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The Morning

January 7, 2025

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Good morning. Today, my colleague Catie Edmondson explains the divisions within Congress. We’re also covering Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and 52 Places to Go in 2025. —David Leonhardt

 
 
 
Politicians sit in curved rows inside the House chamber.
A joint session of Congress. Eric Lee/The New York Times

A House divided

Author Headshot

By Catie Edmondson

I cover Congress.

 

Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump’s victory yesterday. Now that Republicans will hold the coveted “trifecta” — the White House, the Senate and the House — they’ll have their way in Washington, right? Maybe. The success of the Trump administration will hinge on congressional Republicans’ ability to stay united. It won’t be easy.

In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, who was re-elected on Friday, will have the smallest majority in history: 217 to 215. That means every bill Republicans pass will need nearly unanimous support from his famously fractious conference.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll break down some of the disagreements that could define the new Congress — and potentially derail Trump’s agenda.

Funding the government

Mike Johnson in profile, surrounded by reporters.
Mike Johnson  Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

Spending is the issue that most divided House Republicans in recent years. Many of them say they came to Congress to cut federal spending and rein in the nation’s debt. So, unable to unite his conference around a spending plan, Johnson has instead relied on Democratic votes to pass important measures, from stopgap bills to avert government shutdowns to the aid package lawmakers approved for Ukraine. He argued such an approach was justified because he was dealing with a Democratic Senate and White House.

No longer.

Because Democrats are unlikely to vote for the Republican majority’s bills, Johnson will need to bring his whole conference along. But any measure that wins over the most anti-spending Republicans could alienate more centrist Republicans — and vice versa.

The lines can be fuzzy. Most House Republicans believe that the government should spend less. But they split over which programs should be slashed. Every state delegation has its own prerogatives to protect: New York Republicans, for example, resist cuts to Amtrak, while Iowa Republicans reject G.O.P. efforts to cut biofuel tax credits. Then there are ideological differences between hard-liners in safe seats who want to shutter entire agencies and the pragmatists in swing districts who view those plans as politically toxic.

Events will test intraparty comity almost immediately. The nation is set to default on its debt as early as January unless lawmakers raise or suspend the borrowing limit, a move ultraconservatives refused to support in December despite Trump’s urging. After that, Congress will hit another government funding deadline in March.

Even if House Republicans find a compromise, they must win approval in the Senate. Republicans there — especially centrists like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who will chair the Appropriations Committee — have less appetite for giant spending cuts.

One solution could be for House leaders to accept the higher spending levels set by the Senate and try to get Democrats to supply some votes. That would most likely infuriate the hard-right Republicans.

The reconciliation bill

Senator Rick Scott, flanked by House and Senate Republicans.
Senator Rick Scott, flanked by House and Senate Republicans.  Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

The big marquee fight this year is going to be Republicans’ drive to reshape the nation’s tax, budget and immigration policies through a process called reconciliation. It allows the Senate to pass bills with a simple majority, rather than the filibuster-proof 60 votes often needed for other measures.

Congressional Republicans believe that this is their best chance to ram through much of Trump’s agenda. They are eyeing one mammoth bill that would increase the nation’s borrowing limit, extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, cut federal spending and impose a wide-ranging immigration crackdown.

That is a lot of pressure to put on a single piece of legislation. And the reconciliation process is unwieldy.

Some members of the House Freedom Caucus, the ultraconservative clutch of lawmakers, have said they won’t support a reconciliation bill that ends up costing money. That means expensive measures will need to be offset by huge spending cuts. Extending the Trump tax cuts alone would cost roughly $4 trillion over a decade, for instance.

But moderate Republicans in both chambers aren’t interested in crippling programs like Medicaid and SNAP, two frequent G.O.P. targets.

And Republicans will have to agree on immigration policies that have bitterly divided them since the election. One wing of the party wants to recruit high-skilled workers to keep America competitive. The other thinks those workers take Americans’ jobs.

How will Johnson face these problems with a one-vote margin? He deadpanned in a news conference in December that he’d had a lot of practice working with a tiny majority: “That’s our custom.”

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Transition

Kamala Harris and Mike Johnson in the House chamber.
Kamala Harris and Mike Johnson. Eric Lee/The New York Times
  • Congress certified Trump’s victory in an uneventful ceremony — a stark difference from four years ago, when Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol to disrupt the vote.
  • Trump lawyers asked the Justice Department and a federal judge to block Jack Smith from releasing his report on the classified documents investigation.

More on Politics

Canada

A close-up of Justin Trudeau standing in front of microphone.
Justin Trudeau Cole Burston for The New York Times
  • Justin Trudeau resigned as the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, and plans to step down as prime minister once his party finds a new leader.
  • Trudeau’s popularity fell sharply last year as housing prices rose and Canada’s health system faltered. Members of his own party had called on him to step aside.
  • Canada is set to hold a national election before October. Polls show the Conservative Party with a double-digit lead.
  • Trudeau became a global figure of liberalism when he took office in 2015. See a timeline of his career.

Middle East

More International News

  • A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck a region near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, killing at least 93 people, according to Chinese state media.
  • Pope Francis appointed a nun to lead the department that oversees Catholic religious orders. She is the first woman to hold a top spot in a Vatican office.

Other Big Stories

The U.S. Capitol is barely seen through falling snow. The street is adorned with American flags ahead of Inauguration Day.
In Washington, D.C. Eric Lee/The New York Times

Opinions

Syria and Iran have long had a grip on Lebanese politics. With Assad gone and Hezbollah weakened, Lebanon has a chance to embrace a modern, diverse democracy, Michel Helou writes.

Biden’s signature climate bill focused too much on companies. The U.S. needs climate programs that benefit the working class — like cheaper clean energy and more mass transit, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos argue.

Here is a column by Michelle Goldberg on Elon Musk’s intervention in British politics.

 
 

A subscription to match the variety of your interests.

News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today.

 

MORNING READS

A dog before a row of microphones.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for The New York Times

FOOD, MORE, NOW: Some dog owners think their pets can speak to them using “talking buttons.” Scientists are less convinced.

Danger: Poisonous snakes bite millions of people each year. In rural areas where anti-venom is hard to find, many of those bites prove fatal.

Ask Well: Can estrogen cream reverse skin aging?

Pollution: Exposure to lead from mining probably lowered I.Q. levels in the Roman Empire.

Lives Lived: Friedrich St. Florian’s design for the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington inspired criticism as well as praise. He died at 91.

 

SPORTS

N.F.L.: Multiple coaching vacancies have opened since the regular season ended on Sunday. Read about the coaching carousel.

College football: North Dakota State won the F.C.S. national championship in a 35-32 thriller against previously undefeated Montana State.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Where will you travel this year? The Times has published 52 Places to Go, an annual feature that highlights destinations across the U.S. and around the globe. Some made the list because of anniversaries, like southwest England, which is celebrating the 250th birthday of Jane Austen. Others are newly accessible, like the Nangma Valley of Pakistan, which now features an easy camping-based trekking route through its Yosemite-like granite peaks.

You can explore the full list here.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A plate of pasta in green sauce, topped with cheese.
Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times

Boil and blitz kale with fried garlic, Parmesan and olive oil for a silky pasta sauce.

Hit peak fitness after 40.

Write in a journal, and keep at it, with these tips.

Buy an affordable Android phone.

Replace these household essentials.

 

GAMES

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

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.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

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The Morning

January 8, 2025

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Good morning. Today, we’re covering breaking news about the wildfires spreading uncontained across parts of Southern California. Then, my colleague Steven Lee Myers explains a change in our social media feeds. —David Leonhardt.

 
 
 
A firefighter, holding a hose on his shoulder, douses a house with water.
A burning home in Pacific Palisades. Philip Cheung for The New York Times

An inferno

By the staff of The Morning

 

Wildfires are raging out of control across parts of Los Angeles. A fierce windstorm is fanning embers, billowing dangerous smoke across the city and turning the sky an apocalyptic red.

At least four blazes are spreading in Southern California, near the scenic coast, in Malibu and the Pacific Palisades, as well as further inland. Firefighters are struggling to work in the wind, and the fires are uncontained.

At least 30,000 people have fled. Some abandoned their cars and escaped on foot to avoid roads jammed with traffic. Residents of one nursing home evacuated on gurneys, officials said. Homes, landmarks and places of worship have been destroyed, and officials warned more destruction is coming.

 
 
 
An image of a Meta sign.
Jason Henry for The New York Times

Truth social

Author Headshot

By Steven Lee Myers

I cover misinformation and disinformation.

 

Policing the truth on social media is a Sisyphean challenge. The volume of content — billions of posts in hundreds of languages — makes it impossible for the platforms to identify all the errors or lies that people post, let alone to remove them.

Yesterday, Meta — the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads — effectively stopped trying. The company said independent fact-checkers would no longer police content on its sites. The announcement punctuated an industrywide retreat in the fight against falsehoods that poison public discourse online.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said the new policy would mean fewer instances when the platforms “accidentally” take down posts wrongly flagged as false. The trade-off, he acknowledged, is that more “bad stuff” will pollute the content we scroll through.

That’s not just an annoyance when you open Facebook on your phone. It also corrodes our civic life. Social media apps — where the average American spends more than two hours per day — are making it so that truth, especially in politics, is simply a matter of toxic and inconclusive debate online.

Meta’s conundrum

It easy to see why Meta made the change. With Donald Trump about to begin his second term, Zuckerberg seems to have decided that alienating half the country is bad business.

