Members phkrause Posted October 18 Author Members Posted October 18 October 16, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Let’s look at what happens when school police arrest children. In Corpus Christi, Texas. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times In the system There are a lot of police officers in Texas public schools. In the four years since a gunman killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, districts across the state have spent billions of dollars to put cops on every campus. They’re there both to protect against future attacks and to curb misbehavior and fighting, which swelled after the Covid pandemic. The crackdown has had an unintended consequence, according to an investigation by The Times and The San Antonio Express-News: It has swept tens of thousands of elementary students and middle schoolers into the justice system. In the 2024-25 school year, the most recent one for which data is available, about 4,800 Texans between the ages of 10 and 13 were referred for prosecution. That’s a third more than the number a decade before. What “referred for prosecution” means in plain English: Some kid slaps another kid on the playground, or puffs on a vape in the bathroom, or kicks a principal in frustration or rage, and a uniformed officer with a gun puts the child in handcuffs. Just like that the student’s not just in the school system, but in the criminal justice one, too. That can reshape a life. Some referred children receive a warning. Others end up before a judge, where they’re assigned community service, counseling or court supervision. In more serious cases, they end up in state juvenile justice facilities. In few cases do they return to school unchanged. Research shows that getting handcuffed and dragged out of school can hurt academic performance and can lead to future contact with law enforcement. Referrals are one of the places where the so-called school-to-prison pipeline starts. ‘She just gave up’ The stories our reporters recount are chilling. In 2024, a 12-year-old girl in Galveston got sent to the principal’s office for being “disruptive.” School officials suspended her and told her to go wait in the lobby for her mother to pick her up. Laquital Thompson and her daughter, who was arrested at her middle school in Galveston in 2024. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times She refused to go there. The administrators called for a school police officer, who arrived and told the girl: “You’ve got four seconds to walk over there. Otherwise, I’m going to put you in handcuffs, and we’re going to give you a ride.” The girl didn’t move. “OK, I’m done,” the officer said, and slid off her pink backpack to handcuff her wrists behind her back. His body camera footage shows the sequence: The New York Times “I didn’t really know why it was happening,” the girl told our reporters later. “Why would they put me in handcuffs?” The girl was eventually charged with trespassing. Two former school district police chiefs who reviewed the case at The Times’s request said that the arrest and the referral were unnecessary. But the girl pleaded guilty and was put on probation for a year, her mother told our reporters. And now her daughter has even more trouble in class. “She just gave up,” her mother said. The witness Kristian Hernández is one of the reporters who worked on the investigation. A native Texan, he grew up on the border and attended public schools in El Paso. Kristian was a straight-A student, but one of those straight-A students with long heavy-metal hair and a skateboard, the kind who gets in fights. He had plenty of contact with law enforcement along the way. The arrests he documented in schools didn’t surprise him, he told me yesterday. It was the age of those arrested. “There’s a lot of emphasis and even support for making schools more secure,” he said. “I haven’t talked to a single kid or parent who hasn’t expressed a fear of a school shooting.” That fear is understandable. Just yesterday, three kids and a teacher were killed at a school in Oregon. Still, Kristian continued: “What we learned that was surprising — and scary — is that no one is paying attention to what happens when schools are hardened against that threat.” Among other things, it’s 10-year-olds getting placed in the back of police cars, and 12-year-olds asking for lawyers. Please read the whole story, which is by Kristian, Asher Lehrer-Small, Clare Amari and Rosie Cima. A shooting in Oregon A 16-year-old blasted his way through locked doors into an Oregon elementary school, killing three children and a teacher before an armed bystander pursued him inside and killed him, the police said. The children killed were 5, 8 and 11. COMPUTE THIS The New York Times In 2018, OpenAI released its first GPT model. Trained with a mere 18 million trillion calculations, it was often incoherent. As the company scaled up — 5 sextillion, 2.6 septillion — the models improved. GPT 6 Astra is estimated to have required an octillion, or a thousand trillion trillion, calculations. It would take an iPhone 13 million years to do that math. The scale is hard to comprehend, so we visualized it. Related: Parenting can feel like doing an octillion calculations every week. Some families are turning to A.I. agents for help. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Elon Musk, who has major business interests in Texas, appeared to funnel $158 million to back Ken Paxton’s Senate bid there. Even as Democrats hope to flip congressional seats in red states, bluer states have a few races that are far closer than the party would like. A contract dispute is forcing many migrant children to face immigration judges alone. What happens when a 7-year-old agrees to leave the country without a lawyer present? President Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the midterm elections are raising fears among election officials that he could try to challenge results. Letters “containing suspicious substances” were sent to senators and state election officials in recent days. Investigations are underway. Around the World In Yemen. Social Media/UGC, via Social Media Via Reuters The Houthis, the Iranian-backed militia in Yemen, attacked the government’s headquarters there, officials said. Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s government, accused Iran of trying to escalate the war. Russia and Ukraine have started striking each other’s data centers. The daughter of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, traveled to the Balkan territory of Republika Srpska with an American businessman to explore a gas pipeline deal with the pro-Russian government there. Other Big Stories Trump canceled the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution of the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting. It’s a tough time to buy a house. Mortgage rates have pushed above 7 percent — their highest level in more than three years — and home prices remain elevated. It’s not just rich people getting richer. Harvard’s endowment grew by $11 billion this year to a record $68 billion — a 27 percent return. A teenager was arrested in suburban Chicago after his gun jammed before a planned mass shooting at a Hindu temple, the police said. The police identified a homicide victim found in a barrel in Lake Mead in 2022. They say he’s an Arkansas man killed in the 1980s. IN ONE GRAPHIC Source: Gallup polls of U.S. adults conducted in September 1949 and 2018. The New York Times Polls show that socialism is growing in popularity. Here, we track warming American attitudes toward it (and waning regard for capitalism), even as respondents aren’t quite sure what “socialism” means. OPINIONS Requiring fraternities to admit women can make campuses safer, the president of Wesleyan University argues. To solve today’s affordability crisis, we have to face a tricky, wonky, tenacious problem from yesteryear, Matthew Yglesias writes: the deficit. The Anniversary Sale ends soon: Morning readers, enjoy our best offer. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your interests with expert coverage of news, culture, business and more. Save now: $1/week for your first year. FREE TO READ Crisis in Paris: The city has acknowledged a “collective failure” to prevent sexual offenders from working in schools after a surge in abuse accusations. Rescuing Luna: A small dog who went missing in Yellowstone National Park for nearly five weeks was found safe. See a photo. Kelly Clarkson (Day 7!): The Brooklyn store that angered the singer has raised the price of the toy bird that she said it wouldn’t sell her to $15 million. We went to visit it. Your pick: The most clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about how to prevent stroke and dementia. Hilary Swank: She’s having her third child at 52. TODAY’S NUMBER McFarlane Toys $399 — That is the price of a new deluxe version of a Shohei Ohtani action figure from a company that usually sells superhero toys. It’s 14 inches tall and comes with home and away Dodgers uniforms, two pairs of cleats, more than a dozen interchangeable hands and two heads. One stares icily. The other gives a celebratory shout. Check it out. SPORTS Competitive eating: Tim Janus brought rigor and strategy to his sport, rising to No. 2 in the world. He died at 49. N.F.L.: The Denver Broncos held off a late comeback attempt and defeated the Seattle Seahawks in overtime, 17-14, in Denver, dropping the reigning Super Bowl champions’ record to 3-3 — matching their total of losses from last season. RECIPE OF THE DAY Bobbi Lin for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Here’s a minimalist recipe for butternut squash soup that delivers maximalist flavor, thanks to the balance between the sweetness of the vegetable and the warm sparkle of spices and acid that joins it in the pot. There are some lovely notes and modifications in the comments below the instructions, well worth considering. Butternut squash soup is a canvas. Paint on it! THE EYES HAVE IT Nathan Fielder interviewing Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything.” A24 The documentary “You Can See Everything,” about the disgraced tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes, opens today. Manohla Dargis, reviewing it for The Times, calls the film “off-the-charts bonkers,” and “a wily, disturbing, self-aware exploration of the relationship between documentarians and their subjects.” More on culture Zara Larsson is poised for pop superstardom, and she came onto our “Popcast” culture show to talk about it. Watch, listen or read. Meet Mette Wendelboe Okkels, a Danish knitting luminary who runs the fiber-crafts brand PetiteKnit. The aesthetic of her patterns is pure Scandinavian chic. “I see these pictures and it’s like, ‘I’m going to live like this,’” one fan told The Times. “‘I’m going to make the sweater and I’m going to have breezy hair and endless cups of coffee.’” Hygge! 🇩🇰🧶☕ THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Watch “Prey,” a 2014 British cops-and-bad-guys series set in Manchester that’s kicking around on Amazon Prime. The Times liked it when it first came to America. I like it now. Sleep well on a plane. It’s possible! Subscribe to “The Backstory”: Our journalists often face tough calls about how to tell sensitive stories. In a new newsletter, we explain how we make those decisions, beginning with our coverage of the gang rape allegation at Cornell. Sign up here. Clean your refrigerator this weekend. (This should be a monthly chore — in restaurants it’s more like a daily one.) The kitchen porters at Wirecutter have some very good tips. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were inimically, maniacally and manically. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. If you’re not a subscriber yet, would you consider becoming one today? Subscriptions allow us to keep doing this work that we love. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted October 18 Author Members Posted October 18 October 16, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Let’s look at what happens when school police arrest children. In Corpus Christi, Texas. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times In the system There are a lot of police officers in Texas public schools. In the four years since a gunman killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, districts across the state have spent billions of dollars to put cops on every campus. They’re there both to protect against future attacks and to curb misbehavior and fighting, which swelled after the Covid pandemic. The crackdown has had an unintended consequence, according to an investigation by The Times and The San Antonio Express-News: It has swept tens of thousands of elementary students and middle schoolers into the justice system. In the 2024-25 school year, the most recent one for which data is available, about 4,800 Texans between the ages of 10 and 13 were referred for prosecution. That’s a third more than the number a decade before. What “referred for prosecution” means in plain English: Some kid slaps another kid on the playground, or puffs on a vape in the bathroom, or kicks a principal in frustration or rage, and a uniformed officer with a gun puts the child in handcuffs. Just like that the student’s not just in the school system, but in the criminal justice one, too. That can reshape a life. Some referred children receive a warning. Others end up before a judge, where they’re assigned community service, counseling or court supervision. In more serious cases, they end up in state juvenile justice facilities. In few cases do they return to school unchanged. Research shows that getting handcuffed and dragged out of school can hurt academic performance and can lead to future contact with law enforcement. Referrals are one of the places where the so-called school-to-prison pipeline starts. ‘She just gave up’ The stories our reporters recount are chilling. In 2024, a 12-year-old girl in Galveston got sent to the principal’s office for being “disruptive.” School officials suspended her and told her to go wait in the lobby for her mother to pick her up. Laquital Thompson and her daughter, who was arrested at her middle school in Galveston in 2024. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times She refused to go there. The administrators called for a school police officer, who arrived and told the girl: “You’ve got four seconds to walk over there. Otherwise, I’m going to put you in handcuffs, and we’re going to give you a ride.” The girl didn’t move. “OK, I’m done,” the officer said, and slid off her pink backpack to handcuff her wrists behind her back. His body camera footage shows the sequence: The New York Times “I didn’t really know why it was happening,” the girl told our reporters later. “Why would they put me in handcuffs?” The girl was eventually charged with trespassing. Two former school district police chiefs who reviewed the case at The Times’s request said that the arrest and the referral were unnecessary. But the girl pleaded guilty and was put on probation for a year, her mother told our reporters. And now her daughter has even more trouble in class. “She just gave up,” her mother said. The witness Kristian Hernández is one of the reporters who worked on the investigation. A native Texan, he grew up on the border and attended public schools in El Paso. Kristian was a straight-A student, but one of those straight-A students with long heavy-metal hair and a skateboard, the kind who gets in fights. He had plenty of contact with law enforcement along the way. The arrests he documented in schools didn’t surprise him, he told me yesterday. It was the age of those arrested. “There’s a lot of emphasis and even support for making schools more secure,” he said. “I haven’t talked to a single kid or parent who hasn’t expressed a fear of a school shooting.” That fear is understandable. Just yesterday, three kids and a teacher were killed at a school in Oregon. Still, Kristian continued: “What we learned that was surprising — and scary — is that no one is paying attention to what happens when schools are hardened against that threat.” Among other things, it’s 10-year-olds getting placed in the back of police cars, and 12-year-olds asking for lawyers. Please read the whole story, which is by Kristian, Asher Lehrer-Small, Clare Amari and Rosie Cima. A shooting in Oregon A 16-year-old blasted his way through locked doors into an Oregon elementary school, killing three children and a teacher before an armed bystander pursued him inside and killed him, the police said. The children killed were 5, 8 and 11. COMPUTE THIS The New York Times In 2018, OpenAI released its first GPT model. Trained with a mere 18 million trillion calculations, it was often incoherent. As the company scaled up — 5 sextillion, 2.6 septillion — the models improved. GPT 6 Astra is estimated to have required an octillion, or a thousand trillion trillion, calculations. It would take an iPhone 13 million years to do that math. The scale is hard to comprehend, so we visualized it. Related: Parenting can feel like doing an octillion calculations every week. Some families are turning to A.I. agents for help. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Elon Musk, who has major business interests in Texas, appeared to funnel $158 million to back Ken Paxton’s Senate bid there. Even as Democrats hope to flip congressional seats in red states, bluer states have a few races that are far closer than the party would like. A contract dispute is forcing many migrant children to face immigration judges alone. What happens when a 7-year-old agrees to leave the country without a lawyer present? President Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the midterm elections are raising fears among election officials that he could try to challenge results. Letters “containing suspicious substances” were sent to senators and state election officials in recent days. Investigations are underway. Around the World In Yemen. Social Media/UGC, via Social Media Via Reuters The Houthis, the Iranian-backed militia in Yemen, attacked the government’s headquarters there, officials said. Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s government, accused Iran of trying to escalate the war. Russia and Ukraine have started striking each other’s data centers. The daughter of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, traveled to the Balkan territory of Republika Srpska with an American businessman to explore a gas pipeline deal with the pro-Russian government there. Other Big Stories Trump canceled the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution of the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting. It’s a tough time to buy a house. Mortgage rates have pushed above 7 percent — their highest level in more than three years — and home prices remain elevated. It’s not just rich people getting richer. Harvard’s endowment grew by $11 billion this year to a record $68 billion — a 27 percent return. A teenager was arrested in suburban Chicago after his gun jammed before a planned mass shooting at a Hindu temple, the police said. The police identified a homicide victim found in a barrel in Lake Mead in 2022. They say he’s an Arkansas man killed in the 1980s. IN ONE GRAPHIC Source: Gallup polls of U.S. adults conducted in September 1949 and 2018. The New York Times Polls show that socialism is growing in popularity. Here, we track warming American attitudes toward it (and waning regard for capitalism), even as respondents aren’t quite sure what “socialism” means. OPINIONS Requiring fraternities to admit women can make campuses safer, the president of Wesleyan University argues. To solve today’s affordability crisis, we have to face a tricky, wonky, tenacious problem from yesteryear, Matthew Yglesias writes: the deficit. The Anniversary Sale ends soon: Morning readers, enjoy our best offer. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your interests with expert coverage of news, culture, business and more. Save now: $1/week for your first year. FREE TO READ Crisis in Paris: The city has acknowledged a “collective failure” to prevent sexual offenders from working in schools after a surge in abuse accusations. Rescuing Luna: A small dog who went missing in Yellowstone National Park for nearly five weeks was found safe. See a photo. Kelly Clarkson (Day 7!): The Brooklyn store that angered the singer has raised the price of the toy bird that she said it wouldn’t sell her to $15 million. We went to visit it. Your pick: The most clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about how to prevent stroke and dementia. Hilary Swank: She’s having her third child at 52. TODAY’S NUMBER McFarlane Toys $399 — That is the price of a new deluxe version of a Shohei Ohtani action figure from a company that usually sells superhero toys. It’s 14 inches tall and comes with home and away Dodgers uniforms, two pairs of cleats, more than a dozen interchangeable hands and two heads. One stares icily. The other gives a celebratory shout. Check it out. SPORTS Competitive eating: Tim Janus brought rigor and strategy to his sport, rising to No. 2 in the world. He died at 49. N.F.L.: The Denver Broncos held off a late comeback attempt and defeated the Seattle Seahawks in overtime, 17-14, in Denver, dropping the reigning Super Bowl champions’ record to 3-3 — matching their total of losses from last season. RECIPE OF THE DAY Bobbi Lin for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Here’s a minimalist recipe for butternut squash soup that delivers maximalist flavor, thanks to the balance between the sweetness of the vegetable and the warm sparkle of spices and acid that joins it in the pot. There are some lovely notes and modifications in the comments below the instructions, well worth considering. Butternut squash soup is a canvas. Paint on it! THE EYES HAVE IT Nathan Fielder interviewing Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything.” A24 The documentary “You Can See Everything,” about the disgraced tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes, opens today. Manohla Dargis, reviewing it for The Times, calls the film “off-the-charts bonkers,” and “a wily, disturbing, self-aware exploration of the relationship between documentarians and their subjects.” More on culture Zara Larsson is poised for pop superstardom, and she came onto our “Popcast” culture show to talk about it. Watch, listen or read. Meet Mette Wendelboe Okkels, a Danish knitting luminary who runs the fiber-crafts brand PetiteKnit. The aesthetic of her patterns is pure Scandinavian chic. “I see these pictures and it’s like, ‘I’m going to live like this,’” one fan told The Times. “‘I’m going to make the sweater and I’m going to have breezy hair and endless cups of coffee.’” Hygge! 🇩🇰🧶☕ THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Watch “Prey,” a 2014 British cops-and-bad-guys series set in Manchester that’s kicking around on Amazon Prime. The Times liked it when it first came to America. I like it now. Sleep well on a plane. It’s possible! Subscribe to “The Backstory”: Our journalists often face tough calls about how to tell sensitive stories. In a new newsletter, we explain how we make those decisions, beginning with our coverage of the gang rape allegation at Cornell. Sign up here. Clean your refrigerator this weekend. (This should be a monthly chore — in restaurants it’s more like a daily one.) The kitchen porters at Wirecutter have some very good tips. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were inimically, maniacally and manically. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. If you’re not a subscriber yet, would you consider becoming one today? Subscriptions allow us to keep doing this work that we love. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted October 19 Author Members Posted October 19 October 17, 2026 Good morning. We’re all temporary citizens of makeshift communities created by happenstance, tiny disposable societies forged and dismantled in jury rooms and departure lounges. María Jesús Contreras Paper towns By Melissa Kirsch I resisted the urge to sneak a peek at the questionnaire of the man sitting beside me at jury duty a few weeks ago. He’d been totally unknown to me a half-hour before, but now, through the accident of being summoned to serve this civic duty on the same day, he was part of my world, an object of curiosity, my neighbor for the day. Who was this 30ish man in a plaid flannel who didn’t crack a smile when the hammy lawyer released a fellow juror with the quip, “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride”? Who were any of these people who, as I had, took the day off work and stepped out of the currents of their lives to enter this fluorescent-lit parallel universe of judgment and justice? Jury duty presents an acute instance of the makeshift community: strangers who come together for a short period, and in that time become their own little society with its own customs and laws, its own characters and gossip. These accidental communities happen all around us, all the time: the people sitting around you on the beach, fellow passengers on a flight, other fans who started queuing for concert tickets before dawn. Unlike when, say, staying in the same bed-and-breakfast or sharing a cubicle at work, socializing is not expected; but just by being present, you’re part of the play. How quickly people go from invisible to mattering! At jury duty, the woman who works at a nonprofit and grew up in Kansas has such thoughtful answers to the lawyers’ queries: She is the most beloved of all my new neighbors. We share a smile when we’re released for lunch, the pop-up community equivalent of best friendship. And that man in the cap watching a movie on his phone: He’s breaking the no-devices rule, and we all revile him. By afternoon, we have familiarized ourselves with routes from the metal detector to the assembly room, assembly room to bathroom: These are our neighborhood’s streets. We all know the same sleepy security guard, the no-nonsense courthouse staff; they live here too. Our outside lives become dim — do we really have jobs and spouses and full-fledged personalities? Our friends have no idea about these people to whom we’ve uttered not a word but have somehow become our confederates, no inkling of all the infrastructure we’ve erected. Then, as quickly as this society materialized, it evaporates. Those of us who have not been empaneled are abruptly dismissed at 4:30 p.m. There is no duty keeping us here, no actual ties to unravel, so we spill out the doors and stagger back to our actual friends and neighbors. We will probably not remember one another, and isn’t there a tiny bit of grief in that? How strange to periodically take up residency in these disposable towns, to participate in their bureaucracies so intensely and then never revisit them. We return home to our established relationships, the people we’ve lived beside for years, those who know us and whom we know. How wonderful to be recognized, depended upon, to contribute to the ongoing project of building a