Members phkrause Posted October 26 Author Members Posted October 26 October 24, 2024 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering bipartisan support for marijuana legalization — plus, accusations of fascism, Israeli bombs in Lebanon and #MeToo in Japan. In Rome, Ga. Nicole Craine for The New York Times High support Twelve years ago, mainstream politicians opposed marijuana legalization. Recreational use was forbidden even in the most liberal states. Today, even conservative states are considering the policy — including North Dakota, South Dakota and Florida, through ballot initiatives this November. And both presidential contenders now favor legalization. Kamala Harris confirmed her support this month. Donald Trump says he will vote for Florida’s initiative. He also backs easing federal restrictions on weed. This is the first time even one major-party candidate has publicly supported legalizing pot. The shift was unusually quick for American politics; it’s very rare for the bipartisan consensus to flip in less than a generation. One reason politicians have changed their minds so quickly is that they are following a shift in voters’ views. In today’s newsletter, I’ll look at how public opinion evolved — and why Harris’s and Trump’s positions could matter even in states that have already legalized marijuana. A quick shift Americans’ views on domestic policy are largely stable. Consider guns: Congress passed the last major federal gun measure, the Brady Act, three decades ago. Since then, views on whether firearm laws should be made more or less strict have barely moved, according to Gallup. This is typical for most domestic policy issues, researchers have found. Marijuana legalization is an exception. In 2000, 31 percent supported it; now 70 percent do. The new consensus formed long before politicians caught up. Most Democrats have supported legalization since the late 2000s. Most Republicans have since 2017, according to Gallup. Why did public opinion change so quickly? One explanation is exhaustion with the war on drugs. Decades of punitive policy did not get great results. The United States is in the middle of its deadliest drug overdose crisis ever (although overdose deaths are now falling). People want reform, and one place to start is a drug that most Americans see as less dangerous than legal substances like alcohol and tobacco. The shift has continued even as legalization has produced its own problems. In states where marijuana is legal, people have reported more addiction and other serious medical issues that are linked to daily marijuana use. (See some of those harms.) Still, public opinion remains in favor of legal pot — and now Democratic and Republican leaders are catching up. Federal impact With many states legalizing marijuana — perhaps a majority, after this year’s election — you may wonder whether it matters that the presidential candidates have come around to legalization. After all, many states addressed the issue before federal officials caught up. But federal law still shapes marijuana policy at the state level. For example, many banks, which are regulated at the federal level, remain wary of holding money from marijuana businesses. In many ways, the law treats those transactions the same way it does bank transactions from a drug cartel or another criminal enterprise. This leaves dispensaries open to robbery because many can’t take credit cards and can’t find a secure place to store all their cash. Federal regulation can also help address some of the problems that have appeared with legalization. Congress will ultimately decide whether federal marijuana laws are loosened or repealed. But the next House and Senate will be able to make such changes with confidence, knowing that they probably won’t face a veto from the White House. Related: A jar of legal weed can cost $60 in New York. One reason? Federal prohibition. THE LATEST NEWS Democratic Campaign Vice President Kamala Harris Erin Schaff/The New York Times When asked in a CNN town hall if she believes Trump is a fascist, as his former chief of staff alleged to The Times, Harris said yes. Harris was also asked about her changes in position on fracking and other issues. She said the country deserved a president “who is not afraid of good ideas and does not stand on pride,” adding, “The important thing is to build consensus to fix problems.” Read more takeaways. A leading historian of fascism thought the label was overused. He’s changing his mind. Eminem and Violent J of Insane Clown Posse are among the celebrities who have recently endorsed Harris. The authorities arrested an Arizona man in connection with shootings at a Democratic Party campaign office. He had dozens of guns and a grenade launcher at his home The head of The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board resigned after the paper’s owner blocked an endorsement of Harris. Republican Campaign The Justice Department warned Elon Musk’s super PAC that his plan to give voters $1 million might violate federal law. It’s illegal to pay people to register to vote. The country singer Jason Aldean said he’d voted early for Trump. Can Harris or Trump bring back manufacturing jobs? We looked at the data. Voting Marjorie Taylor Greene turned a Georgia voter’s simple mistake into a conspiracy theory. Other Trump allies are reviving false claims about voting machines. Georgia’s secretary of state said that a foreign cyberattack had failed to shut down the state’s website to request absentee ballots. International Sirajuddin Haqqani Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times Afghanistan’s most wanted militant is trying to remake himself as a statesman. Diplomats are shocked — and intrigued. Read The Times’s interview with him. The Group of 7 nations will use frozen Russian assets to back a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, essentially forcing Russia to financially support Ukraine. Israel bombed the ancient port city of Tyre in Lebanon. It issued a major evacuation order there. Fake X accounts linked to China are attacking Republican members of Congress, accusing them of corruption and promoting their electoral opponents. North Korea’s decision to dispatch troops to help Russia may complicate the Kremlin’s relationship with China. Liberal Party lawmakers in Canada are urging their leader, Justin Trudeau, to step down as prime minister. They worry his unpopularity could hurt them in the next election. Other Big Stories Gina Forbush, of Gig Harbor, Wash. M. Scott Brauer for The New York Times Boeing’s largest union rejected a labor contract and extended a strike. The Biden administration has been trying to rebuild chip manufacturing. But Intel, a cornerstone of its plan, is in trouble. The U.S. government fined Goldman Sachs and Apple nearly $90 million for failing to properly handle fraud and refunds for Apple Card users. A 4-year-old starved to death at home in New York. Read how the city missed the signs. Opinions “Show you’re going to fight for them”: Four economists discuss what the presidential candidates’ policies should be. It’s the inflation, stupid: Adam Seessel writes about why the working class wants Trump back. The Mets’ run this year gave Kathleen O’Brien’s autistic son a hobby he can hold onto when she’s gone. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on lead poisoning and Pamela Paul on settler colonialist theory. The Times Sale starts now: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Shrek, a Przewalski’s horse, in Aurora, Colo. Daniel Brenner for The New York Times Today’s great read: How did two of the world’s rarest horses get lost? Table talk: Can’t hear your friends in a noisy restaurant? Headphones could help. Normies: Lana Del Rey married a swamp tour guide. See other celebrities who have married regular people. 11 stories tall: A new mural in Brazil uses materials from environmental disasters to protest corporate destruction of wildlife. A divided house: For politically opposed couples, the election can’t end soon enough. Social Q’s: “My sister chose my birthday for her scheduled C-section. I’m annoyed!” Haunted: Even skeptical real estate agents say they think twice about the existence of ghosts. Lives Lived: Fernando Valenzuela won his first eight starts as a Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, igniting the “Fernandomania” phenomenon and helping him win the 1981 Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Awards. He died at 63. SPORTS Julia Hawkins in 2019. Brit Huckabay/National Senior Games Association, via Associated Press Sprinter: Julia Hawkins, who took up running after her 100th birthday and went on to set world records in the 100-meter dash, died at 108. N.B.A.: The Los Angeles Clippers opened a new arena with an overtime loss to Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns. College football: Bond was set for two former Penn State players who are awaiting a hearing on rape charges. N.F.L.: The Kansas City Chiefs acquired the receiver DeAndre Hopkins from the Tennessee Titans. ARTS AND IDEAS Dana Carvey and Maya Rudolph on “Saturday Night Live.” Will Heath/NBC There is no shortage of political impersonations this campaign season. Maya Rudolph has returned to “Saturday Night Live” to play Kamala Harris; Sebastian Stan embodies Donald Trump in the movie “The Apprentice.” But Dana Carvey’s impression of President Biden has stood out. “Carvey doesn’t mimic Biden as much as capture his energy and give something that feels like genuine insight,” Alissa Wilkinson writes. Read about how. More on culture Over two decades on TV, Seth Meyers has crafted a precise but genial comic persona. In a new stand-up special, he reveals his acerbic side. “Black Box Diaries,” a bracing documentary about the #MeToo movement in Japan, will be released in the U.S. and Britain tomorrow. Late night hosts mocked Trump’s comments about Hitler. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Pugliese for The New York Times Make mattar paneer. Use a to-do list app. Stay dry with a good raincoat. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was enjoyment. 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. A Times reporter has followed Trump through swing states and drive-throughs. Read about his experience. 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 October 27 Author Members Posted October 27 October 25, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering North Korean troops in Russia — as well as Project 2025, enigmas in space and food on Facebook Marketplace. Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik Kremlin, via Associated Press An axis against democracy The 3,000 North Korean troops boarded ships in the port city of Wonsan earlier this month and made the journey up the coast to Vladivostok, in Russia’s southeastern corner. From there, they moved to three military training sites in Russia’s Far East, according to U.S. officials. Ukrainian officials say that the troops have since traveled west to fight against Ukraine. “If their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue,” Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, said this week. Countries do not lightly send their own citizens to fight in another country’s war. That North Korea may be doing so on Russia’s behalf is the latest sign of increasing cooperation among four authoritarian countries — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — that seek to weaken the U.S.-led alliance of mostly democratic countries, like South Korea, Japan and many European nations. The emergence of this authoritarian axis has been a theme of The Morning because I think it’s a major development. Today, I’ll explain the latest news. ‘This isn’t NATO’ The four countries have clear ideological similarities. All are autocracies that repress dissent through imprisonment and death. (In an early instance of cooperation, China helped Iran shut down its internet during pro-democracy protests 15 years ago.) To varying degrees, the countries are also hostile to political equality: Few women hold senior government roles. L.G.B.T.Q. citizens and ethnic minorities are repressed. Religious freedom is restricted. But the four do not share a consistent ideology, as the Soviet bloc did during the Cold War or much of NATO does today. Iran, for example, is an Islamist theocracy, while China and Russia oppress their Muslim minorities. “This isn’t NATO,” my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence, said. “It’s a much more complex dynamic.” At a summit this month. Pool photo by Maxim Shemetov The countries’ common goal is to weaken the U.S. and its allies. Doing so could reduce the appeal of democracy. It could allow China to become dominant in the Pacific Ocean and more influential elsewhere. Russia and Iran could have more influence over their own regions, and North Korea’s government could minimize the risk of collapse. “What these states do share,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded this month, “is an autocratic antipathy for the liberal aspects of the U.S.-led order, which they believe threatens their very existence.” Today’s two wars This shared goal explains why the world’s two recent major wars — the first in Ukraine and Russia, the second in the Middle East — have led to more cooperation among the autocratic countries. Both wars have created opportunities to weaken the U.S.-led alliance. In Ukraine, even a partial Russian victory would be a setback for democracy. The war has been the largest in Europe in almost 80 years, with an authoritarian country invading a democratic neighbor. If Russia wins, it will suggest, as The Times has written, “that the West, with all its firepower, cannot prevail far from its shores.” That possibility has led to a concerted effort to help Russia. Iran has sent munitions, Shahed drones and ballistic missiles. North Korea has sent artillery shells and now troops. China has sent technology that can be used in weapons and has bought Russian oil to help Vladimir Putin’s economy evade international sanctions. In the Middle East, the cooperation has not been as extensive, but it is still notable. When Hamas (which Iran funds) attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it used North Korean grenade launchers. After the attack, Chinese and Russian groups filled social media with antisemitic, pro-Hamas posts. In recent weeks, Viktor Bout — a Russian arms dealer who’s close to Putin and whom the U.S. freed in a 2022 prisoner exchange — has tried to sell arms to the Houthis, another Iran-backed group. (The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Russia helped the Houthis attack Western ships in the Red Sea — and disrupt global commerce — this year.) Why do these other countries care about the Middle East? It’s about chaos. A major reason that Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 was to disrupt the progress toward a diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two U.S. allies, that could have increased regional stability. Instead, the war has caused diplomatic tensions within the U.S.-led alliance. The resulting chaos has become another chance for China and Russia to weaken that alliance. Harris vs. Trump Still, there are limits to the autocratic partnership. China is by far its most powerful member and benefits from some kinds of international stability. The Chinese economy relies on an integrated global system. For that reason, the Carnegie Endowment report argued that a crucial way to reduce cooperation among the four autocracies would be for the U.S. and its allies to avoid fully isolating China. The next big question is what happens in the U.S. presidential election. Iran’s leaders have made clear that they are rooting for Kamala Harris because of Donald Trump’s strong anti-Iran stance. China’s and Russia’s leaders have made it clear that they are rooting for Trump. They see him as an agent of chaos who will help their global ambitions. For more The move to send troops gives North Korea leverage to ask Russia for a lot in return, Michael Shear writes. Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin since 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported. THE LATEST NEWS Republican Campaign Meet the new Project 2025: The America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank, is planning for a Trump win. It wants ultrasounds before all abortions, work requirements for Medicaid and federal workers who can be fired at will. Trump said he would fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted him over the Jan. 6 riot and classified documents, if he were elected again. His lawyers are also seeking to dismiss the Jan. 6 case, arguing that Smith was illegally appointed. Trump has floated the idea of replacing income taxes with tariffs, as was the case in the late 19th century. Experts said doing so would increase the deficit and cause widespread economic damage. In Detroit, Trump called into JD Vance’s town hall with undecided voters and asked, on speakerphone, “How brilliant is Donald Trump?” Vance eventually replied, “Sir, of course, you’re very brilliant.” At a Trump campaign event, Tucker Carlson made disparaging comments about women and compared Trump to an angry father. “When Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl, you’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking,’” Carlson said. Democratic Campaign Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. David Walter Banks for The New York Times Harris campaigned in Georgia with Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen and others. Two swing-state Republicans — Fred Upton, a former Michigan congressman, and Shawn Reilly, the mayor of Waukesha, Wis. — endorsed Harris. Harris’s policy pivot to the center and her courting of Republican support have left some progressives feeling alienated. Harris, asked about her policies at a CNN town hall with voters, often answered with generalities or criticisms of Trump. In Georgia, Harris’s Muslim allies have a message for Arab American voters upset by the war in Gaza: Trump would be worse. More on the Election The race has narrowed to a tie, the final New York Times/Siena College national poll finds. Harris had a three-point lead earlier this month. Harris has a financial advantage over Trump. Her campaign raised twice what Trump did in early October and has three times the cash on hand. A man set fire to a curbside mailbox in Arizona, damaging about 20 mail-in ballots. Arizona’s secretary of state said affected voters could get new ballots. Maps on social media show a hurricane hitting the U.S. the week of the election. Our meteorologist says it’s too early to worry. More on Politics Biden signed the first national security memo detailing how the government should use A.I. In Arizona, Biden will apologize for the government’s role in the running of boarding schools where many Native American children faced abuse and nearly 1,000 died. An influential doctor doing a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs said she had not yet published it because of the charged political environment. International Iran wants to avoid war with Israel. Still, it is preparing its troops just in case. An Israeli strike killed three journalists, Lebanese officials said. Sunnis and Shiites are waging a bitter war in Pakistan. Other Big Stories The Los Angeles County district attorney plans to ask a judge to resentence Lyle and Erik Menendez, who killed their parents in 1989. It could lead to their release from prison. The companies behind the container ship that slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore agreed to pay around $100 million to settle a government lawsuit. Boeing workers rejected a new contract that included big raises but did not restore a pension plan. Opinions Trump has described the dangerous and disturbing actions he plans to take as president. Voters should believe him, The Editorial Board writes. Students today know reading skills won’t help them get jobs in finance or tech. Instructors should assign them books to read anyway, Jonathan Malesic writes. When Harris called Trump a fascist, she implied his voters were fascists, too, Bret Stephens argues. Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg on the Senate race in Nebraska. The Times Sale starts now: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS The Orion Nebula, top, seen from Spain in March. Pedro Puente Hoyos/EPA, via Shutterstock Astronomy: The James Webb Space Telescope spotted enigmas. Researchers are trying to figure out what they are. Blue zones: Do people in specific regions around the world really live longer? Travel: It’s getting harder to fly to China. Here’s why. Lives Lived: The singer Jack Jones’s popularity peaked in the 1960s, but he found a new audience in the 1970s and ’80s singing the theme to the hit television show “The Love Boat.” He died at 86. SPORTS In New York City. Todd Heisler/The New York Times W.N.B.A.: New York celebrated the Liberty’s championship with a parade down Broadway. See photos from the party. M.L.B.: The World Series begins tonight. Two superstars, the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, will be competing. College basketball: The South Florida coach Amir Abdur-Rahim died from complications during a medical procedure at 43. ARTS AND IDEAS Davila Dion Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times Facebook Marketplace is the internet’s garage sale, a place to find deals on used furniture and electronics. It’s also a great place to find a hot meal. Home cooks, many of them immigrants, are using the site to sell fufu, okra stew, tamales and empanadas. “When you’re sitting down with a plate of her food, it’s not like food that you got out at a restaurant,” one customer said. “Somebody’s mom made that food or somebody’s grandmother made that food.” More on culture Young viewers say they want more shows and movies that depict platonic relationships — and fewer about romance and sex. Jimmy Fallon was excited about Beyoncé’s appearance with Harris today. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Mark Weinberg for The New York Times Put hot wings in the oven. Visit an overlooked corner of Japan. Chill drinks with a countertop ice maker. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were dolloping and plodding. 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 October 27 Author Members Posted October 27 October 26, 2024 Good morning. Today, we’ve got an update on the fighting in the Middle East — followed by Melissa Kirsch’s regular Saturday newsletter. —David Leonhardt Overlooking Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Israel’s response First, we want to update you on the latest from the Middle East. The Israeli military struck Iran overnight, in response to the barrage of missiles that Iran had fired at Israel this month. Israel’s attack seemed limited, and Iranian officials appeared to downplay the impact. The combination made it unclear whether the fighting between the two countries would expand — or whether Iran would choose not to respond. The White House expressed support for Israel, describing the attack as proportionate, and said it should be the end of military exchanges. Israel said it had targeted air defense systems and long-range missile production sites in Iran, as well as sites in Syria and Iraq. Two Iranian soldiers were killed, according to Iran’s military. By midmorning, life in Tehran looked normal, people in the city said. Children were in school, and adults had gone to work. We have much more coverage on our website. Here’s how the attack unfolded. And we recommend this analysis by Patrick Kingsley, our Jerusalem bureau chief. Now over to Melissa Kirsch for our normal Saturday newsletter. María Jesús Contreras Screen time By Melissa Kirsch It’s the season when many festival darlings, the films that critics saw and loved in Cannes, Venice, Telluride and Toronto, finally arrive in theaters, and this year, it feels different. More exciting? More like the old days? I’ve been making a concerted effort to actually go and see movies in the movie theater instead of waiting for them to arrive on streaming platforms, and it’s been paying off gloriously. The movies I’ve seen recently — “Didi,” “Megalopolis,” “Anora,” “Saturday Night” — have felt urgent and exciting: complicated stories with complicated characters, not a superhero franchise among them. I didn’t love all of these movies equally, but I loved seeing them, loved being in the dark drinking up their writers’ and directors’ idiosyncratic visions. And I loved the intention that led to the experience: I made a decision to see a movie, went to an establishment expressly built for that purpose, sat and paid attention for the length of the film and then, only then, returned to nonmovie life. Contrast that experience with the half-attention I so often pay a movie on a streaming platform, watching it in installments over several nights, maybe on an iPad, maybe while I’m brushing my teeth. Each movie I saw in the theater, I talked about afterward, with the friends accompanying me, with colleagues the next day. Some of the movies I’ve streamed — some abandoned before completion — I’ve discussed with no one. As the Times critic A.O. Scott wrote in his wonderful essay “Is It Still Worth Going to the Movies?”: “Just as streaming isolates and aggregates its users, so it dissolves movies into content. They don’t appear on the platforms so much as disappear into them, flickering in a silent space beyond the reach of conversation.” I’m willing to wager that no filmmaker ever made a movie hoping or expecting that it would end up beyond the reach of conversation. Not every movie you watch has to be a means of connecting with other people, but it could be. Walking out of “Anora” the other night, chatting with friends, comparing the film with the director’s previous ones, I realized how rare the experience of seeing a movie with a group had become for me. Once, it was commonplace, a weekly tradition. Every Sunday evening when I was 14 and 15, my friends Justin and Tracy and I would go with one of our moms (we couldn’t yet drive ourselves) to the SoNo Cinema, an art-house theater in South Norwalk, Conn., where we saw films that would never be shown in our suburb’s mainstream theaters. We saw Hugh Grant in Ken Russell’s horror movie “The Lair of the White Worm.” We saw “Babette’s Feast,” the first Danish film to win an Oscar for best foreign language film, and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” After, we’d go out to dinner and discuss what we’d just watched. Searching for information about the theater, I found stories about its struggles to stay open over the years, its various fund-raising efforts. “I’m convinced that a lot of the young people we used to draw are raising families now and watching video rental films at home,” the owner told The Times in 1987, the same year we went to SoNo to see the British film “White Mischief,” about the Happy Valley murder case in Kenya. It closed not long after. I’ve over-romanticized those early adventures in theatergoing (I’m not the only one — “the movie house equivalent of ‘The Secret Garden,’” Tracy called it when I asked her recently). But the truth is, my friends and I still discuss the movies we saw at SoNo, how they informed our ideas of what life after high school might be like. And while I’m not going to argue that we’re as impressionable in middle age as we were when we’d been alive for barely more than a decade, my recent trips to the movies have convinced me that whenever the option presents itself, the right move is to see the movie in the theater. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Paramount Pictures Looking for something spooky to watch this weekend? Filmmakers, actors and Times writers ranked the 25 best jump scares in cinema history. “Venom: The Last Dance,” the last of the superhero trilogy, is one of seven movies our critics are talking about this week. “What We Do in the Shadows” returned for its sixth and final season. The show, about a household of vampires on Staten Island, is one of television’s few great laugh-out-loud comedies, Margaret Lyons writes. On German TV, (a fictional) Angela Merkel is solving crimes. Music Phil Lesh, who anchored the Grateful Dead as its bassist and co-wrote some of its best-known songs, died at 84. Instrumentalists who take up contemporary music sometimes have to sing and play at the same time. It requires excellent aural and physical coordination. Jon Caramanica, a Times pop music critic, shared six social media accounts that changed how he discovers music. More Culture Sawa, a new restaurant in Park Slope, serves Levantine classics with a dash of hipster style. Read our review. The African American artist Barbara Chase-Riboud hadn’t had a show in Paris, her adopted city, since 1974. Now she is being celebrated in eight museums. This fall, art exhibitions around the U.S. will showcase artists’ responses to political and social movements. Here’s a guide. THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election Kamala Harris and Beyoncé Erin Schaff/The New York Times Kamala Harris held a rally in Houston with Beyoncé, focused on abortion rights. “It’s time for America to sing a new song,” Beyoncé told the around 30,000 attendees, Harris’s largest crowd so far. Chinese hackers targeted data from Donald Trump and JD Vance’s phones in an effort to gather intelligence. It’s unclear whether they took or saw any data. A former model accused Trump of groping her in front of Jeffrey Epstein in 1993. Two of her friends corroborated her account; the Trump campaign denied it. Trump, in a three-hour podcast interview with Joe Rogan, floated eliminating income taxes in favor of tariffs and repeated debunked election-fraud claims. Here are more takeaways. Trump again threatened Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted him. Trump called Smith “mentally deranged” and said “he should be thrown out of the country.” The Washington Post’s editorial page won’t endorse a presidential candidate, ending decades of tradition. Jeff Bezos, the paper’s billionaire owner, made the decision. Other Big Stories President Biden formally apologized for the U.S. government’s policy of forcibly putting Native American children in boarding schools between the 1800s and the 1960s. “It’s long overdue,” he said at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, said U.S. and Israeli negotiators would soon return to Qatar to try to revive talks with Hamas, but a quick cease-fire deal seems unlikely. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed Florida’s strict abortion ban, is working to defeat a November ballot measure that would legalize it until about 24 weeks of pregnancy The Times Sale starts now: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. CULTURE CALENDAR By Desiree Ibekwe 🎥 “A Real Pain” (Friday): In this Jesse Eisenberg-directed movie, two cousins — played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin — take a historical tour of Poland to connect with their recently deceased grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor. The film, The Times’s Marc Tracy writes, is representative of the output of the grandchildren of survivors. “I’m telling the story of the third generation with all of its contradictions,” Eisenberg said, “with its distance, its privileged remove, its grotesque fascination, as well as all the reverence that should be applied.” (A Times critic called it “a knockout.”) RECIPE OF THE WEEK David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. By Melissa Clark Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Galette We’re reaching peak winter squash season, which means now is the time to celebrate dishes that show off its velvety sweetness. Yossy Arefi’s butternut squash and goat cheese galette does just that, showcasing thin wafers of orange-hued squash baked on top of the tangy, herby cheese. If you can time things to serve this while it’s still a little warm, it will be at its flakiest and most tender. But it’s still excellent a few hours later after cooling down. And feel free to use store-bought pie dough if homemade is just one step too many. This lovely tart will be a crowd-pleaser either way. REAL ESTATE Arsy Khodabandelou and Katie Muela with their dogs Hank and Odin. Katherine Marks for The New York Times The Hunt: A young couple with a budget of $800,000 was looking for a dog-friendly two-bedroom on the Upper East Side. Which home did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $380,000: A three-bedroom Gothic house in Cambridge, N.Y.; a renovated three-story home in Cincinnati; or a cottage in Portland, Ore. LIVING An Outerspace warehouse in Carlstadt, N.J. Graham Dickie/The New York Times Pack it up: A founder of a clothing company was frustrated by how warehouses handled his brand’s stock. So he started a new kind of packaging firm for chic labels. Streaming: Our strange new way of witnessing natural disasters. Caregiving: Dementia can change a loved one’s personality. Here are expert-recommended strategies that can help. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER The beauty of a to-do list app If you’re prone to forgetting appointments or missing deadlines, or you often find yourself leaving the grocery store without the one thing you went for, you might benefit from an app that keeps track of your to-dos. Beyond just throwing all of your tasks onto a screen, a good to-do list app also helps you prioritize, while syncing to your calendar and staying flexible as your work changes. Wirecutter’s experts found the three best to-do list apps, each of them thoughtfully designed and convenient to use. So you can jot your to-dos down, and get right back to the doing. — Kaitlin Mahar GAME OF THE WEEK Freddie Freeman celebrating his home run last night. Maddie Meyer/Getty Images New York Yankees vs. Los Angeles Dodgers, World Series: There’s too much history between these two franchises to squeeze into a newsletter, so we’ll just focus on the present. The Dodgers won a Game 1 for the ages last night, thanks to Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning. (See the video.) It was a fitting start to this series, considering the hitting prowess of these two teams — both of whom led their respective leagues in home runs this season. Game 2 is tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were captaincy and incapacity. 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 P.S. The most-clicked article in this week’s newsletter was a story about a 14-year-old boy who died by suicide after developing a relationship with an A.I. chatbot. Read it here. 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 October 27 Author Members Posted October 27 October 27, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleague Javier Hernández writes about a rare discovery in the classical music world. We’re also covering Michelle Obama, Sudan and abandoned churches. —David Leonhardt Chopin General Photographic Agency/Getty Images A hidden gem By Javier C. Hernández I’m a reporter covering classical music, opera and dance. As The Times’s classical music reporter, I don’t often get “news” from long-dead composers. But I recently learned that an unknown waltz by the eminent composer Chopin, written nearly 200 years ago, had been discovered in the vault of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. It was unearthed in a collection of memorabilia, alongside postcards signed by Picasso and letters from Brahms and Tchaikovsky. We published our exclusive story on the discovery today. And here’s a special treat: The superstar pianist Lang Lang recorded the waltz for The Times. You can watch his performance here. The story of the long-lost waltz starts at the Morgan on a late-spring day, when the curator and composer Robinson McClellan came across an unusual musical manuscript. The piece was moody and melancholic, and a conspicuous name was written across the top: Chopin. McClellan took a photo on his iPhone so he could play the piece back at home on his electric piano. He also sent a photo to Jeffrey Kallberg, a Chopin scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. “My jaw dropped,” Kallberg told me. “I knew I had never seen this before.” In September, the Morgan’s experts invited me to view the manuscript, which they had authenticated by analyzing the paper, ink and musical style. It was much smaller than I had imagined — a pockmarked scrap about the size of an index card. Chopin had famously tiny penmanship, and he packed a lot into this little piece. As an amateur pianist, I grew up adoring Chopin’s music. His waltzes, nocturnes, ballades and mazurkas are a dreamy realm of nostalgia, longing, suffering and bliss. He is still one of music’s most beloved figures. (His heart, pickled in a jar of alcohol, is encased in a church in Warsaw.) After viewing the manuscript, I spent weeks immersed in Chopin’s world. I studied his scores, letters and sketches, and listened to recordings of his waltzes, searching for clues about the unusual piece found at the Morgan. I tracked down the previous owners of the manuscript: a Connecticut family that was not aware of its importance. I delighted in working through the waltz in a practice room near Lincoln Center, wondering if anyone nearby had any idea what I was playing. Newly discovered works are rare in classical music, especially for Chopin, who was less prolific than other composers. We knew that readers would want to hear the waltz, but we needed a pianist who could do it justice. I immediately thought of Lang Lang, one of the biggest stars in classical music, whom I first met in 2016 when I was a China correspondent for The Times in Beijing. I messaged Lang on WeChat, asking if he’d be interested in being part of an “unusual story.” “What kind of unusual story ☺️☺️,” he wrote back. I told him about the newly discovered Chopin and sent him the score, which he played through before a rehearsal in San Francisco. “Wow this is a great piece!” he said in a voice message. “I’m very surprised. It’s very Chopin. It must be Chopin. It sounds very much like Chopin, with a very dramatic darkness turning into a positive thing. It’s beautiful.” While Lang was in New York earlier this month to open Carnegie Hall’s season, I met up with him at Steinway Hall in Manhattan to record the waltz. He adjusted his interpretation after each take, changing the tempo and refining the quiet opening notes. He joked that the piece sounded like the beginning of a Woody Allen movie. Sitting near the piano, I asked him why people should care about this waltz, 175 years after Chopin’s death. “This level of music making — it always touches us the deepest,” he said. “To have a new work by this level of great artist — we’re just so lucky. Just enjoy it.” Take a moment to read our story and listen to Chopin’s waltz yourself. THE LATEST NEWS Harris Campaign In Kalamazoo, Mich. Emily Elconin for The New York Times At a Michigan rally, Michelle Obama made an appeal anchored in abortion rights and aimed at male voters. “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother,” she said, “will become collateral damage to your rage.” Residents in towns like Aliquippa, Pa., have more faith in football than in politics. Can Tim Walz combine the two? As vice president, Kamala Harris has targeted race and gender gaps. She isn’t talking about that part of her record as she tries to appeal to moderate voters. Trump Campaign Donald Trump in Novi, Mich. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Donald Trump — who frequently used anti-Muslim rhetoric during his first campaign — celebrated the endorsement of some Muslim and Arab American leaders during a rally in suburban Detroit. Trump does not use the word “fascist” to describe himself, but he does not shrink from the impression it leaves. He goes out of his way to portray himself as an American strongman, Peter Baker writes. Trump will today hold a rally at Madison Square Garden, a show of force that is a reminder and a warning: He will never be done with New York, Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman write. More on the 2024 Election Three-quarters of American voters say democracy is under threat, while nearly half say that it does not do a good job of representing the people, according to a Times/Siena poll. Georgia has seen a flurry of activity from the Trump and Harris campaigns, a recognition that the state is anyone’s to win. Barricades and bulletproof glass: Luzerne County, Pa., is a hub for election conspiracies. Here’s how it is preparing for the possibility of political violence. Middle East Israel’s attacks on Iran destroyed air-defense systems that protected critical energy sites, leaving them vulnerable to future attacks. Some Israeli lawmakers said that the retaliatory strikes did not go far enough. “We could and should have made Iran pay a much higher price,” said the centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid. Iran faces a dilemma in deciding whether to respond: If it does, it risks escalation at a time when its economy is struggling and its allies are faltering, Steven Erlanger writes. More International News Hundreds of people in Sudan have been killed in bombings and revenge attacks in recent days as fighting surges in the war there. The North Korean troops that are nearing Russia’s front line are seemingly young and likely in the early stages of military conscription, The Wall Street Journal reports. Other Big Stories In Springfield, Ohio. Erin Schaff/The New York Times The death of an 11-year-old boy in a school bus accident in Springfield, Ohio, prompted conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant hate. His family is the latest target. The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series. The Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani left the game with an injury. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Should newspaper editorial boards make political endorsements? Yes. Political endorsements are a part of newspapers’ civic role and help readers understand their own positions. “Our goal is to have a well-informed and engaged audience, not one that marches in lock step,” The Boston Globe’s editorial board writes. No. Readers struggle to understand the difference between news and opinion, making it appear as if reporters are biased. “And does it matter? You know who you’re going to vote for, anyway,” Jim Beckerman writes for The Record. FROM OPINION Eminem’s endorsement of Harris focused on the idea that she will let you say and do what you want, a message tailored to the middle-aged white voters she needs, Jessica Grose argues. When politics is hostile and the news feels grim, Boris Fishman turns to wine. Here’s a column by Ross Douthat on fictional robots and A.I. The Times Sale starts now: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS In Peoria, Ill. Amir Hamja for The New York Times Buying time: Scientists are changing the DNA of living things to fight climate change. For sale: Hundreds of abandoned churches. Great prices. Need work. Routine: How the NBC anchor Tom Llamas spends his Sundays. Vows: They were just what they needed. Lives Lived: Leon Cooper was a Nobel-winning physicist who helped unlock the secret of how some materials can convey electricity without resistance, a phenomenon called superconductivity. He died at 94. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “The Mighty Red,” by Louise Erdrich: Even if you’re unclear on the difference between sugar beets and beetroot, Louise Erdrich’s abundant novel leaves you with new respect for a salad bar’s pinch-hitter. “The Mighty Red” is rooted in the rich soil of the Red River Valley of North Dakota, where fragments of buffalo bone commingle with scallop shells, and a tangled legacy of ownership falls on the shoulders of two high school seniors. Gary Geist is the son of beet farmers whose marriage is more merger than meeting of minds; Kismet Poe is the daughter of strivers — an Ojibwe mother operating by the book and a theatrical father skirting the bounds of the law. The unlikely union of teenagers is way more than the sum of its parts and, in classic Erdrichian fashion, functions as both entertainment and microcosm of the world’s ills. Who else can harness hope in a dozen words? “His heart creaked open,” Erdrich writes. “A beam of light struck his left ventricle.” Read our review here. More on books Twenty years after the publication of her fantasy debut, “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,” Susanna Clarke is returning to her richly imagined world of magical England. NASA and Ada Limón, the U.S. poet laureate, may not be obvious collaborators, but a Jupiter-bound mission helped them find common ground. THE INTERVIEW John Fetterman Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman. We spoke about his concerns over the intensity of support for Trump in his state, as well as his backing for Israel’s war in Gaza and his place in the Democratic Party. You’ve said that Trump has a special connection with the people of Pennsylvania. One hundred percent. Why? What is it that you see that he appeals to in your state? There’s a difference between not understanding, but also acknowledging that it exists. And anybody spends time driving around, and you can see the intensity. It’s astonishing. I was doing an event in Indiana County. Very, very red. And there was a superstore of Trump stuff, and it was a hundred feet long, and it was dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds of, I mean, it’s like, Where does this all come from? It’s the kind of thing that has taken on its own life. And it’s like something very special exists there. And that doesn’t mean that I admire it. It’s just — it’s real. And now [Elon] Musk is joining him. I mean, to a lot of people, that’s Tony Stark. That’s the world’s richest guy. And he’s obviously, and undeniably, a brilliant guy, and he’s saying, Hey, that’s my guy for president. That’s going to really matter. What do you think it does? I was truly alarmed about that when he [Musk] started showing up. I mean, I’ve been there, not at that rally [in Pennsylvania], but when they were having the A.I. conference in Washington, he showed up at my building at Russell, and senators were like, [Fetterman’s voice gets very high] Ooh, ooh. They were like, I got to have two minutes, you know, please. So if senators are all like ooh! Then can you imagine what voters in Scranton or all across Pennsylvania — you know, in some sense, he’s a bigger star than Trump. Endorsements, they’re really not meaningful often, but this one is, I think. That has me concerned. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photograph by Dina Litovsky for The New York Times Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Search the web with images from your phone. Make picking up your dog’s poop less unpleasant. Personalize a gift. MEAL PLAN Linda Pugliese for The New York Times Emily Weinstein often can’t pass paneer — a firm, fresh Indian cheese — at the grocery store without adding it to her basket. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, she recommends making mattar paneer, peas and paneer in spiced tomato gravy. Emily also suggests lemon-garlic linguine and sheet-pan chile crisp salmon and asparagus. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was bullheaded. Can you put eight historical events — including the Whiskey Rebellion, the creation of the Space Needle and the discoveries of Marie Curie — 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 October 28 Author Members Posted October 28 October 28, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleague Margot Sanger-Katz writes about the presidential candidates’ health policy proposals. We’re also covering the Middle East, the South China Sea and the N.F.L.’s Uncrustables obsession. —David Leonhardt In Ortonville, Minn. Erin Schaff/The New York Times THE STAKES On health care By Margot Sanger-Katz I cover health care. After several elections with health care at the forefront, the issue has faded into the background this cycle. But the stakes are still high. The next president could influence how many people have health insurance, how much many pay for it, the prices of prescription drugs and more through regulatory power alone. In the event that either candidate is elected with legislative majorities, the differences could be even larger. The Morning has been writing on how the election will matter for major areas of public policy. Today, I’ll break down the stakes for health care. Insurance For people who use Obamacare, a lot of money is at stake. During the pandemic, Democrats raised the subsidies that help 20 million Americans buy their own insurance. Poor Americans can get covered without paying a cent, and even people making north of $100,000 got help with premiums. But if Congress does nothing, the new subsidies will expire at the end of next year. That would likely leave more than three million uninsured — and would make nearly everyone insured through Obamacare pay more. Donald Trump’s campaign says he opposes an extension, which might cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Kamala Harris wants the subsidies to be permanent, though she probably wouldn’t get her way if Republicans control Congress. At Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Grant Hindsley for The New York Times The candidates are also likely to approach key regulations of Obamacare differently. In his first term, Trump encouraged the sale of lightly regulated insurance plans that cost less — and covered fewer medical problems. He also pulled back on advertising for people to enroll in Obamacare. The Biden administration reversed most of these changes, and Harris would likely keep such moves in place. Trump could also weaken the requirement for insurers to cover all forms of contraception. In his first term, he let employers claim exemption on religious or moral grounds. Drug prices A rare point of agreement between the two candidates is that the United States should pay less for prescription drugs. This is an area where the president could have a lot of influence, even if Congress doesn’t cooperate. The Biden administration signed legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of certain drugs with the companies that make them. Ozempic and Wegovy, the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs, could be negotiated next year. How aggressively will officials haggle over their price? It depends who’s running Medicare. In Centreville, Ala. Charity Rachelle for The New York Times Harris is a fan of the new law and wants it to apply to more drugs. Trump has been quiet about the specific provision, but he has lamented for years that Americans pay more for drugs than the rest of the world. When he was president, he wasn’t able to get any major legislation passed, but he tried various rules — blessing Canadian drug imports, forcing drug companies to mention most prices on television ads — to achieve similar goals. But Trump’s policies here are difficult to predict. On this topic, he is out of step with congressional Republicans and conservative health care scholars, who mostly oppose the drug negotiation law. How far he goes may depend on whom he appoints to the big government jobs. Medicare and Medicaid On Medicare, the federal insurance program for Americans over 65, both Trump and Harris have vowed not to cut benefits. But when it comes to Medicaid, which covers poor and disabled Americans, there are major differences between the candidates. Trump allowed state Medicaid programs to impose work requirements, limiting coverage to people who could prove they worked a certain number of hours a week. He could let Republican-led states try other experiments. With a congressional majority If allies of either candidate control both houses of Congress, the differences could be huge. Lawmakers could authorize Harris to negotiate for more drugs. She has also proposed to expand Medicare so it covers seniors’ hearing, vision and home-based care. Those changes would be costly but could be accomplished with a bare-majority vote in the Senate. Her other proposals — such as limiting insulin co-payments to $35 for all Americans or capping everyone’s out-of-pocket drug spending to $2,000 a year — would probably require either 60 Senate votes or the end of the filibuster. If Republicans control Congress and the White House, they might cut Medicaid. Trump has not campaigned on reductions. But he has not pledged to protect the program, and he proposed major cuts in every one of his presidential budgets. None passed. Trump has suggested he might be open to another Obamacare repeal attempt. But Republicans in Congress don’t seem interested. Bottom line: Kamala Harris has offered policies that would lower out-of-pocket costs for many Americans and preserve or expand health insurance coverage. Donald Trump has been vaguer, and his agenda is a little harder to predict. But his allies have embraced policies that would probably increase insurance premiums for people who buy their own insurance — and raise the number of Americans who are uninsured. Both candidates would probably take steps to lower the price of prescription drugs. Related: An opaque industry — pharmacy benefit managers — secretly inflates the price of prescription drugs. The Stakes A Morning newsletter series on how Harris and Trump view some of the biggest issues facing the country. Presidential power Taxes Immigration Abortion Climate THE LATEST NEWS Republican Campaigns Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden. Speakers likened Harris to a prostitute, called her “the Antichrist” and mocked her ethnicity. A comedian at the rally called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” (Trump’s campaign said the joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump.”) For years, a network of Republican activists and officials have met on video calls to plan to contest a Trump defeat. The Times has obtained the recordings. Republicans are clinging to slim leads in Nebraska and Texas Senate races, according to Times/Siena College polls. These polls show that Senate control may still be in play, Nate Cohn writes. Democratic Campaign Harris now leads Trump by less than one percentage point nationally, according to The Times’s polling average. She is trying to become a candidate small business owners love. That’s tough: They tend to lean Republican or Independent. Harris is targeting Trump’s age and competence. She’s employing the same playbook Trump and his allies used against Biden, The Washington Post reports. Last week, several celebrities — including Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen — appeared on the campaign trail for Harris. Trump supporters feel anger and envy, Shawn McCreesh writes. Middle East Israel’s recent strikes against Iran made clear that it is dictating events in the Middle East, and the U.S. has been relegated to the role of wing man, Mark Landler writes. Iranian leaders emphasized that Tehran had the right to retaliate against Israel for the strikes, but they appeared to take a measured tone. Asia In Vietnam. Linh Pham for The New York Times Chinese officials boarded a Vietnamese fishing boat and beat a man with iron pipes in a part of the South China Sea claimed by both China and Vietnam. Japan’s governing party lost its majority in parliamentary elections. It had a political finance scandal. A tropical storm, Trami, made landfall in Vietnam. It killed at least 80 people in the Philippines. Other Big Stories In Swannanoa, N.C. Loren Elliott for The New York Times In Western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene’s devastation is making it hard for people to get health care. McDonald’s will put its Quarter Pounder beef patties back on the menu after a deadly E. coli outbreak. In some locations, the burger won’t include raw onions on top, the likely source of the outbreak. Opinions Members of The Editorial Board share what is motivating their vote this year. Pharmacists have become more skeptical of people looking for opioids. But when they refuse to fill prescriptions, patients turn to the black market, Elizabeth Chiarello writes. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss the election. Here are columns by David French on anti-Trump conservatives and Nicholas Kristof on Trump’s age. The Times Sale starts now: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS In Pluckley, England. Andrew Testa for The New York Times Pluckley: Visit England’s most haunted village. “Ketamine queen”: Read about the woman at the center of the investigation into Matthew Perry’s death. Endangered: Can whale moms save their species? Meet one of them. Metropolitan Diary: Deli meat math. Lives Lived: Antonio Franklin, known as DJ Clark Kent, was a respected hip-hop insider who had influential relationships with many leading rappers. He died at 58. SPORTS Jayden Daniels’s 52-yard Hail Mary. NFL N.F.L.: The Washington Commanders defeated the Chicago Bears with Jayden Daniels’s game-winning Hail Mary pass. N.B.A.: Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry sprained his ankle. His team lost, 112-104, to the Los Angeles Clippers. M.L.B.: Shohei Ohtani will play for the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series tonight after injuring his shoulder in Game 2. ARTS AND IDEAS Gustaf Öhrnell Hjalmars Uncrustables, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches found in supermarket freezers, are popular in the N.F.L. Brock Purdy ate one at his locker before the Super Bowl. Andy Reid once offered them to his players as a reward. At the end of 2023, The Athletic tried to find out just how many of these snacks the league went through that year. The answer: Some 80,000. See a breakdown by team. More on culture New-York Historical Society, after 220 years of existence, is changing its name to the New York Historical. It will open a new wing devoted to American democracy. Holiday music is a big business. Some pop stars are trying to expand the market to include Halloween hits. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times Poach fish fillets in scallion oil. Clean your towels. Here’s how. Keep warm with a space heater. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was flagpole. 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 October 29 Author Members Posted October 29 October 29, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the country’s working-class majority — as well as election interference, North Korean troops and liberal Catholics. New Haven, Conn. Ty Wright, Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times Dayton versus Yale If you want to understand this year’s election, a book published in 1970 turns out to be surprisingly useful. Both liberal and conservative analysts have recently cited its ideas, and the Harris and Trump campaigns have embraced its arguments in different ways. The book’s title is “The Real Majority,” and it appeared during Richard Nixon’s first term. Its authors were two Democrats hoping to save their party from future defeats: Richard Scammon, who had run the Census Bureau under John F. Kennedy, and Ben Wattenberg, who’d been a speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson. Scammon and Wattenberg believed that their fellow Democrats misunderstood the country’s electorate. The energy of the 1960s had led the party to imagine that the typical voter was young and highly educated. As a hypothetical example, the book described a 24-year-old political science instructor at Yale University. In reality, the authors wrote, the typical voter resembled a 47-year-old woman living in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, who didn’t have a college degree and whose husband worked as a machinist. This Dayton voter wasn’t poor, but she struggled with rising inflation. She worried about crime, student protests and drug use, polls showed. She felt ambivalent about the Vietnam War. She was one of the “plain people,” as Scammon and Wattenberg put it, who had long voted Democratic but was uncomfortable with the party’s leftward shift — toward the views of that 24-year-old Yale instructor. Unless Democrats changed course, the authors wrote, “we may well see Republican presidents in the White House for a generation.” The book was prophetic: Republicans won four of the next five presidential elections, including landslides by Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The new 1960s The book also foreshadowed the political dynamics in 2024, when the cost of living is a major issue, foreign wars rage and the Democratic Party is trying to leave behind a period of liberal foment. When “The Real Majority” appeared, that period was the 1960s. Today, it is the late 2010s and early 2020s, when many Democrats pushed unpopular ideas, such as less border security, less policing, long Covid lockdowns, the end of private health insurance and the decriminalization of hard drugs. All those ideas are more popular on college campuses than in places like Dayton. And the country more closely resembles Dayton; roughly 60 percent of voters do not have a four-year college degree. Ben Wattenberg, left, and Richard Scammon. “There is a natural working-class majority in American politics and those who hope to lead the country ignore it at their peril,” Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, wrote in his recent book, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the G.O.P.” Ruffini cited the Dayton-Yale framework. Timothy Shenk, a progressive historian at George Washington University, also used the framework in his new book “Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics.” (You may be interested in Shenk’s recent Times Opinion essay about the most effective ways to combat Trumpism, as well as Ruffini’s list of the 21 communities that will help decide next week’s election, with maps.) Class over age The working-class majority holds a complex set of views. It tends to be deeply dissatisfied with the country’s direction and to want sweeping change. It leans left on economic policies, like Medicare and Social Security, while worrying about government overreach. It leans isolationist on foreign policy. It tends to be wary of trade and immigration and to feel positively about the military and the police. Donald Trump managed to take over the Republican Party in 2016, and then win the presidency, with help from his gut feel for working-class politics (despite his own wealth). He defied Republican orthodoxy by criticizing trade and immigration while promising not to cut Medicare and Social Security. If he wins again this year, it will be partly by appealing to people whom Democrats wrongly imagined as loyal progressives — including Black, Latino, Asian American and younger voters. Social class, as Scammon and Wattenberg suggested, can be an even better predictor of a person’s vote than race or age. Much of Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign is also consistent with their arguments. After adopting fiercely liberal positions four years ago, she has reversed course and changed her positions on immigration, fracking and more. Her ads describe her as “a border state prosecutor.” She emphasizes patriotism and economic populism. Still, it’s a tricky pivot: More Americans describe Harris as “too liberal” (44 percent) than describe Trump as “too conservative” (32 percent), according to a New York Times/Siena College poll last month. I know that many people find that comparison hard to fathom. “The Real Majority” helps make sense of it. For more: On today’s episode of “The Daily,” Michael Barbaro and I explain why immigration has become such a sore spot for working-class voters. And in this short Times video, I break down the campaign advertisements of several Democratic Senate candidates who are running strong races in purple and red states — including Ohio. THE LATEST NEWS Democratic Campaign Kamala Harris in Michigan. Brittany Greeson for The New York Times Harris campaigned across Michigan. In Philadelphia, John Legend and Bruce Springsteen performed at a rally featuring Barack Obama. Harris campaign aides argue that the race is shifting in her favor and that her warnings about Trump and abortion are breaking through. President Biden waited in line and voted early for Harris near his hometown, Wilmington, Del. A reporter asked him whether it was bittersweet. “No, this is just sweet,” he said. Harris has avoided campaigning alongside Biden in the final days of the race. Her campaign believes that his unpopularity would hurt her chances. Michael Bloomberg, who had given less to Democrats this year than in 2018 and 2020, donated about $50 million to support Harris. Republican Campaign Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden. Kenny Holston/The New York Times The Trump campaign denounced a comedian’s offensive jokes about Puerto Rico and minorities at a rally in Madison Square Garden. Republican lawmakers also distanced themselves from the remarks. Trump is using much more profanity now than he did in 2016. What minimal self-restraint he once showed in his public discourse has evaporated, Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman write. If he wins, Trump would likely have more financial conflicts of interest than any previous president. He has ties to foreign governments, real estate deals and a publicly traded social media company. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump stopped talking about a federal abortion ban. These charts show how else his language changed. Philadelphia’s district attorney sued Elon Musk’s super PAC over its $1 million giveaways to people who both registered to vote and signed a conservative petition. A growing number of voters say that Trump was “just exercising his right” to contest the 2020 election results, New York Times/Siena College polling finds, and most aren’t worried that he will try to contest this year’s results. More on 2024 Foreign election interference has become more sophisticated with the help of A.I. Read about efforts by China, Iran and Russia. In response to rising migration, both Trump and Harris promise restrictions on political asylum, breaking with decades of U.S. policy. Two ballot drop boxes — one in Oregon, one in Washington State — were set on fire. The police believe the arsons are linked. Three Washington Post journalists stepped down from the paper’s editorial board in protest of Jeff Bezos’ decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. (Bezos wrote a defense of his decision in The Post.) War in Ukraine Ukraine is bracing for North Korean soldiers to attack alongside Russian troops. Thousands of North Korean soldiers are now in Russia’s west. Russian glide bombs, which fly so quietly that they evade detection, are menacing a Ukrainian city thought to be a haven from the war. Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing Western leaders to support a plan that he says could end the war next year. He has received a lukewarm response. Middle East In Sana, Yemen. Mohammed Huwais/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Iran-backed Houthi militia has arrested dozens of Yemenis linked to the U.S. Embassy or international agencies. Hezbollah named a new leader, Naim Qassem, a longtime deputy. The Israeli Parliament passed laws that could threaten the work of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians. Other Big Stories Steve Bannon, the strategist who helped elect Trump in 2016, was released from prison this morning. “I’m not broken, I’m empowered,” he said. In Austin, Texas, Musk is trying to create a compound where his children — of which there are at least 11 — and their mothers could live. It’s been complicated. A Ph.D. student accidentally found a lost Maya city in a Mexican jungle, including pyramids and amphitheaters, the BBC reports. In Brazil, criminals are increasingly using chemicals instead of chain saws for deforestation. More than a third of the world’s trees are at risk of extinction, scientists say. Opinions Climate disasters have made renting a safer financial choice than homeownership, Benjamin Keys argues. Trump says America is on the decline. The data says otherwise, Steven Pinker writes. Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on Trump’s New York rally, and Lydia Polgreen on the BRICS bloc. Readers of The Morning: Don’t miss out on a full year of savings. From in-depth coverage of Decision 2024 to unlimited news and analysis, Games, Cooking, The Athletic and more, subscribe now for only $1 a week for your first year. MORNING READS In Burnaby, British Columbia. Alana Paterson for The New York Times Wildlife: Crows can hold grudges, scientists say. Their wrath can be alarming. Ask Vanessa: “What is the perfect length for a winter coat?” A lot of Cheddar: Scammers stole 22 metric tons of rare cheese from a leading London retailer. Lives Lived: Paul Morrissey collaborated with Andy Warhol in the late 1960s and early ’70s to create films that captured New York’s demimonde of drug addicts, drag queens and hipsters. Morrissey died at 86. SPORTS M.L.B.: The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees, 4-2. The Dodgers are one victory away from winning the World Series. N.F.L.: In Pittsburgh, the Steelers beat the New York Giants. N.B.A.: The Orlando Magic forward Paolo Banchero delivered the first 50-point game of the season. He scored 37 points in the first half alone. ARTS AND IDEAS Dominic Preziosi, editor of Commonweal. Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times Commonweal magazine was founded in 1924 as a sort of Catholic version of the The New Republic, a journal for middle-class, liberal-minded members of the faith. It attracted an illustrious roster of writers, including Dorothy Day, W.H. Auden and John Updike. But a century later, with Mass attendance dwindling and the church’s conservative voices growing louder, Commonweal is wrestling with its place. More on culture Jon Stewart will continue to host “The Daily Show” on Monday nights through next year. After Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, Stewart said: “How dare they desecrate the stage that the Piano Man has consecrated?” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Bryan Gardner for The New York Times Cover salmon in an everything bagel seasoning and serve with a creamy caper sauce. Use this cream on curly hair. Open a bottle of wine with these corkscrews. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was warming. 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 October 30 Author Members Posted October 30 October 30, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies — as well as Gaza, Botswana and New York pizza. Donald Trump Doug Mills/The New York Times Not a rerun Donald Trump has shown more hostility to American democracy than any other president in the country’s history. He tried to overturn an election result. He celebrates political violence. The list goes on, and it is familiar by now. A central question about a second Trump term is how this hostility might manifest itself. The country’s political system survived his first term, after all, and many Americans understandably wonder how much different a second term would be. It really could be different. Trump is now far better positioned to accomplish his goals, as my colleagues Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan have explained in a series of stories. His aides are vetting job candidates for loyalty, trying to exclude establishment Republicans who might resist his wishes. Both Congress and the judiciary would likely be friendlier to him than they were eight years ago. In today’s newsletter, I want to help you understand the main ways that Trump could undermine democratic traditions. Along the way, I’ll point to Times coverage from the past two years. I will also address some objections that I expect some readers to have. The dangers There are at least six major ways Trump could weaken American democracy: 1. Prosecute critics. Trump has promised to use the Justice Department to punish his political opponents if he is president again, including with “long term prison sentences,” as he wrote online. Presidents have traditionally not inserted themselves into criminal cases. But that has been a choice; a president has the power to issue orders to the Justice Department. In his first term, Trump demanded investigations of at least 10 people, sometimes damaging their lives, as my colleague Michael Schmidt has documented. Trump could order more investigations in a second term, given his staffing plans. (This graphic lays out how Trump could seek to jail his political opponents.) 2. Silence critics in other ways. Trump may also try to use his regulatory powers to shape public discourse. He has suggested that NBC, MSNBC and CBS deserve to lose their broadcast licenses because of their critical coverage of him. He has talked about punishing Amazon because its founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post. These comments echo the silencing campaigns that foreign leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India have conducted (as this essay by A.G. Sulzberger, The Times’s publisher, explains). 3. Reward allies and campaign donors. Trump, as The Times has reported, “is sometimes making overt promises about what he will do once he’s in office, a level of explicitness toward individual industries and a handful of billionaires that has rarely been seen in modern presidential politics.” Both the oil and vaping industries — and perhaps Elon Musk — seem likely to benefit. 4. Replace federal employees with loyalists. Late in his first term, Trump issued an executive order that gave him the power to fire and replace tens of thousands of federal workers, including economists, scientists and national security experts. The order would have vastly increased the number of political appointees, which is now about 4,000. President Biden rescinded the order. True, there is an argument that such an order promotes democracy by causing the federal work force to reflect the elected president. But the moves may also strip the government of nonpartisan expertise that connects policy with reality. And combined with Trump’s many anti-democratic promises, the wholesale firing of federal employees could allow him to use the government for his personal whims. 5. Undermine previously enacted policies. Rather than trying to repeal laws he opposes, Trump and his allies have suggested that he may simply “impound” funds — effectively ignoring laws that Congress previously passed. One example: He could try to block money for clean energy. 6. Refuse to transfer power peacefully. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, still do not acknowledge that Biden beat Trump in 2020. Trump even vows to pardon some of the rioters who attacked Congress when it was meeting to certify the result on Jan. 6, 2021. This combination suggests that a transfer of power took place in 2021 only because enough Republicans stood up to Trump. And they may not do so in the future. Policy isn’t democracy I know that Trump supporters may ask why we’re not writing a similar newsletter about the Democratic Party. And it’s true that liberals have violated democratic norms at times — with aggressive executive orders, for example, or attempts to stifle debate during the Covid pandemic. But Trump’s anti-democratic behavior is of a different order of magnitude. Pretending otherwise is false balance. As an example of how different Biden and Trump are, look at Biden’s Justice Department. It has indicted not only prominent Republicans (like Trump) but also prominent Democrats (like Mayor Eric Adams and Senator Robert Menendez), a major Democratic fund-raiser (Sam Bankman-Fried, the now imprisoned crypto executive) and even the president’s son (Hunter Biden). I also know that some Democrats will argue that the list here is too short and should include Trump’s potential policies on abortion, immigration, climate change and more. But it’s worth distinguishing between policy disputes and democracy itself. There is nothing inherently anti-democratic about reducing environmental regulations, allowing states to restrict abortion access or deporting people who entered the country illegally. Democrats can make the case that these policies are wrong — and voters can decide who’s right. Voters can also change their minds if the policies don’t succeed. Attacks on democracy are different. If democracy breaks down, the political system can lose the ability to self-correct. More on Trump A second Trump administration would likely expand presidential power and reduce the independence of federal agencies, including the Federal Reserve. Trump says he will use the military for domestic law enforcement, including to fight crime in Democratic-run cities. His ties to foreign governments and to regulated companies would probably make him the most conflicted president in U.S. history. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but he has many links to it. It could offer a preview of how he would govern. Trump has promoted false conspiracies about plots against him or the American people more than 300 times, a Times analysis revealed. THE LATEST NEWS More on 2024 Kamala Harris Erin Schaff/The New York Times Kamala Harris spoke to a crowd of about 75,000 people outside the White House, the same spot where Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021. She called Trump a “petty tyrant” who threatens democracy. Harris also outlined her plans to lower housing, health care and other costs. “On Day 1, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list,” she said. Trump claimed he didn’t know the comedian who called Puerto Rico “garbage” at his Madison Square Garden rally and hadn’t seen his remarks. Trump described the rally as a “lovefest.” Biden, addressing the comedian’s remark, appeared to insult Trump supporters: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.” A White House official said that Biden was referring to the racist language not to Trump supporters in general. Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania featuring speakers with ties to Puerto Rico. Nearby, Democrats put up billboards highlighting the comedian’s comments. The China-linked hackers who targeted Trump and Vance’s phones also targeted phones belonging to Eric Trump, Jared Kushner and members of Harris’s staff. Barbara Bush, whose father and grandfather were Republican presidents, knocked on doors in support of Harris. Middle East In northern Gaza. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Israeli military struck Beit Lahia, a town in northern Gaza, for the third time in just over a week, killing dozens of people including children, Gazan officials said. Israeli airstrikes in eastern Lebanon killed at least 60 people, according to Lebanese officials. October has been the deadliest month of the year for Israel’s military; more than 55 soldiers have been killed in operations in Gaza and Lebanon. More International News A global slump in demand for diamonds has become an issue in Botswana’s national election. Flash floods in eastern Spain have killed at least 51 people, according to officials. Delivery at the doomsday shed: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, which safeguards plant species in case of a global catastrophe, has received a huge shipment of new seeds. Other Big Stories A California judge sentenced the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer to life in prison. Airlines in the U.S. must now provide automatic refunds when a flight is significantly delayed — three hours for domestic flights and six hours for international flights. Scientists discovered the second-smallest vertebrate known on Earth: a “toadlet,” smaller than some ant species. Some prosecutors have used laws unrelated to abortion — like ones for child abuse or murder — to charge women accused of trying to end their pregnancies. Read one woman’s story in The Washington Post. Opinions Highly educated women and less educated men will decide this presidential election. A populist message can appeal to both, Celinda Lake and Amanda Iovino argue. Progressives point to civil rights and the New Deal to say they’re on the right side of history. But progressives have been wrong, too, on immigration, policing and more, Oren Cass writes. Here are columns by Bret Stephens on his vote for Harris, and Thomas Friedman on the future of A.I. Readers of The Morning: Don’t miss out on a full year of savings. From in-depth coverage of Decision 2024 to unlimited news and analysis, Games, Cooking, The Athletic and more, subscribe now for only $1 a week for your first year. MORNING READS United Film Distribution Company; Pixar/Disney Extra! Extra! When disaster movies want to show that the end is nigh, they flash a newspaper. See some of the best front pages. Ask Well: “What should I eat while taking antibiotics?” Get a slice: See a list of the 25 best pizza places in New York. Real-life Wonka: See inside the factory where Nerds gummies are made. Three tips: Make your commute more enjoyable. Lives Lived: If Teri Garr’s best-known roles — in films like “Tootsie,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”— had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives. She died at 79. SPORTS Mookie Betts and Yankees fans. FOX Sports: MLB M.L.B.: The New York Yankees forced a Game 5 in the World Series with an 11-4 rout of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Two Yankees fans were ejected during the game for prying open a Dodgers player’s glove. New signing: After the Chicago White Sox had the worst season in league history, the team is hiring Will Venable, the Texas Rangers’ associate manager. N.F.L.: The Indianapolis Colts benched quarterback Anthony Richardson, whom they selected at No. 4 in the 2023 draft. ARTS AND IDEAS In Mendoza, Argentina. Courtesy of Casa de Uco Vineyards & Wine Resort Planning a vacation for the week between Christmas and New Year can be difficult. Hotel rates are high, and room availability is low. T Magazine has a list of 15 destinations where you can still find a hotel room, including Mendoza, Argentina, for those in search of a great meal, and Marrakesh, Morocco, for those who want to go someplace warm. See the full list here. More on culture A new book, “Nora Ephron at the Movies,” examines her work, including “When Harry Met Sally” and “Heartburn.” “Tonight’s monologue is for Republicans”: Jimmy Kimmel made a 19-minute case against Trump. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Armando Rafael for The New York Times Make ruby chocolate badam burfi bark for Diwali. Purée soup with an immersion blender. Prepare for the end of daylight saving time. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was mortify. 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 Correction: A picture caption in yesterday’s newsletter misidentified the location of one of the top photos. The photos showed Dayton, Ohio, (left), and New Haven, Conn. (right). They were not both from New Haven. 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 October 31 Author Members Posted October 31 October 31, 2024 Happy Halloween. Today, we’re covering how the election could change the courts — as well as the candidates’ closing arguments, floods in Spain and a haunted house. —David Leonhardt Inside the Supreme Court. Amir Hamja/The New York Times THE STAKES Holding court By Ian Prasad Philbrick I’m a writer for The Morning newsletter. On Tuesday, Americans will elect the next president and hundreds of Congress members. In doing so, voters will also shape the third branch: the judiciary. Federal judges — whom the president picks and the Senate confirms — have become even more powerful in recent years as a polarized Congress has failed to pass major laws on many issues. As a result, the judiciary has shaped policy on abortion, immigration, guns, voting rights and more. Today’s newsletter explains how the election could change the courts for decades to come. The Supreme Court Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices as president. If he wins next week, he may get more appointments than Kamala Harris would have gotten. History suggests one reason: In recent years, judges have tended to retire in time to let the president they prefer fill their seats. The oldest sitting justices today — Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74 — are Republican appointees. If they stepped down during a second Trump administration, the president could choose younger replacements who would cement conservative control of the court for decades. The Senate is another reason. Republicans seem more likely to control the chamber next year. If they do, they can block Harris from filling a vacancy, much as they did Barack Obama in 2016. “If he were re-elected, he’d probably get to appoint one if not two members to the United States Supreme Court,” Harris said of Trump last week. She did not say how many appointees she may get if she wins. Harris also wants to enact term limits and an ethics code for the court, given the revelation that Thomas and Alito accepted luxury gifts without disclosing them. That’s unlikely if Republicans control the Senate — and maybe even if Democrats do, thanks to the filibuster. Courts, remade What about lower courts? Judges can serve for life. So the more a president appoints, the more he or she can shape the country. The Supreme Court hears only about 80 cases per year, meaning that lower courts are often the final arbiter on many issues. They set precedent on criminal justice, bankruptcy proceedings, corporate disputes and antitrust enforcement, and on whether federal laws and rules are constitutional. In a typical four-year term, a president replaces about one-quarter of the country’s 870 active federal judges, across both federal district and appeals courts. Trump filled 231 vacancies, and President Biden may equal that number before the next Congress takes over. Partly as a result, Republican and Democratic presidents have each appointed about half of the judges on federal courts. The appeals courts lean slightly Republican, while the district courts lean Democratic (if you count senior judges who work less but still hear cases), according to Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution. The next president will likely be able to tip that balance, letting one party’s appointees make up a clear majority of judges. By The New York Times The next president will also alter the courts’ racial, ideological and professional makeup. Under Trump, 76 percent of judicial nominees were men, and 84 percent were white, according to an analysis by my colleagues. Many had ties to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. Biden’s appointees have been 63 percent female and 61 percent nonwhite. He has prioritized nominees who served as public defenders and civil rights lawyers, and his picks have tended to be more liberal than those of past Democratic presidents. A second-term Trump might have the edge over a first-term Harris because a Republican-controlled Senate could block some of her appointees. Perhaps moderate Harris nominees would get through, though: Most of Biden’s appointees received bipartisan support. Another potential area of agreement is a bipartisan measure to incrementally increase the total number of federal district judges to ease rising caseloads. The bill passed the Senate in August but has yet to receive a House vote. Harris hasn’t specified whom she might nominate if given the chance. Trump boasts about his first-term nominees and suggests he’ll name more people like them. What’s next Even as the election will shape the judiciary, the judiciary may also shape the election. As in 2020, Republicans and Democrats have already asked federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court, to resolve disputes about ballots before Election Day. Their rulings could determine the outcome of a close race. Perhaps related, Americans’ faith in the courts has eroded in the Trump era. Unpopular rulings on elections, abortion, presidential immunity, guns and other issues — as well as the criminal cases against Trump, which will likely move forward if he loses — have driven down public trust in the Supreme Court and the justice system, polls suggest. That decline may be hard to reverse no matter which candidate prevails — especially if the courts play a role in deciding the winner. For more The Supreme Court let Virginia remove about 1,600 people suspected of being noncitizens from its voter rolls. The Justice Department had argued that the purge could remove eligible voters. Pennsylvania Democrats sued Erie County, alleging that voters who requested mail ballots hadn’t yet received them or had received the wrong one. The Stakes A Morning newsletter series on how Harris and Trump view some of the biggest issues facing the country. Presidential power Taxes Immigration Abortion Climate Health care THE LATEST NEWS Democratic Campaign Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Harris visited three battleground states to deliver her closing argument: that she can unite the country. “The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us,” she said in Raleigh, N.C. Harris distanced herself from Biden’s remarks that seemed to call Trump supporters “garbage.” Biden clarified that he had meant a Trump surrogate who made a racist joke. Harris said, “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.” Bernie Sanders, campaigning for Harris, has taken a darker tone than she has. He denounced elites and the status quo as “disgraceful” and “disgusting.” Republican Campaign Donald Trump in Wisconsin. Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump wore a garbage collector’s vest during a Wisconsin rally, criticizing Biden’s “garbage” comment. Brett Favre, former Green Bay Packers quarterback, campaigned with him. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that Republicans would try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if Trump wins. “No Obamacare?” a voter asked. “No Obamacare,” Johnson responded. Trump’s campaign disavowed the remark. In his appeals to Black and Latino voters, Trump is pitting them against immigrants and sometimes against each other. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters that Trump had promised to put him in charge of public health agencies. A notable number of former Trump aides have turned on him and said he should not be president again. Here is a list, with their comments. Voting Michigan officials charged a noncitizen for registering and illegally voting in Ann Arbor. They called it “an extremely isolated and rare event.” Michigan also removed a local election official who said he planned to count ballots by hand, despite rules against it. The official has ties to activists who spread conspiracies about voting machines. The police in Florida arrested an 18-year-old Trump supporter for threatening two Harris supporters with a machete at an early-voting site. More on 2024 Americans pick their president, but their choice will affect the rest of the world. Times foreign correspondents explain the stakes for Europe, China, global trade and more. Republicans have softened their positions on abortion, competitive House races show. Americans are increasingly moving to areas where neighbors share their political views, a Times analysis found. International Ukrainians in Sumy, Ukraine, after arriving from Russian-occupied areas. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Ukrainians say Russia is imposing brutal repression — including torture, detention and re-education — in regions under Moscow’s control. At least 95 people have died in floods in eastern Spain. Many others are still missing, and rescuers are searching for bodies. Shanghai cracked down on Halloween celebrations, rounding up revelers — including some dressed as Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump — apparently to prevent gatherings turning political. Other Big Stories The U.S. relies on SpaceX to build its military and spy technologies. Elon Musk’s plunge into politics complicates those deals. Consumers are spending and inflation is cooling, a report on the U.S. economy shows. Opinions Massachusetts voters will consider whether to do away with the state’s high school exit exam. Keeping it would make sure students were ready to graduate, Jessica Grose argues. A pro-independence candidate running for governor of Puerto Rico gives Puerto Ricans hope, Yarimar Bonilla writes. Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on pro-Palestinian voters against Harris. Enjoy open access to the election hub in The Times app. Explore polls, analysis, reporter videos and all other coverage featured in the election hub, for a limited time. Ready? Download the app. MORNING READS In New York. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Fake blood is expensive: This haunted house in TriBeCa costs $45 to enter. The owners explained what goes into that ticket price. Trick or treat: You may eat a lot of sugar this week. See how it will impact your body. Social Q’s: “Our fun friend bails on dinner dates but still sends her dull husband.” Lives Lived: John Gierach, a fly fisherman, was as skilled with words as he was with a rod and reel. Gierach wrote hundreds of articles and more than 20 books, including “Even Brook Trout Get the Blues” and “Sex, Death and Fly-Fishing.” He died at 77. SPORTS Mookie Betts connects for the Dodgers. Major League Baseball World Series: The Los Angeles Dodgers are champions after beating the New York Yankees 7-6 in Game 5. N.F.L.: The Carolina Panthers announced that Bryce Young, the No. 1 draft pick in 2023, would remain the starting quarterback for now, despite Andy Dalton’s return to practice. N.B.A.: Bronny James, son of LeBron James, scored his first career points last night in Cleveland, where the 20-year-old grew up. ARTS AND IDEAS Lionsgate “Saw,” the horror movie about a serial-killer-slash-taskmaster, was released 20 years ago this week. The film’s sequels ratcheted up the disgust, and reveled in it, earning them the label “torture porn.” But the original “Saw” was more interested in morality than gore, Annie Aguiar writes. Read her retrospective. More on culture In China, a rock band of farmers has become popular. Late-night hosts joked about Biden’s “garbage” comment. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Mark Weinberg for The New York Times Bake Nigella Lawson’s monster cookies for an easy Halloween treat. Counter the effects of sitting all day. Replace your shower curtains. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was indictment. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Strands, and a bonus crossword for Halloween. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —Ian P.S. Curious about how The Times is covering this election? Our journalists answered readers’ questions about fact-checking, biases and more. 