Members phkrause Posted November 19, 2024 Author Members Posted November 19, 2024 November 18, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleague Jonathan Mahler analyzes Elon Musk’s political influence. We’re also covering Ukraine, Haiti and the unofficial liquor of Chicago. —David Leonhardt Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The mogul By Jonathan Mahler I’m a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. Over the course of the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk went from dark-money donor to high-profile surrogate to unofficial chief of staff. He camped out at Mar-a-Lago after the election with the Trump family and hopped on Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president. He’s even played diplomat, meeting secretly in New York with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations. Last week, the president-elect named Musk to co-lead a department focused on government efficiency, a role that will put him in a position to recommend the hiring and firing of federal workers and the restructuring of entire agencies. But it’s clear that Musk’s influence could reach far beyond even this. He and Trump are in sync on a lot of issues (immigration, trans rights). And although they diverge on some others (climate change and policies that push people toward electric vehicles), the world’s richest person has now allied himself with the leader of the free world whom he helped install in office, creating a political partnership unlike anything America has ever seen. In today’s newsletter, we will look at Musk’s agenda and ideology — and at what his influence in the new administration could mean for both him and the country. Big government deals Musk previewed plans for his new job on the campaign trail. He said that the federal government’s $6.8 trillion budget should be slashed by at least $2 trillion and acknowledged that such draconian cuts would “necessarily involve some temporary hardship.” Slashing and burning is certainly one of his hallmarks: He laid off 80 percent of X’s staff after buying the company — then called Twitter — in late 2022. Musk has a lot to gain from a second Trump administration. His businesses are already entangled with the federal government, which awarded them $3 billion in contracts across numerous agencies last year. His rocket company, SpaceX, launches military satellites and shuttles astronauts to the International Space Station. Even before the election, Musk asked Trump to hire SpaceX employees at the Defense Department, presumably to further strengthen their ties. Source: The New York Times’ analysis of transaction-level contract and grant data from usaspending.gov | By Jonathan Corum Musk is also at war with federal regulators. He faces at least 20 investigations or reviews, including one into the software of Tesla’s self-driving cars and another into polluted water allegedly discharged from SpaceX’s launchpad in Texas. It’s safe to assume that Musk will try to quash these inquiries and also seek greater freedom from oversight in the future. Musk views government regulation as more than just a drain on profits. He is a techno-utopian who sees his work — from trying to colonize Mars to implanting computer chips in people’s brains that will enable them to control devices with their thoughts — as vital to the long-term survival of the human race, and he doesn’t want bureaucracy to stand in his way. “The Department of Government Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth,” he wrote last month on X. At the same time, some government regulations have proved enormously beneficial to him. Tesla generates billions of dollars selling zero-emission vehicle credits to carmakers that don’t make enough electric cars to earn them. Cultivating Trump seems to be paying off. Trump was a harsh critic of electric vehicles; he accused them of hurting American autoworkers while helping China and Mexico. But on the campaign trail this year, Trump said that he was “for electric cars” because “Elon endorsed me very strongly.” And that was before Musk relocated to Pennsylvania during the homestretch and spent nearly $120 million to help Trump win. Musk’s ideas Musk is not just an entrepreneur. He is a new kind of media mogul, with ready access to the president and few rules governing how he uses his platform. And he wants a hands-off approach. He considers himself a free-speech absolutist. After buying Twitter and renaming it X, Musk reinstated the accounts of hundreds of users barred for spreading misinformation or inciting violence. Trump’s was among them — he was kicked off the platform after the Jan. 6 attack out of concern that he might encourage more violence— and during the campaign Musk used his own account to promote Trump’s candidacy to his more than 200 million followers. That could make X a new home for the MAGA movement as Trump seeks out friendly outlets to champion his policies. The platform is already a gathering place for Trump’s supporters. Once Trump is back in the White House, it’s easy to imagine it as the primary means through which he and his officials communicate with the public, bypassing an independent media that Trump considers hostile and Musk considers unnecessary and corrupt. It would cement an unusual bond between two extraordinarily powerful, if famously impulsive, men. Provided that they don’t fall out, they stand to gain a great deal from each other. Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Al Drago for The New York Times For more Musk has wooed right-wing heads of state to help him and his companies. NASA, the Pentagon, the E.P.A.: See the government agencies that pay Musk’s businesses and how much they shell out. Trump has chosen Brendan Carr, a critic of Big Tech, to lead the Federal Communications Commission. Carr currently sits on the commission and wrote a chapter on the F.C.C. for the Project 2025 planning document. Trump said he was standing by Pete Hegseth, his nominee for defense secretary who has been accused of sexual assault. Hegseth says the interaction was consensual. He previously entered into a financial settlement with the woman that had a confidentiality clause. Trump is interviewing candidates for Treasury secretary, including the Wall Street billionaire Marc Rowan and the former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh. THE LATEST NEWS War in Ukraine In Luhansk, in Russia-controlled Ukraine. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters President Biden has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied long-range missiles for strikes inside Russia. Read about the weapons that might be used. Biden was responding to Russia’s decision to allow North Korean troops into the fight, officials said. Trump might undo his efforts. Middle East Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut, killing at least six people, Lebanese officials said. Attacks inside Beirut are rare, but Israel’s military has been targeting Hezbollah in areas nearby. Families of American victims of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack and of those killed fighting in Gaza sued Iran. They accused Iran of supporting the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. More International News The authorities in New Delhi have closed schools and urged people to stay indoors because the Indian capital is choked by toxic smog. Gang violence is prevailing in Haiti, despite foreign intervention. Solutions are difficult to find. Anti-immigrant sentiment is gaining ground in Europe despite a decline in the number of border crossings. The Times spoke with Venezuela’s opposition leader in hiding. She is pushing Trump to oust the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, who is accused of stealing the election. Politics In Manaus, Brazil. Eric Lee/The New York Times Biden visited the Amazon rainforest and promised Brazil funds for environmental initiatives. This election cycle, Democrats’ challenges with white working-class voters worsened. One diagnosis: Those voters see the party as unresponsive to their daily troubles. Ann Selzer, a vaunted pollster, announced the end of her election polling operation. Her final Iowa poll before the election showed Kamala Harris leading Trump. Homelessness In Berkeley, Calif. Rachel Bujalski for The New York Times A progressive stronghold in California plans to target two sprawling homeless encampments, relying on a Supreme Court decision handed down by a conservative majority. At least 146,000 public school students in New York City were homeless last year, a record, according to an advocacy group. Other Big Stories About a dozen people carrying Nazi flags and shouting expressions of white power and racial slurs marched through part of Columbus, Ohio. Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy. It recently failed to renegotiate its looming debt. Conservative social media platforms are becoming more popular. Opinions Trump’s decision to fill his cabinet with military hawks signals a return to “might makes right” rule. Decades of counterterrorism operations prove it’s not effective, Oona Hathaway writes. Pete Hegseth of Fox News represents America’s dissatisfaction with our military leaders. But he doesn’t have the experience to be defense secretary, Jennifer Steinhauer writes. Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump’s appointments and Biden’s presidency. Here are columns by David French on Trump’s demise, and Ezra Klein on what Colorado’s governor can teach Democrats. MORNING READS In Orlando, Fla. Zack Wittman for The New York Times The National Bible Bee: See inside a competition where young Christians recite memorized verses. Ask Vanessa: “Should socks be subtle, or should they stand out?” Bluesky: People are turning to the upstart social media site as they seek alternatives to Facebook, X and Threads. Test: How well do you know “Romeo and Juliet”? Take our quiz. Object of desire: A $190 soap dispenser is all the rage in Downtown Manhattan. Metropolitan Diary: A hypnotic city. Lives Lived: In 1974, Celeste Caeiro, handed out red carnations to soldiers on their way to ending a 40-year right-wing dictatorship in Portugal. Her spontaneous patriotic act gave a largely bloodless coup its name: the Carnation Revolution. Caeiro died at 91. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Buffalo Bills beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 30-21, handing the defending Super Bowl champions their first loss of the season. W.N.B.A.: The Dallas Wings won the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft and a chance to select UConn’s Paige Bueckers, considered to be the likely top choice. N.B.A.: The Cleveland Cavaliers achieved a blowout victory over the Charlotte Hornets. The Cavaliers became only the fourth team in NBA history to start a season with 15 straight wins. ARTS AND IDEAS Chona Kasinger for The New York Times Malört — which is made from neutral spirits, wormwood and sugar — is the unofficial liquor of Chicago. The drink is bitter, herbaceous and citrusy, like sucking dandelion juice through a straw made of car tires or biting a grapefruit like an apple. In the last decade, Malört has gone from being sold exclusively in Illinois to populating bars across 33 states. Some fans worry it is losing its roots. More on culture Clothes could become more expensive under Trump’s proposed tariffs. Read more in The Cut. Seeing pregnant women undressed was once scandalous. Now they are visible all over advertising, Amanda Hess writes. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Simpson for The New York Times Bake cacio e pepe cheese puffs, with a bite of black pepper and Parmesan. Find the best travel credit card with these tips. Bring a gift to Thanksgiving dinner. Play PC games with a controller. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were biplane and plebeian. 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 November 20, 2024 Author Members Posted November 20, 2024 November 19, 2024 Good morning. Today, Emily Baumgaertner explores America’s childhood death rate. We’re also covering Donald Trump’s appointments, Hong Kong and a magician society. A vigil for the victims of the Uvalde shooting. Mark Felix for The New York Times Guns, drugs and children By Emily Baumgaertner I cover public health issues affecting children. If I drew you a graph that showed the death rate among American kids, you would see a backward check mark: Fewer kids died over the last several decades, thanks to everything from leukemia drugs to bicycle helmets. Then, suddenly, came a reversal. The chart shows the mortality rate for children ages one through 19 | Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER database | By The New York Times I first noticed this in 2021 while poking around in mortality data from the virus-ridden year before. It looked bad. I knew that kids who contracted Covid tended to fare better than older people, but was the virus killing them, too? Nope. It wasn’t the virus. It was injuries — mostly from guns and drugs. From 2019 to 2021, the child death rate rose more steeply than it had in at least half a century. It stayed high after that. Despite all of the medical advances and public health gains, there are enough injuries to have changed the direction of the chart. Horrified, I started making phone calls. It turned out that I was not the only one who wanted to understand what was happening to America’s children. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what we now know. Guns and drugs When life expectancy in the United States plateaued around 2010, it was big news. Problems that grabbed people in midlife — chronic disease, depression, opioids and alcohol — were bringing down the average. Yet the survival rate for children kept improving, thanks to better neonatal care, vaccines and even swimming lessons. The first real alarm bells coincided with the pandemic. That’s when the mortality rate among children and adolescents shot up by more than 10 percent in a single year. These children weren’t felled by some spreading contagion; their deaths were sudden and “almost always preventable,” as Dr. Coleen Cunningham, the pediatrician in chief at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, puts it. Deadly car accidents among tweens and teens climbed nearly 16 percent. Murders went up 39 percent. Fatal overdoses more than doubled. In Brooklyn, New York. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times New patterns emerged with race and gender, too. Black and Native American children were dying at much higher rates than white children. And the disparities — which had been narrowing — were now widening again. Black kids were mostly shot by other people. Native American kids mostly shot themselves. There were harbingers before 2020. Suicides started to increase in 10- to 19-year-olds after the 2007 recession alongside the rise of social media and cyberbullying. Homicides climbed as access to firearms rose. Overdose deaths spiked shortly before the pandemic began as cartels laced their drugs with fentanyl. But guns were at the center of it all, replacing car crashes as the leading killer of kids. Gun deaths alone accounted for almost half of the increase in young people. They are now equivalent to 52 school buses of children crashing each year. The chart shows mortality rates for children ages one through 19 | Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER database | By The New York Times Seeking answers Of course, how children die is not the same as why, and answering the latter question could prove increasingly difficult in the years ahead. That’s because of politics. Three decades ago, major health studies began to reveal the danger of guns. The National Rifle Association took notice. That’s when Congress barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from spending money to “advocate or promote gun control.” Grants from the agency ended. Without the funding, the research stopped. But a researcher helped persuade Congress to restore the money in 2019, just before the children’s mortality rate spiked. Gun-violence research is now going through a sort of renaissance. Epidemiologists are gathering better data on what’s behind the rise in gun deaths and what could help prevent them, from expanded background checks to gun safes. But politics change, and that means funding could, too. For more Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s nominee to run the health department, says American children face an epidemic of chronic diseases in part because of fluoride in water and vaccines. Medical experts agree there is a health crisis. They disagree on the source. Kennedy could be in a position to undermine childhood immunizations if confirmed. See how. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Administration Protesters in New York. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Trump, in a 4 a.m. Truth Social post, confirmed that he would declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to help deport undocumented immigrants en masse. His team also plans to open holding camps for migrants and to try to end birthright citizenship. Sean Duffy, a Fox News host and former Republican congressman, is Trump’s pick to be transportation secretary. Trump privately admits that the Senate may not confirm Matt Gaetz to be attorney general but believes his other contentious nominees will be approved. A woman who testified that Gaetz paid her for sex described witnessing him having sex with an underage girl at a party in 2017, the woman’s lawyer said. Russian state media celebrated Trump’s nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence. She has blamed the U.S. for provoking Russia to invade Ukraine. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, whose MSNBC show regularly criticizes Trump, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him. Trump plans to attend a SpaceX rocket launch in Texas today. Elon Musk, a consistent presence during Trump’s transition, owns the company. Football players and a U.F.C. fighter have imitated Trump’s signature dance moves, rocking their hips and pumping their fists. More on Politics Texas education officials will vote this week on whether to add Bible teachings into elementary school lessons on reading and language arts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered election officials to stop counting mail ballots that are missing dates or have errors on the outer envelope. The ruling could help decide the Senate race there. A Wyoming judge ruled that two state abortion bans violated the Wyoming Constitution and could not be enforced. Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor who ran for president in 2016, is running to lead the Democratic National Committee. Ken Martin, the party’s Minnesota chairman, is also in the race. President Biden urged Congress to pass another $100 billion in disaster aid for communities damaged by hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires. Interviews with hundreds of working-class minority voters revealed that they no longer trust Democrats to improve the economy. International In Hong Kong. Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A court in Hong Kong sentenced 45 former politicians and activists under a Beijing-imposed national security law. See who was sentenced and for how long. Nearly 100 aid trucks were looted at gunpoint in Gaza. It was not clear who was responsible for the attack. Venezuela’s government released at least 131 people arrested in a crackdown after the country’s disputed presidential election. The move was seen as a gesture to Trump. As the glaciers of South America retreat, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse. Russia made its largest territorial gains in over two years last month. Other Big Stories A former U.S. Army soldier was sentenced to more than four years in prison for assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 riot — 20 years after he was found guilty in the killing an Iraqi civilian. The Associated Press will cut its staff by 8 percent. Its union said the cuts were a result of a decline in revenue. Opinions Ema Ryan Yamazaki “We’re each a piece of a heart”: First graders at a Japanese school form an orchestra for a school ceremony. See what it reveals about the country’s education system. Polls reflect the messiness of politics. We have to get used to that, Nate Silver writes. Here is a column by Paul Krugman on how Musk runs X. The Thanksgiving Sale is on. Time to subscribe to Cooking. Cooking answers “What’s for dinner?” deliciously, every day. Explore thousands of easy five-star recipes. Save on your first year of Cooking. MORNING READS Sophie Park for The New York Times By the sea: An old battered — and pink — house on the North Shore of Boston was going to be demolished. Artists and local residents fought to save it. Daring deception: A British society of magicians expelled a woman who tricked her way into membership by disguising herself as a man. Three decades later, it wants her back. Diet: How healthy are sweet potatoes? Lives Lived: The critic, scholar and poet Sandra Gilbert co-wrote “The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination,” a groundbreaking work of literary criticism that became a feminist classic. She died at 87. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Dallas Cowboys continued a misery-filled season with a 34-10 home loss against the Houston Texans. Before the game, pieces of the AT&T Stadium roof fell to the turf. Baseball: Juan Soto, a free agent, will meet with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team he lost to in the World Series as a member of the New York Yankees. Soccer: The U.S. men’s national team secured a 4-2 victory over Jamaica, sealing the Americans’ place in the Nations League semifinals. ARTS AND IDEAS One for the flight. Jennifer Chase for The New York Times José Andrés, a Michelin-starred chef and head of a disaster relief nonprofit, has a new venture: airport dining. Andrés is opening Landing, a 5,500-square-foot lounge-restaurant at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington. He hopes to elevate the airport dining experience with a menu of tapas, caviar cones and Basque cheesecake. Read more about the venture. More on culture The Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste is returning to his classical music roots on his latest album. Hear him improvise on some of Beethoven’s classics. On “Real Time,” Bill Maher chided Democrats for losing touch with average Americans. “Maybe take the clothespins off your noses and actually converse with the other half of the country,” he said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susan Spungen. Make these two-tone cranberry lemon bars. Try these expert tips on staying healthy while flying. Improve the performance of your microwave. Explore Walmart’s early Black Friday deals. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was pinewood. 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 November 21, 2024 Author Members Posted November 21, 2024 November 20, 2024 By German Lopez Good morning. Today, we’re covering the escalating war in Ukraine — as well as Trump’s appointments, Gaza’s wounded and Rafael Nadal’s retirement. An ATACMS missile. John Hamilton/White Sands Missile Range, via Associated Press A new phase The war in Ukraine is escalating quickly and unpredictably. Ukraine is now using U.S.-made missiles to strike inside Russia, with President Biden’s permission. Russia has raised the threat of nuclear weapons. It has also sacrificed thousands of troops to take more territory in eastern Ukraine, achieving its largest gains in more than two years. At the same time, an end to the war seems closer than ever. Donald Trump has promised to negotiate a truce quickly once he takes office in January. Given how much Ukraine depends on the United States, Trump could force Ukraine to accept a deal. These things — the recent escalations and a potential end to the war — are related. As Russia and Ukraine prepare for a potential peace deal, they are working to improve their negotiating positions. That reality has kicked off a dangerous and urgent phase of the war, although one that could last only a few months. Today’s newsletter will explain the recent events and what could come next. Ratcheting up The recent events in Ukraine can be summarized as a series of escalations. After Ukraine lost territory on its eastern front, it opened a northern front this past summer in the Russian region of Kursk. It grabbed Russian territory for the first time in the war, and has managed to hold the land. Russia then recruited more than 10,000 soldiers from North Korea to try to reclaim the area. Washington saw North Korea’s involvement as a big deal. After all, Russia has warned the West against sending any of its own troops in Ukraine’s defense. Yet Russia turned around and got outside help. In response, the United States has allowed Ukraine to fire American-made long-range missiles into Russian territory. Ukraine did so for the first time yesterday, hitting an ammunition depot. The specific missiles, known as ATACMS, do not have the range to hit Moscow. “U.S. officials do not want to see ATACMS flying at the Kremlin,” said my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers international security. “That’s not what this is about.” Instead, Ukraine can use the missiles to weaken Russian advances and hold territory in Kursk and elsewhere. Source: The Institute for the Study of War With American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats | By Samuel Granados and Leanne Abraham Why are U.S. officials so cautious about how Ukraine uses these weapons? Russia’s actions yesterday offer an explanation. It declared the right to respond with a nuclear weapon to an attack by a nonnuclear nation (Ukraine, presumably) that’s supported by a nuclear-armed country (the United States). Since the beginning of the war, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has used the threat of nukes to deter Western involvement. To some extent, the threat has worked. It previously kept Americans from supplying ATACMS and fighter jets, for instance. Putin is not actually closer to using nukes, American officials say. But the consequences of a nuclear conflict are so large — potentially world-ending — that even a tiny or slightly growing risk is alarming. Seeking the best deal There’s another factor behind Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike inside Russia: the coming Trump administration. Trump has indicated that he will not offer the same level of military support to Ukraine that Biden has. He wants to end the war as soon as possible. He will likely try to force both sides to negotiate some sort of truce, even if Ukraine doesn’t regain its territory in the process. That means Ukraine is running out of time to improve its negotiating position. If it can hold on to parts of Kursk, maybe it can trade the area for more of its eastern territory held by Russia. In other words, Ukraine’s strength at the bargaining table depends on fending off Russian and North Korean troops in the coming months. Russia is trying to improve its own hand, too. It has pushed farther into eastern Ukraine despite staggering losses. (As of last month, the war had left 600,000 to 700,000 Russian troops dead or wounded, Western officials estimate.) Russia continues its brutal campaign knowing that every inch of land it claims now could be kept for good. All of this adds up to a bit of a paradox: Peace may be around the corner, but the fighting could get bloodier as both sides try to position themselves for a more favorable deal. For more The U.S. has closed its embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and told employees to shelter in place, warning that Russia was planning a significant air attack. Biden authorized the provision of some land mines to Ukraine, The Washington Post reports. Kyiv has sought the weapons — which Russia uses liberally on the front line — since the beginning of the war. The U.S. has grown used to Russia’s threat of nuclear weapons, David Sanger writes. Along some stretches of the front, Kyiv’s forces are outnumbered by more than six to one. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Appointments Linda McMahon Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times Trump will tap Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education. McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive, is a longtime Trump donor and was co-chair of his transition team. Trump chose Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2022, to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Howard Lutnick, chief executive of a Wall Street firm, is Trump’s pick to be commerce secretary. Lutnick has defended Trump’s plans for imposing tariffs on imports. A hacker gained access to damaging information about Matt Gaetz, Trump’s selection for attorney general, including testimony from a woman who said that she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17. Trump, who was found liable for sexual abuse, has named to his administration four men accused of sexual misconduct in some form. (The men all deny the accusations). Trump seeks a Treasury secretary who can achieve possibly conflicting goals: implement tariffs and still keep the stock market booming. Trump wants the option to appoint his choices without Senate vetting, potentially testing the Constitution. Read about the maneuver, known as “recess appointments.” More on Trump Prosecutors proposed delaying the sentencing in Trump’s Manhattan criminal case until he’s out of office. Trump’s lawyers want to dismiss his conviction. Republicans have started to prepare legislation that would extend Trump’s tax cuts, lower corporate taxes, fund border enforcement and cut spending. But passing the bills could be difficult. Trump joined Elon Musk for a SpaceX Starship launch in Texas. The test flight showed a mix of progress and setbacks for the company. More on Politics Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, wants to bar transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol. The proposal targets Sarah McBride, a Democrat who is the first openly transgender member of Congress. Harris’s campaign produced, but chose not to air, ads about transgender rights. Some Democrats now say that was a mistake. Kamala Harris earned seven million fewer votes in this year’s election than Biden did in 2020. Those losses were just as consequential as Trump’s gains. California voters rejected a ballot measure that would have raised the minimum wage there. It took weeks to count votes. The Los Angeles City Council voted to prohibit city resources from being used for federal immigration enforcement. Israel-Hamas War In Doha, Qatar. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times The war in Gaza has left many with horrific wounds. The Times spoke with some of them. Benjamin Netanyahu offered $5 million and safe passage out of Gaza to anyone who returns a hostage being held there. The Israeli military has issued more than 1,000 arrest warrants for ultra-Orthodox conscripts who have not responded to draft orders, CNN reports. More International News The Brazilian authorities accused members of an elite army unit of planning to assassinate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva shortly before he was to become president. The Norwegian police said that they had arrested the son of the country’s crown princess on suspicion of rape. As Trump prepares to re-enter the global stage, world leaders are seeking stability with China. That is complicated by several issues, including the fate of Taiwan. Other Big Stories A culture of concealment: Google, to avoid antitrust suits, systematically told employees to destroy messages. Executives in charge of the National Association of Realtors, a nonprofit, used company money to see Broadway shows, ride in chauffeured cars and enjoy other perks, a Times investigation found. The New York region is experiencing drought — the dry weather makes the area vulnerable to wildfires. Read what to know. Asheville, N.C., has drinkable tap water again, 53 days after Hurricane Helene. A 17-year-old in California is believed to be the youngest person to pass the state’s bar exam, beating the previous record-holder: her older brother. Opinions Trump needs someone on his team who shares his views on tariffs. His former U.S. trade representative is that person, Matthew Schmitz writes. Right-wing influence over social media platforms won Republicans the election, Julia Angwin argues. Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Gaetz and Republican morality, and Thomas Friedman on Trump’s plan for Israel and the Palestinians. The Thanksgiving Sale is on. Time to subscribe to Cooking. Cooking answers “What’s for dinner?” deliciously, every day. Explore thousands of easy five-star recipes. Save on your first year of Cooking. MORNING READS A subway mosaic by the artist Keith Godard. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times I ❤️ NY: “I liked New York as a tourist. I fell in love with it as a tour guide.” New tastes: Weight-loss drugs like Ozempic are changing people’s appetite for junk food. ‘Airplane ear’: Here’s why your ears feel clogged while flying — and how to avoid it. Lives Lived: Arthur Frommer’s “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day: A Guide to Inexpensive Travel,” first published in 1957 and annually updated (and adjusted for inflation) for the next 50 years, changed the idea that European travel was reserved for wealthy Americans. He died at 95. SPORTS Rafael Nadal Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Retirement: Rafael Nadal’s professional tennis career has ended. His final match was a 6-4, 6-4 defeat at the Davis Cup. “I lost my first match in the Davis Cup, and I lost my last one. So we close the circle,” he said. N.B.A.: The Cleveland Cavaliers are no longer undefeated. They lost, 120-117, to the defending champion, the Boston Celtics. ARTS AND IDEAS Rylee Arnold and Stephen Nedoroscik. Eric McCandless/Disney, via Getty Images The format of “Dancing With the Stars” hasn’t changed much since the reality show premiered 20 years ago — a professional dancer teams up with a celebrity to perform each week. Its viewership, though, is starting to change. For years, the show was a hit with older audiences; in 2022, the average viewer was nearly 64 years old. But the past two seasons have finally grabbed hold of Gen Z viewers, thanks to TikTok and a younger crop of dancers. More on culture “Rust” will premiere at a film festival in Poland. The movie’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was fatally shot when a gun held by Alec Baldwin went off. The late-night hosts discussed Trump’s cabinet picks. “Sean Duffy sounds like every character in a Ben Affleck movie,” Jimmy Fallon said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Season oyster crackers with a ranch-inspired mix to make fire crackers, beloved in the South. Improve your home’s energy efficiency. Cut a crusty loaf with one of these knives. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was heavily. 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. Have you ever ghosted someone? The Times wants to hear from you about why. 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 22, 2024 Author Members Posted November 22, 2024 November 21, 2024 Good morning. Today, we’re covering Trump’s tariff plan — as well as Matt Gaetz, the Middle East and banana art. In San Pedro, Calif. Adam Amengual for The New York Times TRUMP’S AGENDA On tariffs By Ana Swanson I cover trade. President-elect Donald Trump calls tariffs “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” He has talked about them again and again as a fix for America’s economic relationship with the rest of the world. Tariffs are a charge on foreign products when they are brought across the border. By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs encourage Americans to buy products from U.S. factories instead. For Trump, this is a way to spur American manufacturing, create new jobs and lower U.S. trade deficits. He used them liberally in his first term, taxing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of metals, solar panels and Chinese goods. While running for president this year, he proposed even larger tariffs — of 60 percent or more on China, and up to 20 percent on most goods from other countries. Some doubt whether Trump will follow through with these plans. But I think it’s safe to assume he’s serious about moving forward with some of them. The Morning is running a series on the policies Trump and his congressional allies may implement next year. In today’s installment, I’ll talk about his promise to impose tariffs. Note: Figures for 2024 are through September. Source: U.S. Census Bureau | By The New York Times Do they work? Trump advisers describe tariffs as a “core belief” for the president-elect. He has sung their praises for decades. Today he says they can also raise money to fund tax cuts and force other governments to make concessions on trade and immigration. Can tariffs accomplish these goals? Perhaps in part. They can certainly encourage more factory production, at least in the specific industries they shield: When the United States put tariffs on steel, clothing and kitchen cabinets in Trump’s first term, companies here generally made more of those things. The incoming president is right on a couple of points: First, tariffs do raise money for the government. The amount they generate has more than doubled since Trump first took office (though it is a tiny percentage of government revenue). Second, the United States has much lower tariffs than most other countries do. Both parties agree that some tariffs help protect industries against unfair competition from China. But tariffs also have downsides, and those can outweigh the economic benefits. Companies charge Americans more to pay for them. And they are regressive, meaning they place a higher burden on poor families than on rich ones. Tariffs can also backfire by hurting U.S. manufacturers. American factories use a lot of foreign parts and materials, and tariffs make it more expensive to get these. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, for instance, got U.S. firms to make more metals — but because the price rose, other companies that use metals to make things, like industrial machinery and auto parts, ended up manufacturing less. Imposing tariffs on foreign countries also encourages them to do the same thing to the United States. Suddenly, American exporters lose markets abroad. That costs jobs. A powerful tool Trump has several ways to impose new levies right away. He could use an existing trade investigation from his first term to slap more tariffs on China, as President Biden did earlier this year. His advisers also argue he could quickly impose tariffs on other countries by declaring an economic emergency. This action might be vulnerable in court, but challenges often take years to unfold, and tariffs would probably continue in the meantime. There are a few reasons Trump might hold back. One is that he might try to include tariffs in a big tax bill next year. Then they’d be clearly legal — and impossible to change without another act of Congress. Another factor could be opposition from pro-business advisers or a plunge in the stock and bond markets. Would tariffs help or hurt the economy? It really depends on their size, and other countries’ reactions. Dani Rodrik, a Harvard University economist who has written about the harms of globalization, said that if tariffs were low, maybe 10 percent, Americans might just pay a bit more for their imports — not a huge deal. But if tariffs increase significantly beyond that, he said, it could lead to a 1930s-style trade war, in which countries keep retaliating against one another with higher and higher levies. The price of goods could rise quickly. In that scenario, Trump’s tariffs would likely hurt rather than help American workers. Trump’s Agenda A Morning newsletter series on the policies Donald Trump may pursue next year. Taxes Republican Priorities THE LATEST NEWS Matt Gaetz Matt Gaetz Kenny Holston/The New York Times Federal investigators found a trail of payments from Matt Gaetz, Trump’s choice for attorney general, to women who testified that he had hired them for sex. See a map of the payments. House Republicans blocked the release of a report about allegations against Gaetz. Senators weighing whether to confirm him could subpoena it. Pete Hegseth A police report released yesterday detailed a 2017 encounter in which a woman said she had been sexually assaulted by Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host Trump picked for defense secretary. Hegseth said the encounter was consensual. He was never charged with a crime. JD Vance accompanied Gaetz and Hegseth to Capitol Hill to try to persuade senators to confirm them. More on Trump’s Appointments Trump selected Matthew Whitaker, an acting attorney general in his first term who lacks foreign policy experience, to be the U.S. ambassador to NATO. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lead Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” proposed requiring federal employees to work in person full-time. Doing so, they said, could prompt a “wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.” Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary, supports giving parents money to send their kids to private schools. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV personality Trump wants to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has promoted sham diet pills and ineffective Covid treatments. Pot smoking and mean tweets: Missteps that sank past presidential nominees look quaint next to the allegations against some of Trump’s nominees. Congress In some of the final House races to be called, Nick Begich, an Alaska Republican, unseated Mary Peltola, a moderate Democrat. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, a Democrat who broke with Biden on immigration and China, narrowly won re-election. House Speaker Mike Johnson backed barring Sarah McBride, a Democrat who is the first openly transgender member of Congress, from women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill. The House unanimously passed legislation that would make it easier for reporters to protect their sources. Trump wants Republicans to kill it. More on Politics North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill to strip powers from the incoming Democratic governor and give Republicans more control over elections. A jury convicted a Tennessee man who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 of plotting to murder the F.B.I. agents who investigated him. Biden turned 82 yesterday. Middle East The U.S. cast the sole vote against a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas because the resolution did not make the truce contingent on the release of hostages. Bernie Sanders, a critic of U.S. support for Israel, proposed measures to block weapons transfers to the country. All Republicans and most Democrats in the Senate rejected it. Israel’s military offers to freeze the sperm of soldiers killed in war. Some grieving widows and parents struggle with the ethics of the decision. Business The Justice Department asked a federal court to force Google to sell Chrome, its web browser. A judge ruled in August that the company had an illegal monopoly in search. Nvidia, which makes chips that power artificial intelligence, said that its profits had doubled compared with last year. Comcast will spin off its cable channels, including MSNBC and CNBC, into a new public company. Target’s stock price fell 21 percent, its biggest drop in more than two years, after weak sales. Other Big Stories In British Columbia. Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press A powerful storm killed at least two people, downed trees and knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. A 26-year-old immigrant from Venezuela was convicted of killing Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student, and sentenced to life in prison. Trump has highlighted Riley’s murder as a failure of the immigration system. Opinions Public health officials hurt their cause when they describe everything from gun violence to loneliness as a “crisis” — if everything is a crisis, then nothing is, Jeneen Interlandi argues. Logistics, not the law, will be the main check on Trump’s mass deportation plans, Dara Lind argues. Here’s a column by Tressie McMillan Cottom on Trump’s cultural power. The Thanksgiving Sale is on. Time to subscribe to Cooking. Cooking answers “What’s for dinner?” deliciously, every day. Explore thousands of easy five-star recipes. Save on your first year of Cooking. MORNING READS In Georgia. Emile Ducke for The New York Times Looking westward: Some winemakers in Georgia, a former Soviet republic, want to end their dependence on Russia. Health: Has menopause made you ache? There’s a name for that. Social Q’s: “A friend lied about her dying brother to cancel plans with me. Help!” Bag charms: Dangly accessories hung from handbags are all the rage. Some cost more than the handbags themselves. Lives Lived: A modern-day Icarus who popularized hang gliding, Bill Moyes set a world record for the longest unassisted flight, was arrested after soaring into the Grand Canyon and nearly killed himself several times. He died at 92. SPORTS Women’s college basketball: The Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma became the coach with the most wins in college basketball history. M.L.B.: The league announced that the Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal had won the A.L. Cy Young Award, while the Atlanta Braves left-hander Chris Sale won the N.L. honor. ARTS AND IDEAS Johnny Carson on his final show in 1992. Alice S. Hall/NBCU, via Getty Images In a fractured media landscape, it can be hard to grasp just how big Johnny Carson was, Jason Zinoman writes. What was the source of his appeal? “There’s always been more of a subtext and strategy to his performance,” Jason writes, “a crowd-pleasing fantasy beneath the facade that speaks to deeper and darker strains in the American psyche.” Read his piece. More on culture Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” — a banana duct-taped to a wall — sold at auction for $6.2 million. The buyer is a crypto entrepreneur. Percival Everett won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel “James,” a retelling of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of an enslaved man. Late-night hosts joked about Biden’s birthday. “We got you a cake, but Nancy Pelosi insisted you sacrifice it for the good of democracy,” Stephen Colbert said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Craig Lee for The New York Times Serve this light, snappy, lemon-garlic kale salad as the perfect holiday side. Make your sofa look more inviting. Tie the room together with an area rug. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was microcrack. 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 November 23, 2024 Author Members Posted November 23, 2024 November 22, 2024 Good morning. We’re covering an affordability crisis in New York City — as well as Trump’s pick for attorney general, Russian missiles and bathing in oil. In New York City. DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York Times Urban tweaks By Emma G. Fitzsimmons I cover New York City’s government. New York City faces an affordability crisis. Rents have soared. The century-old subway needs to be modernized, and buses are painfully slow. Piles of trash bags often line the sidewalks. The person tasked with fixing these problems, Mayor Eric Adams, faces a major corruption scandal. His criminal case has obscured better news — that officials are advancing several ambitious proposals that hope to improve life in the city. The Democrats who run New York are crafting new policies because voters are concerned about their quality of life. The cost of living has become a campaign issue in Adams’s re-election next year, and his rivals are highlighting affordability. Here are the proposals and how they could make things better for New Yorkers: The proposals Better transit: The streets of Manhattan are choked with traffic and double-parked delivery trucks. The nation’s first congestion pricing plan will charge vehicles entering Manhattan south of Central Park to reduce traffic and raise money for the struggling transit system. Drivers pay to enter the tolling zone using electronic passes on their windshields or photos of their license plates. By Scott Reinhard The plan has been decades in the making. It still requires federal approval, and the Biden administration is poised to sign off before leaving office. Donald Trump and suburban lawmakers have vowed to kill it, arguing that it could hurt the city’s economic recovery from the pandemic. But New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, recently lowered the toll to $9 to help rally public support. Lower rental costs: Right now, if you rent an apartment in New York City, you have to pay thousands of dollars to a broker to secure a lease. A proposal in the City Council would shift that fee from renters to landlords. A progressive young lawmaker proposed the bill, which just passed despite opposition from the real estate industry. Critics argued that landlords would pass along the cost by raising rents. The law will probably take effect next summer. Cleaner sidewalks: Foul-smelling heaps of trash bags appear on city sidewalks on pickup day. They take up a lot of space, and they often tear and ooze into the street. Now the Adams administration is creating new rules for trash as part of the mayor’s war on rats. Starting this month, residential buildings with nine units or fewer must put garbage in cans. Eventually, the city will remove parking spots in dense neighborhoods to make way for large on-street containers. Other major cities, like Barcelona and Buenos Aires, already do this. By Larry Buchanan Some homeowners and building staffers oppose the new trash rules, complaining about the look of the bins and the requirement that garbage be kept indoors until closer to the pickup time. The political stakes The new proposals show how changes in local policy can have a major impact on the lives of the city’s eight million residents. Here’s one example: I’m raising two little kids in Manhattan. The last mayor, Bill de Blasio, started a free preschool program for 3- and 4-year-olds — one that helped my family afford to stay in the city. (My son is in a city-funded preschool that he loves, saving us more than $30,000 per year.) The current proposals similarly aim to make it easier to live in the city. Supporters of the broker fee bill have argued that it will allow artists to keep living in New York so it doesn’t end up as a home only for the wealthy. Yesterday, the City Council moved forward with a proposal that would build more affordable housing in neighborhoods and remove rules that require new buildings to create parking spaces. That has been contentious, and lobbying from neighborhood groups has weakened the plan. They don’t want high-rise apartments in less dense neighborhoods, and they want new homes to provide parking. Although New Yorkers may disagree on tactics, most want to make the city more livable. More than half of voters here say the city is moving in the wrong direction. Even my 4-year-old wants to see some changes in our neighborhood. I was walking him home from preschool when we came across a mound of black trash bags lying in the crosswalk. As we veered around them, he scoffed and noted that they were not where they belonged. Related: Why is it so hard to build more housing in New York City? The different fates of two affordable housing developments help explain the city’s housing shortage. THE LATEST NEWS Matt Gaetz Matt Gaetz Kenny Holston/The New York Times Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration to lead the Justice Department. After meeting with Republican senators, Gaetz believed he lacked enough support to be confirmed. Trump picked Pam Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general, to replace Gaetz. Bondi, who defended Trump during his first impeachment, leads a right-wing think tank. Gaetz withdrew after CNN told him it planned to report that he had a second sexual encounter with a 17-year-old girl in 2017, and after The Times reported that federal investigators had found payments Gaetz made to women he had allegedly hired for sex. Trump, who had privately conceded that Gaetz might not be confirmed but had made calls on his behalf, praised Gaetz in a Truth Social post. Trump said that Gaetz withdrew to avoid becoming a distraction for the administration and that he “has a wonderful future.” Gaetz resigned from the House ahead of the release of an ethics report about him. Pete Hegseth Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, denied that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2017 after a police report released this week detailed their encounter. “The matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared,” he said. Several Republican senators have stood by Hegseth, noting that no charges were filed. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee lamented “the media’s focus on personal attacks.” Hegseth, as an Army lieutenant in 2005, criticized soldiers who committed war crimes. By 2018, embittered by military dysfunction, he was defending them as a Trump supporter on Fox News. More on the Trump Administration In a recount, Senator Bob Casey, a three-term Pennsylvania Democrat, conceded to Dave McCormick, a Republican. The Republicans have 53 Senate seats next year. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican, will lead a House panel focused on cutting government waste, in concert with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, was a registered lobbyist until early this year. Her clients included a tobacco company, a mining project and a cancer research foundation. The House passed legislation that would let the government revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups it accuses of supporting terrorism. Democrats warned that Trump could exploit it to target his political enemies. Trump claims that his “landslide” victory gives him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to transform the country. In fact, he’s set to win the popular vote by a small margin. Middle East Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Yoav Gallant. Amir Cohen/Reuters The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as part of its investigation into war crimes in Gaza. The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Muhammad Deif, Hamas’s military chief, for crimes against humanity. Israel says it killed Deif. The warrants are not enforceable in Israel and the U.S., but they could make it difficult for Netanyahu to travel to most other countries. International Ukrainian soldiers in eastern Ukraine. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Vladimir Putin said Russia struck Ukraine with a new type of missile, one capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The Brazilian police accused former President Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a coup. China’s hacking of communications inside the U.S. was more widespread than previously reported. Hackers listened to phone calls and read texts by exploiting aging equipment. U.S. officials warned American defense companies that Russia might try to sabotage them. They recommended increasing security for employees and watching for signs of surveillance. Other Big Stories Several major automakers want Trump to keep the Biden administration’s electric vehicle requirements. The companies have already spent billions to shift to E.V.s. White supremacist demonstrations are becoming more frequent across the U.S. Police officers in Trenton, N.J., systematically violate citizens’ rights and needlessly escalate peaceful interactions into violence, a Justice Department report found. M.I.T. announced that it would eliminate tuition costs next fall for all undergraduate students whose families earn less than $200,000 per year. Opinions Biden should end the tradition of pardoning turkeys on Thanksgiving. They’ve committed no crime to deserve a pardon, Peter Singer writes. Here are columns by Paul Krugman on how anti-immigrant sentiment affects the tech sector and Michelle Goldberg on Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate Washington Democrat. The Thanksgiving Sale. Subscribe to Cooking now, offer won’t last. Less mess, less stress. Cooking provides easy recipes plus videos, community tips and more. Save on your first year of Cooking. MORNING READS Bathing in oil in Naftalan, Azerbaijan. Emile Ducke for The New York Times Dispatch: In Azerbaijan, host of COP29, people aren’t just proud of their oil — they soak in it. Explore your roots: Take a family heritage trip. Omen: Sea-dwelling oarfish are thought to be harbingers of disaster. Three have washed up in California in recent months. Researchers are excited to study them. Lives Lived: Diane Coleman was a fierce disability-rights advocate born with muscular spinal atrophy who took on the right-to-die movement. She died at 71. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Cleveland Browns beat the division-rival Pittsburgh Steelers, 24-19, in a driving snowstorm. N.H.L.: The Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin will miss four to six weeks with a fractured fibula. It will slow his pace toward the league’s all-time goals record, held by Wayne Gretzky. College football: Michigan flipped Bryce Underwood, a top recruit. He was previously committed to L.S.U. ARTS AND IDEAS Paul Tazewell Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times Paul Tazewell was 16 and in Ohio when he first designed costumes for a show about Oz. It was a high school production, and much of the work happened in his family’s dining room. So he was ready when he got the call to design costumes for “Wicked,” the movie. Read more about him and the costumes. More on culture In new collections, the Palestinian poets Mosab Abu Toha and Najwan Darwish write about the war in Gaza. Late night hosts joked about Matt Gaetz. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times Sprinkle crema and queso fresco over this festive cornbread stuffing. Improve mobility with six exercises. Floss with water. Roll pastry with this pin. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was legalizing. 