community we hope will last. THE LATEST NEWS Oregon Shooting Outside Silver Rail Elementary School yesterday. Jordan Gale for The New York Times A teacher and a father of two girls stopped the 16-year-old assailant who killed four people at an Oregon school Thursday from doing much more damage. Read how they did it. Officials believe the attacker, a former special ed student at the school, used a shotgun owned by his mother. Here’s what else we know about him. Trump Administration Katie Zacharia is out after only five days as White House press secretary. Her ouster follows a shaky first news conference and questions about whether she misrepresented herself as a lawyer. President Trump signed an executive order exempting Russia from new sanctions legislation as part of his effort to lower gas prices. The Midterms Jeremy White/The New York Times Trump has claimed that noncitizens vote en masse, but studies show that it is so rare that it has never changed the outcome of an election. Our graphics put the frequency in perspective. Our reporters talked to young voters who have given up on Trump and to residents of Republican strongholds who are struggling with drug prices. Four congressional districts in Pennsylvania exemplify the types of seats that Democrats are aiming to flip. In the video below, our national political correspondent Shane Goldmacher explains. Click to watch. The New York Times Political Spending Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York transferred $1 million to Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign in Michigan. Democratic candidates have out-raised Republicans, but super PACs tied to Elon Musk and Trump have kept the G.O.P. competitive. Some $137 million has been spent in this election cycle on A.I.-generated ads. More than 80 percent of those were by or on behalf of Republican candidates. Around the World Using new drones, Russia is trying to make life in Kyiv unbearable. See what it’s like there now. Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Times reporters witnessed the attack, in which a photojournalist from The Washington Post was among the injured. Crime plunged in Caracas after death squads killed thousands in 2018 and 2019. Now Venezuela is investigating that blood-soaked campaign. Officials in France acknowledged that they failed to keep sexual offenders from working in schools. College Safety A campaign to unmask the former Cornell student who accused seven men of sexual assault began on X. Our reporters tracked how it evolved. A 19-year-old man was charged in the rape and fentanyl death of a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Science The international authority on timekeeping voted to eliminate the leap second. The contentious measure will be replaced, a very long time from now, with a leap hour. Researchers claimed to have found the world’s oldest shipwreck. Terence Tao, one of the world’s greatest living mathematicians, is on a “war footing” about A.I. In an interview, he told us why. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times “We pledged to each other when we were 18, 17, 16, that we would never, ever walk onto a stage without it being everything. We’ve had fistfights onstage, we’ve had them backstage, we’ve had madness, but we’ve never betrayed that.” — Bono. He and The Edge talked to David Marchese on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of U2. They also have a new album coming out. Watch or read more of their conversation here. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave in a scene from “Ken Russell’s The Devils.” Warner Bros. Clockwork Perhaps the most in-demand screening at the Cannes Film Festival this spring was 55 years old and hated when it came out. A new restoration makes its qualities clearer. A cringe comedian might seem an odd choice to helm a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes — until you see Nathan Fielder’s TV shows. Get caught up with our guide. Music In 2003, the Dixie Chicks took on the president. In 2006, they took on the backlash with a Grammy-winning album. Now they’re on tour celebrating that album’s 20th anniversary. Barbara Kingsolver and Yiyun Li are novelists who also play piano. Both just published novels about pianists. We talked to them about it. More Culture The act of cutting paper is one of the world’s oldest folk arts. A new generation has given it a subversive edge. Trained as a historian, the painter Nilima Sheikh portrays the fractures of modern India in massive scrolls. Our critic says that her first New York show is marvelous. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today. GAME OF THE WEEK Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith and Indiana quarterback Josh Hoover Jay Laprete and Vera Nieuwenhuis/Associated Press Ohio State vs. Indiana, college football: The Athletic’s Justin Williams called this “the biggest home game in the history of Indiana football,” and it’s not hard to see why. The No. 5-ranked Hoosiers, who spent much of the last 70 years as the Big Ten’s punching bag, are now riding an incredible 22-game winning streak that includes last season’s national championship. Yet they’re still considered the underdog against the No. 4-ranked Buckeyes, whose star wide receiver, Jeremiah Smith, has appeared nearly impossible to defend. Kickoff is today at noon Eastern. — Matthew Cullen REAL ESTATE Graham Dickie for The New York Times The Hunt: After years of visiting her children in New York, a Colorado sculptor decided to look for a second home near Manhattan’s galleries. What did she find? Play our game. What you get for $400,000: An Italianate brick home in Schenectady, N.Y., a bungalow in Oregon, and a farmhouse in Indiana. Which would you choose? Jewel box: For decades, the architect Bob Ray Offenhauser built mansions for his clients. Now his own home is on the market. Check it out. LIVING Andrew Lee for The New York Times More space: An artist in Atlanta built his own backyard studio using salvaged materials. Go inside. Cosmetic restoration: Mask scratches, gouges and splintering on your hardwood floors with these D.I.Y. techniques. Home gallery: Young artists in New York are using their apartments as studios to showcase and sell their work. Meet some of them. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Surprising things you should refrigerate Of course, your milk and poultry need to be kept cool. But the chilly darkness of your fridge can also help many common household objects last much longer. Cold temperatures can prevent an open bottle of super glue from turning rock solid or slow the aging process of unused photo film. Same goes for expensive skin care products, like vitamin C serums. Use teeth-whitening strips? The cold helps delay the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide and other active ingredients. Just make sure any nonfood items are clearly labeled, out of sight or out of reach from anyone who might not understand that they are not safe to ingest. — Maki Yazawa NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were burping and upbringing. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, 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. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted October 19 Author Members Posted October 19 October 18, 2026 Good morning. After all these years, The Times found new developments in the O.J. Simpson case. O.J. Simpson wearing the infamous gloves found at the crime scene and his home during his criminal trial in 1995. Sam Mircovich/Reuters O.J.’s accomplice? By Adam B. Kushner I watched the infamous Ford Bronco chase from a hotel TV in Colorado. O.J. Simpson said he didn’t do it. Then he authored a book titled “If I Did It,” in which he said he had help. He outlined a “hypothetical” in those pages, and it went like this: A friend was with him on the summer evening in 1994 when he murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. That person disposed of the knife and Simpson’s bloody clothes. It was a strange exercise, that 2007 book. But what if it wasn’t hypothetical? New reporting by The Times suggests that the assist may have actually happened — and identifies a possible accomplice. A quick reminder: In 1995, a criminal jury found Simpson not guilty of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. (A civil jury later found him liable for the deaths.) Prosecutors never turned up a murder weapon. Joey Ippolito reportedly knew where it was, our reporters Mike Baker and Tim Arango discovered. The hidden man A mug shot of Joseph Ippolito, dated Feb. 4, 2006. U.S. Department of Justice Ippolito was like a character from an Elmore Leonard novel: a drug runner, a Mafioso, a frequent felon — and a friend of Al Cowlings, Simpson’s former teammate and the eventual pilot of the white Ford Bronco as Simpson fled from the cops. He was also a prison escapee. When the law caught up with him (hiding under a toupee) in New York’s Little Italy in the summer of 1995, he offered information in exchange for a reduced sentence. Federal