Only four years ago, Facebook suspended Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, though Zuckerberg had misgivings at the time about deplatforming a sitting president.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and in the courts have cast decisions by social media platforms to remove posts as an extension of government censorship. Officials in Washington had urged the companies to remove some posts about election fraud and Covid vaccines. The Supreme Court took up a case about Facebook’s removals last year but dismissed it on technical grounds.

Mark Zuckerberg sits in front of a microphone in a dark suit.
Mark Zuckerberg Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

Even so, the debate has clearly worried Zuckerberg. In August he wrote a mea culpa to the Republican congressman spearheading the charge against the platforms. He said Meta should have spoken out against what he called “government pressure” to remove some content.

Yesterday, the company went further to court the G.O.P. Meta’s new policy chief, a former Republican operative, told Fox News that there was “too much political bias” in the fact-checking program. Zuckerberg even plans to move the trust and safety teams — those responsible for policing all kinds of content — from California to Texas to “remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.” The company appointed Dana White, a close Trump ally, to its board.

The new town square

Meta is not entirely abdicating responsibility for what appears on its platforms. It will still take down posts with illegal activity, hate speech and pornography, for example.

But like other platforms, it is leaving the political space in order to maintain market share. Elon Musk purchased Twitter (which is now called X) with a promise of unfettered free speech. He also invited back users banned for bad behavior. And he replaced content moderation teams with crowdsourced “community notes” below disputed content. YouTube made a similar change last year. Now Meta is adopting the model, too.

Numerous studies have shown the proliferation of hateful, tendentious content on X. Antisemitic, racist and misogynistic posts there rose sharply after Musk’s takeover, as did disinformation about climate change. Users spent more time liking and reposting items from authoritarian governments and terrorist groups, including the Islamic State and Hamas. Musk himself regularly peddles conspiratorial ideas about political issues like migration and gender to his 211 million followers.

Letting users weigh in on the validity of a post — say, one claiming that vaccines cause autism or that nobody was hurt in the Jan. 6 attack — has promise, researchers say. Today, when enough people speak up on X, a note appears below the contested material. But that process takes time and is susceptible to manipulation. By then, the lie may have gone viral, and the damage is done.

Perhaps people still crave something more reliable. That is the promise of upstarts like Bluesky. What happened at X could be a warning. Users and, more important, advertisers have fled.

It’s also possible that people value entertainment and views they agree with over strict adherence to the truth. If so, the internet may be a place where it is even harder to separate fact from fiction.

For more: Zuckerberg, fed up with criticism, has stepped away from his apologetic approach to problems on his platforms. Read about Zuckerberg’s political transformation.

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

Trump’s Press Conference

Donald Trump speaks to the press from a lectern at Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.  Doug Mills/The New York Times

More on Politics

Jimmy Carter’s coffin, in the Rotunda at the U.S. Capitol, is draped with an American flag. Many people are seated in a circle around it.
At the Capitol Rotunda.  Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

International

A crowd of people holding metal bowls, standing in an arid landscape while awaiting food distribution.
Sudanese refugees in Chad. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Other Big Stories

Opinions

Three Times Opinion columnists discuss the biggest risks and challenges facing America.

Enough with the land acknowledgments: Performative sensitivity for Native peoples does little good, Kathleen DuVal writes.

Here are columns by Bret Stephens on Biden’s legacy of deception and Thomas Edsall on civil society’s Trump-related failures.

 
 

A subscription to match the variety of your interests.

News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today.

 

MORNING READS

A person wearing a headlamp looks through a fishing net on the deck of a boat.
On Lake Gatún in Panama. Charlie Cordero for The New York Times

Intruders: The Panama Canal got wider to accommodate larger ships. Then the saltwater fish invaded.

Letter of Recommendation: Sign language can help us all communicate better.

Have 5 minutes to spare? Listen here to fall in love with jazz guitar.

Lives Lived: Pippa Garner was an art provocateur whose modified consumer goods — like a midriff-baring men’s “Half Suit” and a ’59 Chevy with its chassis reversed — offered witty commentary on gender, bodies and the boundaries of fine art. She died at 82.

 

SPORTS

N.B.A.: The league’s two best teams, Cleveland and Oklahoma City, play each other tonight in a possible finals preview. At 31-4, Cleveland are winning at a record pace.

N.F.L.: Las Vegas fired its coach Antonio Pierce after just one full season. Possible candidates for his replacement include the former Raiders coach Jon Gruden.

College basketball: No. 1 Tennessee, previously the last unbeaten men’s team, suffered a 73-43 rout against No. 6 Florida.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

A slice of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate, sitting atop a pizza box.
This slice is in Minneapolis. Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

You can get New York-style pizza in Rexburg, Idaho, that’s so good you’d swear you were in Greenwich Village. It’s a sign that the New York slice has become an object of food-nerd fascination far beyond the city.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A Dutch oven filled with a brothy stew of chicken, potatoes and greens is photographed from overhead.
Kerri Brewer for The New York Times

Simmer a lemony Greek chicken, spinach and potato stew.

Keep pets safe in the cold.

Improve your meal prep.

Make a cashmere sweater last longer.

 

GAMES

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

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.

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter described incorrectly snakes whose bites pose a risk to humans. They are venomous, not poisonous.

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

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

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

phkrause

Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
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Posted
The Morning

January 9, 2025

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By the staff of The Morning

 

Good morning. We’re covering the wildfires across Los Angeles, as well as the Supreme Court, the French far right and Cameo politicians.

 
 
 
An image of fire burning homes and palm trees in the dark.
In Pacific Palisades. Loren Elliott for The New York Times

Uncontained

Los Angeles is surrounded by fire.

The city’s major wildfires have spread, and a new one started overnight in Hollywood Hills. It threatened a wealthy neighborhood and landmarks synonymous with America’s self-image — the Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame. Streets near Hollywood filled with traffic as helicopters raced through the sky. (Track the fires with these maps.)

The wildfires have killed at least five people; forced tens of thousands to evacuate; and charred entire neighborhoods of every socioeconomic status, from the scenic West Coast to the inland suburbs. “It wasn’t just that the place was in flames. It was that it seemed to be in flames everywhere at once,” The Times’s Shawn Hubler wrote of the city.

Below, we explain how these fires became a major crisis so quickly.

What makes these fires different

While Southern Californians are used to wildfire, these blazes are a shock in three key ways:

  • Location: Wildfires are normally contained to Southern California’s dry hills. These fires have burned out of control and spread into the city, and two are the most destructive in Los Angeles’s history. The flames are visible for miles down the city’s famous coastline, a half-moon crescent of sand that is usually domed by blue sky. “I’ve lived here my whole life and never seen anything like this,” a 71-year-old resident said.
  • Extreme winds: Intense winds, known as Santa Anas, have spread these fires into the city. The winds also made it unsafe for aircraft to douse the flames from above, which slowed firefighting. Santa Anas are notorious for aiding California wildfires in the fall, after the landscape dries in the summer. But the impact is often less dramatic by winter, when the hills are more moist from rain. That hasn’t been true this year.
  • Dry conditions: It hasn’t rained much in Los Angeles for months. As a result, the fires spread more quickly across a dry landscape. Water supplies were also limited. Firefighters sprayed water faster than tanks could be refilled, and hydrants ran dry. Some residents stood and watched as their homes burned away. On Sunset Boulevard, one man fell to his knees and begged firefighters to save his house. Without water, they were helpless to stop the flames.

The response

A police officer carrying an elderly person.
In Altadena, Calif. Kyle Grillot for The New York Times

Firefighters are continuing their battle, but more destruction is expected.

President Biden canceled a trip to Italy, in which he was supposed to meet the Pope, to coordinate the federal response to the wildfires. The White House said it had arranged for Navy helicopters to join the firefighting effort.

Biden also appeared alongside Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, at a fire station in Santa Monica. “We’re prepared to do anything and everything, as long as it takes, to contain these fires and help reconstruct, make sure we get back to normal,” Biden said.

Forecasters warned that extreme fire danger would continue for at least another day, and millions of people in Southern California remain under fire warnings — which have heightened anxiety across the region.

The fires have “merged into a kind of mega-catastrophe for Southern Californians,” Shawn wrote. “Ash, smoke, wind and flames carried the heart-stinging realization, which spread like a contagion, that a new and less manageable landscape was on the horizon.”

Follow the latest news here.

More on the fires

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Transition

Donald Trump standing in a line of Republican leaders in Congress.
Donald Trump Eric Lee/The New York Times

More on Politics

International

A woman sitting at a makeshift wooden table in an urban street selling food and other items.
In Giza, Egypt. Heba Khamis for The New York Times

Other Big Stories

A group of men stand on a sidewalk holding signs. One sign says in part: “Corporate Greed vs. Workers Rights.”
Dockworkers outside the Port of New Orleans. Annie Flanagan for The New York Times

Opinions

The TikTok law doesn’t ban content — it bans Chinese control of that content, David French argues.

Here are columns by Charles Blow on drinking culture and Nicholas Kristof’s “win a trip” winner on the benefits of breastfeeding.

 
 

A subscription to match the variety of your interests.

News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today.

 

MORNING READS

An illustration of a scale with a person on the center part. The right side of the scale is lower and heavier with DNA in it. The left side of the scale is higher and has health related items in it like an apple, a carrot, a sneaker, and a barbell. The dial on the scale is set to 100.
Mike Ellis

Personal health: Do your genes matter more for longevity than your lifestyle? It depends how long you hope to live.

Social Qs: “My brother and sister-in-law no longer want to put me up. I’m hurt!”

