Members phkrause Posted June 21 Author Members Posted June 21 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 23 Author Members Posted June 23 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 24 Author Members Posted June 24 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 24 Author Members Posted June 24 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 26 Author Members Posted June 26 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 27 Author Members Posted June 27 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 28 Author Members Posted June 28 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 29 Author Members Posted June 29 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 30 Author Members Posted June 30 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted June 30 Author Members Posted June 30 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted July 1 Author Members Posted July 1 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
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