agents knew him as a trustworthy informant who’d helped take down mob figures. He told them a wild tale about his pal Cowlings, who he said knew the location of Simpson’s knife. Officials believed Ippolito and helped secure a light punishment for the jailbreak. They also told Los Angeles prosecutors about what Ippolito had said. But by that point, Simpson’s trial was nearly over. Government lawyers had already rested their case and didn’t try to introduce Ippolito’s tips. (Cowlings did not respond to The Times’s many requests to comment on this narrative.) Ippolito’s informant account was sealed. But he died in 2006. The Times asked a judge to make it public this summer, and she saw no reason not to. Our reporters also tracked down Ippolito’s brother, Sam, who added a great deal to the yarn. Sam, who runs a motel in New Jersey, said Joey was with Simpson that night. He returned to the apartment the brothers shared with what appeared to be literal blood on his hands, bearing a bag that contained a bulky object, presumably the knife. In this version, which aligns with the scenario in Simpson’s book, Al Cowlings has no role and Joey Ippolito is the bag man. Joey asked his brother to get rid of the bag, Sam recalled. You have to read Mike and Tim’s article to find out what Sam did next. An American fixation The California Highway Patrol chased Al Cowlings, who was driving a white Ford Bronco, and O.J. Simpson, who was hiding in the rear, in June 1994. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images The O.J. Simpson saga is one of those moments, like the J.F.K. assassination or 9/11, seared into our collective memory with a specific time and place; if you are old enough, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing. But unlike those other events, which began and ended, the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman is officially still an unsolved, ongoing mystery. “This is probably the most scrutinized criminal case in American history,” Mike, an investigative reporter based in Seattle, told me: So it was kind of shocking to me to find that there was still an untold part of the story, and that there were law enforcement records that people did not know about after all these years. The new evidence won’t bring definitive closure. (Especially because Sam Ippolito recanted his story when Times reporters declined to pay him for it. The Times, like most news outlets, does not pay for tips.) Simpson will never face the new accusations: He died two years ago. Yet for those transfixed by this whodunit — and the books, shows, documentaries and debates it has spawned — our new investigation offers several intriguing new puzzle pieces. Read it here. FREE TO READ Bruiser Eva Zweifel Mellema One of a kind: Bruiser the elk formed a herd of one on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, and became its unofficial mascot. Read why he inspired such devotion. “Central casting”: On the campaign trail, President Trump has been making odd comments about how male candidates look. Pilot Picasso: Benjamin McDaniel drew the Mona Lisa in the skies over Oklahoma. See what it looked like. Strange love: A South Korean reality dating show is pairing celebrities with A.I. First time in The Times: For our 175th anniversary, we’re looking back at the original appearances in our pages of various terms. When do you think guacamole, bicycles and the title Ms. made it in? THE LATEST NEWS Politics At a “No Kings” rally in Dallas. Jeffrey McWhorter for The New York Times “No Kings” protests took place across the country to encourage voting, but they were smaller and more subdued than previous events. Democrats are attacking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in their campaign ads. Senator Darline Graham gingerly criticized Trump for exempting Russia from a sanctions law that was championed by and named after her late brother, Lindsey. The Middle East The New York Times Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank during the annual olive harvest. Azam Ahmed, a correspondent for The Times, witnessed the violence. He spoke about it on our podcast “The Call.” Click to watch. In a separate attack, extremists beat a Palestinian teenager and attacked European diplomats participating in the harvest. Civilian deaths are rising in the fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. More International News A “serious incident” at a military base in Canada caused a major fire and left people dead, officials said. Kenya has confirmed seven Ebola cases. The country had never recorded a case before this month. Rioters attacked government buildings in cities across France as protests against rising living costs and poor school conditions turned violent. Other Big Stories Pope Leo thanked people for their prayers in an appearance at St. Peter’s Square a day after being released from the hospital following lung cancer surgery. At this remote gas station in California, you might pay $10.49 for a gallon. Helen Branswell, a leading reporter on infectious diseases, recognized the threat of Covid-19 before a vast majority of journalists and even medical experts. She died at 69. FROM OPINION Photo Illustration by Meg Griffiths for The New York Times Title IX may be flawed, Emily Bazelon argues, but it can help people like Jane Doe at Cornell. Without the law, only the police and prosecutors would field claims like hers. The industrial slaughter of animals for food is a great moral blind spot of our age, Nicholas Kristof writes. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today. SPORTS Gabby Williams drives to the basket. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images W.N.B.A.: The Golden State Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream 68-64 in Game 1 of the finals. M.L.B.: The Tampa Bay Rays scored a win over the Cleveland Guardians in Game 4 to tie the American League Championship Series at 2-2. College football: Five of the top seven teams in The Associated Press Top 25 lost on the same day. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Partita,” by Barbara Kingsolver Kingsolver’s follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Demon Copperhead” begins, as many sagas do, with a blast from the past. Livia Cable is living quietly and, for the most part, happily on a dairy farm in Appalachia when she receives a call from the man who derailed her ambitions as a piano prodigy and scholarship student decades earlier. He wants to visit. As Livia decides how to answer, Kingsolver whisks readers back to Livia’s college days — her whirlwind romance, her lofty aspirations, her haunted family. Suddenly the question at the heart of this lyrical novel is less about Livia’s reunion with her old flame or how she ended up where she is but rather when — and whether — she’ll hear the music that infuses the world she’s in now. To read our review, go here. To read about Kingsolver’s love of classical piano music, go here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Carry a green bag. The color is unexpected but easy to wear. Stay healthy in retirement by finding a sense of purpose. Pile on the throw pillows with these Wirecutter recommendations that can still look good after frequent use. MEAL PLAN Joel Goldberg for The New York Times With its garlicky vinaigrette, plump golden raisins and big, bodacious croutons, this recipe for oregano-garlic chicken is reminiscent of the roast chicken served at the beloved Zuni Café in San Francisco. Have it for dinner this week. Or you could try Melissa Clark’s meatballs with any meat. Watch how to make them here. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was ambulant. Can you put eight historical events, including the fall of Constantinople, Andrew Jackson’s giant Cheddar wheel and Harpo Marx’s tour of Russia, in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, 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. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted October 21 Author Members Posted October 21 October 19, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Peaceful antigovernment protests in France devolved into riots and looting. Now shopkeepers are picking up the pieces. And President Trump spent the weekend on the campaign trail, trying to make clear that the midterms are actually about him. There’s a lot more below, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Broadway debut. I’m going to start, though, with the human face of America’s utility bill crisis. Genia Weitz confined herself to her living room to try to keep the electricity bill down. Erin Schaff/The New York Times A bad combination The economic news was grim last week. Government data revealed something millions of Americans have known for months: Rising energy costs, largely driven by the war with Iran, have pushed prices up all over. Wages are flat. And nearly half of Americans are having trouble paying for basic needs right now. The climate news hasn’t been much better. It was the hottest summer on record in the United States, hotter than the Dust Bowl summer of 1936. Over the past few months, Americans ran a lot of air-conditioning to keep themselves cool — and, in some places, to keep themselves alive. Now about one in six U.S. households is behind on utility bills, according to federal data. Some hot-weather states have laws to prevent utility companies from shutting off someone’s electricity during the most dangerous heat. But then comes fall, and the disconnections begin to mount. It’s when, Eli Saslow reports, “a climate crisis turns into a collection notice.” Eli spent days with a couple and their family in the small city of McAlester, Okla., as they struggled to pay an electricity bill that was higher than their monthly income. When the heat index finally fell below 100 degrees at the end of September, the family had nine days to pay. Here then were Genia Weitz and her husband, Daryl Mason. They have a three-bedroom house with two bathrooms but had installed themselves mostly in their 300-square-foot living room, hanging heavy blankets across the halls and doors to trap cool air from a rattly window-mounted air-conditioner. Weitz had been sleeping on the couch, with her oxygen machine plugged into the wall. Mason slept in the recliner with a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. Weitz had just retrieved the disconnection notice from her mailbox. Eli captured the stakes: “I can’t breathe if I don’t have my oxygen,” Weitz said, as she handed the bill to Mason. “I don’t think I’d last a single night.” “We’d probably stroke out anyway in all this heat,” Mason said. “If we lose this room, we’re not going to make it.” In crisis Weitz and Mason’s power comes from the Public Service Company of Oklahoma, known as PSO. The company had told its customers that it faced rising costs itself. Demand for its electricity had risen because of the extreme weather — and because of all the juice required by new customers, including data centers. A PSO facility. Erin Schaff/The New York Times The state has emerged as a hub for them. One proposed data center outside McAlester, Eli reported, “would use more electricity each week at full capacity than all the homes in McAlester used in an entire year.” PSO’s rates were below the national average, but the summer’s high temperatures had kept air-conditioners running around the clock. Bills were high all over. Weitz and Mason weren’t alone. Weitz’s daughter-in-law went on social media and found hundreds of others in the same boat: “My bill is unreal. I guess I’ll just burn up.” “I use a flashlight on my phone before I turn a light on, and I pay $100 a week.” “Single mom here. Cried on the phone with them last week because mine is so high.” “My monthly bill is almost 900. I know it’s hot, but this is like an AC bill on Venus.” A struggle Eli was with Weitz as she tried to figure out what to do. The family’s car was broken down in the driveway, so she rode a shuttle bus into town to get a doctor to sign a form saying she had a serious medical condition. That was a chance to get 30 days of relief from disconnection. “Please be advised that a life-threatening situation does not cause the debt to be forgiven, but merely postponed to a later date,” the form read. She got her monthlong reprieve — but not more money. Eli’s account of what happened next is extremely powerful. I urge you to read every word. FREE TO READ In Minneapolis. Eric Ruby for The New York Times A concrete legacy: Minoru Yamasaki designed the World Trade Center. But that wasn’t all. See more of his work. Times investigation: Gold that delivers profit to Wall Street and governments is connected to criminals, gangsters and those who exploit children. Read how. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about O.J. Simpson’s possible accomplice in the murder of his ex-wife and her friend. Metropolitan Diary: Scarred by a pork chop. Living with secrets: The wealthy are making housekeepers, tutors and private chefs sign nondisclosure agreements. THE LATEST NEWS France Protests The town hall in Limoges, France. Pascal Lachenaud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Rioters attacked city halls and shops during protests over living costs and poor school conditions. The far-right National Rally party is looking to gain from denouncing the rioting. More International News Five members of a U.N.-backed force sent to stop gang violence in Haiti remain missing after an ambush. A spacecraft set to launch from Japan today could bring back the first samples of dirt from a Martian moon. Brazil’s presidential election could decide the future of the Amazon. In an interview with The Times, Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado criticized the Trump administration’s handpicked oil partner there and spoke about her country’s future. Immigration The New York Times The Homeland Security Department has repeatedly said that ICE agents are pursuing “the worst of the worst” criminals. But data shows that arrests of people with no criminal record have soared. In the video above, our reporter Hamed Aleaziz explains. Click to watch. The Trump administration said that people who came to the United States from Ukraine and Sudan can keep Temporary Protected Status for now. Politics The East Potomac Golf Links. Andrew Leyden for The New York Times Trump said the East Potomac golf course in Washington would close for 15 months for renovations, starting within four weeks. Barack Obama defended Representative Ilhan Omar, describing the Trump administration’s investigation of her family as an effort to intimidate her. Trump said his decision to ease sanctions against Russia was part of peace negotiations that could involve hostages. Other Big Stories New York has a new weapon in its war on rats: BurrowRx, a carbon monoxide-emitting killing machine. Dozens of cows were found wandering streets in Kansas City after a semi truck carrying them overturned. OPINIONS Stephan Dybus Tenants already pay a lot in rent. A surge in add-on “junk fees” is overwhelming them, Tracie McMillan writes. Abolish business schools, a professor at one argues. He says they normalize the economic system’s harms and train leaders to defend its structures. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today. TODAY’S NUMBER Sanae Takaichi Eric Lee for The New York Times 3 — That is the minimum number of hours each day that Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, says she spends on makeup, bathing, cooking and other chores. “Finding the time to sit down and focus with a truly clear head is a challenge,” she told the country’s Parliament last week. “I feel that, compared to a male prime minister, I might be spending an extra three or four hours on these tasks.” Her remarks have set off a debate among our readers — and you can join it. A taste: B BlueKazoo New York Japan definitely has high and honestly absurd standards for women’s presentation in public. But people are in denial if they don’t think the US has some too. Women are critiqued on their fashion choices and comments are made on if they look “put together” in the corporate and political world. People don’t notice it because it’s so much an unspoken part of our culture. View all comments SPORTS M.L.B.: The Tampa Bay Rays won Game 5 of their series against the Cleveland Guardians, putting them one win from the World Series. College football: The University of Miami is No. 1 in the A.P. Top 25 for the first time since 2002 after five of the top seven teams lost matches on Saturday. Boxing: Wilfredo Gomez rose from poverty in Puerto Rico to win world boxing championships in three weight classes. He died at 69. RECIPE OF THE DAY Armando Rafael for The New York Times. I love a veal piccata, a chicken piccata, even a swordfish piccata. Here’s a brilliant fourth option for that alchemy of lemon, capers and butter: tofu piccata. Press a firm brick of the stuff so it releases its water, cut it into slabs or cubes, coat it in cornstarch and pan-fry. Then build your piccata sauce while the tofu rests. You could nap it onto a bedroom slipper and have a good meal. (Make sure the butter you use at the end is cold, so it melts slowly into the sauce and emulsifies properly.) TRADECRAFT David McCloskey Shelby Tauber for The New York Times David McCloskey is a 40-year-old former C.I.A. analyst, now a spy novelist who some say is shaping up as America’s answer to John le Carré. (“The Persian,” his 2025 novel about a Persian Jewish dentist who goes to Tehran to spy for the Mossad, makes the argument well.) McCloskey’s latest offering is “London Station,” which imagines the relationship between the C.I.A. and its British counterpart getting so bad that the two agencies start actively working against each other. He spoke to The Times about it — and the supreme weirdness of the intelligence agency he worked for. More on culture Julia Louis-Dreyfus made her Broadway debut last night, in Jon Robin Baitz’s play “Other Desert Cities.” Our critic Helen Shaw praised her “nervy charisma.” Read the whole review. Copenhagen is famed for its luxe restaurants and innovative tweezer food. But these days its hottest dish is super basic: bread, butter and hard cheese. The city’s top bakeries are competing to make the best version. Take a tour. The comedian Larry David mocked the Democratic Socialists of America in an essay. Not everyone found it funny. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Quinn Kelsey The New York Times Hear the baritone Quinn Kelsey sing Verdi at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We’ve got clips! Fight aging. Fight it hand to hand. Buy your parents (or yourself) a new phone. The helpful little ones at Wirecutter found the best blowers for older people. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was jointed. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted Thursday at 06:28 PM Author Members Posted Thursday at 06:28 PM October 20, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. President Trump said last night that the Agriculture Department would provide $8 billion in economic aid to farmers hurt by high diesel prices. And France extended curfews after the measures “helped keep the night calm” in the wake of riots. There’s more below. But first, let’s see what’s happening in Ukraine. Ukrainian military surveillance videos Death from above The front line of the war in Ukraine stretches 750 miles, almost the distance between Chicago and Dallas. Armies of drones fly over all of it, constantly. They watch. They hunt. They strike. It makes for a new kind of battlefield, one where anything that moves is a target. It was not that way when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Then, the boundaries were clear, as front lines have been for centuries: Troops massed in trenches on opposite sides of a no-man’s land, battling one another in a narrow area. No longer. The drones have widened the front by miles and miles, making it a huge and dangerous area in which neither side really holds control. Death stalks everyone within it. The Times wrote about two Ukrainian soldiers who spent time in that crucible, which some call the kill zone. They hid out from buzzing drones in a house half-destroyed by attacks. To keep from being targeted, they hardly left it, relieving themselves in bottles and bags rather than going outside. They slept pressed together in winter, rather than lighting a fire. When they managed to kill Russian soldiers, they dragged the bodies into the house, so that Russian drones would not see evidence of fighting. Those Russian soldiers were close, sometimes extremely so. Once, when one of the Ukrainian soldiers turned on his phone, it offered to connect to a Russian Wi-Fi router. “I immediately turned the phone off,” he told The Times. Josh Holder/The New York Times Sources: BlackBird Group (territorial control as of April 1, 2026); Russian documents obtained by The Times (Russian positions); Project Owl (Ukrainian positions). The front, transformed The rise of drone warfare has changed how armies fight. Soldiers used to march to the front. Now they have to crawl there at night, under thermal blankets that block the heat signature that would give them away. Armored vehicles could scout the roads before a ground assault on a village or town. A few soldiers on A.T.V.s play that role now, riskily. And trench warfare? That’s over. It’s easy to target a trench. So soldiers hide out in abandoned buildings or dig underground bunkers. Henadii and Mykhailo in the Zaporizhzhia region in May. Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times And they stay a long time. Regular rotation of troops in and out of battle is too dangerous under a drone-filled sky. Henadii and Mykhailo, the two Ukrainian soldiers The Times interviewed, were in the kill zone for more than six months. (Like all Ukrainian soldiers The Times spoke to, they asked to be identified only by their first names or call signs, for security reasons.) Their experience was hellish. Vehicles can’t bring supplies, so drones dropped them food and water, at least when the drones made it to them. Sometimes they didn’t. Each man lost 40 pounds. Getting home Leaving the kill zone was the most dangerous part of the deployment. Russia’s drones can patrol six miles into the enemy territory, and the soldiers had to hike through that zone. It took the two men days, as their commander guided them by radio, moving them on and off their path by watching a live feed from a reconnaissance drone floating above them. “Move left. Move right,” Mykhailo said, recalling the orders. “We zigzagged like hares.” They slept in bombed-out houses and picked their way home through the front slowly. It had to have been terrifying. One day, a Russian drone blew up a house where they’d slept, just 10 minutes after they left. The men who eventually arrived at their unit’s command post looked very different from the ones who had left it a half-year before: thinner, with haunted expressions and thick, unruly facial hair. A photo released by the Ukrainian military shows Mykhailo, left, and Henadii, right, soon after arriving back at their base in March. Ukraine’s 128th Heavy Mechanized Brigade The unit posted a video of Henadii inhaling a chocolate cake, The Times reported: “His wife saw it and called. In all of their years together, she said, he had always insisted he hated chocolate cake. ‘Must have been the hunger,’ Henadii said, smiling.” Read the whole article. It’s by Constant Méheut, Josh Holder and Olha Konovalova. For more on the war Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg that President Trump was trying to force Ukraine to surrender. Trump’s push to make deals with Russia indicates that he wants to normalize relations with Moscow even if it means further undercutting Ukraine. Over the weekend, a mysterious Russian satellite moved threateningly close to a U.S. commercial radar satellite used by the Ukrainian military. FREE TO READ Barbara Palvin Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret Maternity leave: Barbara Palvin walked the runway at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show six weeks after giving birth. Here’s how people reacted. Evolution: How did life arise on Earth? Three moments offer clues. Sick trees: Overlapping plagues are killing American forests. Read why. A reader asks: Does my suit make me look MAGA? Our fashion critic has answers. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about how families in Oklahoma are struggling to pay their electricity bills. THE LATEST NEWS Midterm Elections Note: Data includes only broadcast and streaming ads aired between Sept. 9, 2026 and Oct. 17, 2026. Source: AdImpact. The New York Times Trump has implored voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” in the midterms. But these charts show he has all but disappeared from Republican ads. Trump began a six-day tour to drive Republican turnout in deep-red states like South Carolina that the party did not view as competitive just a few months ago. See where else he’s going. Our White House correspondent Tyler Pager has been traveling with the president during the campaign. In the video below, he describes what that’s been like. Click to watch. The New York Times More on Politics Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Mark Kelly, Pete Buttigieg, Raphael Warnock and Ro Khanna are all going to New Hampshire this month. Welcome to the 2028 presidential “shadow primary.” A federal judge grilled government officials about whether the Trump administration had been plotting to renovate a Washington golf course while hiding it from the court. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate arrested by ICE during a crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests last year, appealed to the Supreme Court to stop his deportation. Israel The police detained at least 10 Israelis after recent attacks in the West Bank. Rights groups say most inquiries into extremist assaults on Palestinians go nowhere. Thousands of Israelis living in the United States are expected to fly to Israel to vote in the election. Trump endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu in his re-election bid. Will that change anything? More International News The riots in France reflect frustration across Europe with low economic growth, high inflation and poor prospects for young people. Voters in Alberta rejected a proposal to consider seceding from Canada. A priest in Ecuador died after a large wooden crucifix fell on him during a livestreamed Mass. Other Big Stories Elon Musk said he would give one SpaceX share to “every kid in America” next year. California’s latest climate change report includes dire projections like more extreme floods and a rise in deaths from wildfire smoke. IN ONE GRAPHIC Source: State Department. Albert Sun/The New York Times Legal immigration has plunged during Trump’s crackdown on illegal migrants. Browse charts that show the effect on different places. OPINIONS Americans dream of escaping to France, a memoirist writes from Paris, but the riots reveal a troubled country. Fraternity culture thrives on