Risks: Middle-aged Americans are outdrinking younger adults — and suffering the consequences.

Space: Pluto may have captured its biggest moon after an ancient dance and kiss.

Lives Lived: Carole Wilbourn was a self-described cat therapist, known for her skill in decoding the emotional lives of misbehaving pets. She died at 84.

 

SPORTS

College football: Penn State and Notre Dame meet tonight in the semifinals of the first 12-team Playoff. Both teams have reputations on the line.

N.B.A.: Cleveland outlasted Oklahoma City, 129-122, in a matchup of the league’s best teams.

N.F.L.: The Chicago Bears will interview the Iowa State coach Matt Campbell for their head-coaching vacancy. The Raiders got a rebuff from the former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, currently at North Carolina.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

A photo illustration of various celebrities collaged together.
Photo illustration by Joan Wong

Cameo, a website where celebrities sell personalized videos, has become a haven for out-of-work Republican politicians. Both George Santos, who charges $400 a video, and Matt Gaetz are using the platform to monetize their notoriety, and they appear to be having fun.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A close-up of a tray of oatmeal.
Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Bake oatmeal for a satisfying breakfast.

Eat better with these tips.

Declutter your fridge.

Organize your pantry.

 

GAMES

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

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.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

phkrause

Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
  • Members
Posted
The Morning

January 10, 2025

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Good morning. Today, we’re covering the TikTok arguments at the Supreme Court this morning — as well as a new fire in Los Angeles and Jimmy Carter’s funeral.

 
 
 
A woman mounts a phone on a ring light.
Influencing.  Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times

Unavoidable tensions

Free speech and national security can often conflict. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln prevented newspapers from publishing pro-Confederate material. During later wars, the federal government suppressed criticism. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress made it a crime to provide even human rights advice to extremist groups.

In each case, government officials argued that they needed to restrict speech to protect Americans. And in each case, free speech advocates argued that the government had gone too far and undermined the country’s values.

The same is true about the latest conflict between speech and security — involving TikTok, the social media platform owned by a Chinese company.

In response to concerns that China can use the platform to spy on Americans and spread propaganda, Congress last year passed a law requiring TikTok’s parent company to sell it to a non-Chinese owner. TikTok and the parent company, ByteDance, then sued to block the law. This morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll lay out each side’s best arguments. Whatever your own views, I encourage you to recognize that there is no perfect solution, just as there was no perfect solution to the earlier conflicts between national security and free speech. Prioritizing one probably means compromising the other.

TikTok as speech

The argument to leave TikTok alone starts with its popularity. About 170 million Americans, equal to half the country’s population, use the app. They entertain themselves, communicate with friends, follow the news, go shopping and operate businesses.

Critics of the law say that shutting down TikTok — as the government would do if ByteDance refused to sell it — would be an unprecedented infringement on Americans’ speech: Never before has the government eliminated a platform used so widely for communication and commerce.

Supporters of TikTok at a protest in front of the Capitol building. They are holding signs that say “Keep TikTok” and “I’m 1 of 170 million Americans on TikTok.”
Supporters of TikTok on Capitol Hill last year. Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

Critics also argue that Congress has failed to show that China uses TikTok to manipulate Americans; the law is instead based on the worry that China might one day do so. The law’s effect is “to substitute definite manipulation by our own government for feared manipulation by China,” Jameel Jaffer and Genevieve Lakier, two First Amendment experts, wrote in a Times Opinion essay.

Donald Trump now seems to be on TikTok’s side, too. In a brief last month, he and his lawyers argued that the Supreme Court should let him resolve the issue after becoming president. (The deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok is Jan. 19.) Trump originally supported a forced sale but changed his position last year, evidently after speaking with a Republican Party donor who’s a TikTok investor.

TikTok as a threat

The argument in favor of the law revolves around the Chinese government’s recent actions and future ambitions. China treats companies as extensions of the state. If executives disobey orders, they can be fired or sent to prison. China has also made extensive efforts to spy on the U.S. and influence American politics.

Already, videos on some subjects, including Taiwan and Tibet, can be hard to find on TikTok, independent research has found. The same is true of pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel videos. (China has become increasingly allied with Russia and Iran.) These patterns suggest that TikTok suppresses material that the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like.

Perhaps the simplest argument for the law is that the U.S. would not have allowed the Soviet Union to own NBC, Life magazine or a company that collected Americans’ personal information. “Limits on foreign ownership have been a part of federal communications policy for more than a century,” the legal scholar Zephyr Teachout wrote in The Atlantic.

Supporters say that this history helps explain why Congress passed the law overwhelmingly, with bipartisan support, and why both liberal and conservative appeals court judges voted to uphold the law last month.

What’s next

From left, the Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. All three are dressed in black judicial robes.
Supreme Court justices. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Today’s oral arguments will offer a clearer sense of how the justices might rule. My colleague Adam Liptak, who’s a lawyer by training and covers the Supreme Court, says that recent history suggests TikTok may have the harder case to make. “The court will be reluctant to second-guess congressional judgments about national security even in the context of the First Amendment challenge,” Adam said.

He pointed to a 2010 case that involved another clash between national security and free speech. In that ruling, the court upheld a provision in the 2001 Patriot Act that banned even nonviolent assistance to terrorist groups.

Three of today’s justices (John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas) were in the majority, and only one (Sonia Sotomayor) dissented. A fourth member of the current court (Elena Kagan) was the solicitor general in 2010 and defended the law during oral arguments.

But Adam added that the court could also draw on older precedents, from the Cold War and Vietnam eras, in which the court rejected the government’s arguments that supposed threats to national security justified limits on speech.

Related: Other countries are also cracking down on TikTok.

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

Los Angeles Fires

Firefighters and a helicopter around an enormous blaze on a hillside.
The Kenneth Fire, in the West Hills section of Los Angeles. Ethan Swope/Associated Press
  • A new fire started in the West Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Over a just a few hours last night, it exploded to cover 1,000 acres.
  • The two largest fires, Palisades and Eaton, continue to spread. They are among the top five most destructive in California’s history. The fires have killed 10 people and destroyed about 10,000 structures.
  • Easing winds allowed helicopters and planes to douse fires from the skies, and firefighters were able to extinguish or contain several smaller blazes. (Read what it means for a fire to be “contained.”)
  • But heavy winds could return over the weekend and next week. See the forecast.
The sun setting over the charred remains of homes on a hillside.
In Pacific Palisades. Kyle Grillot for The New York Times

Jimmy Carter’s Funeral

A view of Washington National Cathedral, showing Biden at the stone lectern under a vaulted ceiling, next to Carter’s coffin.
President Biden eulogizing Jimmy Carter. Erin Schaff/The New York Times
  • President Biden delivered a eulogy at the state funeral for Jimmy Carter. “Throughout his life, he showed us what it means to be a practitioner of good works, a good and faithful servant of God and of the people,” Biden said.
  • Biden was joined at the funeral by the nation’s other four living presidents. The gathering presented a rare image of presidential unity.
  • There were also eulogies by Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice president, and Gerald Ford, whom he defeated in 1976. Both men died years ago; their sons read the remarks.
  • After the funeral, Carter’s coffin was flown to Plains, Ga., for a private service at his local church. He was buried next to his wife, Rosalynn, outside the ranch home they built in 1961.
  • Carter’s grandson told a funny story about his grandfather, once a Navy nuclear engineer, struggling to use a cellphone. Carter accidentally called him while trying to take a photo. Watch the video here from MSNBC.

Migration

A crowd gathering in a dusty area with concertina wire in the foreground. The night scene is illuminated by floodlights.
A makeshift migrant camp in El Paso, Texas. Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times

Politics

Other Big Stories

  • 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history. It was also the year that the planet crossed a temperature threshold scientists had warned about.
  • France indicted the founder of the website used by some of the men who raped Gisèle Pelicot.
  • A federal analysis links high fluoride exposure to lower I.Q. in children. It drew on countries that put much more fluoride in drinking water than the U.S. does.
  • A man convicted of firing a gun inside a Washington pizza restaurant in 2016, inspired by the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, was fatally shot by the police in North Carolina.

Opinions

Immigration policy needs three shifts: deterrence of illegal migration, an expansion of legal migration and a path to citizenship for those who already live here, the Editorial Board writes.

Big cities can be great places to live. New York should prove its greatness by reducing crime on the subway, Mara Gay writes.

Here are columns by David Brooks on character building and Michelle Goldberg on Representative Ro Khanna.

 
 

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MORNING READS

A black-and-white portrait of Shujun Wang. Only his face and neck are in the frame.
Shujun Wang Adam Pape for The New York Times

Espionage: A Chinese American scholar pretended to be a democracy activist and an ally to dissidents in New York. He turned out to be a spy.

Shop smarter: Can you spot ultraprocessed food? Take our grocery quiz.

Lives Lived: Anita Bryant was a singer and former beauty queen who had a robust career in the 1960s and ’70s. But her opposition to gay rights — she called homosexuality “an abomination” — virtually destroyed her career. She died at 84.

 

SPORTS

College football: Notre Dame beat Penn State in a 27-24 thriller to earn a slot in the national title game.

M.L.S.: The league apologized for publishing an article that identified the wrong player as having transferred to one of its clubs, Atlanta United.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

Under a sign that reads “Christie’s” and a screen showing Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” is a row of telephone bidders in an auction salesroom.
The auction of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” in 2017. Christie's Images Ltd. 2024

Auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christies have been struggling in a market downturn. So they have expanded beyond art and are selling niche experiences and luxury goods, including real estate, classic cars, dinosaur fossils, designer handbags, jewelry, fine wines and game-worn N.B.A. jerseys. Read about the shift here.