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 November 2 Author Members Posted November 2 November 1, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering next week’s races for Congress — as well as farmers in Gaza, Russian mercenaries and pigeon racing. Shuran Huang for The New York Times A divided or united capital? Every president of the past 30 years has taken office with his party in control of both the Senate and the House. That combination has allowed presidents to pass major legislation early in their terms — including deficit reduction by Bill Clinton, tax cuts by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, an expansion of health insurance by Barack Obama, and a major climate law by Joe Biden. The next president may end the streak. Even if Kamala Harris wins, a Democratic-controlled Senate looks improbable. If Trump wins, his party has a better chance to enjoy a so-called trifecta — controlling the White House, Senate and House of Representatives — but it isn’t assured. “Control of the House is on a knife’s edge,” Maya Miller, who’s been covering the campaign for The Times, told me. In today’s newsletter, my colleagues and I will preview the race for congressional control. We’ll also explain what a divided government might get done and what each party hopes to accomplish if it does win a trifecta. The Senate Senator Jon Tester Janie Osborne for The New York Times The Senate math is daunting for Democrats. Their caucus now has 51 senators, meaning they can lose only one seat and retain control in a Harris presidency. (The vice president breaks 50-50 Senate ties.) And Democrats are vulnerable in several states. West Virginia is all but lost because Joe Manchin is retiring and other Democrats tend to lose badly there. In Montana, Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent, trailed by eight points in the most recent Times/Siena College poll. A few other Senate Democrats, like Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, are in tight races. To keep Senate control, Democrats would need to win all those races but West Virginia — or pull off at least one upset elsewhere. Their best hopes are in either Texas, where Colin Allred, a House Democrat, is only a few points behind Ted Cruz in the polls, or Nebraska, where Dan Osborn, an industrial mechanic who’s running as an independent, is trying to unseat Deb Fischer, the Republican incumbent. Osborn’s views on the economy and abortion suggest he will often side with Democrats. (To understand why the Nebraska race is close, I recommend Maya’s recent story — or this feisty Osborn ad.) The House House Speaker Mike Johnson Kenny Holston/The New York Times The party that wins the presidential race is also likely to control the House. But the race is so close that the presidency and the House could go in opposite directions for the first time since 1988. How can Republicans keep their House majority even if Harris wins? Partly by taking districts in deep-blue states like California and New York. Some voters there have been unhappy with these states’ “leftward lurch,” as my colleagues Nicholas Fandos and Catie Edmondson put it. Education, immigration and criminal justice are among the disputed issues. And how can Democrats win the House even if Trump wins? One, Harris may win the popular vote even if she loses the Electoral College, which could help Democratic candidates. Two, incumbent House Republicans must defend 17 seats in districts that Biden won four years ago (such as a suburban district in Orange County, Calif., home to many Vietnamese Americans). Only five House Democrats are running in districts that Trump won. “All five of them are appealing heavily to working-class people and separating themselves from the Democratic Party on tricky issues like immigration and policing,” Maya said. Among those five: a rural Maine district that she recently profiled. Three scenarios for 2025 In a divided government, sweeping legislation is unlikely. Trump probably couldn’t pass the large tax cut he wants, nor could Harris pass abortion protections. Either would need to pursue the least ambitious agenda of any new president in decades. Of course, bills would still pass. Possibilities include a compromise extension of some Trump tax cuts (which are set to expire in December) and a border-security bill modeled after the bipartisan plan from this past summer. If there is a Democratic trifecta, Harris could accomplish a lot on economic policy (because many budget-related provisions are not subject to a filibuster and can pass with 51 votes). Democrats could extend tax cuts for the middle class and the poor while raising taxes on the rich, for instance. They could also pass Harris’s proposed housing subsidies. A big question would be whether the party would vote to scrap the filibuster for other bills, such as on abortion access or statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Under a Republican trifecta, the priorities would likely include large tax cuts; a tough immigration bill; expansions of oil-and-gas production; restrictions on transgender rights and diversity programs; and reductions in aid to Ukraine and other allies. Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress, said that she expected the recent infighting among House Republicans to continue, which would complicate their ability to pass some bills. Trump’s proposed tariffs might be one area of disagreement; China policy (on which many Republicans now seem more hawkish than Trump) could be another. Overall, though, Republicans seem poised to get much more done than at the start of Trump’s first term, when much of the party was still critical of him. As Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, writes, “This time, Republicans would be much better prepared to take advantage of their consolidated power.” To go deeper, I recommend Carl’s preview of a potential Republican trifecta. THE LATEST NEWS Democratic Campaign Jennifer Lopez in Nevada. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Harris campaigned in suburban Las Vegas with the singer Jennifer Lopez. Lopez criticized Trump’s recent rally at Madison Square Garden, where a comedian called Puerto Rico “garbage.” Harris criticized Trump for saying that he would protect women as president “whether the women like it or not.” She said it revealed “how he thinks about women and their agency.” Inflation is basically back to normal and the job market is strong. Read why voters are still feeling pessimistic. Many economists say Harris’s plans, when compared with Trump’s, would do more to help working-class Americans. Those voters are skeptical. Republican Campaign Donald Trump in Albuquerque. Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump campaigned in New Mexico yesterday and will visit Virginia this weekend, two reliably blue, but close, states. Trump and JD Vance are sowing doubts about election security in Pennsylvania. Trump accused the state of cheating, while Vance reposted false claims that Democrats are impersonating election workers. Howard Lutnick, who leads Trump’s White House transition team, said that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made him a vaccine skeptic. Lutnick echoed the false claim that childhood vaccines cause autism. Vance, in an interview with Joe Rogan, predicted that Trump would win “the normal gay guy vote” because of transgender issues. Elon Musk pledged political neutrality when he bought Twitter. Instead, he’s used the platform to spread pro-Trump misinformation. Many Republicans are predicting a Trump landslide based on skewed polls. If he loses, they could fuel claims of a rigged election. As president, Trump set foreign policy impulsively, often tweeting changes that sent his officials scrambling. A Trump win could revive that approach at a moment of international peril. More on 2024 Algoma, Wis., a town that Biden won by just six votes in 2020, is among the most politically split communities in the nation. Tensions are rising there. Both parties are running ads inviting voters to cross party lines. In one, a Jewish woman admits she “never cared for” Trump, “but at least he’ll keep us safe.” Another urges women to vote differently from their Trump-supporting husbands. An ad for Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska, a Republican in a tight race against a populist independent candidate, used stock footage from New England. A Fischer spokesman blamed a vendor. Middle East Israel struck a hospital in northern Gaza, destroying recently delivered medical supplies, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli military, which claims Hamas operates within the hospital, said it was unaware of the strike and was reviewing reports. Two top Iranian officials said that Tehran planned to respond to Israel’s recent attacks. After more than a year of war in Gaza, farmers — who once tended eggplants and tomatoes — have lost land and sometimes their lives. More International News In Paiporta, Spain. David Ramos/Getty Images In the Spanish town of Paiporta, residents are reckoning with death and destruction caused by recent floods. “We are alive,” one resident said. “But we have lost everything.” Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, suffered a major defeat in Mali this summer. It showed that its capabilities might be overstated. The party that has governed Botswana since 1966 lost its majority in Parliament for the first time. The nation is facing an economic slump. Last month, Russia made its largest territorial gains in Ukraine in two years. Other Big Stories American communities that suffered the most factory closures in recent decades are now receiving a large share of investment from cutting-edge industries. The Biden administration will invest hundreds of millions to place a semiconductor research facility in upstate New York. The rapper Young Thug pleaded guilty to participating in criminal street gang activity, ending his role in Georgia’s longest ever trial. He was sentenced to time served, plus 15 years probation. Opinions With maps, Doug Sosnik explains the best paths to an Electoral College win for both Harris and Trump. Trump’s unraveling language and cursing isn’t a sign of cognitive decline. It’s a sign he’s bored, John McWhorter argues. Here are columns by Paul Krugman on Trump voters’ future remorse and Michelle Goldberg on Trump and fascism. Enjoy open access to the election hub in The Times app. Explore polls, analysis, reporter videos and all other coverage featured in the election hub, for a limited time. Ready? Download the app. MORNING READS In Mumbai. Poras Chaudhary for The New York Times Layover: How a British Airways pilot spent 24 hours in Mumbai. Mental health: Libraries have become public stages for social problems. The people who work there are burning out. Global affairs: Counting the number of continents is surprisingly difficult. Big babies: The oldest known tadpole fossil is the size of a hot dog. Lives Lived: The artist and designer Isabelle de Borchgrave made life-size paper recreations of period garments including Elizabethan court gowns and the flapper fashions of Coco Chanel. She died at 78. SPORTS Garrett Wilson’s catch. New York Jets N.F.L.: New York Jets receiver Garrett Wilson made what could be the catch of the year in a 21-13 win over the Houston Texans. Read a recap. M.L.B.: The announcer Bob Costas has retired from calling play-by-play after 44 years. N.B.A.: San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama recorded a 5x5 game in a matchup against the Utah Jazz, the second of his young career and just the 23rd in league history. ARTS AND IDEAS Rachel Wizniewski for The New York Times; James Estrin/The New York Times The start of a pigeon racing competition, writes Tracey Tully, can be as tense as it is spectacular, with birds soaring and hooking across the sky. The sport is an old one — its roots that can be traced to ancient Egypt — but it is threatened by dwindling open spaces and fading traditions. Animal rights activists would not be sad to see it go. More on culture The chief executive of PEN America is stepping down. The organization has faced criticism over its response to the war in Gaza. Late night hosts joked about Trump’s campaign appearance inside a garbage truck. “And right at the buzzer, a new Halloween costume has emerged,” Jimmy Fallon said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Armando Rafael for The New York Times Make a five-star turkey chili for dinner tonight. Relieve pain with a massage chair. Exercise on a treadmill at home. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was thoughtful. 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 November 3 Author Members Posted November 3 November 2, 2024 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Daylight saving time ends tomorrow. How will you make use of the extra hour? María Jesús Contreras Taking time The midday sun in my apartment this time of year is like a searchlight, illuminating every windowpane streak and every mote of dust. It’s obnoxious, honestly, like a teacher’s pet showing off: “Look how bright and unsparing I can be,” the sun seems to taunt, “just before I decamp for the next four months.” An extra hour of sleep is no small thing if you can seize it. This is what I’ll remind myself as I make the rounds of the clocks tonight before bed, anticipating that brief moment of confused excitement tomorrow when I wake and check the time: It’s 7, no wait, it’s actually 6! Every first Sunday in November, I contemplate becoming a different, better person, one who gets up one hour earlier to meditate or exercise or meal-prep. I could be the person who spends an hour journaling, or fixing a large, healthy breakfast or taking the dog for a brisk walk in the cold dark. (In this alternate reality, I have a dog.) And every first Sunday in November I do none of these things. I spend the extra hour in bed, trying to go back to sleep, probably fretting a little about how I’m squandering this precious opportunity to begin leading a truly productive life. I know, it’s just one hour. How one spends it or doesn’t is hardly determinative of whether they’re making the most of their time on earth. But the scarcity of daylight this time of year does make every hour feel that much more valuable. As we enter the final two months of the year, thoughts naturally turn to how we’re filling our days. I like the handy suggestion that we change the batteries in our smoke detectors every time we change the clocks. A potentially lifesaving precaution, easy enough. If daylight saving is this built-in, twice-yearly reminder, we could use it to prompt ourselves to perform other life-improving tasks. Maybe it’s the day you make a list of all the things you’d do if you had an extra hour, and commit to doing at least one of them daily between now and March, when we give that hour back. Or you could just sleep in. Luxuriate in the extra hour without any mandate to do something with it. You could even do as a reader of The Morning advised a couple years ago, when I asked for tips for acclimating to the return to standard time: Wait to change your clock until an hour on Sunday that you’d like to experience again. Maybe you’d like to redo coffee and bagels at 10, or maybe an extra hour for an afternoon lie-down at 2feels like just the thing. “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life,” Charles Darwin said, rather imperiously, but I guess his body of work does speak to some pretty impressive time-management skills. I’ve often used this sort of injunction as a way to urge myself into action. But I’m as inspired by the psychologist Amos Tversky, who said, “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” Whose wisdom will you heed this weekend? For more How to fall back without missing a beat. Why do we change the clocks, anyway? An opinion writer on the case for and against daylight saving time. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Jesse Eisenberg, left, and Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain.” Searchlight Pictures “A Real Pain,” which stars its director and writer, Jesse Eisenberg, alongside Kieran Culkin, is a melancholic yet funny exploration of Jewish belonging and loss, Manohla Dargis writes. In “Blitz,” Saoirse Ronan plays a single mother in London during World War II. It is one of the eight movies our critics are talking about this week. The actress Teri Garr, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in “Tootsie,” died this week at 79. See her life in pictures. Timothée Chalamet showed up unannounced at his own look-alike contest in New York City. (He did not compete.) Martha Stewart does not like the new Netflix documentary about her: “I hate those last scenes,” she told Brooks Barnes, our film-industry reporter. “Hate them.” Social media users are filming themselves crying after seeing “We Live in Time,” a new drama starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. Music Two years ago, the singer and songwriter Shawn Mendes canceled his world tour. Now he’s back with a stripped-down album. Thanks to TikTok, younger listeners are discovering artists across genres and eras, including Pavement, Cocteau Twins and Three 6 Mafia. Mariah Carey says the holiday season has officially begun. She spoke to The Times about her 30 years as the queen of Christmas. Art Rather than asking whether we should be doing drugs, a new exhibition in Norwich, England, tries to understand why we always have. Prosecutors in Manhattan obtained an arrest warrant for a Princeton-educated antiquities dealer based in Italy, accusing him of trafficking thousands of illicit artifacts. The Frick Collection will reopen at its Fifth Avenue Gilded Age mansion, which was closed for renovations, next year. More Culture Clockwise from top left, Kenny Giarla/NBAE, via Getty Images; The Hapa Blonde/GC Images; Washington Wizards; Jeff Haynes/NBAE, via Getty Images Kyle Kuzma unleashed a parade of N.B.A. fashion with his outlandish pregame outfits. This year, he plans to wear a bland sweatsuit to every game. Pizza Hut’s Book It! literacy program, which celebrated its 40th anniversary, has reached more than 70 million students. Starbucks will no longer charge extra for milk alternatives, an effort to improve slowing sales, The Washington Post reports. THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney at a campaign event in Brookfield, Wis. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times Donald Trump called Liz Cheney a war hawk who should be sent to a combat zone. “Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said. Kamala Harris called his language disqualifying. In a legal win for Democrats, the Supreme Court will let some Pennsylvania voters cast provisional ballots in person if election workers reject their mail ballots. U.S. employers added just 12,000 jobs last month, far fewer than forecast, as a Boeing labor strike and hurricanes affected businesses. The Trump campaign blamed Harris. The rapper Cardi B campaigned with Harris in Wisconsin. She said she hadn’t planned to vote this year, but that Harris’s entry into the race changed her mind. Harris is trying to recapture working-class voters who have slipped away from Democrats. But they seem likely to favor Trump again. An annual security conference in Atlanta models emergency responses to fictional disasters. This year, election conspiracy theorists and prominent Republicans shut it down. Other Big Stories A federal jury found Brett Hankison, a former Louisville, Ky., detective who shot into Breonna Taylor’s apartment in 2020, guilty of violating her rights. Mayor Eric Adams of New York City is set to stand trial on corruption charges in April. He has pleaded not guilty. Russia is making steadier gains in eastern Ukraine than U.S. officials had anticipated, deepening a sense of pessimism as Ukraine’s military struggles to recruit soldiers. The death toll from flooding in Spain rose to 205. Dozens of people are still missing. Ends soon: Our best rate on unlimited access for Morning readers. From in-depth coverage of Decision 2024 to unlimited news and analysis, Games, Cooking, The Athletic and more, subscribe now for only $1 a week for your first year. CULTURE CALENDAR By Andrew LaVallee 🤣 “The 2024 S.N.L. Election Special” (Monday): Perhaps you are jittery and stressed out by the presidential election. But you’re also reading The Morning, which means you’re taking it all in and have accepted there’s no avoiding the headlines. Lean into it, and allow yourself to laugh at an impression or two, during this collection of “Saturday Night Live” political sketches right before Election Day. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui. By Melissa Clark Buttermilk-Brined Roast Chicken Now that the wild candy rumpus that is Halloween has come and gone, you might be looking to make something on the more healthful side. You can’t go wrong with a simple, crowd-pleasing roast chicken, especially when it’s been brined in buttermilk and salt before roasting. Samin Nosrat’s five-star buttermilk-brined roast chicken is everything you want in a roasted bird — tender meat that’s juicy and evenly cooked, covered by burnished, caramelized skin. You do need to let it marinate in the fridge overnight, so start it today for dinner tomorrow. Then serve it with a healthful green vegetable and a baguette, and let it compensate for all those Halloween treats. REAL ESTATE Jon and Ashley Oliver in Culver City, Calif. Amanda Friedman for The New York Times The Hunt: A doctor and a D.J. wanted a house for their growing family in Los Angeles. Which one did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $750,000: A Craftsman-style house in Evanston, Ill.; a two-bedroom condo in Peterborough, N.H.; or an 1899 Queen Anne Revival in Knoxville, Tenn. LIVING Erinn Springer for The New York Times Face Value: A writer shares the lessons she has learned from growing out her gray hair. Psychic to the stars: He did readings for John Lennon and Princess Grace. At 83, he’s still talking to ghosts. Test strips: The team behind Starface pimple patches want to make recreational drug use safer. Till death: Some couples are marrying in cemeteries. Voting: Is it legal to take a ballot selfie in the U.S.? It depends on your state. Zynfluenced: Small pouches of nicotine made their way from Sweden to the U.S. and created a new type of guy. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER A white tee is a layering workhorse The weather on the East Coast has been fluctuating between summerlike days and bone-chilling evenings, which makes dressing a challenge. The best advice is, of course, to layer. But before you start buying barn coats and chunky cardigans, you need a solid foundation — and there’s no better building block for a transitional autumn outfit than a good white T-shirt. I prefer a fitted tee, something that doesn’t add much bulk under sweaters and that also looks tailored on its own. But Wirecutter’s style experts have several favorites for all sorts of style preferences. Pick something that you’ll be excited to wear over and over again, no matter the season. — Maxine Builder GAME OF THE WEEK Lions quarterback Jared Goff in last week’s game. Carlos Osorio/Associated Press Detroit Lions vs. Green Bay Packers, N.F.L.: The Lions, who reached the N.F.C. championship game last season, are having another stellar year. In their past four games, all victories, the Lions have scored 42, 47, 31 and 52 points. They have an elite pair of running backs, Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, and quarterback Jared Goff has been playing at an M.V.P. level. But, as The Athletic’s J.J. Bailey notes, those wins all came in the cozy confines of indoor stadiums. This week, they head to Lambeau Field, where the forecast shows temperatures in the 50s and a chance of rain. Tomorrow at 4:25 p.m. Eastern on Fox NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was evading. Take a special election edition of the news quiz to see how well you’ve followed the 2024 campaign. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa P.S. The most popular story this week in The Morning was about the recent discovery of a work by the composer Frédéric Chopin. Listen to it here. 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 November 4 Author Members Posted November 4 November 3, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering the strategic risks that Harris and Trump are taking — as well as “Saturday Night Live,” the New York City Marathon and sleep deprivation. In Pennsylvania. Hannah Beier for The New York Times 20/20 foresight Once an election is over, hindsight can make the winner’s strategy look perfect and the loser’s seem doomed. As my colleague Jonathan Swan said recently on “The Daily”: “The winning campaign, everything they did was genius, and then the losing campaign are just a bunch of idiots. And the truth is that neither is necessarily true.” The truth instead tends to be that presidential campaigns make strategic decisions that come with benefits as well as costs. And those decisions aren’t guaranteed to succeed or fail. In today’s newsletter, I’ll analyze a core strategy that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have each pursued. After Tuesday, I suspect we will come to see both as crucial, albeit in different ways. Harris’s caution On paper, Harris is the underdog. In rich countries around the world, incumbents are doing badly; the ruling parties in Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan have all recently lost power. In the U.S., President Biden has a 40 percent approval rating, and less than 30 percent of adults are satisfied with the country’s direction. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, points out that voters appear eager for change and specifically seem skeptical of progressivism. (I recommend his essay on the subject.) Given this backdrop, Harris has run a strikingly cautious campaign. Game theorists would describe it as a low-variance strategy. She and her aides avoided moves that might have gone very well — and might have gone very poorly. Can you name her campaign’s central theme, for example? Many of her main messages are vague (“when we fight, we win”), Trump-focused (“in it for himself”) or both (“turn the page”). Asked on television how her presidency would differ from Biden’s, Harris said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” She could have taken a different approach. She could have run on the populist, anti-corporate message that is helping Democratic Senate candidates — or gone in the opposite direction and portrayed herself as a business-friendly centrist. She could have picked an issue, like housing, and signaled that it would be her No. 1 priority, much as health care was for Barack Obama. Instead of offering a bold, thematic message, Harris has announced a series of modest policies. Her low-variance strategy is also evident in her decision not to explain why she reversed her stances on immigration and fracking. Many voters say they want to know more about Harris — who became a candidate only three months ago — and she hasn’t always filled in the blanks. The strategy is evident with the Middle East, too. She didn’t pick as her running mate the popular Jewish governor of Pennsylvania partly because many Israel critics opposed him. Her campaign also didn’t invite any Palestinians to speak at the Democratic convention, which may hurt her in Michigan. When possible, Harris has avoided conflict. All these decisions have benefits, to be clear. Making the Middle East more salient is rarely smart in American politics. Explaining why she changed her mind about the border could have made her look weak. Doing more town halls and interviews to explain her views could have exposed one of Harris’s weaknesses: Although she is an excellent debater, she can struggle in less structured settings. But if Harris loses, her caution will look problematic. Game theory usually dictates that an underdog should pursue a higher-variance strategy and hope a few risks pay off. Harris has instead bet that the U.S. will not follow the global anti-incumbent pattern — and that our election will be a referendum on Trump more than on Biden and her. Trump’s gamble Trump is such an instinctual politician that it can sound strange to analyze his behavior strategically. But his advisers do think strategically, and they have urged him to make some different decisions. Trump has overruled them, as Jonathan Swan has reported. They have told him the economy is his best issue and the one that matters most to Americans. Focusing on it could help Trump appeal to undecided voters, including those who liked the results of his presidency but don’t like his erratic style. Many of these people — Nikki Haley supporters, for example — are college graduates who will vote, one way or the other. Economic arguments often bore Trump, however, and he has instead focused on immigration. “That beats out the economy,” he said at a recent rally. It’s part of a closing message focused on grievance, insults and divisive cultural subjects, including his TV ads on trans issues. This anger can be appealing to Americans who are frustrated with the country’s direction and view the Democratic Party as elite, establishment and too far left. Many younger, male and nonwhite voters fall into this category. But relying on this group comes with a downside: It includes many people who don’t regularly vote. Trump has made a big bet on turnout — and the idea that he will win by accentuating his persona rather than moderating it. THE LATEST NEWS Voting The presidential race looks like a photo finish in swing states, the final set of polls by The New York Times and Siena College found. But despite the deadlock, the figures show some notable shifts, Nate Cohn writes. Trump has improved his standing in Pennsylvania even as late-deciding voters appear to be breaking for Harris. White women could determine the election. Nikole Hannah-Jones explores how they have voted over the years. Republican Campaign Most politicians don’t criticize American cities, but Trump does. This map shows how he describes the U.S. Trump’s falsehoods and wild claims have redefined presidential discourse, Peter Baker writes. In his closing arguments, Trump has made misleading statements about Beyoncé, whales and voting. Trump has promised a new era of power for Christians if he wins. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump would seek to remove fluoride from drinking water. Democratic Campaign Kamala Harris, right, and Maya Rudolph. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Harris went on “S.N.L.” She appeared as herself — and Maya Rudolph played her, too. The Times fact-checked Harris’s closing argument. While she has stuck to the truth, she sometimes omitted context or erred when describing policies and statistics. Though Biden left the race, his legacy depends on the outcome, Zolan Kanno-Youngs writes. International In Valencia, Spain. Emma Bubola/The New York Times Spain is reeling from floods that killed at least 211 people. Read about the recovery in Valencia, the worst-hit region. In a town on the Lebanese border, volunteer patrols try to keep Hezbollah fighters out. They don’t want their home dragged into the fighting. Other Big Stories Is it appropriate to describe Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel as “violent”? Internal emails show Harvard University administrators debating the question and removing the word. Storms are battering the Great Plains, and officials reported tornadoes in Oklahoma City. Elon Musk’s
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