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 November 24, 2024 Author Members Posted November 24, 2024 November 23, 2024 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Understanding what’s “for you” or “not for you” is part of refining taste. But what if it’s also closing you off to pleasure and connection? María Jesús Contreras Your heart’s desire It’s “Glicked” weekend, if you’re up for it, an invitation to take in a double feature of two of the season’s most anticipated movies, both of which opened yesterday: “Wicked,” Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and “Gladiator II,” Ridley Scott’s return to the Colosseum 24 years after his original epic. If this particular cinematic portmanteau is missing some of the multisyllabic whimsy of 2023’s “Barbenheimer,” the two films on offer this time are as unalike in subject as “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were, making for another dizzyingly dissonant mash-up, another chance for die-hards to dress up and spend five hours hunkered down in a multiplex. When I first heard that some fans were planning to see “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” back to back, I thought, “Oh, that’s fun, but it’s not for me.” If I’m honest, neither of these films seemed, on its face, to be especially “for me.” I’m inclined to smaller movies over blockbusters. I’m not a huge fan of musicals, nor of action movies. I’m a cultural omnivore, personally and professionally, so I knew I would eventually see these movies. But I would be seeing them as a sociologist, a curious outsider rather than the ideal audience member. I wasn’t going to be mouthing every word to “Defying Gravity” or comparing Lucius’s performance in the arena to that of his father. Understanding what’s “for you” or “not for you” is part of refining taste, of figuring out what you like and don’t so that your time is pleasurably spent. There’s a confidence in that: This is my kind of movie, this is the type of music I listen to, this is the food I like, this is what works for me. It’s the reward for a life discerningly lived — you know who you are. I went to see “Wicked” this week and, if I didn’t feel like it was for me, I did understand after seeing it that it’s for a lot of people who are not me. I was tempted to leave it at that — different strokes for different folks! — but there seemed to be some possibility here. “Wicked” is going to be a huge movie, one that people will be talking about, debating, quoting and referencing, and I was, however tenuously, now connected to these people by dint of having seen it. A few hours in a theater and I could join the conversation. The next day in the office, I ran into my colleague Louis, who’d just written a story about the costumes of “Wicked.” The movie, he confirmed, was definitely for him. He’d seen the stage musical several times, knew the soundtrack by heart. I told Louis that after having seen “Wicked,” I was interested in questioning what I think of as for me, in finding what happens when we deliberately explore something that we’ve consigned to others, assuming our tastes or tendencies are so established that there’s no way in for us. He’d gone to five Mets games that year, Louis told me, becoming in one season a baseball person, the type of fan who might be inclined to seek out a bar when the game was on. Just like that, a new community. It seems like an irrefutable good to know oneself, the ultimate sign of maturity. Enough faffing about figuring out who you are, now you can just be that person. You’ve arrived at your destination. But there’s a finality to that arrival, a rigidity, an end to curiosity. You know who you are, so you know what’s going to happen. What happens if you go see the movie that’s so clearly advertising itself as not for you? Yes, you might sit bored for a couple hours, but there’s a good story (and Milk Duds) even in that experience. Or you could discover something unexpected — an actor you’d never encounter otherwise, a soundtrack that’s actually kind of for you after all. What if you applied the same openness to a problem that’s been plaguing you, or a relationship that’s been challenging? You think you know who you are, how you will react, how things are going to go. What if you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do? What if the you that you think you know, with its taste and preferences and ways of reacting and relating, isn’t totally set in stone? For more Read Manohla Dargis’s reviews of “Wicked” and “Gladiator II.” THE WEEK IN CULTURE Music Liam Payne’s funeral in Amersham, England, on Wednesday. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images A funeral for Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer, was held in England a month after his death at 31. His former bandmates were in attendance. Kendrick Lamar released a surprise album, “GNX,” yesterday. Lady Gaga, Green Day, Post Malone and Travis Scott will headline next year’s Coachella festival, Pitchfork reports. Adele is ending her Las Vegas residency. She is leaving a legacy of excellent black dresses, our fashion critic writes. Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones, accepted her father’s honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards. Rashida delivered a speech he wrote for the event before his death. Film and TV The new Hulu series “Interior Chinatown,” adapted by Charles Yu from his own novel, satirizes Hollywood’s pigeonholing of Asian actors. See the sets that bring the story to life. “The Piano Lesson,” produced by Denzel Washington and based on a play by August Wilson, is one of nine movies our critics are talking about this week. Theater In the Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard,” an actor dodges pedestrians and parked cars on West 44th Street while a camera operator captures the scene live. The brief scene takes 62 people to pull off. “Tammy Faye,” a new musical about the televangelist, will close after less than a month. The show, which gained some good reviews in London, failed to find an audience on Broadway. TKTS, the theater discounter that has been a Times Square mainstay for 51 years, is expanding to Philadelphia. Someone driving a pickup truck stole props from a Michigan ballet company ahead of its annual production of “The Nutcracker.” The community has stepped up to help the show go on. More Culture A recent spate of celebrity look-alike contests has attracted everyday men who bear passing resemblances to stars like Timothée Chalamet and Jeremy Allen White. In TikTok videos, women are sharing tongue-in-cheek stories about toxic dating behavior under #WomenInMaleFields. THE LATEST NEWS Trump’s Appointments Scott Bessent Jonathan Drake/Reuters Donald Trump will nominate Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has defended Trump’s proposed tariffs, to be his Treasury secretary. Russell Vought is Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, an architect of Project 2025, has supported strengthening presidential control over federal agencies. In a surprising move, Trump picked Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon moderate and one of the few congressional Republicans to support pro-union legislation, as his labor secretary. The president of the Teamsters union had recommended her. Sebastian Gorka, a right-wing commentator who backed barring entry to people from Muslim-majority countries in Trump’s first term, will return to the White House as an adviser. Trump also filled several other roles, picking a former Florida congressman to lead the C.D.C. and a Johns Hopkins surgeon who frequently appears on Fox News to run the F.D.A. More on Politics The judge overseeing Trump’s Manhattan criminal case postponed his sentencing and invited Trump’s lawyers to formally seek to dismiss his conviction. Elon Musk is still learning how to play the courtier politics of Trump’s inner circle. Many are already speculating about a future falling out. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from consideration to be Trump’s attorney general amid allegations of sex with a minor, said he would not return to Congress next year. Other Big Stories Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group are closer to reaching a 60-day cease-fire, but unresolved details could still scuttle a deal. Federal officials approved New York City’s revised congestion pricing program. Starting in January, most drivers will have to pay a $9 toll to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan. Having failed to win power through elections in several Indian states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has used bribery, intimidation and even kidnapping to take over local governments. After four female runners in Kenya were killed by their partners, the sport’s governing body has taken steps to keep athletes safe from gender-based violence. The Thanksgiving Sale. Subscribe to Cooking now, offer won’t last. Less mess, less stress. Cooking provides easy recipes plus videos, community tips and more. Save on your first year of Cooking. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 📺 “Get Millie Black” (Monday): A detective returns to her hometown to solve a terrible crime — that’s the plot of dozens of police procedurals. What sets this one apart is its creator, Marlon James, the winner of the 2015 Booker Prize for “A Brief History of Seven Killings” and author of the ongoing “Dark Star” fantasy trilogy. James forays into television with this tangy, tenebrous crime drama set in his native Jamaica. Tamara Lawrance stars as Millie, a former Scotland Yard detective who returns to Kingston, where her sister, Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), still lives. If the story is familiar, the sense of place is exceptional. RECIPE OF THE WEEK By Melissa Clark Sheet-Pan Chicken Tikka Turkey may be the foremost poultry on your mind right now, with Thanksgiving approaching and Christmas hard on its heels. But that doesn’t mean chicken should be off the menu. Zainab Shah’s fragrant sheet-pan chicken tikka is an easy, colorful meal that’s elegant enough for guests, and full of ginger, garlic and spices. If you marinate the chicken overnight, you’ll be rewarded with a deeper, richer character. But even a 30-minute stint will give you a heady and complex meal to kick off your holiday week. REAL ESTATE Gianna Licari Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times The Hunt: A first-time buyer, excited to start a new government job, took her $300,000 budget to the Washington, D.C., area. Which home did she choose? Play our game. What you get for $2.7 million: A stone mansion from 1906 in Minneapolis; a Spanish Colonial-style house in Santa Fe, N.M.; or a 19th-century rowhouse in Alexandria, Va. LIVING Scenes from ComplexCon in Las Vegas. Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times Hypebeasts: See inside ComplexCon, a hybrid sneaker mall, fashion show and music festival. Turkey and a side of politics: Tips to avoid a contentious family holiday after the big election. An iconic venue: Want a wedding in Central Park? This planner can help. Winter: Cases of the flu have begun to rise. Read about eight factors that put people at risk. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Clean your dishwasher filter This holiday season, as you put your dishwasher to the test with more dirty pots, pans and dishes than usual, you might want to pay attention to one part of the machine in particular: the filter, which makes it possible to skip prerinsing your dishes by catching food particles and filtering water as the machine washes. To prevent congealed food from clogging it up, which can lead to a stench and dirtier dishes, clean the filter regularly. It should take you less than five minutes. Here’s how. — Andrea Barnes GAME OF THE WEEK Michael Reaves/Getty Images No. 5 Indiana vs. No. 2 Ohio State, college football: In 137 years of Indiana football, there’s never been a season quite like this. The team is 10-0 for the first time, and quarterback Kurtis Rourke is in the running for the Heisman Trophy. Yet Indiana is still an underdog this week against Ohio State, one of the most dominant teams of the past two decades (and one that Indiana hasn’t beaten since the 1980s). A win today likely gets Indiana in the College Football Playoff, with a chance to play for a national championship. 12 p.m. Eastern on Fox NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were backlit, clickbait and tailback. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted November 25, 2024 Author Members Posted November 25, 2024 November 24, 2024 Good morning. Today, we’ve got a selection of recipes for your Thanksgiving table. We’re also covering Trump’s appointments, the floods in Spain and the box office. Linda Xiao for The New York Times The new classics By Emily Weinstein I’m the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking and Food. The menus are being planned, grocery lists made, details finalized — it’s nearly go time for Thanksgiving, a time for epic feasting and the one day of the year on which even the most reluctant home cooks wander into the kitchen. Are you ready? I’m here to help. We have Thanksgiving recipes for just about every dish you could think of, but today I’m sharing recipes that have become the new classics of the genre: holiday dishes from Cooking that are simple but imbued with intelligence and spark, recipes that are beloved by our readers and indisputably delicious. The menu Romulo Yanes for The New York Times Buttermilk-Brined Roast Turkey Samin Nosrat’s roast turkey is among the most popular and best we’ve ever published, a supersize riff on her justly famous buttermilk-brined roast chicken recipe. Her method calls for three ingredients and produces a turkey with golden brown skin and juicy meat. She did a version for turkey breast, too. Christopher Testani for The New York Times Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin This dish is a Thanksgiving powerhouse with a key innovation: Kenji López-Alt, who wrote the recipe, stands the potato slices up vertically, rather than laying them flat, for a singular presentation that also gives you crisp potato edges in every bite. Christopher Testani for The New York Times Vegetarian Mushroom Wellington A project to be sure, but this dish is a stunner and one of the finest meatless centerpieces you could possibly make for the holiday. David Malosh for The New York Times Green Beans With Ginger and Garlic There are a few dishes you need on the table to cut through the tan symphony that is the traditional Thanksgiving meal. Cranberry sauce, yes, but a fresh vegetable, too — something green that offers a satisfying crunch or snap to contrast with all those soft, sweet or creamy dishes. Evan Sung for The New York Times Cranberry Curd Tart Jewel-toned and chic, this is a statement dessert — something eye-catching and not too sweet for the end of the meal. (Another one of my favorites in this bright realm: our mango pie.) And new classics in the making The recipes above are longstanding treasures of the Cooking catalog, but there are up-and-comers to consider when you’re drawing up your menu: Eric Kim’s new dry-brined roast turkey with chiles, which zings with flavor; saag paneer lasagna (a.k.a. “lasaagna”), the classic but with a saag paneer-inspired filling; creamy double-garlic mashed potatoes, for a supremely garlicky side; caramelized onion, cranberry and rosemary tahchin, which infuses the Persian rice dish with Thanksgiving flavors; and for dessert, a coconut caramel tart and cranberry lemon bars. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Donald Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition. He has picked most of the people he wants to work with him. See what his choices reveal about the next administration. Trump’s picks to oversee public health have all criticized Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream. Immigrants to the U.S. are seeking legal advice in response to Trump’s promise of mass deportations. Is the Democratic Party still for Black people? In “The Run Up,” Black voters discuss the election. International In eastern Spain. Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press A woman too frail to flee floods in Spain died in the arms of her childhood sweetheart as water filled their room. Read more about the floods. An Israeli rabbi who disappeared in Dubai was found dead. Israeli officials said they had information indicating it was an act of terrorism. After antisemitic attacks in Amsterdam, people are debating when it is accurate to use the word “pogrom.” In the West Bank, Palestinians say Israeli forces are pressing them to undertake dangerous tasks, like scouting spaces underground, for soldiers. A wave of bribery prosecutions that started in Brazil once promised to root out corruption across Latin America. Now it’s coming undone. When tragedies happen in Papua New Guinea, accusations of sorcery often follow — bringing violence in their wake. Other Big Stories Members of the Lady Jaguars in 2012. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times More than a decade ago, The Times reported on a girls’ basketball team in a forgotten part of West Tennessee. See how the players are doing now. Max Verstappen won his fourth Formula 1 world championship in Las Vegas. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Does the U.S. need a Department of Government Efficiency? Yes. The federal government’s spending has likely put it on an unsustainable path. “There are more than 180,000 pages of federal regulations. Surely it’s worth taking a close look at them and retiring many,” The Washington Post’s Fareed Zakaria writes. No. Cutting funding in the name of efficiency isn’t going to translate into a government that works. “The way to make the government more effective is no mystery — just fund it adequately so it can effectively do its job,” Bloomberg’s Kathryn Anne Edwards writes. FROM OPINION World leaders are flattering Trump. No one can quite tell what they are really thinking, Katherine Miller argues. Controlled burns are the simplest way to prevent wildfires, M.R. O’Connor writes. Here’s a column by Ross Douthat on the Trump cabinet. The Thanksgiving Sale. Subscribe to Cooking now, offer won’t last. Less mess, less stress. Cooking provides easy recipes plus videos, community tips and more. Save on your first year of Cooking. MORNING READS Kristen Booth Photography Vows: A “Star Wars” actress found the cool nerd she sought. Their wedding was inspired by “Bridgerton.” Most clicked feature: How healthy are sweet potatoes? One of The Morning’s most popular stories this week looks at the science. Tradition: How Thanksgiving lasagna, which first appeared in the late 1800s, became an American staple. Long dinners and luxury shopping: How a pop pianist spends her Sundays. Lives Lived: Fred Harris was a maverick Democratic senator from Oklahoma who ran for president from the left. He died at 94. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “James,” by Percival Everett: The winner of this year’s National Book Award for fiction is “James” by Percival Everett, whose 2001 novel “Erasure” landed on the big screen as “American Fiction” last year. In his latest book, he reimagines “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” through the eyes of Jim, the enslaved runaway who accompanies Huck on his escapades but remains slightly out of the spotlight in Twain’s tale. Here, James not only has a formal name, he has depth, gumption and — perhaps the ultimate key to freedom — an education. It’s the rare author who can breathe new life into a classic, but Everett pulls off the feat, earning “James” a spot in the modern literary canon and elevating his protagonist from trusty sidekick to star. More on books End-of-year lists are coming soon. In the meantime, let us help you find your next great read. In her new memoir, Glory Edim, founder of the Well-Read Black Girl community, opens up about the books that saved her. For more about her reading habits — likes, dislikes, ideal literary dinner party — start here. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is the K-pop star and Blackpink member Rosé, who is releasing her first full-length solo album in December. We spoke about her four years training to be a K-pop idol, about the genre’s intense fans and about her album, which was made away from the system that turned her into a global phenomenon. One of the things that is unique about K-pop is that the fan culture is so specific and so enormous. Can you tell me a little bit about that relationship? How authentic did you feel you could be? How authentic did you want to be? We were trained to always present ourselves in the most perfect, perfect way. And so even when we were interacting with fans online, it was when I was ready to give perfect answers and give them what they wanted — and making sure that I’m a perfect girl for everyone. That was the culture. And that’s why leading into this album, it was more of a personal want and need to be able to write an album like an album that I grew up with, music that I could relate to. In order for that, I’m sure artists had to be vulnerable, but we hadn’t trained to talk about our emotions and feelings and experiences. When you had to sit down with yourself and write this album, what was that like to have to dig deep? To be honest, that was like breathing. All the stories in there are stories that anyone around me has heard more than 20 times. It was about time I wrote it in a song. I had moments where I was like, Wait, can we say this? Wait, maybe we shouldn’t put that word in there. Maybe this is too much. Should we not? The themes are heartache, lost love, anger sometimes — the range of human emotions. Yeah, romance. But even that — it’s scary for me. I could see the faces of the producers and songwriters, they were like, So interesting, Rosie! Why are you so nervous about this? And I’m like, You guys, you don’t know.” Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Philip Montgomery for The New York Times. Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … “Wicked,” left, and “Gladiator II,” right. Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures; Aidan Monaghan, via Paramount Pictures Watch “Wicked” or “Gladiator II,” the movies that are helping reverse a box office slump. Test your mobility. Wear a more comfortable bra. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was unquoted. Can you put eight historical events — including the Salem witch trials, the domestication of corn, and the debut of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” — 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 November 26, 2024 Author Members Posted November 26, 2024 November 25, 2024 Good morning. Today, we’re covering Trump’s climate agenda — as well as the Democratic base, Lebanon and an I.V.F. mix-up. In Oklahoma. Reto Sterchi for The New York Times TRUMP’S AGENDA A climate change By Lisa Friedman I cover climate politics. Some of Donald Trump’s first steps on climate change when he enters the White House will send a message that the federal government no longer cares about the issue. He will pull out of the Paris Agreement. Allies say he’ll strip the phrases “climate change,” “clean energy” and “environmental justice” from every agency website. But the most significant policy moves will come later. They include repealing pollution limits on automobiles, power plants and factories. Agencies will give oil and gas companies easier access to federal lands for drilling. And Trump will work with a Republican-controlled Congress to repeal as much as possible of President Biden’s signature climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The result of all this: The United States will emit more greenhouse gases. The Morning is running a series on the policies Trump and his congressional allies may implement next year. In today’s installment, I’ll walk through their climate agenda. Undoing regulations Trump’s victory will bring changes to almost every aspect of environmental policy. Biden accepts the established science that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet. He tried to do a lot about it. To reduce demand for those fuels, he signed a law to pump billions of dollars into clean energy. He also forced power plant owners, automobile manufacturers and operators of oil and gas wells to keep carbon dioxide emissions down. Trump mocks all of that. “You know, they used to call it, remember, global warming. But then that didn’t work. Had many different names,” he said in a 2022 speech. “Now their great name is climate change.” Donald Trump Doug Mills/The New York Times He said during the race that he’d bring down electricity costs and boost the economy. To achieve that, he wants tax cuts, tariffs and unfettered access for oil companies to extract what he calls the “liquid gold” below. Lee Zeldin, his choice to run the Environmental Protection Agency, is a MAGA loyalist and former New York congressman. While Zeldin took some environmentally friendly positions when he represented Long Island, he has embraced Trump’s approach, and it’s safe to assume he’ll reverse Biden’s regulatory moves. Some rules will be especially easy to repeal. The agency only recently finalized a fee paid by energy companies that spew excess methane gas. Lawmakers can overturn any rule finished within the last 60 days, and Republicans are eager to do so here. Trump’s transition team also wants to hollow out the E.P.A. itself. It would like to move the agency’s headquarters outside Washington, push out civil servants who thwarted Trump’s policies during his first administration and put political appointees in roles traditionally reserved for nonpartisan experts. Drill, baby, drill Trump’s team also has big plans for the Interior Department, which oversees nearly 500 million acres of federal land, and for the Energy Department. Soon they will become almost entirely focused on aiding fossil fuel companies. Trump tapped Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, to be his interior secretary and to lead a new White House energy council. Burgum is close to fossil fuel companies. Trump picked Chris Wright, who runs a fracking company, to lead the Energy Department. The truth about the Biden administration is that oil and gas drilling hit record levels under its watch. But Biden also tried to limit drilling, particularly in fragile wilderness like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Trump promises to end those protections, approve all pending drilling permits and relax regulations against pollution and harming wildlife. Gutting a climate law In Washington, D.C. Pete Kiehart for The New York Times Trump and the new Republican majority will face their biggest test when it comes to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. The 2022 law offers $390 billion over 10 years to reduce emissions. It funds wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery factories and nuclear reactors. Trump calls the law wasteful, and many Republicans are eager to dump its clean energy provisions to help pay for tax cuts that Trump has promised. He would ditch a $7,500 tax credit for people who purchase electric vehicles. Trump also dislikes offshore wind turbines, which he has falsely claimed are causing whales to wash ashore dead. He wants to end a tax break for building them. But roughly 80 percent of the law’s clean-energy money spent in the first two years has flowed to Republican congressional districts, making a repeal politically challenging. Even corporations aren’t sure about all of Trump’s plans. The country’s top automakers spent billions to transition to electric vehicles. Now they don’t want the incoming president to eliminate emissions rules. Utilities want to keep subsidies for wind and solar energy. The test of how far Trump goes won’t rest on opposition from the left. It’ll be about how unified he keeps the right. Trump’s Agenda A Morning newsletter series on the policies Donald Trump may pursue next year. Tariffs Taxes Republican priorities THE LATEST NEWS More on the Trump Administration Trump’s cabinet picks fall into three factions: They’re focused on revenge, calming the markets or shrinking the government, David Sanger writes. Investors have swung from elation to confusion after Trump’s victory. They are trying to figure out how to place their bets. Justice Antonin Scalia is Trump’s judicial hero. He would have hated Trump’s proposal to circumvent the Senate’s responsibility to vet appointments, Adam Liptak writes. Some Latino immigrants in California support Trump’s border stance. Many believe his attacks were directed at recent asylum seekers, not at them. More on Politics At the Democratic National Convention. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Almost every Democratic constituency has swung right, Nate Cohn writes. Trump’s populism has eroded Democrats’ appeal. Jared Bernstein, a leading architect of “Bidenomics,” told The Times he was dealing with guilt after the election. Read the interview. Michael Blake, a former New York State assemblyman who was also an Obama aide, has entered the race to unseat Mayor Eric Adams. Some people who are disappointed by Trump’s win are avoiding news media, The Washington Post reports. Middle East The site of a rocket strike on a house in central Israel. Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock Hezbollah fired about 250 projectiles into Israel, a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed more than 25 people. On a hillside outside Beirut, crowds gather every night to watch airstrikes in the city’s southern suburbs. More International News A DHL cargo plane crashed near an airport in Lithuania, killing one person on board. A onetime mayor and history teacher won the presidency in Uruguay. He’s regarded as a moderate. Negotiators from around the globe are arriving in South Korea to discuss curbing plastic pollution. A little-known ultranationalist won the first round of Romania’s presidential election. Other Big Stories In Fairfax, Va. Moriah Ratner for The New York Times People in need often go to churches looking for help. They are an important source of meals, showers, clothes and jobs. A Dartmouth sorority and two fraternity members have been charged with offenses related to the death of a student who drowned after a party off campus this summer. Federal officials are trying to retrieve billions in stolen pandemic relief, and the government is paying private citizens to help. Southwest Airlines, a success for decades, has struggled to adapt to recent changes in air travel. Hotels in New York City charged an average of $417 per night in September, their highest ever monthly rate. Opinions To attract voters, Democrats can’t just promise higher incomes. They also need to promise a more equal society, Daniel Chandler writes. After Vladimir Putin became president, many Russians who opposed him tuned out of politics. What happened next should be a warning to Trump’s critics, Miriam Elder writes. Here is a column by David French on recess appointments and Gail Collins on a female president. The Thanksgiving Sale. Subscribe to Cooking now, offer won’t last. Less mess, less stress. Cooking provides easy recipes plus videos, community tips and more. Save on your first year of Cooking. MORNING READS Zoë and May, both 5, were born to each other’s genetic parents. Holly Andres for The New York Times I.V.F. mix-up: Two couples in California discovered they were raising each other’s genetic children. Should they switch their girls? Flight trauma: “Everyone thought we were going to die.” History: For generations, scholars argued that white women were rarely involved in the business of slavery. Research shows otherwise. Holiday cards: Remember these grammar rules. Wellness: Do you need to take magnesium supplements? Metropolitan Diary: Never trust a mustache. Lives Lived: Chuck Woolery was the affable host of “Love Connection” and “Wheel of Fortune.” He later criticized liberal values as the co-host of a popular right-wing podcast. He died at 83. SPORTS KaVontae Turpin Dallas Cowboys N.F.L.: The Dallas Cowboys defeated the Washington Commanders, 34-24. KaVontae Turpin ran a 99-yard return. The Eagles: The team moved to 9-2 with a 37-20 rout over the Rams in Los Angeles. It was a fitting nightcap for a wild Week 12. Women’s college basketball: U.C.L.A. upset top-ranked South Carolina, 77-62, ending a 43-game winning streak. Read a recap. N.H.L.: The St. Louis Blues fired their coach, Drew Bannister, 22 games into the season. They replaced him with Jim Montgomery, whom the Boston Bruins fired last week. ARTS AND IDEAS William Jess Laird; Genevieve Lutkin Artists and curators are tired of cold, white gallery rooms. So they’re opening exhibits in homes. “I had all these ideas of things I wanted to make in my head, but there was no space for them,” one artist who is renovating a New York apartment to both live in and show his work. “I think it’ll teach me a lot about designing for real living,” he says. More on culture Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo have been holding hands on the “Wicked” press tour. That’s gone viral, The Cut reports. A debate is raging in Colombia over “+57,” a reggaeton hit that’s named after the country’s international dialing code. The song is explicit, and some say it reinforces negative stereotypes. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Bake these cheese dreams, which one reader called “very elevated grilled cheese.” Travel with a small, fast-charging power bank. Upgrade your guest bathroom with these (on-sale) waffle towels. Stay off your phone with this chic reading light. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was adapting. 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 November 27, 2024 Author Members Posted November 27, 2024 November 26, 2024 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We’re covering an analysis of the 2024 election — as well as Jack Smith, Pakistan and mashed potatoes. Barack Obama in 2007. Keith Bedford for The New York Times ‘I’m one of them’ It remains Barack Obama’s most underrated political skill: his appeal to working-class voters, including those who are white. Obama won most voters without a four-year college degree in his two presidential campaigns. Those majorities helped him win Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in both campaigns. He even won Indiana and North Carolina once. He did so by both speaking to the economic frustration that resulted from years of slow-growing wages and signaling that he, like most Americans, was moderate on social issues. He made clear that he understood people’s anxiety about the speed of cultural change. He talked about “an awesome God” in the 2004 speech that made him a national figure. He rejected sweeping new policies like single-payer health care. He traveled to the University of Notre Dame as president and said he wanted to reduce the number of abortions. He supported civil unions rather than same-sex marriage when most voters felt similarly. He went on MTV and complained about people who wore their pants too low. (“Some people might not want to see your underwear — I’m one of them,” Obama said.) He took a middle ground on immigration, criticizing both family separations and companies that undercut “American wages by hiring illegal workers.” As time has passed, I think some people have forgotten how conservative Obama could sound. This approach sometimes angered progressives. They called him a sellout, a neoliberal and “the deporter in chief.” But Obama was genuinely moderate in some ways. He also hated treating political disagreements as existential and opponents as the enemy. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly,” Obama told young activists after leaving office. “The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.” Perhaps above all, Obama liked winning. He understood that a Democratic Party that treated the country’s working-class majority as backward or hateful would probably lose those voters. He recognized that sounding like an economic populist, as Obama often did, was not enough. Many people — rich, middle-class and poor — vote on social issues and values at least as much as on taxes and spending. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, yesterday published an analysis of how voting patterns have shifted since Obama’s 2012 re-election. And those numbers demonstrate just how badly the Democratic Party’s post-Obama strategy has fared. What Obama and Trump share After Obama, the party moved left on one big issue after another — Medicare, gender, border security, policing and more. It’s true that Kamala Harris tried to move back to the center this year, but her moderation never had the self-assurance that Obama’s did. It could seem tactical and reluctant. She refused to explain why she had changed her mind about fracking, border security and “Medicare for all.” When asked whether she supported any abortion restrictions, she avoided the question. The Democrats’ post-Obama leftward turn was based on a specific theory of the electorate: that the country’s growing number of voters of color would cover the loss of working-class whites. Under this race-centric theory, Donald Trump looked like a gift to Democrats. He made racist and sexist comments. He resembled a caricature of the backward voters Democrats were happy to leave behind. But the Democrats’ theory was wrong. As they moved away from Obama’s approach and toward the purer progressivism that’s popular among college professors, pundits and activists, the party didn’t win over more voters of color. Instead, Democrats have lost ground with every major racial group except white voters, as Nate’s analysis shows: A key reason is that Trump’s anti-establishment populism appealed to working-class voters across racial groups. Trump also helped himself by adopting a mirror image of Obamaism and seeming to reject Republican orthodoxy on subjects like Social Security, Medicare, abortion and foreign wars. Different though they are, both Obama and Trump approach politics as if class matters more than race. Sure enough, Trump’s biggest gains have come among the nonwhite working-class voters who were Obama’s strongest supporters: Not simple moderation As the Democratic Party tries to figure out a way forward, it can’t merely mimic Obama. The country has changed, partly because of Trump. Nor can the party assume that the answer is simply to moderate its position on everything. The Democrats who won tough races this year were more heterodox. They sometimes sounded like Bernie Sanders when talking about foreign trade or corporate America and Joe Manchin when talking about government regulation or social issues. They also sounded authentic. Still, Obama’s success remains relevant. It highlights the importance of treating working-class voters’ opinions respectfully rather than talking down to those voters. And it’s a reminder that no Democrat since Obama has come up with an approach that works as well as his did. Related: Democrats in Georgia and North Carolina are dissecting their 2024 losses in a hurry. Both states will have competitive Senate races in 2026, and Georgia will elect a governor. THE LATEST NEWS Special Counsel Investigation Jack Smith Doug Mills/The New York Times Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to investigate Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and his handling of classified documents, moved to dismiss both cases. Hours later, the judge overseeing the Jan. 6 case dismissed it. Smith said he ended the cases not because of their merits but because Justice Department policy forbids prosecuting sitting presidents. Smith asked to leave open the option of refiling the charges after Trump leaves office. But the statute of limitations — five years for most federal offenses — could prevent that. Trump, who had vowed to fire Smith if he won, plans to fire the entire team that worked for him, The Washington Post reports. Smith plans to pursue charges against Mar-a-Lago workers accused of obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve the documents. Trump could pardon them. Trump will re-enter the White House with legal questions — about presidential immunity and the power of special counsels — still unanswered by courts. Trump Appointments Trump’s legal team found that an adviser had asked potential appointees to pay for help securing roles in the administration. The adviser denied doing so. Billionaires are set to lead Trump’s economic team. Investors are excited. Democrats say it’s proof that he will mostly help the rich. Stocks and bonds rose yesterday morning after Trump picked a financier, Scott Bessent, for Treasury secretary. Steven Witkoff, Trump’s choice as a Middle East envoy, has potential conflicts of interest: He would be negotiating with leaders who have stakes in his real-estate projects. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s failed pick for attorney general, is now on Cameo, where users can pay him $500 to record personalized videos. More on the Administration Trump said he’d impose a 25 percent tariff on all products imported from Canada and Mexico on Day 1. Mitch McConnell, now out of Senate leadership, will support Ukraine and oppose recess appointments to Trump’s cabinet. That could invite clashes with Trump. A 33-year-old aide who was a far-right cable anchor gives good news to Trump. She carries a printer to show him positive articles and takes dictation for his social media posts. Trump endorsed Jimmy Patronis, a Florida official, in the special election for Gaetz’s House seat. Patronis backed a plan to use public funds to pay Trump’s legal fees. More on Politics Phew! Eric Lee/The New York Times President Biden pardoned two turkeys, Peach and Blossom, named for the official flower of his home state, Delaware. The flower “symbolizes resilience,” he said. California will give eligible residents tax rebates for electric vehicles if Trump ends the $7,500 federal tax credit that Biden passed. Harris’s job title may be one reason she lost: Sitting vice presidents have a poor record in presidential elections. The U.S. is withholding its annual payment to the World Anti-Doping Agency to press the organization to make changes after it failed to suspend Chinese swimmers for positive tests. The Biden administration will propose that Medicare and Medicaid cover obesity medications. Middle East Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that he’s open to a cease-fire with Hezbollah in the war in Lebanon. His cabinet is expected to discuss a proposed deal today. Israeli strikes threaten Lebanon’s antiquities. More International News In Islamabad, Pakistan. Irtisham Ahmed/Associated Press Thousands of Pakistanis defied a government lockdown to demand the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The U.N. and several embassies are evacuating personnel from Haiti. Gang members recently attacked a neighborhood where international aid groups are based. The Danish government will tax the owners of cows and pigs for the animals’ methane emissions. Chinese police forces are crossing provincial borders to raise cash by fining small companies, sometimes for made-up charges. Other Big Stories Some transgender activists say it’s time to rethink their tactics because they are facing diminishing public support. A federal judge ruled that a transgender player on the San Jose State women’s volleyball team could continue playing. Several other players, including one of her teammates, had sued to bar her from competition. Washington, D.C., sued an anti-police activist, accusing him of spending $75,000 from his charity on luxuries like a trip to Cancún and designer clothes. A white woman in Florida who shot and killed a Black neighbor, Ajike Owens, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for manslaughter. Opinions Doctors persisted with the hope that Sarah Wildman’s daughter Orli could survive her cancer. Such hope prevents sick children from receiving essential end-of-life care, she argues. Here are columns by Paul Krugman on Trump’s crony capitalism and Michelle Goldberg on Representative-elect Sarah McBride. Last chance to save on Cooking before Thanksgiving. Readers of The Morning: Save on a year of Cooking. Search recipes by ingredient or explore editors’ picks to easily find something delicious. MORNING READS Eli Durst, Brian Kaiser, Brandon Watson for The New York Times Team spirit: The New York Times for Kids goes inside the sweaty and heartfelt world of high school mascots. World-class looks: Competitive tablescapers can teach us something about setting the perfect table. Ask A&L: “Should I sit through the movie’s closing credits?” Lives Lived: Barbara Taylor Bradford’s best-selling novels captivated readers with chronicles of buried secrets, raging ambitions and strong women of humble origins rising to wealth and power. She died at 91. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Baltimore Ravens, coached by John Harbaugh, beat the Los Angeles Chargers — coached by his brother, Jim Harbaugh — 30-23. N.H.L.: Several men attacked Paul Bissonnette, a popular hockey personality and former player, at a restaurant in Arizona. Soccer: The goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher announced her retirement from the U.S. women’s national team. ARTS AND IDEAS Submissions from singles. Alec Jacobson for The New York Times Feeling fatigued by dating apps? In Vermont, they are using an old method to look for love. For decades, singles in the state have placed earnest and sometimes quirky personal ads in Seven Days, a small weekly newspaper. (In a recent entry, a man in his 70s boasts about his several hundred maple sugar taps.) More on culture Baby tees — ultra-fitted, sometimes cropped shirts — are back. “Wicked” is a merchandising juggernaut, with dolls, Stanley cups, clothing lines, Lego sets and even hair dryers. Jimmy Fallon joked about this year’s turkey pardoning. “Next year, under Trump, those turkeys will be Matt Gaetz and Rudy Giuliani,” he said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Save Martha Stewart’s ultra-creamy mashed potatoes. Dress in this fits-any-body jumpsuit. Upgrade to an (on-sale) electric toothbrush. Browse these deals on great host gifts. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was handbill. 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 28, 2024 Author Members Posted November 28, 2024 November 27, 2024 By German Lopez Good morning. We’re covering Donald Trump’s deportation plans, as well as the Israel-Lebanon cease-fire, assisted dying and 100 notable books of 2024. Boarding an ICE jet. John Moore/Getty Images TRUMP’S AGENDA Pushing people out Imagine the population of Chicago. Then quadruple it. That’s about how many unauthorized immigrants Donald Trump hopes to remove from the country: 11 million people in all. It won’t be easy. How will the government find all of these people? Where will they be held as officials process their cases? Will migrants’ home countries take them back? And will lawmakers approve all the funding required for this? The Morning is running a series on the policies that Trump and his congressional allies will try to implement next year. Today’s installment will look at his mass deportation goals. A huge operation We already know the broad contours of Trump’s plan. He wants to use the military and law enforcement to detain the millions of people who are in the United States illegally. The government will hold them in detention facilities while it inspects the facts of each case. Finally, it will fly undocumented migrants to their home countries or other places that agree to take them. We know less about more specific details. Here are six lingering questions: 1. Who are the targets? Trump aides say they will prioritize migrants with criminal records and previous removal orders, who number in the hundreds of thousands. The federal government already knows where to find most of these people, thanks to their previous contact with law enforcement, and can quickly deport many. The question is who comes next. Trump also wants to deport undocumented migrants with clean records (aside from the blemish of breaking the law to enter the United States). And he has said he’ll go after people with Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows some migrants from specific countries to stay in the United States legally. These migrants could be harder to find and detain, especially in cities and states that call themselves sanctuaries for the undocumented. Those places have refused to cooperate with most federal deportation efforts. 