More on culture

A woman painting a landscape on to a white T-shirt.
Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Roast shrimp and sweet potatoes coated in coconut milk.

Care for your heart. Here are tips from doctors.

Take our news quiz.

 

GAMES

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

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

P.S. Thanks to a software glitch, you probably received yesterday’s edition of The Morning twice. Sorry about that.

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

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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

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Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
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The Morning

January 11, 2025

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Good morning. Reading alone is a deeply enjoyable activity. But being read to has its own irreplaceable allure.

 
 
 
An illustration shows a gray-haired couple reading a book together. A man in a purple sweater has his arm around a woman in a green sweater, and a dog sits by their side.
María Jesús Contreras

Language arts

The Harvard Sentences are hundreds of sentences that have been used for many decades to test technologies in which understanding speech is essential, like telephone systems and hearing aids. I came across the list recently and was charmed by it.

Some sample sentences: It’s easy to tell the depth of a well. The hogs were fed chopped corn and garbage. Help the woman get back to her feet. The harder he tried the less he got done. It caught its hind paw in a rusty trap. Write a fond note to the friend you cherish. Most of the news is easy for us to hear.

These sentences weren’t chosen for their meaning but for their “phonetic balance,” the way their frequency of sounds are similar to spoken language. They’re tools, not advice or koans. But reading them I felt moved as when reading a poem. I found a site where you can listen to people read the sentences in different accents and tried to see if it was possible to hear a series of lines aloud without them gathering meaning. These narrators were particularly skilled at reading without affect, but it’s impossible to listen to even the least emotive person recite: “The stray cat gave birth to kittens. The young girl gave no clear response. The meal was cooked before the bell rang. What joy there is in living,” and not detect some poetry.

Is there a person on earth who doesn’t love to be read to? Children get storytime, nightly if they’re lucky, but once we know how to read we typically do it by ourselves. Last year I wrote about audiobooks as bedtime stories for adults, how they can tap into that desire that’s maybe dormant in all of us, the desire to have our sleep treated as a project worthy of coaxing and custodianship. Every few months I let Joseph Brodsky reading his poem “A Song” lull me to sleep. Recently a friend and I read each other portions of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Reading to someone is different from simply speaking to them. The words aren’t yours, so you don’t own the thoughts or meaning, only the communication. You’re free to interpret, to perform. It’s a process of co-discovery, intimate but, unlike conversation, the content comes from a third party. It’s about connecting and it’s also about consuming art together, whether that art is a poem or “The Polar Express” or a novel from which you and your sweetheart read alternating chapters to each other while cooking dinner.

There are so many ways to be read to now, if that’s your thing. Audiobooks, articles narrated by people and by artificial intelligence, recordings of author appearances at bookstores, and yes, WAV files of curiously blasé people muttering Harvard Sentences into the void. There is little I like more than reading by myself, or listening to a book alone on a long car drive. But you might still make the effort to read and be read to by the people in your life. It’s cozy. It’s strange and exciting if you’ve grown accustomed to reading as a solo activity. You’re living in your head all the time with your own voice as the narrator. It’s so lovely to listen to someone else tell the stories for a change.

For more

 
 
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THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film

Pamela Anderson, in a skimpy, feathery showgirl costume, adjusting her headpiece in a vanity mirror.
Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl.” Zoey Grossman/Roadside Attractions
  • In “The Last Showgirl,” Pamela Anderson stars as a dancer at a Las Vegas revue. The director Gia Coppola tells the story with “an obvious appreciation for the affirming highs and bitter lows that age and beauty afford,” Manohla Dargis writes.
  • At the movies, the character of the “older woman” — middle-aged and in a relationship with a younger man — has finally become the protagonist.
  • Oscar nominations will be revealed next week. The Times’s awards columnist shared the nods he’d like to see, including “Challengers” for best original score.
  • Perry, the miniature donkey who was used as a model for “Shrek” animators, died at 30.

Television

Music

A guitarist in the foreground plays an electric guitar while in the back, a man with gray hair looks down studiously at a sound board.
Bob Czaykowski, known as Nitebob, working a soundboard. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
  • Many of the music industry’s most respected — and consistently employed — rock ’n’ roll roadies are septuagenarians.
  • Sam Moore, the tenor half of the scorching soul duo Sam & Dave — known for indelible hits like “Soul Man” — died at 89.
  • The folk singer Peter Yarrow died this week at 86. With his trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, he eased folk music into the Top 10.

More Culture

 

THE LATEST NEWS

California Fires

Charred remains of houses line a street.
The remains of a neighborhood in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

Politics

Other Big Stories

 
 

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CULTURE CALENDAR

🎥 “Better Man” (out now): In Britain, Robbie Williams is something of a national treasure. The lyrics to his songs “Angels” and “Rock DJ” are etched in just about everyone’s brains, and his boy band, Take That, was so popular that when it broke up in the 1990s, a charity set up a help line to counsel distraught fans. Yet the press tour for this movie has revealed to me that many Americans do not know who he is. Get to know Williams’s story in “Better Man,” a biopic from the director of “The Greatest Showman,” in which Williams is rendered as a computer-generated primate. (Wild.)

 
 
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RECIPE OF THE WEEK

A chocolate babka sitting next to a knife on a cooling rack.
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Chocolate Babka

Some weekends are made for long, meditative cooking projects. If that’s what you’re seeking, look no further than my recipe for chocolate babka. Yes, it will take you all weekend, but that’s exactly the point. After all the kneading and rising, the rolling and filling, you’ll end up with two gorgeous, streusel-topped loaves — one for you, one to give away to anyone who needs some sweet cheer. Babka freezes well, too, meaning you could save some for future gratification of the fudgiest kind.

 

REAL ESTATE

A room with two large windows and a colorful fresco painted on the ceiling.
A combined living room, dining room and kitchen. Anna Positano, Gaia Cambiaggi | Studio Campo

Renovation: The second floor of a 12th-century palazzo in Genoa, Italy, had been sitting empty for decades. Two architects restored its glory.

The Hunt: A London couple searched for a traditional Marrakesh riad for about $500,000. Which one did they choose? Play our game.

What you get for $2.3 million: A Pueblo-style house in Miami, an 1890 townhouse in Hudson N.Y., or a midcentury-modern-style home in North Bethesda, Md.

 

LIVING

An animation of a hand painting with a brush on fabric. The brush adds green to the leaves in a print of vegetables.
Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

Not-so-fast fashion: Inside the slow growth of hand-painted clothes.

Burlap & Barrel: The spice company sources directly from farms across the world and has become a secret ingredient used by celebrity chefs.

Sick or injured abroad? Read what to know.

Health: Take better care of your heart this year.

 

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Replace your shower head

Replacing a dribbly old shower head with a new, high-performing model is one of the simplest and most satisfying upgrades you can make to your home. Any good one is likely to be an upgrade over the one you inherited when you moved into your place — especially if it’s more than a decade old. And it doesn’t need to cost a lot. In Wirecutter’s quest to find the best shower head, our testing left us a little surprised. An inexpensive model grabbed our attention from the moment we tried it, and became our top pick for its easy installation, sleek design and fantastic flow. — Tim Heffernan

 

GAME OF THE WEEK

Jarrett Allen and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in midair, both reaching for a rebound.
Jarrett Allen of the Cavaliers, left, and Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder, N.B.A.: Cleveland has the league’s best offense. Oklahoma City has the best defense. Both have historically great records. What happens when they collide? This week, the Cavs outran the Thunder, 129-122, in a game that was hailed as the best of the N.B.A. season. (The Athletic’s Zach Harper called it “some of the best basketball you’ve seen in a decade.”) Lucky for fans, the rematch is just a few days away — this time in Oklahoma City. Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Eastern on TNT

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

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.

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The Morning Newsletter Logo

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

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The Morning

January 12, 2025

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Good morning. Today, my colleague Madison Malone Kircher writes about celebrity entrepreneurs. We’re also covering the California fires, Sudan and chronic pain. —David Leonhardt

 
 
 
Selena Gomez dressed in pink at a press event for her beauty brand, holds up product to the camera.
Selena Gomez Cindy Ord/Getty Images

Celebrity, Inc.

Author Headshot

By Madison Malone Kircher

I cover internet culture.

 

“Please just keep in mind,” Nikki Glaser exhorted Hollywood’s A-list while hosting the Golden Globes last week: “The point of making art is not to win an award. The point of making art is to start a tequila brand so popular that you never have to make art again.” The stars arrayed before her chuckled.

They were laughing at themselves.

Among them was Selena Gomez. The actress, doubly nominated that evening for her roles in “Only Murders in the Building” and “Emilia Peréz,” has become a beauty tycoon with her popular makeup company, Rare Beauty. Ariana Grande, seated nearby, owns a cosmetics brand, too.

Need a drink? Ryan Reynolds sells gin, and Brad Pitt has rosé. George Clooney, Kendall Jenner and Dwayne the Rock Johnson all founded tequila brands. Got kids? Jessica Alba’s Honest Company proffers diapers and baby stuff. Looking for workout gear? There’s Kate Hudson’s Fabletics. Menopause products? Try Naomi Watts’s offering, Stripes.

These days it feels as if Hollywood’s entrepreneurs are dabbling in every part of the retail market. It’s not enough anymore for a celebrity to simply be a spokesperson for the brand. Now they’ve got to own it, too. This model offers more control — and potentially bigger profits. (Though that means bigger risks as well, naturally.)

