arms race with South Korea. The Netherlands swore in its first far-right government today, after nearly 14 years under its previous prime minister. Read what to know. The defeat of Emmanuel Macron’s party in the first round of parliamentary elections has effectively dissolved his centrist movement. An era has ended in France, Roger Cohen writes. Other Big Stories Nearly a third of staff doctors in Wisconsin’s prisons have been censured by a state medical board, a Times investigation found. The judge declared a mistrial in the case of Karen Read, who was accused of killing her boyfriend, a Boston police officer. If congestion pricing had gone into effect in New York City, it would have made at least $200,000 during yesterday’s rush hour, Times reporters found. A piece of metal from a SpaceX spacecraft was found on a private hiking trail in North Carolina. A significant heat wave will begin in California today, and forecasters said high temperatures would last well through the holiday weekend. Opinions Biden might see withdrawal from the race as a sign of weakness. It would, in fact, be a courageous act that puts the nation first, Kevin Boyle argues. The future of dining is waiting in lines, Karen Stabiner writes. Here are columns by Carlos Lozada on American exceptionalism and Paul Krugman on the American and the French right. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Erno Rubik Akos Stiller for The New York Times The Rubik’s Cube turns 50: Mathematicians and hobbyists have had a half-century of fun exploring the puzzle’s some 43 billion billion permutations. Ask Vanessa: “How can I stay cool and look chic in the heat?” Education: The pandemic’s babies, toddlers and preschoolers are now school-age. Many are struggling. Lives Lived: Critics often compared the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare to Kafka and Orwell. His works subversively attacked the brutal dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, skirting censorship through allegory, satire and myth. But Kadare also wrote a novel that favorably portrayed the dictator and that he later said he had written to curry favor. He died at 88. SPORTS Copa América: The U.S. men’s national team was eliminated from the competition after a loss to Uruguay. Coach Gregg Berhalter’s job could be in jeopardy. N.B.A.: The Boston Celtics are finalizing a five-year, $314 million contract extension with Jayson Tatum. It would be the largest contract in league history. Klay Thompson: The Golden State Warriors legend will leave the franchise for the Dallas Mavericks, ending a 13-year run. A MESSAGE FROM UPWAY E-Bikes up to 60% off retail Get top-tier e-Bikes at unbeatable prices! Visit Upway and use code SUMMER for $150 off. Get your e-Bike now! ARTS AND IDEAS The grounds of Dyrham House in England. Andrew Testa for The New York Times The culture wars have come for Britain’s stately homes. The National Trust, the charity that manages many of them, changed displays in dozens of properties to explain the sites’ links to slavery and exploitation. Right-wing columnists and academics got angry; they said the trust was being woke and suggested that it was presenting an “anti-British” view of history. Read more about the fight. More on culture The global market for ordering TV shows is beginning to pick up after a major slowdown. Netflix and Amazon are mainly driving the bump in new orders. Young people on TikTok are dancing to a catchy song called “Friendly Father.” It’s a piece of North Korean propaganda about Kim Jong-un, The Wall Street Journal reports. Young Thug’s much-delayed gang conspiracy trial was halted indefinitely to determine whether the judge, who met with an uncooperative witness, should recuse himself. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Julia Gartland for The New York Times Make a saltine cracker crust for this lemony summer pie. Grill better hot dogs. Discover a new fitness routine. Browse Wirecutter’s most popular picks of June. Travel light with a carry-on backpack. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were headline, headlined, inhaled and nailhead. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —German P.S. Mario Koran, the reporter who wrote the Wisconsin prison investigation in today’s newsletter, is a former inmate himself. Read about his journey from jail to journalism. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 3, 2024 Author Members Posted July 3, 2024 July 3, 2024 Good morning. Today, Mark Landler has a preview of this week’s British election. We’re also covering President Biden, a stampede in India and competitive eating. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform U.K., looks out at a crowd during a rally. Hollie Adams/Reuters Against the tide By Mark Landler London bureau chief Britain goes to the polls tomorrow after a campaign that featured the same ingredients as other elections across Europe and the Americas: frustrated voters eager to reject the status quo, a deeply discredited government and a dash of populism — in this case, represented by the insurgent candidacy of Nigel Farage. But Britain is likely to emerge from the election as an outlier. While the electorates in other countries are shifting to the right, British voters are expected to evict the Conservative-led government after 14 years, in favor of the center-left Labour Party. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why Britain is zigging while others are zagging. Tory tumult The Conservatives, or Tories, have presided over a tumultuous era that began with David Cameron in 2010. It included harsh budget cuts after the financial crisis of 2008, the Brexit vote of 2016, the Covid pandemic and a revolving door of prime ministers. For many, it has been a circus that now needs to leave town. Boris Johnson was drummed out of office after serial scandals. (Among other things, he held parties during a Covid lockdown he had imposed.) Liz Truss lasted less than 50 days after the financial markets turned savagely against her proposed tax cuts. The current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has steadied the ship but failed to give restless voters much of an argument for keeping his party in power. Beyond the constant drama, Labour politicians claim the Conservatives have broken Britain. They say: Cuts have starved the country’s revered National Health Service, leading to overcrowded emergency rooms and monthslong waits for elective surgery. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Benjamin Cremel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Other experts note that Britain’s departure from the European Union has slowed trade and handicapped economic growth. Though its rebound after the pandemic was comparable to that of its European neighbors, its economy has since stagnated, and its public debt has ballooned. (These charts, by my colleagues Josh Holder and Ademola Bello, show how Britain has changed since the Conservatives took power in 2010.) The Tories have even struggled with their own priorities: Immigration has soared since Brexit. That is partly because of refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong. But the influx is also fueled by huge numbers of migrants from South Asia and Africa, many of whom come to study at universities or are recruited as nurses or doctors in the understaffed N.H.S. In addition to these documented arrivals, thousands of asylum seekers try to cross the English Channel in unseaworthy boats. Conservative leaders, who sold Brexit as a tool to reduce immigration, say they will cut back the number of arrivals. Sunak has vowed to “stop the boats.” He spent months securing the passage in Parliament of a legally challenged policy that would put some asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda. But many voters no longer think the Conservative Party has credibility on this issue. Labour’s pitch Labour vows to curb immigration by better policing Britain’s borders. (It would mothball Rwanda flights, which it calls costly and ineffective.) Aside from that, however, the party’s priorities don’t seem all that different from those of the government, which is no accident. Across a range of issues, Labour has been careful not to draw deep distinctions between itself and the Conservatives. It is not proposing big tax increases. It has vowed no major spending hikes until Britain cuts its runaway public deficit. It has scaled back its ambitious program to curb climate change. It would maintain Britain’s military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party. Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters Labour rejects the Tories less for the substance of their policies than for their hapless governance. It hopes to win over the many voters who are fed up with Conservative rule without frightening the ones who distrusted the tax-and-spend left — and especially its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Polls suggest the plan is working. Labour has led the Conservatives by double digits in polls for more than 18 months. The current Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has positioned himself as a plausible substitute for Sunak — a change agent but hardly a left-wing revolutionary. The real conceptual contest To the extent that there is an ideological struggle in this election, it is being waged on the right. Farage, a populist firebrand who campaigned on behalf of Brexit, is leading an anti-immigration party, Reform U.K., which is siphoning off votes from the Conservatives. Under the electoral rules that govern British politics, Reform is unlikely to win many seats in Parliament. But it could split the right-wing vote, deepening the scale of the Conservative defeat to Labour and perhaps even fracturing the Tories. Farage is an ally of Donald Trump, and his populist challenge echoes not only Trump’s movement in the United States but also the gains made by far-right parties in France and Germany. In this respect, at least, Britain is not such an outlier. For more Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, is on the cusp of a potential landslide victory without the star quality that marked previous British leaders. In Starmer, King Charles could get a prime minister he likes. They are likely to find common ground on issues including climate change and the European Union. Soccer — which has long been a convenient P.R. vehicle for British politicians — has helped shape the election, Simon Hughes writes in The Athletic. Read more about the backgrounds and policies of Sunak and Starmer from the BBC. THE LATEST NEWS President Biden President Biden Eric Lee/The New York Times In recent months, some aides say, President Biden has had mental lapses — sometimes appearing confused, listless or losing the thread of conversations — particularly when tired. At a fund-raiser in Virginia, Biden acknowledged his poor debate performance, quipping that he almost “fell asleep on the stage.” He blamed a busy international travel schedule. Most Democrats, including party leaders, still publicly support Biden. Nancy Pelosi defended him but said it was “a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode, or is this a condition?’” But other House Democrats expressed concern yesterday. Lloyd Doggett of Texas called for Biden to exit the race, while Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington said they thought Biden would lose to Trump. Tim Ryan, a former Ohio congressman who ran against Biden in 2020, said Vice President Kamala Harris should be the nominee instead. Representative James Clyburn, who is influential with Biden, said he would back Harris if Biden withdrew. Biden plans to meet with Democratic governors today and travel to battleground states this week. ABC News will interview him on Friday. Supreme Court The judge who oversaw Trump’s Manhattan criminal conviction delayed the sentencing until September so that he can weigh whether the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling threatens Trump’s conviction. Trump had a very good year at the Supreme Court, and administrative agencies had a very bad one, Adam Liptak writes. See how the court ruled in major cases. For its next term, the court agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors’ access to internet pornography. More on Politics Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Trump, is said to be planning to continue his two criminal cases through the election if the former president wins. A New York court disbarred Rudy Giuliani, preventing him from practicing law in the state over his efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. International Outside a hospital in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Reuters In northern India, at least 121 people were killed in a stampede at a Hindu religious event. Israel issued an evacuation order for a large area of southeastern Gaza. Gazans are struggling to finding new places to shelter. Groups of men in Turkish cities have attacked Syrian refugees and damaged their property. Hurricane Beryl caused extreme damage on two islands in Grenada, the nation’s prime minister said. See a tracker of where the storm is headed next. Business and Economy Elon Musk’s public persona has become increasingly right wing. Analysts say this is alienating some potential Tesla customers. Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said that inflation in the U.S. was coming down once more, and suggested that the central bank could lower interest rates if the trend continued. The Biden administration awarded millions of dollars in grants to help industries like biomanufacturing, clean energy and artificial intelligence. Other Big Stories Months after the end of a pandemic pause in student loans, about half of borrowers have not resumed their payments. The F.D.A. approved a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s. Studies show it could modestly slow cognitive decline in early stages of the disease. Airports and roads could see record travelers this Fourth of July weekend. Avoid travel headaches with these tips, and check the forecast — it’s going to be hot. Opinions Starmer’s purge of the Labour Party’s left wing proves he will maintain the British status quo, Oliver Eagleton writes. The data shows: Voters like Democrats. It’s Biden who is the problem, Nate Silver writes. The Supreme Court’s dismissal of Idaho’s case against emergency abortions suggests that there’s disagreement in the court’s conservative ranks, Linda Greenhouse argues. A better Israeli prime minister than Benjamin Netanyahu would put Arab states in control of Gaza, Bret Stephens argues. Here is a column by Thomas Friedman on Biden’s best next move. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS The New York Times Technology: The GPS system, an essential part of modern life, is under constant attack from hackers. America’s network is especially old and vulnerable. Your next move: Is it better to rent or buy? Check with this calculator. Peak British summer: See inside Queen Camilla’s second annual Queen’s Reading Room Festival at Hampton Court Palace. Most clicked in June: Visit five cities with great beaches. Etsy vs. sex: The online marketplace has banned the sale of some products, including vintage Playboys and sex toys. Health: Do you need to apply sunscreen every day? Experts weigh in. Lives Lived: The painter and sculptor June Leaf developed a unique blend of expressionism, primitivism and a childlike sense of play. Her exploration of the female form paved the way for generations of feminist artists. She died at 94. SPORTS W.N.B.A.: The star rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were voted onto the All-Star Game roster. N.B.A.: Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers agreed to a three-year, $150 million extension. The biggest gamble in the franchise’s history paid off, our columnist writes. ARTS AND IDEAS Eating practice in Tobyhanna, Pa. Jonno Rattman for The New York Times This year’s Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, which takes place on July 4 on Coney Island, is unexpectedly open. Joey Chestnut, a 16-time champion, was barred after signing an endorsement deal with a vegan hot dog brand. Most elite eaters, however, are not signing endorsements deals: They’re regular people with normal jobs. Read about how competitive eaters prepare the bodies and their minds. More on culture Two hundred years after it was written, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” is still popular. A few years ago, Chet Hanks, the son of the actor Tom Hanks, made a seemingly ironic claim that a “white boy summer” was ahead. Hate groups have since latched onto the phrase. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Make this vibrant green pasta salad, which gets its color from a combination of spinach and basil. Stock your car with this gear for a roadside emergency. Block fireworks noise for kids and pets. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was flavorful. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 5, 2024 Author Members Posted July 5, 2024 July 4, 2024 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering the fallout from President Biden’s debate performance — plus, the British election, Hezbollah and Wimbledon. President Biden Doug Mills/The New York Times Bad to worse The political climate for President Biden is worse this morning than it was just a few days ago. First, the polls: A New York Times/Siena College poll, released yesterday, shows that Biden is down six points against Donald Trump among likely voters — a three-point drop since his poor debate performance. Other polls show a similar, if slightly smaller, post-debate swing, with the trend against Biden and toward Trump. Why? One reason is Biden’s age. In the Times poll, the share of voters who say Biden is “too old to be an effective president” rose to 74 percent from 69 percent and included a majority of Democrats. Four years ago, just 36 percent of voters said Biden was too old. At the same time, more of Biden’s allies have turned against his re-election campaign. Yesterday, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona became the second House Democrat to publicly call on Biden to withdraw from the race. Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix and one of the biggest Democratic donors, called for Biden to make way for “a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous.” Other wealthy donors also believe Biden should step aside, but they have not said as much publicly, to avoid helping Trump. A sign outside the White House. Doug Mills/The New York Times Biden has taken notice. He has privately told allies that the next few days may determine whether he can salvage his candidacy, according to my colleague Katie Rogers, who covers the White House. He scheduled a rare interview with ABC News tomorrow and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the coming days. He hopes to show that his debate performance was an anomaly, and that he is actually fit for the presidency. As Katie wrote, Biden knows he is in the fight for his political life. But while he has defied the odds before, he might struggle to mount a comeback this time. More news Biden’s poll numbers have been weak for years, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst. The debate’s most pronounced effect was forcing those close to Biden to address the longstanding concerns. For now, Biden insists he will remain the Democratic nominee. “I’m in this race to the end,” he told campaign staff members yesterday, adding, “No one’s pushing me out.” The next few days will be pivotal. Yesterday evening, Biden told a group of Democratic governors that he was staying in the race. Despite publicly supporting him, several expressed concerns. One, Janet Mills of Maine, told him that voters didn’t think he was up to running. He also told the governors he had a medical checkup after the debate and was fine, Politico reports. Biden had lunch with Vice President Kamala Harris, who some Democrats say should replace him as the nominee. Democratic congressional leaders are not urging their members to rally behind Biden, but instead to take a position that best suits their districts. This graphic shows what prominent Democrats have said. Democrats see benefits (a younger nominee, a potential surge of donations) and risks (an untested candidate, a crash-course campaign) to replacing Biden. Responses around the country Jill Biden, the first lady, tried to reassure Democrats in Michigan at the opening of a Biden campaign office there. Outside, two people held signs calling on Biden to step aside. Memes and coconut tree emojis: Harris’s supporters — known as the KHive — are flooding social media with signals that they’re prepared to back her if Biden drops out. The House Republicans’ campaign arm is running an ad calling Harris a Biden “enabler.” THE LATEST NEWS British Election Saffron Walden, England. Mary Turner for The New York Times Voting is happening now. The Labour Party is projected to sweep out the Conservatives after 14 years, but people are skeptical that new leadership could tackle the country’s problems. Britain’s exit poll is trusted — and accurate. Read what else to know about the election. Hurricane Beryl Petite Martinique, Grenada. Arthur Daniel/Reuters Hurricane Beryl battered Jamaica after it left nearly every building on two islands in Grenada in ruins. The storm weakened as it moved toward the Cayman Islands and the Yucatán Peninsula. “A roller coaster in a carwash”: Scientists are flying into the storm to better understand it. International Israel killed a top commander of Hezbollah. The group responded with a rocket barrage, and both are on the brink of a new war. One man lost his wife, mother and daughter in the stampede in India. Many of Tehran’s residents listed Iran’s struggling economy as the No. 1 issue for the country’s next president. Sierra Leone is trying to stop child marriage by punishing adult spouses, parents and wedding guests. Other Big Stories Thousands have been evacuating as wildfires spread in Northern California. A hacker stole secrets from OpenAI, raising concerns that China could steal them, too. Residents of Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Va., have been told to boil their drinking water because it may be unsafe. A temporary halt in avocado inspections shows how reliant the U.S. has become on Mexico for the fruit. Opinions A flag can take on multiple meanings, Ezekiel Kweku writes. He shares more about the history of the American flag. The truest form of patriotism is to demand that America lives up to its ideals, Esau McCaulley writes. Here are columns by Pamela Paul on the Bible in public schools and Nicholas Kristof on starvation in Gaza. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Roberto Benavidez Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times Paper crafts: In Los Angeles, an artist’s ornate piñatas are a source of wonder (but not candy). Game of thrones: Two men claim to be the leader of an ancient kingdom in northern Nigeria. They’re fighting over who should lead. New York: The real problem with legal weed? The state is trying to treat an addictive substance just like any other product, Charles Fain Lehman writes. Tibet: A trove of animal bone fragments reveals how a Neanderthal-like group of people survived the ice age. Gut health and “hurkle-durkling”: Read about the wellness trends that are defining 2024. Lives Lived: Audrey Flack was a pioneer of photorealism who became known for oversize, in-your-face still lifes crowded with color and detail. She died at 93. SPORTS Coco Gauff Matthew Childs/Reuters Wimbledon: Coco Gauff, the No. 2 seed, is setting the pace for the women’s draw when it comes to serve speeds. She hit 124 miles per hour on the radar gun. M.L.B.: The Philadelphia Phillies lead all teams with three All-Star starters, the league announced. The players will wear polarizing new jerseys at the Midsummer Classic. N.B.A.: The superstar LeBron James plans to sign a two-year, $104 million maximum deal to stay with the Los Angeles Lakers, an expected decision that comes shortly after the team drafted his son. Betting: The former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter, whom the N.B.A. banned in April, is facing federal charges for his role in an apparent sports gambling ring. ARTS AND IDEAS On Coney Island. Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times It is the Fourth of July in New York City. That means a day for fireworks, sweaty subway rides and family cookouts. But it also means it is time for the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. This year’s event, which tests competitive eaters on how many hot dogs they can consume in 10 minutes, promises to be unusually suspenseful. For the first time in almost a generation, the men’s competition has no clear front-runner. Read more about it. More on culture Russians are watching a bleak, nihilistic show. That says grim things about the national mood. Norman Rockwell’s World War II-era painting “Freedom of Speech” has become a popular meme for those who want to share a potentially unpopular opinion. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Discover a secret to great grilled hot dogs. Clean up your phone’s photo library. Listen to these music memoirs. Capture photos of the fireworks like a pro. Browse these actually good Fourth of July sales. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was warlock. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 7, 2024 Author Members Posted July 7, 2024 July 5, 2024 By Lyna Bentahar Good morning. We’re covering Independence Days around the world — Labour’s victory in Britain, President Biden and Andy Murray. In Hoboken, N.J. Jeenah Moon for The New York Times Americans declared independence from the British 248 years ago. Throughout this long weekend, people will celebrate the holiday with a hot, sticky spectacle of national identity. Towns hold parades and shoot fireworks, families have barbecues and crowds wear red, white and blue. The Times publishes the Declaration of Independence in full. Dozens of other countries have seceded from the British Empire. Even more have seceded from other empires, and many countries mark their liberty with holidays that display their national identities, too. We wanted to share how other countries honor their independence each summer. Here’s a look: Algeria | July 5 In Algiers. Mohamed Messara/EPA, via Shutterstock Algeria lived under 132 years of colonial French rule. After a brutal war, the country declared its independence on the anniversary of the French invasion of Algiers. Across the country, Algerians hold parades and dress in traditional tribal clothing. The president issues pardons to thousands of prisoners including, in some instances, anti-government activists. Iceland | June 17 Iceland was part of Denmark until it held a referendum during the Nazi era. Icelanders now celebrate independence on the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson, a major figure in the Icelandic independence movement. People hold parades across the island; they often include a woman meant to personify Iceland. She wears a traditional dress and recites a poem. Indonesia | Aug. 17 A greased-pole race in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mast Irham/EPA, via Shutterstock A four-year war ended Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia. Indonesians hold games and competitions to celebrate, like sack races and eating contests. One of the most popular games is “panjat pinang,” where players attempt to climb a greasy pole to get the prizes sitting on top — including, often, bicycles. Jamaica | Aug. 6 Jamaica commemorates its turn from a British colony to a Commonwealth country with around a week of parades. Jamaican artists also participate in a competition to write an original, patriotic song. (Here are some of the winning songs over the years.) Niger | Aug. 3 Niger’s independence day, commemorating the end of French colonial rule, coincides with its National Arbor Day, which encourages Nigeriens to plant trees. In the last few decades, over 200 million new trees have grown in southern Niger. North and South Korea | Aug. 15 Sisters holding flags in Seoul. Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA, via Shutterstock North and South Korea both celebrate their independence from 35 years of Japanese imperial rule. It is one of the few holidays the countries share. North Korea knows the day as “Liberation of the Fatherland Day.” In South Korea, where the holiday’s literal translation is “Restoration of Light Day,” buildings are decorated with the national flag. Pakistan and India | Aug. 14 and 15, respectively Pakistani troops at the border with India. Shahzaib Akber/EPA, via Shutterstock After decades of colonial rule, Britain left the Indian subcontinent in 1947, partitioning the region into two new countries: India and Pakistan. Pakistan and India both still celebrate the partition as their independence. On their border, Indian and Pakistani soldiers perform a daily symbolic ritual of rivalry to roaring crowds. But on this special occasion, forces also share sweets and gifts with their counterparts on the other side, a gesture of peace. Peru | July 28 In Lima, Peru. Aldair Mejia/EPA, via Shutterstock Peru celebrates its independence from Spain by celebrating for multiple days. Schools hold winter break during this period, workers receive bonuses and the military holds a parade. Presidents or vice presidents are also inaugurated on the holiday. Philippines | June 12 In Manila. Rolex Dela Pena/EPA, via Shutterstock Filipinos celebrate their declaration of independence from Spain after more than 300 years of colonial rule. Today, people honor their heritage online by writing alternative Philippine history and sharing memes about events from the past. Celebrating this weekend? Here are some tips: Grill with a good meat thermometer, wear face sunscreen and wash your swimsuit without hurting it. THE LATEST NEWS British Election In London. Andrew Testa for The New York Times The Labour Party won a landslide victory. Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister, ending 14 years of Conservative government and heralding a new era. Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has led a remarkable turnaround for the Labour Party. Read more about him. The Conservatives had the worst defeat in the party’s nearly 200-year history. Liz Truss, a former prime minister, lost her seat. Reform U.K., an anti-immigrant party, the Green Party and pro-Palestinian independent candidates won formerly safe Labour seats. More International Elections Economic turmoil is spreading across the globe, including in Kenya, Bolivia and France. The response has been protests, attempted coups and elections of far-right politicians. More French youths in particular are voting for far-right politicians. Here’s why. Iranians are voting in a runoff for its next president. The outcome is difficult to predict. President Biden President Biden Doug Mills/The New York Times Wealthy donors are discussing plans to pressure President Biden to step aside. He appears committed to remaining on the ballot. Biden told a meeting of governors he needs more sleep and less work at night, including curtailing events after 8 p.m. The president’s appearances since the debate are being scrutinized. Any fumbled words become a news story. Weather In Cancun, Mexico. Paola Chiomante/Reuters Hurricane Beryl, now a Category 2 storm, is hitting Mexico today. See the hurricane’s probable path. Ravaged Caribbean islands are assessing the devastation. Other Big Stories A wildfire in Northern California slowed, allowing some residents to return home. Earth is about to reach its greatest distance from the sun, known as the aphelion. A driver plowed into a crowd in a park on Manhattan, killing two people, the authorities said. The police said they suspected alcohol had been involved. Opinions If Biden steps aside, who should lead the Democratic ticket? Six columnists weigh in. Donald Trump is the living, lying contradiction of the idea that actions have consequences, Frank Bruni writes. Is Kamala Harris underrated? The Ezra Klein Show considers what her candidacy could look like. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Above New York City. Todd Heisler/The New York Times New York: In the city’s skies, observation decks are one-upping one another for visitors’ attention and dollars. Gut problems? They may be the most overlooked Covid symptom. Inner beauty: Summer camps are asking kids to leave their skin care routines and Sephora hauls at home. Diagnosis: Read about the experience of one woman diagnosed with autism at 43 from The Cut. Digital life: One Million Checkboxes has been called the most pointless website on the planet. It’s a case study in internet behavior. 36 hours in Boston: Visit Fenway Park, walk along the waterfront and explore the John F. Kennedy presidential library. D.I.Y. travel: Experience the adventure of the Orient Express journey for much cheaper than the luxury train. Work: Some countries are trying a four-day workweek. Greece wants six. Lives Lived: V. Craig Jordan was a pharmacologist who discovered a key breast cancer drug and helped save the lives of millions of women. He died at 76. SPORTS Andy Murray Hannah Mckay/Reuters Tennis: The English tennis legend Andy Murray bid an emotional goodbye to Wimbledon yesterday after losing in doubles. N.B.A.: The Golden State Warriors acquired the sharpshooter Buddy Hield, who has made the second-most 3-pointers in the league in recent years — behind new teammate Stephen Curry. Competitive eating: At the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, Miki Sudo won the women’s title with a record 51 hot dogs and Patrick Bertoletti won the men’s title. The reigning champion, Joey Chestnut, barred from the event, held his own contest later in the day. ARTS AND IDEAS Dress sightings near Sixth Avenue. Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times The internet can’t decide what makes a sundress a sundress. Does it need to be bright and floral? Can it be white or, even more controversially, black? What about the shape? Some feel it should be tight, others say loose; and no one can agree on the length. The Styles section has put together a sundress survey: Take the quiz, and see if you can find common ground with other Times readers. More on culture Cindy Crawford Amy Harrity for The New York Times Decades ago, Cindy Crawford invented the model-to-brand playbook being used by the current generation. “I always say, ‘I modeled,’” she said. “It’s a verb to me. It’s not an identity.” “Spermworld,” a Hulu documentary about men who connect with would-be parents looking for sperm donors via the internet, is on a list of the best documentaries of 2024 so far. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Combine dill pickles and tzatziki for an easy dip that goes with practically everything. Enjoy these stand-up specials. Bring these gadgets on your next trip. Crack open one of the best hard seltzers. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was jollying. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 8, 2024 Author Members Posted July 8, 2024 July 6, 2024 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. The meals that we love are informed as much by the experience of eating them as by the flavor of the food itself. María Jesús Contreras Acquired tastes This week, the Caesar salad celebrated its 100th birthday. I hadn’t ever considered the age of the Caesar before reading the Times article on its origins, but I think I would have assumed it was born in the 1970s, maybe in a steakhouse in San Francisco. So I was surprised to learn that the American menu mainstay was, according to a new book, invented in Tijuana in 1924 by a charismatic Italian restaurateur named Cesare Cardini who prepared the salad in a theatrical tableside performance that enchanted the glamorous Americans who, during Prohibition, streamed into Mexico to drink, smoke and revel. (The exact details of the origin story are the subject of some dispute among historians.) I have, for what feels like 100 years now, been trying to replicate at home the Caesar dressing found at a popular Manhattan restaurant from which I used to get a salad every single day, until I realized I was going to have to dip into my 401(k) if I didn’t figure out an alternative. I’ve meticulously titrated the dressing’s ingredients in my kitchen laboratory, increasing oil and reducing acid, doubling the Parmesan and tripling the Dijon. I’ve experimented with MSG and even, in a brief moment of delirium, created my own dried anchovy powder to sprinkle on top. The Caesar salads I’ve created are fine, maybe even good, but they’re not the same as the desk lunches of my obsession. In honor of the Caesar’s centennial, I brought my beloved restaurant salad to Sam Sifton, the founding editor of NYT Cooking and the most thoughtful home chef I know, to see if he could give me pointers for recreating it. He had some tips — try Worcestershire instead of anchovies, grind the Parmesan in a food processor, add more black pepper than I might think prudent. But then he suggested, in the nicest way possible (I think), that my goal of trying to reproduce this restaurant’s salad was never going to lead to satisfaction. Why try so hard to recreate something that already exists when I could spend my time making my own version, or making something else entirely? This dressing came from a big kitchen and was made in batches vast enough to feed hordes of Midtown office workers. Cooking at home, I’d have none of those constraints and could create something excellent according to my own standards. I felt a little foolish after talking to Sam, like a child who can’t entertain that there might be foods they’d enjoy besides hot dogs and buttered noodles. Why was I so determined to replicate this salad? Why couldn’t I just let it be a thing I liked, and knew where to get, without needing to harness it? And how good was it really? This was a takeout salad I usually ate mindlessly, and in a hurry, at my desk. In the bustle of a stressful work day, a salad that under other conditions might be just decent can be transporting simply because it’s providing sustenance. When I asked Pati Jinich, the writer of the Times story on the Caesar’s 100th birthday, why she thought this salad from Tijuana became such a global phenomenon, she said it had as much to do with the excitement of anything-goes, Prohibition-era Tijuana and the charming theatricality of Cesare Cardini as the salad itself. “It was the moment, the man and the dish,” she said. People liked the salad, sure, but what they really liked, what really made it special, was the experience of being in Cardini’s checkered-floor restaurant when he wheeled over his fresh ingredients and whipped up the salad in a big wooden bowl. Here I was, essentially trying to recreate the experience of being a tired office worker stuffing food in her mouth with a plastic fork between meetings. I brought the salad to Sam expecting he’d reveal to me the secret that would permit me to make it at home. Instead, our conversation marked the end of my quest to replicate the takeout Caesar once and for all. “Let none of us aspire to recreating the deliciousness of the salad we ate at our desk,” he pronounced solemnly as we parted. An aspiration I’ll consign to my unenlightened past, that time that Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, remembering her foolish carrying-on with another Caesar, called “my salad days, when I was green in judgment.” For more Caesar’s Caesar Salad recipe, from NYT Cooking Sam Sifton on a variation on the Caesar, with smoked herring. Restaurante Caesar’s Tijuana, on Instagram. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Mia Goth Amy Harrity for The New York Times Mia Goth spoke with The Times about starring in “MaXXXine,” the last installment of the “X” horror trilogy. It is one of eight movies our critics are talking about this week. “Despicable Me 4” — technically the sixth film in the franchise — is “messily passable” and occasionally fun, our reviewer writes. Meet the man who invented (and voices) the minions. Eddie Murphy returned as the detective Axel Foley in “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.” Our reviewer called the movie a “painfully lackluster retread.” The latest season of “The Bear” is littered with real-world culinary references. See a list of the Easter eggs. Andrew Scott, star of “Ripley” and “Fleabag,” is enthralling to watch. Maya Phillips explores his favorite modes of performance. Abdulaziz Almuzaini’s sardonic Netflix cartoon, likened to “South Park,” seemed to embody Saudi Arabia’s social and cultural transformation. It also earned him a prison sentence. Music Twenty-five years ago, Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” became a hit and brought twerking and New Orleans bounce into the mainstream. Here’s how it became a sensation. Rob Stone, a founder of the influential music magazine The Fader, which gave early exposure to rappers like Kanye West and Drake, died at 55. Members of Gen Z have adopted Billy Joel’s 50-year-old song “Vienna” to describe their feelings of ennui, The Guardian reports. Other Big Stories Chloe Misseldine Kristina Dittmar for The New York Times At the American Ballet Theater, the rise of the soloist Chloe Misseldine has felt meteoric. She took on the starring role in “Swan Lake” at the Metropolitan Opera House this week. Though San Francisco’s art institutions are still seeing fewer visitors than they did before the pandemic, they are having some success getting audiences to return. Wimbledon has begun. Glamour captured some of the best celebrity courtside fashion. The National Portrait Gallery bought an 1846 image of Dolley Madison, the earliest known photograph of an American first lady, for $456,000. THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election President Biden sat for an interview with George Stephanopoulos. ABC President Biden vowed to stay in the race in a defiant interview with ABC News, dismissing concerns about his age. “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race, but the Lord Almighty’s not coming down,” he said. During the 22-minute interview, which ABC aired unedited, Biden brushed aside calls to take an independent cognitive or neurological test. But he accepted the blame for his poor debate performance, calling it a “bad night” that was “nobody’s fault but mine.” Asked how he’d feel if Trump won, Biden said, “As long as I gave it my all, and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” Some Democrats said the interview did little to assuage their doubts about Biden’s candidacy. The Times spoke to dozens of swing-state voters who supported Biden in 2020 but now want him to drop out. Two more House Democrats, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Mike Quigley of Illinois, called for Biden to do so. Kamala Harris had already taken on a more visible role in Biden’s campaign before last week’s debate. Her allies say she’s the logical choice to become the nominee if he steps aside. Both presidential candidates have big weaknesses. But their parties are reacting to those weaknesses in radically different ways, Peter Baker writes. Other Big Stories Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist candidate, won Iran’s presidential election in an upset. He has advocated moderate policies and better relations with the West. Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader who just became Britain’s prime minister, is inheriting a sluggish economy. Read more election takeaways. The U.S. economy added 206,000 jobs last month, a strong pace even as job growth has slowed. The unemployment rate rose to 4.1 percent. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, upsetting E.U. officials. After weeks of deadlock, Israeli negotiators traveled to Qatar to restart talks over a cease-fire deal that would end the war in Gaza and free the hostages. Japan scrapped government regulations requiring businesses to use floppy disks for administrative purposes. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. CULTURE CALENDAR By Andrew LaVallee 📺 “The Boyfriend” (Tuesday): Same-sex dating shows are fraught terrain — for every “Are You the One?” Season 8, there is a “Finding Prince Charming” — but “The Boyfriend,” made in Japan and streaming on Netflix, promises to be different. Nine single men are in one house, where, as Motoko Rich and Kiuko Notoya reported, “Sex rarely comes up, and friendship and self-improvement feature as prominently as romance.” Another global hit, “Terrace House,” is in its DNA, but its vibe also sounds like a lower-drama “Love Island.” This summer, we all deserve a new TV show that’s a little on the gentle side. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist. Mariana Velásquez. By Melissa Clark Limonada It’s July, peak firefly watching in my part of the country, with every grassy patch alight with them. If a firefly-watching party is in your future, or, if you just need an excuse to sit outside in the pinkening dusk, you’ll need something cool to quench your thirst. Gabriella Lewis’s limonada (Brazilian lemonade) is just the thing. Condensed milk (either dairy or coconut) makes it sweet; lime juice keeps it tart; and a whirl in the blender lends a frothy, near-frozen appeal. Although crowd-pleasing and family-friendly as is, adding a shot of cachaca or rum would not be amiss. REAL ESTATE Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Adding color: What’s the easiest way to make any room look better? A vase of fresh flowers. Learn how to arrange them. The Hunt: After a couple traveled around the country in an R.V., they wanted a condo in Washington D.C. Which one did they pick? Play our game. What you get for $550,000: A two-bedroom cottage in Castine, Maine; a one-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op apartment in Washington; or a circa-1900 house in Louisville, Ky. LIVING “The Bear” menswear: The latest season of the FX series has provided style-obsessed viewers with plenty of fodder. In the garden: This botanic garden is determined to bring back heirloom apples that taste like those grown 500 years ago. It won’t be easy. Style outside: See what the rich, famous and fabulous wore at couture week in Paris. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER How to drink more water It’s hot out! Feeling parched? Wirecutter’s experts have some advice for how to actually drink more water. First, keep it in sight. Placing a pretty glass or a carafe within reach — and if you like your water cold, an always-full dispenser in the fridge for quick refills — can keep you sipping all day long. For on-the-go hydration, consider investing in a good double-walled tumbler. And if you’re turned off by the blah-ness or the taste of water, try gussying it up with a little carbonation from a soda maker. — Annemarie Conte For expert advice, independent reviews and deals, sign up for Wirecutter’s newsletter, The Recommendation. GAME OF THE WEEK Danielle Collins in her match on Thursday. Andrej Isakovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Wimbledon: American women are making their presence felt on the grass courts of the All England Club. Danielle Collins kicks things off for the U.S. contingent, facing Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil at 8 a.m. Eastern today. Collins, 30, announced she would retire after this season, and has since gone on a tear, winning two tournaments and reaching the finals of another. Two of Collins’s Olympics teammates, Coco Gauff and Emma Navarro, play tomorrow — though, unfortunately for American fans, they’re facing one another. And Madison Keys is still in it, as well: Tomorrow she faces Jasmine Paolini of Italy, who reached the French Open final last month. Matches air on ESPN networks. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were punctuate and unacceptance. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misstated the nationality of the tennis player Andy Murray. He is Scottish, not English. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 8, 2024 Author Members Posted July 8, 2024 July 7, 2024 Good morning. Today, Alexandra Alter explores a booming corner of the book world. We’re also covering President Biden, the Iranian election and electric Ferraris. At the Ripped Bodice bookstore in Brooklyn. Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times Love is blooming By Alexandra Alter I cover the literary world and the publishing business. There’s a boom in romance bookstores. More than 20 of them have sprung up around the United States in the past few years — up from just two in 2020 — and more are on the way. They have quirky names like the Ripped Bodice, Tropes & Trifles, Love’s Sweet Arrow, and Kiss & Tale. They’re sprinkled across the country, from Alaska to Maine. They’re largely owned and operated by women, and have become vibrant community hubs for romance fans. As a reporter who covers publishing, I’ve been following the soaring sales for romance, which is by far the top-selling fiction genre. But the arrival of brick-and-mortar romance stores struck me as something new, and surprising. For a story in The Times, I visited romance stores in South Florida and Brooklyn, and talked to booksellers, publishers and fans of the genre, to find out why romance bookstores are suddenly thriving. How readers fell for romance Romance writers and their fans point out that, about a decade ago, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for the genre in independent bookstores. Even though romance has long been a major moneymaker for publishers, the literary world tended to look down on it as frothy and unserious, or worse, as smut. Rebecca Zanetti told me that after she started publishing paranormal romance in 2011, it was hard for her to book a signing at a store, even though her novels were best sellers. “Back when I started out, you’d go into a small local bookstore and they might not even have a romance section, and if I said I wrote romance, they weren’t interested,” Zanetti said. The current romance craze traces to the early days of the pandemic, when millions of people were stuck at home, bored and anxious, and rediscovered their love of reading. Book sales spiked in 2020 and 2021, and romance in particular saw a steep and sustained rise. Its appeal during times of turmoil and uncertainty is obvious: Romance novels offer comfort and escape, and the stories often land on what fans call an “H.E.A.” — a Happily Ever After. Many who turned to romance during the pandemic seem to have kept up the habit. Print sales of romance books more than doubled in the last few years, from 18 million copies in 2020 to 39 million in 2023. On her most recent tour, Zanetti had events at three different romance bookstores in Southern California. And she said a new one — called It’s A Love Story — had just opened in her hometown, Hayden, Idaho. Looking for love stories. Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times Judgment-free zones The new crop of romance bookstores look and feel different from your typical local independent shop. They carry thousands of books in every conceivable romantic subgenre — historical, L.G.B.T.Q., young adult, romantic suspense, supernatural, romantasy, sports-themed romance — and many carry a wide selection of self-published novels that mainstream booksellers don’t stock. Some customers I spoke to said that they loved being able to shop without feeling judged for their tastes, and that booksellers were happy to steer them toward whatever they fancy: secret billionaire romance, B.D.S.M. erotica, Sapphic vampire romance, polyamorous hockey romance. A lot of the stores have an unabashedly feminine aesthetic. They are heavy on pink and floral motifs, with bright signs and merchandise that riff on familiar romance tropes — enemies to lovers, forced proximity, forbidden love, secret identity, fake relationships. They’ve become hubs for romance fans, not just to buy books but also to gather for book clubs, writing workshops, trivia contests and cheekily themed craft nights. Melissa Saavedra, owner of Steamy Lit in Deerfield Beach, Fla., said that even though romance sales were soaring, fans and writers still needed dedicated spaces and more recognition from the publishing world. “Even though it is the best-selling genre in fiction,” Saavedra told me, “we still have to fight tooth and nail for people to respect the genre.” THE LATEST NEWS Politics President Biden in Wisconsin. Tom Brenner for The New York Times President Biden has overcome personal tragedy and political odds in his career. That resilience now risks looking like blind defiance in the face of questions about his candidacy, Katie Rogers writes. Numerous officials, lawmakers and strategists increasingly see Biden’s candidacy as unsustainable and question his ability to win, according to interviews with dozens of Democrats. Donald Trump’s selection process for a running mate has created a roster of Republicans with the potential to lead the ticket in the 2028 election. International In Rafah, in southern Gaza, during a supervised visit. Adam Goldman/The New York Times Stillness and flattened homes: On a visit to Rafah, in southern Gaza, supervised by the Israeli military, The Times saw destruction and the limits of Israel’s strategy in Gaza. In Ukraine, the shooting of an unarmed, wounded Russian soldier is one of several episodes that have unsettled the Chosen Company, a unit of international volunteer troops. Masoud Pezeshkian — the reformist candidate who won Iran’s presidential election — wants to ease relations with the West and end sanctions. His powers are limited. After deadly protests in Kenya, dozens of activists say they were abducted by armed men. Some are still missing. Voters in France are casting their ballots in the final round of snap legislative elections. The results could force President Emmanuel Macron to govern alongside far-right opponents. Business In Maranello, Italy. Maurizio Fiorino for The New York Times Despite slowing growth in electric vehicle sales, Ferrari is increasing its investment as it tries to reach a new consumer: the wealthy environmentalist. Nearly 75 percent of shops operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City subway stations are vacant, creating a sense of urban decay for travelers. Other Big Stories In Malvern, Pa. Hannah Yoon for The New York Times Middle schoolers in Pennsylvania, impersonating their teachers, posted racist and homophobic videos to TikTok in the first known mass attack of its kind in the U.S. Over a million people in Texas are under a hurricane warning as Tropical Storm Beryl makes its way up the Gulf of Mexico. Khyree Jackson, who was recently drafted by the Minnesota Vikings, died in a car crash at 24. THE SUNDAY DEBATE If Biden leaves the race, should Vice President Kamala Harris be the nominee instead? Yes. Harris is already Biden’s heir apparent, making her an easy choice. “Independent voters might reasonably conclude that she would neither nod off in critical meetings nor erect a sign outside the Oval Office reading ‘Bribes Accepted Here,’” Paul Waldman writes for MSNBC. No. Harris has never been a strong candidate and lacks a broad political base. “Two days before Biden announced that she was his choice back in 2020, he was considering Gretchen Whitmer. Why he embraced Harris is a mystery,” The Washington Post’s David Ignatius writes. FROM OPINION Europe needs to stop relying on the U.S. military and invest in its own defense, Farah Stockman writes. Here are columns by Ross Douthat and Maureen Dowd on Biden. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Cooling off. Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters Frozen balloons and “marshmallow suits”: This is how athletes are preparing for what could be the hottest Olympics yet. Memories: Fifty years ago, Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s family friend was taken at gunpoint on Long Island. She explores why the kidnapping and its aftermath still haunt her. Health: Gastrointestinal issues are a common but overlooked symptom of Covid. Responses: The Times asked readers for their favorite pizza places. Their responses included spots in Kyoto, Japan, and Kathmandu, Nepal. Robot friends: New York officials believe a robotic companion could help older residents feel less alone. Vows: They found chemistry when she picked him to be her ice dance partner. Lives Lived: Yoshihiro Uchida was a longtime San Jose State University coach who helped establish judo as one of the most popular martial arts in America. He was widely regarded as the best college judo coach in history. He died at 104. BOOKS Ricardo Tomás; Photos, via Getty Images Essay: Nearly 2,400 years ago, Plato worried that stories could corrupt susceptible minds. Moral panics over fiction are still common. A guide: Ismail Kadare, a prolific Albanian author who offered a window into the psychology of oppression, died this past week at 88. See a list of books that best represent his work. Sign up: Starting tomorrow, the Books team will begin releasing a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Our editors’ picks: “Triumph of the Yuppies,” an exploration of why America fell in love with finance while inequality skyrocketed in the 1980s, and four other books. Times best sellers: “Resurrection,” the latest novel by Danielle Steel, makes a first appearance on the hardcover fiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Try a beloved Palestinian dessert. Explore history with these podcasts. Choose the right vacation tour group. Detangle your hair with this brush. Get reliable Wi-Fi in any home with this gear. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For A NATO summit in Washington begins on Tuesday. Alec Baldwin’s trial in New Mexico defending against charges of involuntary manslaughter is expected to start on Tuesday with jury selection. The Wimbledon women’s singles final is on Saturday. Meal Plan Chris Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. Every year, Emily Weinstein seizes on a single ingredient as her culinary song of the summer. This year, it’s watermelon. In the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, she suggests cutting it up for chaat, salads with feta or tomatoes, or popping it into a blender for a frozen daiquiri. Emily also suggests making grilled tahini-honey chicken thighs and basil and tomato fried rice. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was biotech. Can you put eight historical events — including the creation of Velcro, summer camp and the statues on Easter Island — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 9, 2024 Author Members Posted July 9, 2024 July 8, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleague Jim Tankersley is writing about some good news for the U.S. economy. We’re also covering President Biden, Israeli anti-government protests and Wimbledon. —David Leonhardt Downtown Scranton, Pa., in September 2019. Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Comeback story By Jim Tankersley I cover economic policy at the White House. America’s so-called “left behind” counties — the once-great manufacturing centers and other distressed places that struggled mightily at the start of this century — have staged a remarkable comeback. In the last three years, they added jobs and new businesses at their fastest pace since Bill Clinton was president. The turnaround has shocked experts. “This is the kind of thing that we couldn’t have even dreamed about five or six years ago,” said John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank that studies economic distress in the U.S. His group is releasing a report today that details the recovery of left-behind counties. Those counties span the nation but are largely concentrated in the Southeast and Midwest. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how they defied recent trends — including a particularly grim stretch under Donald Trump — to rebound so strongly from the pandemic recession. I’ll also show the one indicator that helps explain why voters there might not reward President Biden for the good news that has happened on his watch. Out of the recession The last two decades were economically cruel for the 1,000 or so left-behind counties in the U.S. — places like Bay County, Mich.; Dyer County, Tenn.; and Lackawanna County, Pa., home to Scranton, Biden’s birthplace. These counties added jobs and people far more slowly than the nation as a whole. Some lost factories to foreign competitors like China. Many lost residents, including educated young workers, as economic activity concentrated in big cities like New York and San Francisco. In Dyersburg, Tenn. Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to revitalize those areas. In his first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, the national economy was strong. Unemployment was low. Wages were rising. But left-behind counties saw few of those benefits. In 2018, a colleague and I noted that left-behind counties that voted for Trump had not seen any net job gains the previous year. The new Economic Innovation Group analysis shows that, in terms of job growth, left-behind counties experienced three of their four worst years since the Great Recession on Trump’s watch. The pandemic recession hit those counties harder than the rest of the country, just as the Great Recession did. But their recovery has been much stronger this time. Left-behind counties added jobs five times faster in the first three years of the Biden administration than they did in the first three years of the Trump administration. The flow of residents leaving them for better opportunities slowed. Perhaps most strikingly, they have shared in a new-business boom that has swept the country since the pandemic. That didn’t happen after the Great Recession. From 2009 to 2016, for example, Bay County, Mich., lost 8 percent of its business establishments. Since 2020, it has gained 12 percent. In Bay City, Mich., in March 2020. Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times The political fallout Researchers say it’s too soon to know exactly what’s changed, but there are theories. The pandemic disrupted some long-running patterns of where Americans live and work; some people appear to have fled cities like New York for remote jobs — or for the chance to start a new company — in less expensive areas. Under both Trump and Biden, the government lavished Americans with pandemic assistance, like direct checks for lower-income and middle-class workers and forgivable loans for business owners. Many people saved that money, and they may have used it to start businesses and create jobs in left-behind counties. Whatever the explanation, though, Biden probably should not expect voters in those areas to reward him electorally. Many left-behind counties are solidly Republican, or have moved to the right since Trump first ran. And for all their job and business gains, left-behind counties were hurt by high inflation in the early Biden years. In 2021 and 2022, the typical household income in those counties fell, after adjusting for rising prices. Those price increases have left voters unhappy with Biden on the economy, no matter where they live. THE LATEST NEWS Politics President Biden at a church service in Philadelphia. Tom Brenner for The New York Times A half-dozen top House Democrats told colleagues in a private call that it was time for President Biden to end his campaign, and discussed how to use their collective influence to convince him. Biden is starting a crucial week. He has a NATO summit in Washington and his team has promised that he will hold a solo news conference, his first in Washington since November 2022. He spoke briefly at a church in Philadelphia yesterday, reading from prepared remarks. Some allies called on him to do more: Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said he should “show the country he is still the old Joe Biden.” Biden’s campaign strategy was to raise questions about Donald Trump’s ability to be president. That has boomeranged, Reid Epstein writes. The president’s aides face scrutiny about whether they shielded him from displaying signs of aging, The Washington Post reports. French Election Supporters of the left-wing alliance. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times Left-wing candidates surged in the second round of France’s national election, upending expectations that the right-wing National Rally would win control of the government. Without a clear majority, though, the country faces a political deadlock. France’s left wing united to keep the far right from power. Its strategy appeared to work. It’s not yet clear who will be the next prime minister. Read more takeaways. More International News Israelis held nationwide anti-government protests, calling for a cease-fire and the return of hostages. In Nepal, flooding and landslides killed at least 15 people. Officials warned of further heavy rains and said the death toll could rise. In Sri Lanka, climate change and contaminated water have combined to create an epidemic of kidney disease in young men. Rising heat and profit seekers are making the hajj more dangerous. An industry profits from unregistered pilgrims. In Japan, the yen is plunging. So is the defense budget. Business Paramount agreed to merge with another entertainment company, Skydance, a deal that would usher in a new era for CBS, Nickelodeon and several major film franchises. Boeing will plead guilty to a felony charge over two fatal crashes of 737 Max jets. Other Big Stories In Galveston, Texas. Jennifer Reynolds/The Galveston County Daily News, via Associated Press Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas as a Category 1 storm. See its likely path. In California, a wildfire that erupted in the mountains of Santa Barbara County has burned thousands of acres, prompting an evacuation order. Opinions Some business leaders think Trump will be good for the economy. On the contrary, his agenda poses enormous economic risks, write Robert Rubin, a former Treasury secretary, and Kenneth Chenault, a former C.E.O. of American Express. There are so many television shows about characters in endless labyrinths. It reflects how many of us are feeling politically: stuck, Hillary Kelly argues. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss a presidential fitness test. Here are columns by David French on originalism and Ezra Klein on a “mini” Democratic primary. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Jack Teich in the driveway of his home in Westchester County, N.Y. Dina Litovsky for The New York Times Kidnapping: A writer’s family friend was kidnapped and held for ransom. She writes about what came after — how he lived the rest of his life. Abercrombie: The mall store has succeeded in a rebrand, The Cut reports. It’s now even selling wedding guest outfits. “MaXXXine”: The director of the “X” trilogy, Ti West, is turning Hollywood toward horror. The T List: Jenna Lyons shared her favorite beauty products, including the eyeliner she uses. Metropolitan Diary: Surprise guest star. Lives Lived: Jon Landau was an Oscar-winning producer who helped the director James Cameron bring to life three of the highest-grossing films of all time: “Titanic” and the two “Avatar” movies. He died at 63. SPORTS Coco Gauff Adam Vaughan/EPA, via Shutterstock Wimbledon surprise: Coco Gauff, the No. 2 seed, lost in straight sets while publicly feuding with her coach. M.L.B.: The league announced All-Star rosters. It included Paul Skenes, a pitching phenom who has had just two months in the major leagues. W.N.B.A.: Angel Reese surpassed Candace Parker’s record for consecutive double-doubles, making her 13th in a row just 20 games into her pro career. ARTS AND IDEAS Caroline Li and Colin Wang Tag Christof for The New York Times Across the U.S., young people faced with a difficult housing market are finding creative ways to save on living costs. One workaround: Moving in with a partner early on in a relationship. According to one survey, 80 percent of Gen Z respondents said that finances or logistics contributed to their decision to move in with their partner. As one might imagine, many of these relationships don’t survive the move. More on culture Canadian author Alice Munro in 2013. Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press The Nobel laureate Alice Munro’s daughter said that her stepfather sexually abused her at age 9, and that her mother stayed with him after she learned of it. Ewan Mitchell plays the fearsome Aemond Targaryen in “House of the Dragon.” He’s still getting used to the attention that comes with starring in the “Game of Thrones” universe. The youthful Brooklyn jewelry brand Catbird — known for its dainty designs — is expanding across America, 20 years after it opened its first store in Williamsburg. Some South Asian women remember being embarrassed of their families’ hair oiling traditions. Now, beauty brands and celebrities are embracing the practice. Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial over the fatal shooting on the “Rust” movie set is expected to begin this week. Read what to know. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Toss stir-fried zucchini with cold noodles for this easy summer dinner. Use a good milk frother. Garnish your homemade cocktails. Clean your luggage. Make great cold brew at home. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were defiling, fielding, fledging and fledgling. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 10, 2024 Author Members Posted July 10, 2024 July 9, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering a potential Kamala Harris candidacy — as well as NATO, Beryl in Texas and camel racing. Vice President Kamala Harris Kenny Holston/The New York Times Next in line The debate over President Biden’s fitness for another term has thrust Vice President Kamala Harris into the spotlight, and I want to use today’s newsletter to consider what kind of nominee she might be. Harris’s supporters frequently argue that criticisms of her political skills stem from racism and sexism. And it’s certainly true that racism and sexism infect American life and affect American politics. But this argument can nonetheless do a Harris a disservice. Politicians often get better at their jobs, and become stronger candidates, by listening to criticism and addressing their weaknesses. Barack Obama became less professorial and long-winded, for example. Biden and Ronald Reagan each became somewhat more careful about telling exaggerated stories. George H.W. Bush and Al Gore tried to loosen up. If Harris and her aides buy the notion that most criticism of her merely reflects her race and sex — which are immutable qualities — they will lose an opportunity to help her become more effective in the event that she becomes the Democratic nominee. For now, it’s unclear whether Biden’s critics will succeed in pushing him out of the race. Yesterday, he pushed back aggressively. Yet the possibility remains strong enough that Harris — who would immediately become the favorite to replace him — is worthy of attention. A successful prosecutor Harris in 2004, when she was district attorney in San Francisco. Paul Chinn/, via San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press Both Harris’s biggest strengths and her biggest weaknesses have their roots in her background as a California prosecutor. Let’s start with her strengths. In all, Harris spent more than a quarter-century as a local and state prosecutor, and she compiled an accomplished record — on crime reduction, consumer protection and more. Prosecutors succeed by making more persuasive arguments than their opponents in a combative setting. So it makes sense that Harris’s signature moments as a national figure have occurred in similar settings. In the Senate, she developed a reputation as a sharp questioner of witnesses, including Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. During the 2020 presidential campaign, she won her debate against Vice President Mike Pence, polls showed. Four years earlier, by contrast, Pence beat Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate. In a future debate against Trump, Harris seems like a much stronger option than Biden — and probably stronger than some other potential Democratic nominees. It’s easy to imagine her hammering Trump for his role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade and his lawless approach to the presidency. These criticisms could then become central to a presidential campaign that she ran largely against Trump. Biden had hoped to run such a campaign, as my colleague Reid Epstein points out, but Biden’s jarringly weak debate performance has made that much harder. The vision thing Harris’s background also helps explain her biggest shortcomings as a national politician. She has repeatedly struggled to lay out her vision for the country and explain to voters how she would improve their lives. Politicians who’ve risen to prominence as governors or members of Congress spend years honing such messages. Prosecutors don’t. “She’s a very poor communicator when the parameters are quite wide,” Elaina Plott Calabro, a writer at The Atlantic who spent months profiling Harris, recently said on The Ezra Klein Show. The evidence is abundant. Harris’s 2019 book, “The Truths We Hold,” was even more laden with platitudes than most books by politicians. Once the campaign began, she sometimes seemed unable to describe own policies, especially on Medicare, and her poll numbers were so weak that she dropped out before the Iowa caucus. As vice president, she has made meandering statements mocked by both conservative media and “The Daily Show.” Part of the problem may be that Harris has rarely had to win over the swing voters who decide presidential elections. She comes from California, where Democrats dominate. In her only Senate campaign, no Republican even qualified for the general election; Harris beat another Democrat in the final round. She can seem more comfortable speaking the language of elite liberalism than making the arguments that help Democrats win tough races — like emphasizing pocketbook issues, questioning global trade and praising border security. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator, made a telling comment on CBS News this weekend. Graham predicted that Harris would have the advantage of being a “very vigorous” nominee but the disadvantage of being to Biden’s left and having favored Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. There is one intriguing exception, however: Harris won prosecutor elections in California partly by promising to be tough on crime. She called it “smart on crime.” It was the kind of moderate message that has long helped Democrats (including Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton) win elections. If she can persuade voters that she is less of a San Francisco liberal than her critics claim, she would become a more formidable presidential candidate. The bottom line In a traditional primary, I would consider Harris to be an underdog against Democrats with more impressive electoral records, like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia. But there will be no traditional primary this summer, even if Biden drops out. Harris would start any informal nomination process with large advantages. And the combination of Biden’s glaring weaknesses with Harris’s strengths suggests that she would probably be a stronger candidate this year than he is. If she gets the chance, she will face a task that few previous presidential nominees have: trying to develop a sharp new political message in the final months before Election Day. Related: Harris is expected to speak in Nevada today, a battleground state. The attention will be intense. More on Biden Biden is defiant. He wrote to congressional Democrats reiterating that he would stay in the race and dared critics to “challenge me at the convention” in remarks on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Biden told nervous fund-raisers and donors to focus on beating Trump. “We’re done talking about the debate,” he said. Still, some congressional Democrats expressed skepticism about his candidacy. Representative Adam Smith of Washington said Biden should step aside. Others in Congress are supporting the president, including senators Bernie Sanders and John Fetterman. The Washington Post has a list. Black Democrats are also rallying around him. A Parkinson’s expert visited the White House eight times in eight months, including at least one meeting with Biden’s physician. The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, dodged questions about Biden’s health and refused to talk about the Parkinson’s expert’s visits. The briefing room devolved into shouting. More on the race Whitmer, Michigan’s governor, said she wouldn’t run for president this year even if Biden stepped aside, calling such speculation “a distraction.” Trump backed a draft Republican Party platform that softens the party’s position on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage but is more nationalistic. Biden’s campaign released an ad blaming Trump for the end of Roe v. Wade, part of a $50 million ad blitz in battleground states. THE LATEST NEWS NATO Summit Dozens of world leaders are gathering in Washington today for a NATO meeting, celebrating the alliance’s 75th anniversary. The summit was planned to project confidence in NATO. But uncertainty about the U.S. election looms over the gathering. Trump’s potential return is a challenge for the alliance’s incoming secretary general, Mark Rutte. Read more about him. War in Ukraine Rescuers clear rubble from the site of the attack in Kyiv. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times A Russian missile destroyed Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, in Kyiv. The strike was part of a nationwide bombardment by Russia that killed at least 38 people. U.S. officials believe Russia is unlikely to make significant gains in the coming months, as its poorly trained troops face Ukrainian defenses reinforced by Western weapons. Weather Hurricane Beryl caused flooding and damage on the coast of Texas. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times Tropical Storm Beryl hit Houston, killing at least four people and knocking out power for more than two million customers across Texas. A strange side-effect in Houston: The call of Gulf Coast toads rang out from flooded streets. A heat wave in the Western U.S. is breaking temperature records: It reached 124 degrees in Palm Springs, Calif., and 120 in Las Vegas. Climate disasters have driven up home insurance costs. But certain parts of the country — especially the middle — pay far more than others. (This tool lets you see home insurance costs in your area.) Other Big Stories In Mexico City. Juan Arredondo for The New York Times Thousands of miles, eight countries: See photos that capture the journey of one family trying to get to the U.S. A $1 billion gift from Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University will allow most of the school’s medical students to attend for free. Columbia University punished three deans for exchanging text messages that school officials said “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.” Autistic children appear to carry distinct markers in their gut bacteria, a study found, offering a possible means for more objective diagnoses. Opinions The only way to take Biden out of the race without giving Trump an advantage is to give voters a chance to choose a new candidate, James Carville writes. Europe and the U.S. see Ukraine through the prism of two world wars. They need to look beyond those analogies, Jaroslaw Kuisz and Karolina Wigura write. Here are columns by Paul Krugman on Biden’s candidacy and Jamelle Bouie on Trump. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS In Portugal. Matilde Viegas “Grief literate”: How a death doula with a Baroque mansion in Portugal throws a dinner party. Handcycling: An author lost the use of his legs 12 years ago. This spring, he rode 50 miles through the high desert. Health: Do fiber supplements offer the same benefits as fiber from food? Ask Vanessa: “Are you ever too old for a bikini?” Lives Lived: Jane McAlevey was a fierce labor organizer and scholar who trained thousands of workers across the globe to take charge of their unions and fight economic inequality. She died at 59. SPORTS Basketball: Team USA is raving about 17-year-old Cooper Flagg, who will play at Duke this fall. Olympics: The United States also named its men’s soccer roster for the Paris Games. Wimbledon: Novak Djokovic accused the crowd of “disrespect” during his win over Holger Rune. ARTS AND IDEAS Some men are opting for thigh-baring shorts. Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times Short shorts have become a popular summertime staple for men. The trend started, in part, thanks to widely circulated photos of the Irish actor Paul Mescal sporting micro inseams. Another reason for their popularity: Women are swooning over them on social media. Read more about the rise in inseams. More on culture In Saudi Arabia. Saudi Camel Racing Federation The hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz has made a name for himself in Saudi Arabia’s camel-racing scene. A new documentary about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders displays their preparation for performing and the unfairness of their industry. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Use all your fresh vegetables in this pasta. Send your kids to college with these items. Protect your face with good sunscreens. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were annihilation and inhalation. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —David Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 11, 2024 Author Members Posted July 11, 2024 July 10, 2024 By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering the Democrats’ indecision on President Biden — as well as Israel, Beryl and a slap fighting league. President Biden Tom Brenner for The New York Times The status quo Democratic politicians seemed to be falling in line behind President Biden yesterday even as more polling showed his campaign to be in trouble. In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain the latest developments and polling. We will also give you a selection of commentary — both pro-Biden and anti-Biden — that we found helpful. The view on the Hill Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times If Democrats are going to persuade Biden to quit the race, it will probably require a concerted effort from the party’s congressional leaders. And many of those leaders remain skeptical of Biden’s ability to win in November, given voters’ deep concerns about his age. “Behind closed doors, there was a consensus forming among the members in the toughest House seats that Democrats would have a much better shot of winning the majority with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,” our colleague Annie Karni reported from Capitol Hill. Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey yesterday became the seventh House Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw. “The stakes are too high — and the threat is too real — to stay silent,” she said. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said that Biden was on a path to losing in a landslide. Yet after lunchtime meetings to discuss the situation, Democratic leaders seemed unable to agree about how to proceed. They are nervous about sticking with Biden — and nervous about the chaos and uncertainty of choosing another nominee. “There is no consensus on what to do,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, told us. For now, most Democrats have chosen to defer to Biden, and he has made clear that he wants to run for another term. Dozens of Congress members have publicly backed him this week. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries — the Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House — continue to support him. “I’m with Joe,” Schumer repeatedly said yesterday. Still, Carl said that Biden’s support remained fragile. Further signs of aging — like those he showed in the debate two weeks ago — could unravel that support quickly. The public’s view The polls suggests that Democrats are right to be nervous. It might seem early in the presidential campaign, with Election Day four months away. But polling by July of a presidential election year usually predicts the winner. Biden led Donald Trump four years ago. Hillary Clinton led Trump eight years ago (and she won the popular vote). Barack Obama led the July polls in both 2008 and 2012. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both led in the summers of their re-election campaigns, and both won. There are examples of candidates who have overcome weak summer polling numbers, including George W. Bush in 2004. But Biden today looks to be in a worse position than any recent come-from-behind winner. “There are no precedents in recent memory for presidents to have approval ratings like Biden’s who then go on to win re-election,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, said in a recent interview with The New Yorker. Consider the following: Biden trails in every swing state tracked by The Times’s polling averages: Source: Polling averages by The New York Times as of July 9 Democratic Senate candidates are running well ahead of Biden in every swing state with a Senate race. In Wisconsin, for example, a post-debate poll by AARP found Senator Tammy Baldwin leading her Republican challenger by five points even as Biden trailed Trump by six points. This pattern suggests that voters are more dissatisfied with Biden personally than with his party and that a different nominee might fare better. Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration staff member, pointed out on social media that these results also suggest the polls are not skewed against Democrats. Biden supporters sometimes point to Harry Truman’s 1948 comeback victory as inspiration. But Truman won partly because the polls were misleading and underestimated overall Democratic support that year. (Here’s a closer look at polling misses, from 2020.) Polls continue to suggest that Biden’s age is a central reason for the dissatisfaction with him. In a recent Wall Street Journal survey, 80 percent of voters said he was too old for a second term — similar to the findings of polls by CBS News and The Times. Commentary Biden has time to recover, and the potential alternative nominees all have downsides, Jonathan Last of The Bulwark writes. Read his case for Biden. “If we’re going to judge simply by the record of the administration thus far, I would say that, yeah, he has the capacity to govern,” Times Opinion’s Jamelle Bouie argues. Biden is wrongly casting the “regular folk” as being on his side against the party’s elite, Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, argues. Polling shows that most voters don’t want him to serve another term. Putting personal ambition before your country’s interests is supposed to be Donald Trump’s thing, not Biden’s, Bret Stephens writes in Times Opinion. Democrats’ willingness to stick with Biden suggests that they don’t see a second Trump term as the civic emergency that it is, Jonathan Chait writes in New York magazine. More election coverage At the NATO summit in Washington, Biden forcefully declared that the alliance is “more powerful than ever.” At a Florida rally, Trump mocked Democrats’ infighting as “a full-scale breakdown.” He challenged Biden to another debate and to a golf game. Vice President Kamala Harris, campaigning for Biden in Nevada, cast the election as a choice between “freedom, compassion and rule of law” and “chaos, fear and hate.” Biden has blasted the big donors who want him to withdraw as the moneyed elite. If he stays in, he may have to rely more on small donors. Biden, in his defiance, appears to be trying to run out the clock and make it harder for Democrats to replace him, Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg write. THE LATEST NEWS More on Politics At Mar-a-Lago. Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Since Trump left office, Mar-a-Lago has transformed from the host of society galas to a hub for the hard right. Two Democratic senators asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into Justice Clarence Thomas over possible violations of federal ethics and tax laws. Israel-Hamas War Outside a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images An Israeli airstrike near a school building being used as a shelter by Palestinians killed at least 25 people in southern Gaza, the health ministry there said. Israel said that the strike was targeting a Hamas member who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks. Hezbollah launched rockets into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing two people, in response to an apparent Israeli strike in Syria. Israel’s defense minister approved a plan to start drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the military, after the Supreme Court ruled against their exemption. In Gaza, organized looters are attacking aid convoys in search of smuggled cigarettes. The outgoing chief of Israel’s Central Command, which is responsible for military forces in the West Bank, denounced Jewish settler violence and the government’s policies there. More International News Venezuelans abroad now find it almost impossible to register to vote in this month’s presidential election. Many left because they oppose the autocratic president. A Russian court accused Aleksei Navalny’s widow, who fled the country in 2021, of “participating in an extremist community” and ordered her arrest if she returns. In Ukraine, the Russian military is learning how to reduce the effectiveness of Western high-tech weapons, The Wall Street Journal reports. Other Big Stories Thieves have stripped copper wire out of thousands of U.S. streetlights, taking advantage of increased demand for metals. Swaths of Houston are still without power after Hurricane Beryl. See images from The A.P. of the destruction left by the hurricane. Prosecutors in Manhattan said they were pursuing further allegations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein ahead of a fresh trial. The federal government barred an anonymous messaging app that markets itself as a “safe space for teens” from offering services to minors. Opinions American support and the threat from Russia have made NATO stronger, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, writes. Many Gen Z Iranians already see the Islamic Republic as irredeemable. The election of a moderate president is unlikely to satisfy them, Holly Dagres writes. Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on Trump and Biden and Thomas Edsall on the Supreme Court and the election. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS Tim Bushe’s topiary creations. Andrew Testa for The New York Times Meet Tim Bushe: He’s turned the hedges in his London neighborhood into a menagerie. Take the quiz: What’s a sundress, and what isn’t? In the cart: Your grocery receipts can say a lot about you, and about America’s relationship to food. People across the U.S. let The Times take a look. A deadly sin? More tourists are interacting with sloths, and experts are concerned. Lives Lived: Richard Goldstein was a trailblazer in mapping other planets, pioneering techniques that scientists now use to measure melting glaciers on Earth. He died at 97. SPORTS Copa América: Argentina defeated Canada to advance to the finals. Lionel Messi scored his first goal of the tournament. Euros: Spain is in the final after beating France. Its first goal came from Lamine Yamal, 16, the youngest scorer in the championship’s history. Wimbledon: Jannik Sinner, the men’s No. 1 seed, lost in five sets to Daniil Medvedev. Oranje: The best party at this year’s Euros? Wherever the Dutch fans are. ARTS AND IDEAS At a slap fighting contest. Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times Dana White, the president of U.F.C., is betting on a new venture: a slap fighting league called Power Slap. White has helped to establish rules and protocols, but the Brain Injury Association of America has called for the competition to be banned. “There will be deaths from this,” one doctor said. More on culture Israel’s official Holocaust memorial is taking new steps to preserve its collection of artifacts and testimony. Shani Lechan makes undetectable human hair wigs that are worn by neighborhood moms and supermodels including Naomi Campbell. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Armando Rafael for The New York Times Serve slow-cooker BBQ chicken between buns, with pickles and slaw. Stock your freezer for summer with the best ice cream sandwiches. Buy a snorkel set for your trip. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was bronzing. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —David and Ian P.S. Does America’s largest health care company control your doctor’s office? The Times wants to hear from patients and providers about medical practices affiliated with Optum, part of UnitedHealth Group. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 12, 2024 Author Members Posted July 12, 2024 July 11, 2024 By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We’re covering the history of White House health cover-ups — as well as the NATO summit, the Olympics and young priests. President Biden at the White House. Doug Mills/The New York Times A long history The scandal is almost as old as the United States itself: The president has a health problem that he and his aides try to shroud from the public. Only later — years later, in some cases — does the severity become clear. The list of cover-ups is remarkably long. After a mysterious illness caused James Madison to miss meetings with senators in 1813, he blamed a watch malfunction. During Chester Arthur’s only term as president, he hid a kidney ailment that likely contributed to his death a year after he left office. Grover Cleveland’s aides lied about a surgery in 1893 — performed on a friend’s yacht — to excise a tumor in his mouth. Woodrow Wilson spent his last year and a half as president debilitated by strokes while his wife and doctor secretly carried out some presidential duties. Franklin D. Roosevelt concealed the ailments that led to his death months after he won the 1944 election. Dwight Eisenhower’s doctor initially described his heart attack in 1955 as “a digestive upset.” John F. Kennedy’s aides lied about his Addison’s disease. Ronald Reagan’s administration hid the extent of his injuries after he was shot in 1981 and the signs of his dementia in later years. Donald Trump misled the public about the severity of his Covid illness. President Biden and his aides have become part of this presidential tradition. They have minimized and managed his public appearances to hide his age-related decline, according to reporting by The Times and other news organizations. Even as he has become confused or lost the thread of conversations more often in recent months, he and his aides have insisted he remained sharp and vigorous. The truth seems quite different. The actor George Clooney wrote in a Times Opinion essay yesterday that he noticed Biden’s struggles at a fund-raiser Clooney co-hosted three weeks ago. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney wrote. “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” Pelosi’s coded message What happens next? The Democratic Party remained in a crisis of indecision yesterday, but there was some movement away from Biden. Nancy Pelosi — the former speaker of the House, who commands widespread respect in the party and is a longtime Biden ally — made cryptic but pointed remarks on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” she said, ignoring his insistence that he was running. “Time is running short.” Nancy Pelosi Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Yesterday evening, Peter Welch of Vermont became the first senator to call on Biden to step aide. In the House, Pat Ryan of New York and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon became the eighth and ninth Democrats to urge Biden to quit the race. Democrats have no formal way to deny Biden the nomination, given his victories in this year’s primaries. Instead, senior figures in the party would need to persuade him that he could not win or pressure him through public statements and withheld campaign donations. Some Democrats continue to believe that a weakened Biden is a stronger nominee than Vice President Kamala Harris or the winner of an unknown process to replace him. Privately, though, many Democratic officials say they now think Biden is too wounded to beat Trump. An article in The Atlantic, by Tim Alberta, reported that Trump’s top campaign officials consider Biden an almost ideal opponent because of his image of weakness. If Biden manages to stay in the race and win, there will be at least partial precedent. Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan all won elections — and even had major accomplishments — after they misled the public about their health. If Biden drops out, he will become part of a different tradition — presidents whose condition was too serious or obvious to survive their attempts at spin. In 1884, some of Arthur’s allies tried to have him renominated even as he dealt with Bright’s disease, his kidney ailment. In 1920, a debilitated Wilson expressed a desire to run for a third term. Neither Arthur nor Wilson ended up on the ballot, however. From the archives: Three months after Arthur left office, The Times reported that he had Bright’s disease. You can read the story, from 1885. More on Biden Trump suggested he wanted Biden to remain his opponent. “I hope that he can carry it on,” Trump said, adding, “We planned for him.” George Stephanopoulos, the ABC anchor who interviewed Biden last week, apologized after he was secretly recorded saying that he didn’t believe Biden could serve four more years. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California ruled out running against Harris if Biden drops out and Democrats have an open convention this year. Democrats are weeks away from formally naming their presidential nominee. With questions abounding about Biden’s candidacy, read a few ways the process could unfold. NBC News will interview Biden on Monday. More on the election Some Trump allies were behind Project 2025, a conservative policy plan for the next Republican administration that has outraged Democrats and features extreme executive-branch overhauls. Read what to know. In a speech in Dallas, Harris sharpened her attacks on Trump, saying that he would deport peaceful protesters and terminate the Constitution in a second term. New Hampshire has voted for the Democratic nominee for president for two decades. Some frustrated voters are considering alternatives, a recent poll showed. THE LATEST NEWS NATO Summit NATO leaders in Washington. Eric Lee/The New York Times NATO accused China of supplying Russia with technology for its attacks on Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO allies agreed that Ukraine should have an “irreversible” path to membership in the alliance. The commitment is meant to survive a potential Trump presidency. Some member countries are concerned the U.S. could withdraw under Trump. More on Politics A bipartisan group of senators proposed a bill that would bar lawmakers and their families from buying and selling stocks, NBC News reported. Previous similar efforts have failed. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The articles aren’t likely to advance in the Republican-controlled House. A judge said he was leaning toward dismissing Rudy Giuliani’s request for bankruptcy protection, an outcome that would let creditors pursue lawsuits against Giuliani. The Biden administration said it would impose tariffs on metal imported from Mexico that was partially made in China. Officials said that would close a trade loophole. International In Cairo. Fatma Fahmy for The New York Times Thousands of displaced Palestinians now live in Cairo. They have few job prospects and no way to put their children in local public schools. The Israeli military has urged Palestinians across Gaza City to head south, a sign of renewed fighting meant to crack down on a resurgent Hamas insurgency there. The French government has bused thousands of homeless immigrants out of Paris before the Olympics. Many said they were promised housing, only to wind up on unfamiliar streets. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger withdrew from a West African economic bloc that allows free movement between countries. The grouping had imposed sanctions on all three nations after military coups. Weather In Santa Barbara County, Calif. Daniel Dreifuss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Intense wildfires are burning across California. Read what to know about this fire season. After Hurricane Beryl, power outages have strained Houston’s health care system. Doctors determined that it was unsafe to discharge some patients to homes without air-conditioning, amid a searing heat wave. See a list from The A.P. of heat records broken around the world this year. Other Big Stories Elon Musk is trying to firm up plans for his lifelong goal of reaching Mars. Some SpaceX employees are working on designs and details for what a Martian city could look like. Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter trial began. Prosecutors portrayed the actor as disregarding safety procedures, while the defense said Baldwin didn’t think there would be live rounds on set. New York will ban large hotels from providing guests with tiny plastic bottles of shampoo and soap. Opinions Damon Winter/The New York Times Donald Trump is unfit to lead this country. Voters must see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and reject him, the editorial board writes. Only Senator Chuck Schumer can tell Biden to end his re-election campaign. It could be his biggest leadership test yet, Michelle Cottle writes. Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on Biden’s candidacy. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. MORNING READS At the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee. Nick Hagen for The New York Times Ordination: America’s next generation of Catholic priests looks young, confident and conservative. Justice: Flawed science helped convict a man of murdering his baby. Why is he still in prison? Health: Quitting vaping can be hard. Read some expert tips. Social Q’s: “Why is my brother so angry that I changed tables at his son’s wedding?” Lives Lived: Mary Martin was a Grammy-winning talent scout, manager and record executive who helped start the careers of Leonard Cohen and Emmylou Harris — and introduced Bob Dylan to the Band. She died at 85. SPORTS Euros: England defeated the Netherlands and will advance to the final, against the favorites, Spain. It will be England’s second consecutive Euros final. Copa América: Colombia earned its place in the final, where it will face Argentina. The team beat Uruguay despite playing the second half with only 10 men. U.S. men’s soccer: The national team coach, Gregg Berhalter, was fired after a disappointing Copa América showing. Tennis: Taylor Fritz, the last American in the singles at Wimbledon, lost to a lower-seeded Italian player in a five-set quarterfinal. ARTS AND IDEAS “Sails” by Glenn Kaino. Alex Welsh for The New York Times When the Intuit Dome, the $2 billion home of the Los Angeles Clippers, opens next month, visitors will encounter ambitious works by artists with L.A. connections. See the sculptures, murals and digital installations. More on culture The U.S. gymnasts. GK Elite Sportswear At this summer’s Olympics, Simone Biles and other U.S. gymnasts will be wearing leotards decorated with more than 10,000 crystals. Carol Bongiovi, Jon Bon Jovi’s mother, died at 83. She was a former Marine and Playboy bunny. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Lightly dress this warm potato salad with hot bacon fat and vinegar. Stay cool at home — with or without A.C. — with these tips. Make meals more fun with a lazy Susan. Relieve chapped lips with the best balms. Avoid cooking splatter with a great apron. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was frontman. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —David and Ian Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 14, 2024 Author Members Posted July 14, 2024 July 13, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. Today, we explain Scarlett Johansson’s tips for a happy life — and also give you the latest on President Biden, Alec Baldwin and New York real estate. Thea Traff for The New York Times Intensely present With Melissa Kirsch — the regular writer of our Saturday newsletter — off today, we’re going to turn to another source for some life guidance: Scarlett Johansson. Maureen Dowd, the Times columnist, has just published a profile of Johansson that covers a lot of ground, including how she became one of the top-grossing actors of all time while also confronting both Disney and OpenAI. Despite all this, as Maureen explains, Johansson manages to carve out a surprising amount of normalcy in her life. “She goes to the supermarket,” Colin Jost, the Saturday Night Live star, who’s married to Johansson, said. “She’s just very good at wearing a hat, and she keeps moving.” She spends hours walking around New York in white Hoka sneakers. As I read the profile, I was struck that Johansson also rejects modern normalcy in some important ways. She tries to move more slowly and deliberately, with fewer distractions, than is typical these days. Maureen writes: At a time when everyone always seems one-half there, the other half absorbed by their fiendish little devices, Ms. Johansson is intensely present. She stays off social media; she doesn’t want to share her life with strangers, which gives her mystique in an overexposed world. Her large green eyes stay trained on me for nearly two hours, asking nearly as many questions as she fields. Johansson likes to hang out in Central Park, she said, and she showers “a few times a day.” So on this summer Saturday, when much of the country will be hot and humid, allow me to suggest that you find a way to slow down, too. Read a book (or Maureen’s delightful profile of Johansson). Take a walk — and an extra shower. Enjoy a leisurely last-minute meal with friends. And find a few hours to put away your fiendish little device. It will still be there, with all its sources of entertainment and outrage, when you return. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Alec Baldwin embraced his lawyer on Friday. Pool photo by Ramsay De Give A judge in New Mexico dismissed the manslaughter case against the actor Alec Baldwin, after she found that prosecutors had withheld evidence. Shelley Duvall, one of the biggest film stars of the 1970s, died this week at 75. See her life in photos. “Inside Out 2” is now the highest-grossing Pixar film, surpassing “Incredibles 2.” In “Longlegs,” Nicolas Cage plays a cheery, evil entity behind multiple murders. Read our review. Benji Gregory, who starred as a child in the television series “ALF” from 1986 to 1990, died at 46. “Sorry/Not Sorry,” a movie about the misconduct allegations against Louis C.K., came out. “The film’s bitter punchline is that he’s the one still selling out Madison Square Garden,” the critic Amy Nicholson writes. “Sing Sing,” a prison drama, contains scenes that are both moving and unexpected, the critic Lisa Kennedy writes. Art and Design Louis Kahn designed some of the 20th century’s great buildings. His final sketchbook — which includes ideas for the Roosevelt memorial — has been published. Guillaume Lethière, who was born into slavery, is among France’s most decorated painters. For the first time, a major exhibition provides a full view of his scenes of love and war. Other Big Stories Jack Schlossberg at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Reba Saldanha/Reuters Jack Schlossberg is the only grandson of John F. Kennedy, but he’s perhaps better known for his unusual TikTok videos. Vogue has hired him as a political correspondent. “Oh, Mary!,” a campy comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln, premiered on Broadway this week. Its star, Cole Escola has become an overnight sensation — 17 years after taking up acting. Cigarettes After Sex’s spare, crystalline ballads have become popular on TikTok. New York City is having a “Brat” summer, inspired by Charli XCX. See the latest street style in The Cut. THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election President Biden in Detroit on Friday. Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times President Biden sought to go on offense, criticizing Donald Trump over his economic plans, his criminal conviction and Project 2025 — Trump allies’ plan to transform the government — at a fiery Michigan rally. “Americans want a president, not a dictator,” Biden said. But Biden continues to struggle with some members of his party. Michigan’s top Democrats, including the governor and both senators, skipped his event. And two more House Democrats called on him to drop out. A virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus grew tense at times as Biden made his case to lawmakers who have said he should leave the race. “I’m going out and letting people touch me, poke me, ask me questions,” he said. Major Democratic donors are withholding about $90 million in donations to a pro-Biden super PAC unless Biden ends his re-election campaign. Democrats fear that Biden’s presence on the ballot could turn Minnesota, New Hampshire and other typically blue states into battlegrounds this fall. Trump is leveraging a narrative of persecution to sell Bibles, sneakers and stock in his media company. Other Big Stories Heat waves, made worse by climate change, are causing heat-related emergencies and deaths to spike. Hospitals are struggling to catch up. A federal judge dismissed Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, letting people he owes money — including two Georgia election workers he defamed — pursue foreclosures against him. Eric Schmidt, a former C.E.O. of Google, had an affair with a public relations executive while he led the company. Years later, things are still messy. Prosecutors finished their arguments in the federal corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. The jury began its deliberations. The Games Sale. Offer won’t last. Games for relaxation. Games for concentration. We have them all. For a limited time, save 50% on your first year of a New York Times Games subscription and enjoy new puzzles every day. CULTURE CALENDAR By Desiree Ibekwe 🎥 “Twisters” (Wednesday): “Twister,” the movie from 1996 starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, is just now getting a sequel. The film is directed by Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) and features rising stars Glen Powell (as an influencer-slash-storm chaser) and Daisy Edgar-Jones (as a meteorologist with a troubled past). It has all the makings of a summer blockbuster, but one — it seems — with something to say. “I would love to see more stories in which our identity is defined in relation to the Earth,” Chung told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I felt like this film was a chance to do that.” RECIPE OF THE WEEK Karsten Moran for The New York Times By Melissa Clark French Potato and Green Bean Salad Tomorrow is Bastille Day, which is as good an excuse as any to make David Tanis’s French potato and green bean salad. It has the same bold, garlicky anchovy-mustard vinaigrette of niçoise salad, but skips the tuna, olives and tomatoes. Instead, the pungent dressing works its magic on a pared down combination of jammy eggs, waxy potatoes and green beans, all topped with fresh herbs. Serve as it is, or pile it on top of a bed of arugula (or other greens) for color and a mildly bitter zing. REAL ESTATE Samantha and Chris Shoemaker with their dog, Doug. Jeenah Moon for The New York Times The Hunt: After five years in a one-bedroom rental in Carnegie Hill, this couple wanted some quiet and a bigger kitchen. Which home did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $1.5 million: A 1735 stone house in Saugerties, N.Y.; a circa-1900 Queen Anne Revival-style house in Stockbridge, Mass.; or a 1708 farmhouse in Collegeville, Pa. LIVING Olena Zelenska at the White House this week. Doug Mills/The New York Times Wartime fashion: The stylist to Olena Zelenska, Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife, discusses the role clothes play in times of crisis. Screenland: Food documentaries strain to persuade us that vegetables are healthy. Why do so many of them think we’re stupid? Support: For L.G.B.T.Q. people in the U.S., moving to friendlier states comes with a cost. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER The best lip balms If your lips are always chapped, don’t just reach for the first lip balm you see in the drugstore checkout line. Take a moment to consider what you need. Do you want something thick and glossy? Tinted and smooth? Soothing and sun-blocking? Wirecutter has tested over 80 lip balms to find a variety of great picks, including the best stick under $5, an elegant high-gloss moisturizer and a cool balm that comes in five shades. One general tip: Stay away from common allergens and irritants so your lips can stay nice and supple. — Samantha Schoech GAMES OF THE WEEK England’s Ollie Watkins scored in the semifinals against the Netherlands. Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Euro and Copa América finals: Soccer fans will be feasting on Sunday, with two championships across two continents. First up is the Euro final: England vs. Spain, at 3 p.m. Eastern. England is hoping to break the curse and win its first major tournament since the 1960s, while Spain, the tournament’s top offensive squad, will try to keep the goal onslaught coming. Later is the Copa final: Argentina vs. Colombia, at 8 p.m. Eastern. Argentina is the world’s No. 1-ranked team, and has arguably the greatest player of all time in Lionel Messi. But don’t count out Colombia, which has not lost in 28 matches — a streak that includes wins over Germany, Brazil and Spain. Both matches will air on Fox. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was condominium. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 14, 2024 Author Members Posted July 14, 2024 July 14, 2024 By the staff of The Morning Good morning. We’re covering the latest on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Doug Mills/The New York Times Political violence Authorities have identified the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump yesterday but are still racing to understand what the shooter’s motives were and how he was able to get so close to Trump. The F.B.I. named the gunman as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., roughly 40 miles from Butler, the small city in western Pennsylvania where the attack occurred. Crooks was a registered Republican, though records show that he had donated money to a liberal voter turnout group in 2021. Here is the latest on Crooks. The attack killed one spectator at the scene and left two others critically injured, officials said. Trump had blood on his face as he was escorted from the stage but was safe this morning. The assassination attempt added a shocking and violent turn to a presidential campaign that had already been more tumultuous than any in decades. In today’s newsletter, we’ll help you understand what we know this morning. What happened Our colleague Simon Levien was at the rally during the shooting. “Trump had just started to talk about immigration in his stump speech when several shots rang out from the bleachers to his right,” he wrote. “Everyone immediately ducked — myself included.” There were two bursts of fire — first three shots, and then five. Trump put his hand to his ear and then ducked, before Secret Service agents rushed the stage to shield him. As they began to move him offstage, Trump told them to wait and defiantly pumped his fist, with blood on his face, while the crowd chanted, “U.S.A.” (Watch the video here.) “It’s difficult to imagine a moment that more fully epitomizes Mr. Trump’s visceral connection with his supporters, and his mastery of the modern media age,” The Times’s Shawn McCreesh wrote. A photo showing what appears to be a projectile passing by Trump during the rally. Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump said on social media that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” Law enforcement agencies have not given specifics about what they believe happened. The veteran Times photographer Doug Mills was also at the scene. “I could see blood on” Trump’s face, he said. “I kept taking pictures. As tough as he looked in that one picture with his fist looking very defiant, the next frame I took, he looked completely drained. Very, very shocked.” (This photograph by Doug appears to capture the path of the bullet, and Doug describes his experience here.) The suspect fired shots from an elevated position outside the rally, the Secret Service said. Officials also said that they had recovered an AR-15-type rifle near his body. Videos posted to social media and verified by The Times showed the suspected gunman lying motionless on the roof of a building around 400 feet north of the stage. In an interview with the BBC, a man said he saw somebody with a rifle on a rooftop before the shooting and tried to signal to the Secret Service. Reactions Some attendees of the rally, which had been gleeful, began to cry, pray or scream. “The first thing I thought to myself was, America’s under attack,” Corey Check, a local activist, said. “I grabbed the hands of a couple of people I didn’t even know. We said the Lord’s Prayer. I called my family and told them I loved them.” President Biden spoke publicly after the shooting and spoke with Trump later in the night. “Look, there’s no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said in a brief televised speech. “It’s sick.” Other politicians, including some touched by violence themselves, also denounced the shooting. “I’m holding former President Trump, and all those affected by today’s indefensible act of violence in my heart,” Gabby Giffords, a former representative who survived an assassination attempt, posted on social media. “Political violence is un-American and is never acceptable — never.” More coverage “It was the first attempted assassination of a current or former American president in the era of social media, and the conspiracy theories, finger-pointing and campaign gamesmanship moved at the speed of the internet, far faster than the actual facts,” The Times’s Jonathan Weisman explained. This Times graphic explains the layout and location of the important sites from yesterday’s shooting. CNN compiled photos of Trump at the rally that show multiple angles of him exiting the stage. The Biden campaign scrambled to pause television ads and campaign communications after the shooting. Follow the latest all day through live Times updates posted here. Commentary The attack on Trump is antithetical to America, The Times’s editorial board writes. “The darkest hours of American history, the ones shadowed by political violence, remind us that incitement and hatred must be constantly challenged,” the Washington Post editorial board writes. “Transparency in the investigation will be critical to avoid the spread of conspiracy theories on the right and left,” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes. “Now is the time for America’s moral center to rise up and declare — with one voice, neither red nor blue — ‘Enough,’” David French of Times Opinion writes. THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Hamas War In southern Gaza. Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock Israel conducted a major airstrike in southern Gaza that it said had targeted a top Hamas military commander, Muhammad Deif. The Gaza Health Ministry said 90 people had been killed in the assault. Hamas now acts as a guerrilla force. Its fighters are hiding under residential neighborhoods and emerging in plain clothes. More International News Caño Cabra, in central Colombia. Federico Rios for The New York Times Shifts in the international drug trade have devastated poor Colombians whose livelihood is tied to cocaine. Ukraine, now armed with American-made deep-strike missiles, is targeting Russian air defenses and logistics hubs in Crimea. Hundreds of fires are burning in Brazil, weeks before the usual wildfire season. Other Big Stories A heat wave that broke temperature records across the American southwest is shifting to more of the country. Heat will peak in the Northeast in the coming days, while the West will get a respite. Richard Simmons, who for years was the face of home fitness through his wildly popular videos and his energetic personality, died at 76. FROM OPINION “I’ve learned the restorative effects that come from not moving”: Gregory Berns writes about his herd of cattle, and how they taught him to slow down. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on Biden’s age and Nicholas Kristof on women who could replace Biden. MORNING READS Ruth Westheimer Gabby Jones for The New York Times Lives Lived: Ruth Westheimer, the grandmotherly psychologist known as “Dr. Ruth,” became America’s best-known sex counselor with her frank, funny and taboo-breaking radio and television programs. She died at 96. Lighting the way: At the Met, there’s an art to displaying the art. Meet the “lampers” who make sure the paintings look perfect. Metals in tampons? These findings can sound scary, but experts say there isn’t reason to worry. Vows: Joe Gorman and Matt Capbarat felt an instant spark. But it took a harrowing climb of Denali to know theirs was a forever love. THE INTERVIEW Robert Putnam Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist whose groundbreaking book “Bowling Alone” warned that America was transforming into a nation of loners who are going to church less frequently, joining fewer clubs and losing trust in fellow citizens. Putnam is now 83, and in the two decades since “Bowling Alone” he has watched the nation become steadily more lonely and polarized. I asked him: What went wrong? Your passion is so great, and I’m moved by it, frankly. But here we are. Yeah. So, I don’t know. You shouldn’t think I’ve never asked myself that question. One way to put it is this: Twenty-five years ago I essentially predicted everything that was going to happen. That’s a little exaggerated, but not much. And yet they happened. I’ve been a little bit of an Isaiah, preaching how awful things are. One person once said I was like an Old Testament prophet with charts. I’ve been working for most of my adult life to try and build a better, more productive, more equal, more connected community in America, and now I’m 83 and looking back, and it has been a total failure. Should I be optimistic or pessimistic about the future? I don’t know that I’m optimistic or pessimistic. Honestly, looking at the polls today, I could be pretty pessimistic. But I am hopeful because I can see how we could change it, and I’m doing my damnedest, including right this moment, to try to change the course of history. I’m sorry, that’s very self-important and I apologize for that, but I’m telling you honestly how I feel. I don’t mean to sound cynical, it’s just, What can I do? I tried my damnedest to sketch a way forward, but I’ve not been persuasive enough. Well, maybe it’s just that one man can’t do it alone! We need community. [Laughs] You’re right! Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photograph by Dina Litovsky for The New York Times Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. BOOKS Raphaelle Macaron Literary guide: Read your way through Prague, a city that has survived wars and political strife. Our editors’ picks: “Night Flyer,” about Harriet Tubman’s extraordinary life, and five other books. Times best sellers: “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt’s examination of the mental health impacts of a phone-based life on children, returns to No. 1 this week on the hardcover nonfiction list. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Warm up before your workout. Sleep better in the heat. Fold a suit the way King Charles’s former suit maker suggests. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For The Wimbledon men’s final is today. Carlos Alcaraz will play against Novak Djokovic. Two soccer tournaments end today: Euro 2024, where the final is Spain vs. England, and the Copa América, where it’s Argentina vs. Colombia. The Republican National Convention begins tomorrow in Minneapolis. Rwanda votes in its presidential election tomorrow. M.L.B.’s Home Run Derby is tomorrow, and the All-Star Game is on Tuesday. Nominations for the Emmy Awards are announced on Wednesday. The W.N.B.A.’s All-Star Game is on Friday. Meal Plan Joe Lingeman for The New York Times Ali Slagle makes a lot of quick dinners, especially in summer. This week, she recommends a savory, salty stir-fry of Thai basil chicken; a caprese with roasted red peppers, caper berries, olives and prosciutto; and a crispy coconut, asparagus and green bean salad. Get the recipes. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was bilingual. Can you put eight historical events — including building of the pyramids, Ella Fitzgerald’s debut, and the creation of Kermit the Frog — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 15, 2024 Author Members Posted July 15, 2024 July 15, 2024 Good morning. Today, we have the latest on the assassination attempt and presidential campaign — as well as my colleague Sarah Kliff’s explanation of why childbirth has gotten so expensive. —David Leonhardt Law enforcement outside the arena that will host the Republican National Convention. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times On to Milwaukee The dizzying swirl of the 2024 presidential campaign will continue this week. Just two days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the Republican National Convention begins today in Milwaukee. In Washington, meanwhile, Democrats seem set to spend another week agonizing over whether President Biden is too old and politically damaged to be their party’s nominee. Here is the latest Times coverage: In a short Oval Office address last night, Biden condemned the attack on Trump and urged Americans to “lower the temperature” and reject violence. “Politics must never be a literal battlefield and, god forbid, a killing field,” Biden said. The gunman appears to have acted alone, and his family is cooperating with investigators. The F.B.I. is trying to break into his phone to figure out his motive. Officials identified the spectator who was killed at the rally as Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer firefighter who shielded his family members from gunfire. The shooting also wounded a Marine Corps veteran and a 74-year-old man; both are in stable condition. The Secret Service is under scrutiny: Biden ordered an independent review of the rally, and members of Congress said they planned to hold hearings. Trump arrived in Milwaukee, where convention delegates will officially nominate him for president today. Officials are trying to assure the thousands of attendees that security will be tight. Biden will sit for an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News tonight, continuing his push to prove himself after his poor debate performance. NBC plans to run the interview unedited. For the latest on the assassination investigation and the campaign, follow live Times coverage today. An umbilical cord blood lab in Houston in 2008. Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle, via Getty Images Baby profits By Sarah Kliff I’m an investigative health care reporter. Americans spend more on childbirth than nearly anything else that happens at the hospital. The average delivery is $13,000. Even after insurance pays, patients who have babies still end up on the hook for nearly $3,000. I’ve spent 15 years covering the high costs of American health care, an industry in which patients routinely encounter $600 Band-Aids and $3,000 Covid tests. Recently, I’ve been amazed at how much hospitals, doctors and medical device companies are charging families for newborn care. They are eking out more money from each step of having a baby. They often tap into the anxiety that so many parents feel as they form new families. “People are willing to do anything to ensure the well-being of their kids even before they meet them,” said Neel Shah, chief medical officer at Maven, a women’s health clinic. Moneymakers Health care companies have several chances to make their pitch between a positive pregnancy test and the birth of a child. In the first trimester, genetic companies sell tests that claim to detect serious and rare problems from a few vials of the mother’s blood. But these tests, which can cost thousands of dollars, are usually wrong when they make grave predictions about an infant’s health. The inaccurate results can lead parents to spend thousands on more tests and even to consider abortion. The second trimester often brings a pitch for umbilical-cord blood banking. Brochures in obstetricians’ offices describe how paying to freeze and store a newborn’s stem cells may be vital if the child becomes ill later in life. But the few parents who try to use their samples often find that they are unusable, either because they have too few stem cells or because they are contaminated. Azeen Ghorayshi and I investigated these companies in a story The Times published today. Most spending on childbirth goes toward delivery and newborn care. Cesarean section delivery remains the most common surgery in American hospitals, despite years of advocacy to lessen its use. About 30 percent of kids are born this way, more than twice the World Health Organization’s recommendation. One reason is that we have bizarre incentives. Hospitals earn 50 percent more for C-sections than for vaginal deliveries, even though recent research shows they cost less than vaginal deliveries. When cheaper medical care earns more money, that warps behavior. Neonatal intensive care is also proving to be very profitable. Nearly 40 percent more babies went to these units, supposedly reserved for the sickest kids, from 2008 to 2018. But the infants weren’t sicker. Some doctors worry that hospitals may send healthy babies to the NICU because it pays better. Investors, seeing the opportunity, have been buying up neonatology practices. Capitalizing on fear The experts I talked to have a few explanations for why these efforts work. To start, there are millions of births every year. Hospitals know that childbirth will always make up a large share of their revenue. Another reason is that the most successful messages — the case for banking cord blood, buying advanced genetic tests or spending a few extra nights in the NICU — are selling safety for your child. Lastly, these pitches tend to come from a trusted source: our doctors. They distribute brochures that overstate the benefits of cord blood banking or genetic testing. Cord blood banks even pay obstetricians to collect the stem cells. When your doctor endorses a new and promising technology, it is awfully hard to say no. THE LATEST NEWS International A supermarket in Handan, China. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images China’s economy slowed through the spring, as a real estate crash weakened consumer and company spending. Israel’s military followed a strike targeting the top Hamas military commander in Gaza with a second that exploded near emergency vehicles, photos and videos indicate. Imran Khan, the imprisoned former prime minister of Pakistan, was acquitted of charges that he violated Islamic law by marrying his wife too quickly after her previous divorce. Weather Volunteers delivered water to homeless encampments in Las Vegas on Friday. Bridget Bennett for The New York Times What to expect from the U.S. heat wave this week: The East Coast will swelter, with the heat index topping 100 in some cities, while the West gets a respite. Serious, sometimes fatal burns from sidewalks, roads and other hot outdoor surfaces are becoming more common. Other Big Stories After the Supreme Court said cities could remove homeless campers, some local leaders are preparing to crack down. “My hope is that we can clear them all,” London Breed, the Democratic mayor of San Francisco, said. Google is in talks to buy a cybersecurity start-up, Wiz, for roughly $23 billion. It would be the company’s largest ever acquisition. Opinions Programs to prevent beach erosion cannot keep up with the demands of beach towns. We should let beaches shrink and expand naturally instead, Sarah Stodola writes. Democrats are trapped in the fantasy of America presented in “The West Wing.” In reality, our politics are more like “Veep,” Elizabeth Spiers argues. Four Times Opinion writers discuss what to expect from the Republican convention. MORNING READS Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum at her final service. James Estrin/The New York Times Retirement: A pioneering New York rabbi said goodbye to her L.G.B.T.Q. congregation. Ask Vanessa: What does it mean to dress like a zillennial? No contact: Many Americans, encouraged by social media, are estranging themselves from their families. Dementia: For older adults, too much or too little sleep has been linked to cognitive issues. Metropolitan Diary: Trapped on the terrace. Lives Lived: The photographer Thomas Hoepker captured five people lounging on a Brooklyn waterfront as the World Trade Center burned in the background, an indelible image of 9/11. Hoepker died at 88. SPORTS Copa América: Argentina won the title, beating Colombia 1-0 (see the winning goal). The match was delayed for over an hour because of dangerous chaos outside the stadium. Euro 2024: Spain won the final 2-1, keeping alive England’s nearly six-decade streak without a title. Spain’s teenage star Lamine Yamal was the breakout player of the tournament. Tennis: Carlos Alcaraz dominated Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon men’s final to win his second straight Grand Slam. M.L.B. Draft: The Cleveland Guardians used their No. 1 pick to select Travis Bazzana of Oregon State, an Australian second baseman. Learn more about his journey to the pros. ARTS AND IDEAS Drew Miller at Fortitude Ranch in northern Nevada. Emily Najera for The New York Times The threats of climate change and artificial intelligence have some Americans fearing the end of the world. Drew Miller, a retired Air Force colonel, has an answer to those anxieties: Fortitude Ranch, a collection of survivalist compounds across the U.S. He and other so-called “preppers” are betting that doomsday can be good for business. More on culture Shannen Doherty Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Hallmark Channel Shannen Doherty, who starred in 1990s TV dramas including “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed,” died at 53 of breast cancer. As some luxury fashion brands falter, Victoria Beckham’s appears to be finding its footing. The former Spice Girl credits her pop stardom for making her commercially savvy. Alec Baldwin’s manslaughter case was dismissed, but he still faces several other lawsuits related to the fatal shooting on the set of “Rust.” The youngest son of India’s richest man had a lavish wedding in Mumbai. Among the attendees: Kim Kardashian and the former British prime minister Boris Johnson. In an age of greater cultural sensitivity, Eminem is still spitting provocative lyrics. Younger fans have come to his defense. Over the Fourth of July weekend, colorful fans of Dead & Company — a Grateful Dead spinoff — descended on the Las Vegas Sphere. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Bryan Gardner for The New York Times Pair meatballs with peaches, basil and lime. Visit Greece with your kids. Share what Dr. Ruth meant to you with The Times. Avoid soggy food by packing your cooler right. Protect your accounts with a password manager. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were ejection and injection. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
Members phkrause Posted July 16, 2024 Author Members Posted July 16, 2024 July 16, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleague Michael Bender explains why Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance to be his running mate. We’re also covering Trump’s documents case, heat around the U.S. and the Home Run Derby. —David Leonhardt Senator J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha, at the convention last night. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Vance’s chance By Michael C. Bender I’ve covered Donald Trump’s three presidential campaigns and his four years in the White House. Donald Trump did something yesterday that he’s never before done. He picked a successor. Trump chose Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate, a strategic move driven by the former president’s belief that he’ll win in November by recapturing the Midwestern states he lost in 2020. With Vance’s hardscrabble upbringing and Trump-aligned ideology, the senator is Trump’s attempt to appeal to those voters. Selecting Vance also signals the party’s final commitment to Trumpism. Vance is one of the most aggressive and ideological disciples of the MAGA movement. Instead of balancing the ticket with someone who could expand Trump’s appeal to new voters, Trump has anointed the senator as the future of the Republican Party. The party that Trump took over in 2016 — one guided by establishmentarians like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and John McCain — is now unrecognizable. Trump ushered in economic populism and pushed out the quest for limited government spending. He traded foreign interventionism for restrictive trade policies and downgraded the importance of country-club Republicans while prioritizing blue-collar workers. The arrival of Vance on the ticket shows there is no going back. At first blush, it may seem surprising that Trump would put the future of the party in the hands of a relatively new convert to his brand of conservatism. (As an author and private citizen, Vance said in 2016 that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Later, as he ran for office, the Ohioan embraced Trumpism.) But Trump is focused on winning, and he believes Vance is an asset. An unusual path There are several reasons Trump was drawn to Vance. The senator is an articulate communicator on television. Even his most ardent critics respect his expertise as a MAGA spokesman, a skill that Trump highly prizes. Vance also served in the Marines and deployed to Iraq, making him the only candidate on either party’s ticket with military experience. At the convention. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Vance, a Yale Law School graduate and former venture capitalist, was previously known for his best-selling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which later became a film starring Amy Adams. The subject is Vance’s upbringing in a poor family, but the context is about an often overlooked segment of the country: white, working-class people in Middle America. The book turned him into a renowned explainer of Trumpism’s appeal even as he criticized Trump. But Vance carries risk, too. At 39, he’s the second-youngest member of the Senate. He was sworn into office for the first time last year. That limited political résumé could undercut Trump’s attack on Vice President Kamala Harris as ill-prepared to step in for President Biden if necessary. Vance had also been one of Trump’s most biting critics, and he left a trail of video clips for Democrats to use against the former president. Even in his new life as a pro-Trump Republican, Vance carries a controversial record, including his pledge to end abortion and his outspoken support for a national abortion ban proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham. (Aligning with Trump, Vance said in an interview with Sean Hannity last night that abortion should be decided at the state level.) The last leg Vance ascends to the ticket as Trump seems to be gathering steam. A judge yesterday dismissed the criminal case against him for taking classified documents from the White House. He survived an assassination attempt this past weekend and leads in the polls. Meanwhile, Democrats crestfallen about Biden’s debate performance have tried pushing for the president to quit the race. In that climate, Vance is more wind at Trump’s back — youth and energy and buzz. Even if the former president has chosen political kinship over party expansion, he’s betting that Vance has what he needs to retake the presidency. More on Vance Trump picked Vance — a more combative choice than his other finalists, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota — almost at the last minute. On Fox News, Hannity asked Vance about his earlier criticisms of Trump. Vance laughed and said, “He changed my mind.” Harris called Vance to congratulate him, and to ask him to take part in a vice-presidential debate. More on the convention Donald Trump Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump, with a bandage on his right ear, made his first public appearance since the shooting. The audience cheered and chanted “Fight!” Trump said he had revised his convention speech, scheduled for Thursday. “I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is, and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true,” he said. Delegates approved the party’s new platform, which softens its positions on abortion while endorsing higher tariffs and omitting any mention of climate change. Several prominent Black Republicans — including Senator Tim Scott and Representative Byron Donalds — spoke last night, part of the party’s efforts to win over nonwhite voters. Sean O’Brien, the first Teamsters president to address a Republican convention, praised Trump as a “tough S.O.B.” But he did not endorse Trump, and his criticisms of big corporations received tepid applause. Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and other former Trump critics will speak at the convention tonight, along with several Senate candidates. Here’s what to watch for. THE LATEST NEWS The Trump Shooting The F.B.l. gained access to the phone of the man who shot Trump, but investigators have not been able to discern his motive. Former classmates described him as a solitary student. Three congressional committees have begun inquiries into the shooting, and the director of the Secret Service is scheduled to testify on Monday. One likely question: Why was the gunman’s rooftop position outside the security perimeter? Bystander video from two minutes before shots rang out shows people at the rally pointing to the gunman and trying to warn law enforcement. Within minutes of the shooting, far-right activists, lawmakers and Russian sympathizers were spreading baseless conspiracy theories. Biden called the widow of the man killed in the shooting, but she didn’t want to speak to him, she told The New York Post. She has not heard from Trump, she added. Trump’s Documents Case Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the criminal case accusing Trump of mishandling classified documents. Cannon ruled that the Justice Department improperly appointed the special counsel who charged Trump. The ruling from Cannon, a Trump appointee, rejected decades of established law. The special counsel, Jack Smith, said he would appeal it. President Biden Lester Holt of NBC News at the White House yesterday. Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times In an NBC News interview, Biden said that it was a mistake to have told Democratic donors before last week’s shooting to “put Trump in a bull’s-eye,” but that Trump’s threat to democracy was real. Democratic officials are moving to confirm Biden as the party’s nominee before the end of the month, despite opposition from some elected leaders. The latest New York Times/Siena College polls show Trump leading Biden in Pennsylvania, a battleground state. Virginia, which Biden easily won in 2020, is also competitive. The same polls suggest Harris is stronger than Biden among younger and nonwhite voters, but weaker with older and white working-class voters, Nate Cohn writes. International Israel and Egypt entered talks over a potential Israeli withdrawal from Gaza’s border with Egypt. That could help bring about a cease-fire deal. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, says he hopes to make the country more socially open and engaged with the West. Others have promised the same before, and failed. Gambian lawmakers voted to keep a ban on female genital cutting, reversing a decision earlier this year. Other Big Stories The Lost Hills wildfire in Kern County, Calif., on Saturday. Kern County Fire Department Wildfires have burned across 30,000 acres in Southern California, forcing more than 1,000 people to evacuate their homes. Forecasters expect Washington, D.C., to top 100 degrees for the third straight day, as dangerous levels of heat stretch from Texas to the Northeast. After years of confusion around a jellyfish fossil, researchers turned it upside down — and discovered it was not a jellyfish, but an ancient sea anemone. Opinions Times Opinion writers picked the best and worst moments from the Republican convention’s first night. Trump has become the defining figure of our age, Ross Douthat writes. Of all industrialized democracies, the U.S. is the most politically violent, Matthew Dallek and Robert Dallek write. Here’s a column by Paul Krugman on Project 2025. MORNING READS Schoolchildren sporting backpacks in Tokyo. Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times Japanese childhood: The randoseru backpack has been a staple of elementary schools for almost 150 years. Prime Day: Wirecutter is collecting the best deals from Amazon’s sitewide sale. Best books: We heard from the experts last week; now we want to hear from readers. What are your favorite books of the 21st century? Quiz: Test your knowledge of modern literature. Health: “Tracking your macros” is a trendy way of logging what you eat. Experts say it can help, as long as it doesn’t become an obsession. Lives Lived: The discoveries of the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Bengt Samuelsson led to drugs that treat inflammation, glaucoma and allergies. He died at 90. SPORTS M.L.B.: Teoscar Hernández, a Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder, won the Home Run Derby after top contenders crashed out early. Read a recap. N.F.L.: The retired running back Terrell Davis was detained after an incident with a flight attendant on a flight to California. Davis said he tapped the attendant’s arm to ask for ice. Soccer: The president of Colombia’s soccer federation and his son were charged with fighting security guards at the chaotic Copa América final over the weekend. ARTS AND IDEAS Quinn Ewers, Texas’ quarterback, in College Football 25. EA Sports The video game maker EA Sports has brought back its popular N.C.A.A. Football series, which was dormant for over a decade because of legal restrictions. But the rules in college sports have changed — athletes can now make money — and EA paid more than 11,000 players to include them. The standard fee: $600, plus a copy of the game. For more: Chris Vannini of The Athletic reviews the new game. More on culture An official in Georgia removed the judge overseeing the criminal trial of the rapper Young Thug, because he had met secretly with prosecutors and a key witness. Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” topped the Billboard 200 for the 12th week in a row — thanks in part to her releasing three new versions of the album. “She was a rebel”: Alyssa Milano, Tori Spelling and other celebrities remembered the actress Shannen Doherty, who died on Saturday. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Make this lemon and garlic chicken with fresh, in-season cherry tomatoes. Use a bidet. It’s good for the environment. Stop doomscrolling with the help of this little reading light. Save on these on-sale kitchen workhorses. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was normally. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Read Isaiah 10:1-13
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