2. Will courts sign off? Undocumented migrants have due process rights, so their cases typically have to work through the courts. But immigration courts have yearslong backlogs. Trump officials want to use arcane laws, like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to bypass this process. That will likely lead to lawsuits — similar to those that stifled Trump’s first-term immigration policies. Trump has two advantages. The courts, especially the Supreme Court, are friendlier to conservatives than they were in his first term. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the president has broad powers over immigration. 3. Where will migrants be held? Right now, officials don’t have anywhere to put tens of thousands more migrants, let alone hundreds of thousands. The government will have to build, buy or lease more detention centers. At an airport repatriation center in Guatemala. Toya Sarno Jordan for The New York Times 4. Will other nations cooperate? Some countries, such as Venezuela, don’t take deportation flights from the United States. Others might resist taking in a sudden surge of migrants, especially those with criminal records. The administration could persuade nations to cooperate with a mix of favors and threats — trade deals and tariffs — but that would require careful diplomacy. 5. Will Congress pay up? Trump’s plan will cost $88 billion a year, the American Immigration Council estimates. That’s nearly twice the budget of the National Institutes of Health and four times NASA’s budget. Trump has suggested he’ll declare an emergency to use military funds for deportations. But the plan is expensive enough that Congress will likely have to approve more spending for it, and a bill might require Democratic support to pass the Senate. 6. Will immigrants self-deport? A goal of mass deportations is to create a climate of fear among migrants, leading some to leave America on their own. We don’t know how many people will do this. Given these hurdles, Trump might not sustain the millions of deportations a year he wants. Still, he’ll almost certainly succeed in deporting more people than President Biden did. After all, the country has done it before, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows: Source: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University | By The New York Times The Bush and Obama administrations managed to remove 400,000 people a year at their peaks. Biden has deported fewer than 200,000 most years. The consequences Trump and his allies say that their plan will revitalize the economy and prioritize the rule of law. American workers “will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top immigration advisers, told The Times last year. Critics say that mass deportations will cause chaos in Latino communities, as well as labor shortages in industries like agriculture, food processing and construction, leading to higher prices. They also question if the cost of mass deportations is worth it. For the same price as deporting every undocumented migrant, the American Immigration Council estimated, the United States could build almost three million homes. For more New York City officials are considering closing a Brooklyn shelter that houses 2,000 asylum seekers. They fear Trump may cancel the lease for the shelter, which is on federal land. Trump mentions Mexican migrant caravans to bolster his claims about the border. These groups rarely make it near the U.S. Trump’s Agenda A Morning newsletter series on the policies Donald Trump may pursue next year. Climate change Tariffs Taxes Republican priorities THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Lebanon Cease-Fire South of Beirut, Lebanon. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times Biden announced a 60-day cease-fire agreement to stop the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. It took effect at 4 a.m. local time. Israeli forces will withdraw from Lebanon, and Hezbollah will move its fighters north, letting hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians in both countries return home. These maps show how it will work. Benjamin Netanyahu said the truce would let Israel focus on Iran and Hamas. Thousands of displaced people have started returning to southern and eastern Lebanon. The Lebanese and Israeli militaries warned people not to return immediately to the south, where Israeli troops are still deployed. Biden, announcing the truce, pledged to keep working toward a cease-fire in Gaza and a separate agreement to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump’s Tariffs Trump’s pledge to impose tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China — America’s three biggest trading partners — could disrupt supply chains and hurt the auto industry. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, threatened to retaliate with tariffs on the U.S. Trump says that foreign companies will pay the tariffs. That’s usually wrong. The tariff threats show that Trump is already conducting foreign policy, Peter Baker writes. More on the Trump Administration Trump chose Kevin Hassett, an economic adviser in his first term, to lead the White House National Economic Council, and Jamieson Greer, another former administration official, to be his top trade negotiator. Trump picked Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician who opposed Covid lockdowns, to run the National Institutes of Health, and Jim O’Neill to be second in command at the Department of Health and Human Services. Both have ties to Peter Thiel, a Republican donor. Trump’s team is so far refusing to let the F.B.I. do security clearances for its transition members, limiting the information Biden officials can share with them. Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Trump, had hoped to hold a president accountable. Instead, his cases could expand presidential immunity. More on Politics Roy Cooper Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a Democrat, vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would strip powers from his Democratic successor. Senator Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, is blocking the promotion of a general who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Rudy Giuliani, in court to discuss his failure to turn over assets to Georgia election workers he defamed, lashed out at the judge. Other Big Stories Sarah Tarlow. Her husband, who suffered from a neurological illness, took his own life in central England. Andrew Testa for The New York Times As British lawmakers prepare to vote on legalizing assisted dying for the terminally ill, an intense public discussion has unfolded. Maine has sued oil and gas companies over climate change, saying they concealed the effects of fossil fuels and contributed to the extreme weather in the state. Opinions Biden needs to confirm as many judges as possible before Trump assumes office to prevent him from carrying out his most extreme plans, the Editorial Board writes. The Trump administration needs to be prepared for a bird flu pandemic, David Kessler, a former head of the F.D.A., writes. Here’s a column by Thomas Friedman on the world Trump inherits. Last chance to save on Cooking before Thanksgiving. Readers of The Morning: Save on a year of Cooking. Search recipes by ingredient or explore editors’ picks to easily find something delicious. MORNING READS Bret Tobalske, University of Montana Flight Laboratory. Wings of war: Scientists are studying hummingbirds to improve the flying abilities of combat drones. Superbugs: Drug-resistant pathogens are prevalent in the war-torn nations of the Middle East. Researchers are trying to understand why. New York: He was among the city’s busiest shoplifters. His mother was a cop. Lives Lived: Paul Caponigro, a renowned nature photographer, captured landscapes, deer, sunflowers and still lifes. “I knew that the forces of nature were a language,” he once said. Caponigro died at 91. SPORTS M.L.B.: The pitcher Blake Snell, a free agent, agreed to a five-year, $182 million contract with the defending champion Dodgers. College football: The playoff committee released its latest rankings, which solidified Boise State’s place in the field and spelled trouble for the S.E.C. See the projected 12-team bracket. N.F.L.: The Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield sued a private equity firm managed by his father and brother, accusing it of breaching a settlement deal. ARTS AND IDEAS The Times asked big names in culture to share Thanksgiving memories, opinions and recipes. The “Today” anchor Hoda Kotb drowns her turkey in gravy; Gwyneth Paltrow prefers her stuffing to be traditional; and Dolly Parton shares a cranberry mold recipe. See more from others including Gayle King, David Chang and Elmo. More on culture The staff of the Times Book Review has collated 100 notable books from 2024. See the list. The late night hosts joked about Trump’s proposed tariffs. “And poor Canada is like, ‘What did we do? I mean, be honest: Is this because of Drake?’” Jimmy Kimmel said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Make white chicken chili, or browse more easy recipes to cook the night before Thanksgiving. Read a mood-based guide on what to watch over Thanksgiving. Save on these tiny stocking stuffers. Consider this cushiony (on-sale) mattress. Sleep better with a silky eye mask. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was chlorophyll. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —German Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Quote phkrause Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted November 29, 2024 Author Members Posted November 29, 2024 November 28, 2024 Happy Thanksgiving. We’re covering the holiday tradition of arguing about politics — as well as Lebanon, Trump and turkey farming. Harold Lambert/Getty Images Gobbling and squabbling By Ian Prasad Philbrick I’m a writer on The Morning. Things have gotten so bad, we are told, that the Thanksgiving table is now a battlefield. Advice columnists, psychologists, therapists, podcasters and philosophers counsel us how to avoid or defuse arguments about politics. But sparring at (or about) Thanksgiving isn’t new. It is, in fact, a very old tradition — no less American than pumpkin pie. Debates were on the menu even before Congress formally declared the federal holiday in 1941. Here, from The Times’s archive, is a sample of what we’ve been arguing about. The New York Times 1. Thanksgiving itself. In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved up the traditional Thanksgiving Day by a week to stimulate holiday shopping and boost the economy. The move prompted a national debate. Retailers were pleased and plenty of Americans didn’t seem to mind. But traditionalists gnashed their teeth. “We here in Plymouth consider the day sacred,” said a local official in the birthplace of the Thanksgiving dinner. “Who,” asked a letter to the editor published by The Times, “wants a turkey one week thinner?” Some governors proclaimed separate Thanksgivings on the original day, inviting chaos that lasted until, in 1941, Congress standardized the date for the whole country. (Roosevelt, folding, signed the change into law.) Even some who stood to benefit from Roosevelt’s move mocked it. In early November, a shopkeeper in Kokomo, Ind., put a sign in his store window that read: “Do your shopping now. Who knows, tomorrow may be Christmas.” The New York Times 2. American iconography. A Times editorial in 1987 dinged Benjamin Franklin for (apocryphally) proposing the turkey to be the fledgling country’s national symbol. “Who would thrill to a turkey clutching the arrows of war in its right talon and the olive branch of peace in its left?” The Times wrote. “The banners of the Caesars, Charlemagne and Napoleon were emblazoned with eagles.” Soon, a reader shot back: “That the eagle was the symbol of these mischief makers was precisely why Franklin objected to it.” 3. The Middle East. A Thanksgiving debate may be indirectly responsible for the existence of Israel. Ahead of the 1947 holiday, the United Nations was debating a plan to divide Palestine, a British-administered territory, into two sovereign states — one for Jews, one for Palestinian Arabs. The proposal seemed likely to fail. Arab and Muslim-majority countries opposed it, and much of Europe and Latin America was ambivalent. But when the U.N.’s American hosts called a Thanksgiving recess, advocates for Israel began a furious lobbying campaign. They won over Haiti, the Philippines, Liberia and France, and the partition plan passed on Saturday. “On what remote, and often irrelevant, factors historical decisions may sometimes depend,” one negotiator later marveled about the holiday’s role. (Ultimately, Arab states rejected partition, and Palestinian statehood is still debated today.) The New York Times 4. Gender equality. In 1973, Joyce Slayton Mitchell, a 40-year-old woman from Vermont who worked for the National Organization for Women, urged women to share the burden of prepping Thanksgiving dinner with their families. One year, Mitchell let her daughter carve a turkey cooked by her husband. Her father was having none of it. “He had a fit,” she said. As The Times put it: “Poor grandfather. Instead of a proper New England Thanksgiving, he got his fill of feminism.” 5. Vietnam. In 1965, a youth group in Rye, N.Y., invited high school students to spend the holiday debating sex, underage drinking and the Vietnam War. One boy burned a symbolic draft card, and a blond girl with braces said, “I guess if you really believe the war’s wrong, maybe it’s O.K. to burn it.” Another boy retorted: “I’d rather be dead and buried than to be that selfish. The draft-card burners ought to be thrown in jail.” The New York Times 6. Food. The pages of The Times have filled over the years with debate-inducing pieces about whether the food even matters, what should be served, which foods are healthy, which wines to pair and how to speed up the cooking of a turkey. More on Thanksgiving
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