Extra cash

Why is this happening? One reason is that a side hustle offers insurance against the fickle entertainment industry. It’s harder to score a big payday when streaming services pay a fixed price for a movie or a show, regardless of how many people watch it.

And roles might dry up, but a successful brand can outlast someone’s good looks or the buzz they earned from their last prize nomination. It can offer “a very steady amount of money that can go on for years, after your acting career is over or diminished,” Bruno Maglione, the president for licensing at the talent agency IMG, previously told The Times. In some cases, actors can make much more from their stuff than they do from their film credits. Gomez is reportedly a billionaire these days.

Celebrities aren’t going it alone, however. They work with experienced entrepreneurs. Gomez started her company with three alums from NYX Cosmetics, including her chief executive. Alba brought on the chief executive of a nonprofit focused on childhood health. She later recruited Brian Lee, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Kim Kardashian’s company ShoeDazzle.

Still, there are no guarantees. In 2024, the actor Blake Lively started a hair-care line, Blake Brown. The brand tanked alongside a reported smear campaign against Lively during the promotion of her film “It Ends With Us.” Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s Hello Bello — another diaper company — filed for bankruptcy in 2023. (They later sold it to a private equity fund.)

It’s not enough for celebrities simply to put their face on a product. It’s about telling a story and convincing those of us who might buy their booze or bralette or blush that they actually embody the product. That they use it or, at the very least, like it. Jenner has been known to pop up at college bars pouring shots of her wares. Gomez stepped onto the red carpet at the Golden Globes wearing plenty of her own makeup products, which the brand later highlighted on social media.

Not every celebrity has gone this route. Some still tread more traditional paths, lending their likeness for ad campaigns. Timothée Chalamet, who is drawing Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” hasn’t founded any companies, though he’s an “ambassador” for high-end brands like Chanel.

Bob Dylan, on the other hand, would like to sell you a bottle of his whiskey. Yes, the real Bob Dylan.

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

California Fires

Two firefighters climb an incline.
Fighting the Palisades fire. Loren Elliott for The New York Times
  • Firefighters in Los Angeles are working to contain huge blazes as the death toll from wildfires rose to at least 16. A return of heavier desert winds could spread flames further.
  • The Palisades fire, the biggest one, expanded even as firefighters made progress containing it in some areas.
  • Canada and Mexico sent firefighters to help.
  • Donald Trump criticized the officials handling the blazes. “The fires are still raging in L.A.,” he wrote on Truth Social. “The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out.”
  • The wildfires have destroyed mobile homes, leaving some residents’ dreams of building a middle-class life in ruins.
  • “It looks like we’re in a war zone”: Residents of Pacific Palisades have begun sifting through the remains of their homes.
  • Private firefighters are battling blazes for insurance companies and wealthy property owners, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Politics

  • Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two failed federal prosecutions against Trump, has resigned.
  • Elon Musk is helping to recruit billionaires and tech executives to unofficial government positions. Read about Musk’s plans for the Department of Government Efficiency.
  • Sid Edwards was a high school football coach who had never run for office. Now, he’s the mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s second-largest city.
  • President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom With Distinction to Pope Francis. Biden has turned to the pontiff for personal guidance.

International

A woman in a bright pink hijab wipes her eye.
In Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique. Joao Silva/The New York Times

Other Big Stories

 

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Should we take Trump’s talk of territorial expansion seriously?

Yes. Trump’s threats interfere with the affairs of American allies at a time when our adversaries mean to do us harm. “Now is not the time to tie down the American military in pointless imperialism,” The Kansas City Star’s David Mastio writes.

Who knows? Trump’s strategy of inciting fear makes it impossible to know his real intentions. “This causes many problems, among them forcing people and governments to insulate themselves against the chaos, to the detriment of the chaos-creator,” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s David Mills writes.

 

FROM OPINION

Vivek Ramaswamy wants the United States to reward the genius of skilled immigrants. But the American dream is about working hard, even if it’s not high-achieving, Ross Douthat writes.

Democracy worldwide is being challenged, but it’s not facing extinction, Serge Schmemann writes.

Studies suggest that some patients with severe brain injuries remain conscious even if they’re not responsive. Science needs to work to restore their ability to communicate, Daniela Lamas writes.

Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on contraceptive shots and Maureen Dowd on Jimmy Carter’s funeral.

 
 

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MORNING READS

An image with a distorted torso.
Marcus Schaefer for The New York Times

Medical mystery: A writer suddenly began experiencing chronic pain. It made her realize how many others were, too.

Spooky holidays: Does a giant skeleton in a tutu qualify as a Christmas decoration? A court in Tennessee will decide.

Crossing the Atlantic: Why do so many stage shows that were hits in London bomb on Broadway?

Most clicked: The maps of the Los Angeles fires were the most popular story in The Morning this week. See them here.

Vows: They met more than 20 years ago as child actors in “School of Rock.” Now they’re married.

Lives Lived: Charles Person was the youngest of the 13 original Freedom Riders who traveled to Birmingham, Ala., from Washington in 1961 in an effort to integrate interstate bus terminals across the South. He died at 82.

 

BOOK OF THE WEEK

The red cover portrays a vast cloud of smoke. The text is white.

“Fire Weather,” by John Vaillant: In this hair-raisingly prescient book — it could be shelved under “horror nonfiction” — Vaillant makes the case that the raging wildfire that consumed Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, in May 2016 was a harbinger of catastrophes to come. He shows how the blaze flickered to life, then grew, fed by dry trees and hurricane-force winds, until it devoured more than 2,500 homes and other structures and 2,300 square miles of forest, not to be fully extinguished until August of the following year. “Vaillant anthropomorphizes the fire,” our reviewer wrote of “Fire Season,” which was selected as one of The Times’s 10 Best Books of 2023. “Not only does it grow and breathe and search for food; it strategizes. It hunts.”

More on books

 

THE INTERVIEW

A gif of Ben Stiller with his head on the table, walking his fingers across.
Ben Stiller Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

This week’s subject for The Interview is Ben Stiller. The new season of “Severance” (Apple TV+), which he directs and executive produces, returns on Jan. 17. Stiller talked about the show, how comedy has changed and being Jewish in Hollywood.

A project you had wanted to make for a long time was an adaptation of “What Makes Sammy Run?” the Budd Schulberg novel. It’s a story about a Jewish character named Sammy Glick who’s a conniving, amoral striver in Hollywood and his thirst to succeed. What was it about that book that resonated with you?

I think Budd Schulberg saw it as a metaphor for anybody who wants to get to the top — that mind-set of, do whatever it takes. That’s why I think the novel resonates. There’s always been a resistance to it, and I can understand why. For a long time I was frustrated because I felt like this story should be made, but the flip side of it is it can be looked at as you’re shining a spotlight on a Jewish character who is the self-hating Jew who is willing to do whatever.

That was the resistance to making it?

Partly, I think so. It’s funny, I think about it now and I would love to see that story made. What I worry about is how people would interpret it on the outside — and that’s as a Jewish person.

Are ways in which, after Oct. 7, being Jewish in Hollywood has been trickier to navigate? Have things felt different?

I think just being a Jewish person feels different. I grew up in an incredibly sheltered Upper West Side environment. I never experienced antisemitism. So to start feeling that now, where other people have felt it their whole lives, and to see the rise in antisemitic violence, is something that I never thought I’d experience in my lifetime. The reality of it is frightening.

Read more of the interview here.

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

A gray poodle sits in front of several microphones, as if at a news conference. Text reads: "Sit! Stay! Speak?"
Photo illustration by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari

Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine.

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Shop for groceries like a nutrition scientist.

Stream these children’s movies.

Try a countertop dishwasher.

Check your pulse.

 

MEAL PLAN

A large white Dutch oven is filled with quinoa, white beans, kale and lemon wedges.
Linda Xiao for The New York Times

In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Ali Slagle highlights recipes with three mighty ingredients: greens, beans and grains. Her recipe suggestions include a one-pot grains dish and a brussels sprouts salad with pomegranate and pistachios.

 

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

Can you put eight historical events — including Woodstock, the invention of the typewriter, and the founding of Los Angeles — 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.

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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

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Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
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The Morning

January 13, 2025

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Good morning. Today, my colleague Francesca Paris writes about falling childhood vaccinations. We’re also covering California, Syria and TV show openings. —David Leonhardt

 
 
 
A child receiving an injection.
Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Unvaxxed

Author Headshot

By Francesca Paris

I’m a data reporter.

 

After years of holding steady, American vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases fell during the coronavirus pandemic and continued to drop for much of the past four years.

A chart shows the share of kindergartners in the United States who are vaccinated against measles, polio and whooping cough. In the 2023-24 school year, less than 93 percent of kindergartners were vaccinated, compared with about 95 percent in the 2019-2020 school year.
Source: C.D.C. | By The New York Times

Nationwide, less than 93 percent of kindergartners completed the measles vaccine last year, down from 95 percent, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Immunization rates against polio, whooping cough and chickenpox fell similarly.

And there have been far more precipitous drops in some states, counties and school districts.

A chart shows the change in kindergarten measles vaccination rates — the average rates in the U.S. and the rates for each state — from prepandemic averages to the 2023-24 school year.
Source: C.D.C. | Prepandemic figures are averages of the school years between 2017 and 2020, for states with available data in those years. | By The New York Times

States, not the federal government, set vaccine mandates. But the incoming Trump administration could encourage anti-vaccine sentiment and undermine state programs. The president-elect’s pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spread the false theory that vaccines cause autism, among other misinformation.

Already, falling vaccination rates have followed a partisan pattern.

There are two ways vaccination rates can drop: More families can get an exemption, which gives them legal permission to skip vaccines; or more families can fail to vaccinate their children without permission.

In states that supported Donald Trump for president, the number of children receiving exemptions rose. The story with noncompliance is more complex. It rose in both blue and red states, although more in red states. (An unknown amount of noncompliance reflects families that did vaccinate their children but didn’t file the paperwork verifying they’d done so.)

Two charts show the share of kindergartners with a vaccine exemption and kindergartners with no recorded vaccination and no exemption.
Source: C.D.C. | Charts exclude Montana. Some states are missing data for certain years. | By The New York Times

Surveys reveal a new and deep partisan division on this issue. In 2019, 67 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters told Gallup that childhood immunizations were “extremely important,” compared with 52 percent of their Republican counterparts. Five years later, the enthusiasm among the Democratic grouping had fallen only slightly, to 63 percent. For Republicans and G.O.P. leaners, it had plunged to 26 percent.

Lawmakers in red states have tried to roll back school vaccine mandates, but most changes have been minor: Louisiana required schools to pair any mandate notifications with information about exemption laws; Idaho allowed 18-year-old students to exempt themselves; and Montana stopped collecting data from schools on immunizations.

The decline in vaccination seems likely to have consequences. “Herd immunity,” in which unvaccinated children can’t easily spread measles because others are protected, requires about 92 percent inoculation. The further rates fall, the more likely an outbreak becomes. For children, measles and other once-common childhood diseases can lead to hospitalization and occasionally death.

“It’s trouble waiting to happen,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt.

There are thousands more schools with vaccination rates below 90 percent than there were just five years ago, according to a New York Times analysis of data from 22 states. Schools with falling rates can be found in red and blue states, in large urban districts and in small rural ones.

You can see the change in states in the article we published today.

For more

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

California Fires

A firefighter spraying water on a hillside.
In Los Angeles. Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Trump Transition

Pete Hegseth, wearing a gray suit and blue striped tie.
Pete Hegseth Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

International

Other Big Stories

Opinions

It’s Paul Offit’s job to be a vaccine skeptic — to ask pharmaceutical companies to prove that their products are safe. He argues that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. goes beyond skepticism and refuses to accept science.

Rachel Feintzeig offers a guide for surviving January, which she believes is the worst month of the year.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss the California wildfires and Trump’s sentencing.

Here are columns by David French on Texas’s pornography ban and Pamela Paul on historians’ views on Israel.

 
 

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MORNING READS

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The Cantal area of France. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

Restorations: Churches in France are struggling to pay for repairs.

Raw truths: People are posting online about the benefits of drinking raw milk. Read what we know about the science.

Work: Is H.R. really your friend? Don’t count on it.

Metropolitan Diary: The octopus can’t come in.

Lives Lived: Richard Hays was a methodist minister and leading New Testament theologian who sent a thunderclap into the evangelical world by asserting that a deeper reading of the Bible revealed that same-sex relationships are not sinful. He died at 76.

 

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Washington Commanders won their first playoff game since the 2005 season with a 23-20 road victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. See the game-winning field goal.

New England Patriots: The team hired Mike Vrabel, who won three Super Bowls with the franchise as a player, to be its next head coach.

Women’s college basketball: Pittsburgh overcame a 32-point deficit to beat S.M.U., 72-59, the largest comeback (in regulation) in the sport’s history.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

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The opening titles for “The Last of Us.” 

Opening titles on TV have become intense. The intro for “The Last of Us” shows fungi responsible for turning humankind into zombies. The one for “Game of Thrones” presents a map that also looks like a medieval machine.

In recent years, our critic James Poniewozik writes, TV openings meant to be distinctive have become awfully familiar.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A plate of butter soy chicken and asparagus stir fry.
Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Velvet chicken to make it silky and tender, then stir-fry in a butter-soy sauce.

Clean your plants.

Go hiking with a hydration pack.

Take our news quiz.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were participant and patrician.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

 
 

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The Morning

January 14, 2025

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Good morning. Today, my colleague Raymond Zhong explains why the Los Angeles fires have been so hard to contain. We’re also covering a special counsel report, a potential cease-fire deal and 35 simple health tips. —David Leonhardt

 
 
 
Destruction left from the Palisades fire, which is 14 percent contained.
In Pacific Palisades. Loren Elliott for The New York Times

The airborne flames

Author Headshot

By Raymond Zhong

I’m a climate reporter.

 

More howling, whipping, fire-stoking winds have arrived in Los Angeles. They are expected to strengthen by dawn and may blow up to 70 miles per hour. Some gusts could rekindle parts of the major blazes tearing through the city’s hills and suburbs. Others could start new fires.

It may seem hard to understand why the combined resources of the federal government, California and Los Angeles haven’t been able to defeat the wildfires after a week of fighting them.

The winds are a major reason. The gusts hurl embers across great distances, spreading fire quickly and thwarting efforts to pinch it off. Planes and helicopters that spray water and flame retardant can’t fly. Firefighters on the ground can’t battle the flames on streets and hillsides without fear they’ll be incinerated.

At their peak, the winds have forced firefighters to focus on something else: evacuating residents. “You’re just trying to keep people alive,” Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire expert in Northern California, said.

How to stop a fire

When forests and grasslands ignite, crews follow a strategy called anchor and flank.

They find a safe spot, or anchor point, upwind of the blaze. Then they attack from the edges: They douse the flames with hoses and remove anything flammable from the fire’s path. They use power tools to thin the vegetation or — for the bigger stuff — reduce it to ash with small controlled burns. That’s called a fire line. The advancing blaze stops when it reaches the fire line and finds nothing else to consume.

A map shows the extent of recent fires in California, with the burned areas from each highlighted in red.
Source: Cal Fire | Data is as of 2:00 a.m. Pacific time on Jan. 14. | By The New York Times
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Sources: Cal Fire; New York Times analysis | Data is as of 2:00 a.m. Pacific time on Jan. 14. | By The New York Times

But it’s incredibly hard to anchor and flank in strong winds. Even a spot that seems safe won’t remain safe for long. Flying embers can soar miles away from the fire’s front, meaning the danger spreads too quickly for firefighters keep up.

“Fires under these conditions — they’re not moving on the ground” as a normal fire would, said Hugh Safford, a fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis. “They’re moving in the air.” That’s why some wildfires in Southern California can’t be stopped until the desert winds, known as the Santa Anas, recede.

Urban warfare

The Los Angeles inferno adds another difficulty: an urban tinderbox. When embers float from home to home on a crowded street, there’s no way to create fire lines to interrupt the flames. “All of the things that we have in our houses — drapes, couches, carpet — all of a sudden that stuff can ignite really rapidly,” Rick Connell, an officer with the U.S. Forest Service, said.

Two aerial photos show streets in Hastings Ranch, a neighborhood near the San Gabriel Mountains, before and after the Eaton fire.
Hastings Ranch in Pasadena, Calif. Source: Nearmap | By The New York Times

And winds don’t just ground firefighting aircraft. They also make the water and fire retardants they spray less effective. Gusts turn the liquid into mist by the time it hits the ground, where it does little to smother the blaze. Even in the best circumstances, retardants can do only so much. “If you’ve already got 100-foot flames, you’re just wasting money,” Connell said.

Over the last week, Los Angeles deployed more firefighters and received additional air support, including from the military. “We’re absolutely better prepared,” the county’s fire chief told reporters on Monday.

But the experts I interviewed said it would be unrealistic to expect fires of this size to be contained in just a week. For now, the best hope may be to wait until the current winds slow down.

More on the fires

Two elderly people getting into a recreational vehicle.
In Pasadena, Calif. Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times
 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

Special Counsel Report

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Donald Trump  Doug Mills/The New York Times
  • Jack Smith, who indicted Donald Trump on charges of illegally trying to cling to power after the 2020 election, said in a report that there would have been sufficient evidence to convict Trump in a trial. Trump’s 2024 win made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.
  • The report contained an extensive justification for pursuing the prosecution, given what Smith called Trump’s “unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election.”
  • Read the report here.

Hunter Biden

  • Another special counsel, David Weiss, released the report on his investigation of Hunter Biden.
  • In it, Weiss denounced President Biden for criticizing the inquiry and said that Biden threatened “the integrity of the justice system as a whole.”

Confirmation Hearings

More on Politics

International

  • Israel and Hamas are said to be close to an agreement for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages, according to officials.
  • Last summer, American intelligence officials learned of a Russian plot to detonate airline cargo in the U.S. So the White House sent a warning to the one man who could stop it: Vladimir Putin.
  • Lebanon’s Parliament named Nawaf Salam, the head of the International Court of Justice, as prime minister. His selection is seen as a blow to Hezbollah.

Business

Other Big Stories

Opinions

Members of the House of Representatives, many raising their right hand, are standing in the House chamber.
In the House chamber. Mark Peterson for The New York Times

To escape our two-party trap, we need a better system of electing people to Congress: proportional representation, Jesse Wegman and Lee Drutman argue.

The Los Angeles wildfires burned down diverse, middle-class neighborhoods. Most people won’t be able to afford to rebuild, Héctor Tobar writes.

Victims of the fires should channel their anger into support for the environment, Patti Davis writes.

Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on Democrats’ immigration cowardice and Thomas Edsall on Trump and revenge.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Illustrations of people doing various wellness activities.
Illustration by Lorena Spurio

35 simple tips: Health experts swear by these small things to improve your life.

Hot fitness: Is a heated workout really better for you?

No good spots: Some cities have cut parking requirements for real estate projects. Residents aren’t happy.

Ask Well: “Do I need to worry about microplastics in tea bags?

Lives Lived: Oliviero Toscani was a photographer, art director and creative mastermind of Benetton’s advertising campaigns who used images of an AIDS patient and death row inmates to break the boundaries of fashion imagery. He died at 82.

 

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Rams, displaced by the Los Angeles wildfires, upset the 14-win Vikings in the final wild-card playoff game, 27-9.

M.L.B.: The Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki narrowed his possible free-agent destinations to three: the Dodgers, Padres and Blue Jays.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

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In New York.  Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times

In New York City’s 24-hour diners, patrons of all backgrounds bump elbows over patty melts and pancakes. But the diners are endangered by rising costs and food delivery. Priya Krishna spent a Friday night at a diner in Brooklyn to appreciate the magic of a restaurant that never closes.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Add white chocolate and almond flour to this one-bowl olive oil and lemon cake.

Try these egg substitutes.

Keep your hands hydrated.

Work with a portable second screen.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were bootjack and jackboot.

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.

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Editor: David Leonhardt

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News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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The Morning

January 15, 2025

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Good morning. We’re covering Biden’s legacy — as well as South Korea, Pete Hegseth and plays in Ukraine.

 
 
 
President Biden sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. The scene is reflected in the bottom half of the image.
In the Oval Office.  Eric Lee/The New York Times

Still a turning point?

One-term presidents don’t usually leave big legacies on domestic policy. If anything, political parties move away from the ideas of presidents who fail to win a second term. It was true of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.

It will be true of President Biden in some ways, too. Democrats have already abandoned Biden’s initial immigration policy, which contributed to a record surge at the southern border.

But one major part of Biden’s agenda has a decent chance of surviving. It was the idea that animated much of the legislation he signed — namely, that the federal government should take a more active role in both assisting and regulating the private sector than it did for much of the previous half-century.

This idea has yet to acquire a simple name. The historian Gary Gerstle has called it the end of the neoliberal order. Felicia Wong and her colleagues at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank, have used the term “a new economics.” Jake Sullivan, a top Biden adviser, has referred to it as a new consensus. I’ve described it as part of a new centrism.

The philosophy didn’t originate with Biden, but he meaningfully shifted the country toward it, first as a candidate in 2020 and then as president. He moved the Democratic Party away from decades of support for trade liberalization and imposed tariffs on China. He pursued an industrial policy to build up sectors important to national security (like semiconductors) or future prosperity (like clean energy). And his administration was more aggressive about restraining corporate power than any in decades, blocking mergers, cracking down on “junk fees” and regulating drug prices.

When Biden delivers his farewell address from the Oval Office tonight, he will emphasize these issues.

Promises unmet

The rationale for this new approach was simple enough: The previous consensus — the neoliberal order, in Gerstle’s terms — failed to deliver on its promises.

For most of the past 50 years, the federal government moved toward a more laissez-faire approach to the economy. Tariffs and tax rates plunged. Regulators allowed corporations to grow larger. Presidents of both parties supported these changes, to differing degrees, and argued that the inevitable march of globalization demanded them.

These same presidents often promised that the changes would bring more prosperity to American workers and more freedom to the rest of the world. “It didn’t turn out that way,” as Sullivan said in a 2023 speech explaining Biden’s approach. Democracy has retreated, and China and Russia are more authoritarian. In the U.S., incomes for most families have grown frustratingly slowly. Many measures of well-being — including life satisfaction, loneliness, marriage and birthrates — look grim. The United States today has the lowest life expectancy of any high-income country.

A close-up of President Biden. His hands are clasped near his chin.
Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Biden failed to fix these problems, of course, and voters decided last year that they preferred Donald Trump’s approach to them. Trump will surely undo major parts of the Biden agenda, especially on climate change and some aspects of corporate regulation.

In other ways, though, Trump is part of the shift away from neoliberalism. He romped through the 2016 Republican primaries partly because he was more hostile to trade, China and cuts to Medicare and Social Security than other Republican politicians. Some of Trump’s second-term nominees, including for labor secretary and head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, are hardly small-government neoliberals. Neither is Vice President-elect JD Vance.

The policies vs. the man

One explanation is that most Americans have similar views on these issues. Polls show majority support for government action to reduce drug prices, regulate trade and prevent corporations from becoming too powerful.

That’s also why the Biden shift on economic policy remains virtually a consensus within the Democratic Party. Moderate Democrats sometimes sound even more populist than progressives (as I described in a recent Morning). The disagreements between the party’s center and left tend to involve other issues, such as immigration, gender, crime and foreign policy.

Politics is uncertain. There is obviously no guarantee that Biden’s big economic ideas will survive. One question is whether his investments in new technologies succeed in creating thriving companies and good jobs over the next several years. Another question is how much success the more laissez-faire members of Trump’s circle, like Elon Musk, have in shaping policy.

The best way for Biden and Kamala Harris to protect their legacy would have been to win the election. But it’s possible that Biden’s presidency will nonetheless be part of a turning point in American economic policy. Some of his big ideas remain more popular than Biden himself.

For more: In the final days of his presidency, Biden has issued a series of policy decisions on issues including environmental justice, immigration and prison reform.

 
 
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THE LATEST NEWS

California Fires

Firefighters on a burned hillside.
Mexican firefighters.  Max Whittaker for The New York Times
  • Firefighters in Southern California battled and extinguished new wildfires fueled by winds. The largest fires remain far from contained.
  • The winds yesterday were weaker than expected, but more strong winds in the forecast could stoke blazes.
  • A state insurance program designed to cover people without standard home insurance has less than $400 million available to pay claims. Losses are estimated in the billions.
  • “It’s a loss of a culture”: The Eaton fire displaced entire neighborhoods of a historically Black enclave in Altadena.
  • More Americans than ever are living in areas at risk of wildfires.

Confirmation Hearings

Pete Hegseth speaking into a microphone. He’s wearing a blue suit and a red tie with thin blue stripes.
Pete Hegseth Kenny Holston/The New York Times
  • Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, defended himself during a contentious Senate confirmation hearing against allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking. Republicans appeared ready to confirm Hegseth. Read four takeaways.
  • Hegseth told senators that women would have ground combat roles, provided they adhered to “the same high standards” as men. He had said in the past that women did not belong in combat.
  • Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state pick, is expected to appear at a hearing today. He is expected to be confirmed later this month.
  • Pam Bondi, Trump’s choice for attorney general, has a solid reputation as a prosecutor. At today’s hearing, she will be asked about her independence.

More on Politics

South Korea

War in Gaza

A woman sitting with a small boy in rubble.
In Gaza City. Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

More International News

Business

Other Big Stories

Opinions

Pam Bondi’s challenges to the 2020 election result show she will enable Trump’s worst instincts, Elie Honig writes.

Are we sleepwalking into an American autocracy? Kim Lane Scheppele and Norman Eisen look to Hungary and Poland for clues.

Here’s a column by Bret Stephens on Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Rehearsing a scene from a play, three teenagers sit at a small table while a woman playing a mother places plates in front of them.
In Kyiv. Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times

Ukraine: Despite the war, these teenagers found hope in a summer acting course.

Online therapy: Digital mental health platforms were supposed to expand access for the neediest patients. Researchers say that hasn’t happened.

Letter of Recommendation: Fix your glutes. Fix your life.

Training: One writer on the magic of swimming lessons in middle age.

Lives Lived: For nearly five decades, Leslie Charleson played the role of Dr. Monica Quartermaine, a dedicated cardiologist and the matriarch of a wealthy family on the soap opera “General Hospital.” Charleson died at 79.

 

SPORTS

Olympics: The I.O.C. will send replica medals to the swimmer Gary Hall Jr., who lost all 10 of his original medals in the Los Angeles fires.

Australian Open: No. 5 seed Zheng Qinwen lost in a second-round upset to Laura Siegemund.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

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Courtesy of William Morrow

Karen Wynn Fonstad was a novice cartographer who spent more than two years exhaustively mapping J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the setting of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.” The resulting book, published in 1981, impressed Tolkien fans and scholars with its exquisite level of topographic detail. Her work continues to inspire fantasy mapmakers.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A serving of Hamburger Helper in a white bowl.
Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Make homemade Hamburger Helper all in one pot.

Find a new book you can’t put down.

Sleep on the perfect mattress.

Protect your hearing with earplugs.

 

GAMES

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

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.

Editor’s note: In yesterday’s newsletter, there was a broken link on the article about a man charged with stalking Caitlin Clark. You can read the story here.

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The Morning

January 16, 2025

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By German Lopez

 

Good morning. We’re covering a cease-fire in Gaza. We’re also covering Biden’s farewell address, confirmation hearings and an A.I. boyfriend.

 
 
 
Palestinians celebrate the announcement of a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip.
In central Gaza. Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press

A truce

Almost as soon as the war in Gaza began, global leaders began working to stop it. Over 15 months, Israel and Hamas repeatedly rejected proposals for peace. In that time, tens of thousands of Palestinians died. Israeli families grieved for loved ones held as hostages in Gaza. And people around the world protested against the conflict.

Yesterday, Israel and Hamas finally agreed to a truce. As part of a six-week cease-fire, Israel will withdraw from parts of Gaza and free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas will release a third of the hostages it still holds. Officials hope the cease-fire will give way to a permanent peace, but that depends on whether both sides will work out thornier problems later.

Israel’s government still must ratify the agreement, but officials are treating it as complete. “We’re handing off to the next team a real opportunity for a brighter future in the Middle East,” President Biden said, referring to Donald Trump’s incoming administration. “I hope they take it.”

What’s in the deal?

The truce will go into effect on Sunday. Hamas will release 33 hostages in waves over six weeks. They’ll include women, children, men over age 50 and sick or wounded people. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, although about 35 are believed to be dead.

Two women embrace in front of a sign with images of hostages on it.
In Tel Aviv. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

In exchange, Israel will release around 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. It will also have to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. After a week, Israel will withdraw its forces from the most populated areas in the enclave.

A major concern remains: Some of the details are vague. “To persuade both sides to sign on, mediators forged an arrangement that is worded so loosely that some of its components remain unresolved, meaning that it could easily collapse,” my colleague Patrick Kingsley, reporting from Jerusalem, wrote.

Why now?

An enduring cease-fire has remained elusive since fighting started on Oct. 7, 2023. (One truce lasted for a week in 2023.) Three main issues drove both sides to a deal now:

1. Israel’s successes: After nearly a year and a half of war, Israel has weakened its enemies in the region. It killed many of Hamas’s fighters and leaders, including the group’s longtime chief in Gaza. It destroyed much of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also suffered losses, particularly the fall of an allied regime in Syria. With those wins, another attack like the one on Oct. 7 is less likely, achieving one of Israel’s goals in the war.

2. Two presidents’ efforts: Biden and Trump have pressured Israel and Hamas to reach a deal before Biden’s term ends. Biden saw an armistice as an important part of his legacy. Trump wanted to avoid having to deal with such a difficult issue as president. Both presidents’ teams worked together in negotiations, and the final agreement broadly follows a framework Biden proposed in the spring. (My colleague Peter Baker wrote about the joint effort here.)

3. Domestic pressures: Within Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics say he has not done enough to free the hostages. Within Gaza, Palestinians have become frustrated with Hamas and demanded peace as the humanitarian crisis caused by the war has worsened. These pressures pushed Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiations.

What’s next?

Two men embrace under a Palestinian flag.
Celebrations in Ramallah.  Afif Amireh for The New York Times

Israel’s government will most likely ratify the agreement today. After it takes effect on Sunday, both sides will have to live up to their promises. If they don’t, the cease-fire could fall apart and fighting could begin again.

If the truce holds, negotiators plan to work out a more lasting peace deal in the next six weeks. The terms of a potential agreement remain unknown, although Israel’s support might depend on the release of all remaining hostages. Those negotiations will happen under Trump.

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THE LATEST NEWS

Biden’s Farewell

President Biden sits at his desk in the Oval Office.
In the Oval Office. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Confirmation Hearings

A blonde woman in a dark pinstripe suit stands with her hand raised.
Pam Bondi  Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Inauguration

California Fires

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In Altadena.  Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Business

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The Blue Origin New Glenn rocket. Gregg Newton/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
  • Bezos launched a rocket. The flight is seen as a crucial test of the company’s ability to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
  • Consumer prices rose again last month, a sign that the Fed’s fight against inflation might have stalled.
  • America’s big banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs — reported stronger-than-expected annual profit.
  • The federal government sued Southwest Airlines over two routes — between Chicago and Oakland, and between Baltimore and Cleveland — that were chronically delayed in 2022.
  • Musk is said to have intervened to help free an Italian journalist from Iran.

Other Big Stories

  • The F.D.A. banned Red Dye No. 3, which for decades has given candies and drinks a vibrant red hue. It has been linked to cancer in rats.

Opinions

Americans are able to ignore the costs of natural disasters caused by climate change because the government keeps insurance prices artificially low, Parinitha Sastry and Ishita Sen argue.

Here are columns by Zeynep Tufekci on Zuckerberg and Pamela Paul on geriatricians.

 
 

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MORNING READS

Ayrin is wearing a short dress and a high ponytail while looking at her phone and standing among some chairs at a cafe.
Ayrin, who is in love with ChatGPT. Helen Orr for The New York Times

Virtual love: Meet the 28-year-old woman who spends hours talking to her A.I. boyfriend.

Sober: Conscious of the health risks of alcohol, more people are cutting back on drinking.

Ask the therapist: In Well’s new column, a therapist helps a reader who is sick of being her mother’s dumping ground.

Social Q’s: “Our only friends went away for the weekend without us. We’re hurt!

DNA analysis: An ancient cemetery reveals a Celtic tribe that was organized around maternal lineages.

Lives Lived: After coaching the University of Colorado’s football team, Bill McCartney founded the Promise Keepers, a masculine revivalist group that drew millions of supporters. He died at 84.

 

SPORTS

College basketball: Women’s teams will now get paid for playing N.C.A.A. tournament games, just as men’s teams have for years.

College football: Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers declared for the N.F.L. Draft.

Soccer: Actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are part of a group buying a Colombian soccer club, nearly five years after buying the lower-tier English club Wrexham.

 
 
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ARTS AND IDEAS

A looping video of people working out at the beach and working out in a gym on a wrestling floor mat.

Fitness was very different in the early 1970s: There were few gyms, and people who exercised for fun were regarded as kooky. Over the course of a decade, everything changed. Women embraced fitness via Jazzercise, and yoga found its way into homes across Middle America. Read about five workouts that changed the game.

More on culture

 

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

A bowl of chicken and red lentil soup with swirls of yogurt and flecks of herbs.
Armando Rafael for The New York Times

Top this chicken and red lentil soup with lemony yogurt.

Download your TikTok videos in case the app goes away. Here’s a guide.

Keep a multimedia journal.

Sign up for a razor subscription service.

Eat comforting instant noodles.

 

GAMES

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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were deputize and deputized.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

 
 

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The Morning

January 17, 2025

 
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Good morning. Today, my colleague Alexis Soloski writes about the loss of community in the Los Angeles fires. We’re also covering a Gaza cease-fire, RedNote and rocket debris. —David Leonhardt

 
 
 
Burned cars.
The aftermath of the Eaton Fire in Altadena. Kyle Grillot for The New York Times

‘It’s all gone’

Author Headshot

By Alexis Soloski

I grew up in Los Angeles.

 

Even as the Los Angeles wildfires continue to burn, the real, material toll is already apparent. Homes and businesses are gone. So are schools, supermarkets and houses of worship.

These fires have also robbed some Californians of something more intangible: a sense of community. What defines a community? Though often a physical space, it’s also more vibes-based and amorphous — the networks of feeling among its members and their environment, built and natural.

Already, online and in conversation, Angelenos are memorializing what they lost in the blazes that incinerated the Pacific Palisades, on the coast, and Altadena, an East Side enclave with a thriving Black middle class. The fish tacos at the Reel Inn. The pancakes at Fox’s. A synagogue. The Bunny Museum. Hiking trails. A pet supply store that did a brisk trade in backyard chickens. The accounting is early and incomplete. These fires will likely smolder for weeks. New ones kindle every day.

A burned church in front of mountains.
The destroyed Altadena Community Church. Philip Cheung for The New York Times

The eulogies show how loss is both personal and collective. JJ Redick, the Lakers’ coach who had moved to the Palisades recently, captured this in an interview over the weekend. His rented home had burned along with all of his family’s possessions. But he was struggling most, he said, with the loss of the community. “All the churches, the schools, the library, it’s all gone,” he said. He put his head in his hand when he spoke of the recreation center where his children had played sports. “It just hurts to lose that,” he said. What is the Palisades without these spaces?

What comes after

First settled by Indigenous peoples, then a property of Spain, then of Mexico, Los Angeles incorporated in 1850, the same year that California became a state. Rangy urban sprawl and frequent natural disasters make it feel less fixed than most major American cities. It is always growing, changing, renovating, reforming.

I grew up in the Palisades in the 1990s. I left at 17 for college, and nearly every time I came home, something I loved had disappeared — a nearby bookshop, a diner. Each loss was a pinprick. It was also a real-world example of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment: How much of a neighborhood can be replaced before it isn’t your neighborhood anymore, before it isn’t your home? Now the losses are happening all at once, not slowly over time. With them comes another comprehensive loss — a civic identity, uninsurable, nonreimbursable.

Burned houses by the sea.
The Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Loren Elliott for The New York Times

Some have argued that these neighborhoods shouldn’t be rebuilt, or not in the same way. They point to a 1998 essay by the eco-critic Mike Davis, “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.” But Malibu has burned often, and for better or worse it has always come back. Likewise, these neighborhoods will almost certainly return. There will be new schools, new churches, new recreation centers. As an Angeleno, you have to witness only so many natural disasters to recognize the city’s resilience.

The next Palisades won’t be the same. Neither will a future Altadena. (Whether they will still be accessible to middle-class families remains an open and necessary question.) And it’s unlikely that they’ll feel the same. At least not for a very long time. But for now those communities live on in the people comforting one another, helping one another, remembering and recovering.

With luck, adequate government funding and very hard work, these places might build back safer, better able to withstand what a changing climate will bring. For a century, Los Angeles has been a dream factory. Its residents, mindful of what they have lost, grateful for what they have retained, might dream something brighter.

Now is a time to mourn and help and heal. Soon it will be a time to begin again. Los Angeles, after all, loves nothing more than a sequel.

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THE LATEST NEWS

Gaza Cease-fire

Politics

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Doug Burgum Eric Lee/The New York Times

International

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Omdurman, Sudan. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Space

Debris falls through the air.
Marcus Haworth, via Reuters
  • A home security camera filmed a meteorite landing in a front yard. See the video.