sexual violence, a Cornell professor argues. She says the men bond by protecting one another from accountability. TODAY’S NUMBER A restored Volkswagen Microbus. Jim Motavalli $275,000 — That is the price of a restored and electrified 1966 Volkswagen Microbus. A new one starts at $59,995. See inside both of them. SPORTS M.L.B.: The Tampa Bay Rays will face the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series, after beating the Cleveland Guardians in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series. W.N.B.A.: The Atlanta Dream tied the finals series with a win over the Golden State Valkyries. N.F.L.: The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts will miss the rest of the season: He has blood clots in both lungs. RECIPE OF THE DAY Karsten Moran for The New York Times Mushrooms on toast is one of the great autumnal meals. I use more crème fraîche than the recipe calls for, and a big splash of sherry to make the dressing more gravy-like. Could you slide a fried egg onto the top of each toast for even more heft? Of course you could, and I hope you do. THE FIGHTING FESTIVAL In Japan last month. The Yomiuri Shimbun Every fall, hundreds of Japanese citizens come together to careen extremely heavy floats in the shape of temples down streets at great speed, an ancient tradition known as danjiri. But a recent series of fatal accidents has prompted anxiety about the ritual. It’s a dangerous thrill. More on culture More than 60 years ago, Leslie Fiedler published “Love and Death in the American Novel,” a huge slab of literary criticism that was met with outrage and praise for its characterization of “a squirming freight of symbolic incest in our best fiction, as well as eroticized male bonding and a bedrock inability to deal with adult women and adult sexuality,” in the words of our critic Dwight Garner. I don’t know if many will read the book, but Dwight’s review of its recent reissue is an absolute treat. The American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer has a new solo show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. She talked to The Times about it, and about her birth as an artist: “At about 5 or 6 years old — before I became repressed and tried to be a good, normal person — I had a longstanding, very ambitious art project on a whole roll of shelf paper that my mother gave me. I started to draw and paint the history of the world, including Noah’s Ark and the invention of the Model T Ford.” Read the interview. Late night hosts had thoughts about Katie Zacharia’s brief tenure as Trump’s press secretary. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Listen to Lana Del Rey’s duet with Zach Bryan: “Lies,” a hymn-like ballad about obsession and betrayal. Plus nine more songs we’re talking about this week. Prevent falls. These five tips will help you stay upright. Improve your dining-room tablescaping with the help of tapered candles. The firebugs at Wirecutter have found the best ones out there. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was wheeling. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. Not a subscriber? That’s not a problem. Just download the Times app and you’ll have free access to all our journalism for a month. All of it. Free! See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted Friday at 03:56 PM Author Members Posted Friday at 03:56 PM October 21, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. President Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low just before the midterms, a new Times/Siena University poll found. And Russia released a 74-year-old American after he’d spent four years in jail, according to Russian state media. U.S. officials said the man had been wrongfully detained. The release buys Vladimir Putin good will with Trump, while costing Putin little. There’s more news below. But first, let’s go to Idaho. Ashlie Heywood traveled two hours to deliver her baby. Thea Traff for The New York Times Idaho falls In the four years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, prompting a near-total ban on Idaho abortions, more than a third of the state’s obstetrician-gynecologists have left, closed their offices, stopped practicing obstetrics or retired. Now half of Idaho’s counties don’t have an OB-GYN. There are just 170 obstetricians in the state today — less than two for every 10,000 women there. (Nationally, it’s about twice that.) Facts from the Gem State: Three rural hospitals have closed their labor and delivery wards because they don’t have enough doctors. The wait time for a hysterectomy, even in more populated areas like Boise, can be six months. For an annual exam, it’s more like nine months. And if women face life-threatening complications during childbirth or a miscarriage, they’re increasingly flown out of state for treatment that OB-GYNs in Idaho could be jailed for administering. The result? It’s now more dangerous to be pregnant in Idaho. My colleague Lisa Lerer spent a year interviewing doctors, public health officials, patients and reproductive rights activists across the state to learn how doctors are coping. “In a way, they are like pioneer doctors, working at the frontier of a new America where abortion laws limit the care they can offer,” Lisa writes. Near downtown Moscow, Idaho. Thea Traff for The New York Times That could change this year. A referendum on the ballot would restore abortion rights until what’s called “fetal viability,” which was the standard that Roe set. But the loss of all those doctors will be felt for years. In danger Lisa provides abundant examples of the peril. One new mother was hemorrhaging after she gave birth. It’s a common cause of severe complications. A patient can bleed to death in less than 10 minutes. Her family-practice doctors rushed to stanch the bleeding. If they failed to do so, the patient would need surgery to remove her uterus — a hysterectomy. It is the second most common surgery for women in the United States. (A cesarean section is first.) Hundreds of thousands of hysterectomies are performed each year. In Idaho today, though, a hysterectomy can be a problem. One of the bleeding patient’s doctors had a specialty in high-risk obstetrics. She could deliver babies, implant IUDs, conduct gynecological exams and even perform minor operations to remove fetal tissue after a miscarriage to prevent infection. But she wasn’t trained for hysterectomies. She wasn’t an OB-GYN. And on this day, there were no OB-GYNs available to help. A hospital in Meridian, Idaho. Thea Traff for The New York Times She thought through her options with her colleagues. If the bleeding didn’t stop, they decided, they’d ask the general surgeon on call for the hospital for assistance. This wasn’t a great safety net. General surgeons don’t perform hysterectomies as regularly as OB-GYNs. It’s not really in their wheelhouse, the family doctor told Lisa. But “your other option is the patient dies,” the doctor said. What happened to the patient? Read the story to find out. DARK NUTRITION Kyoko Hamada for The New York Times I once ate a full lobe of a cow’s brain at a diner in St. Louis. I’ve eaten pounds of strange-adjacent proteins: raccoon, squirrel, ptarmigan. But I’ve got nothing on the “dark nutrition” crowd experimenting with all sorts of unusual diets. The Times spoke with many of them: eaters of raw beef, chicken and roadkill; disavowers of seed oils and vegetables; consumers of colostrum, butter and egg yolks. Some swear by organ meats, others by cane sugar or raw milk. You can choose your own adventure. Because dark nutrition isn’t a specific diet. Instead, it’s a style of thinking about food and health. And its central tenet is: Most of what you think you know about food is wrong. Come meet the true believers. Among other things, you’ll learn about meat cereal. FREE TO READ Harry Houdini Bettmann/Getty Images One last illusion: Harry Houdini died on Halloween 100 years ago. But how did it happen? What happened in Vegas: A shirtless man who grabbed a flamingo by its neck and took it to his hotel room was found guilty of animal cruelty. “Mitch was drunk,” his lawyer said. “Mitch was stupid.” Read about the case. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about Barbara Palvin, a model who was back on the Victoria’s Secret runway six weeks after giving birth. 890-mile trek: The first person to swim the length of California endured a hurricane and encountered four great white sharks. See the photos. “One of the most annoying things”: Britain’s prime minister is on a campaign against listening to music on trains without headphones. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Alina Habba Kenny Holston/The New York Times Times exclusive: A Venezuelan billionaire wanted a pardon, and his family made a $50 million deal with one of Trump’s former lawyers. The Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan said that recent decisions on voting rights, gerrymandering and campaign finance had increased polarization in America. Trump proposed turning the White House press briefing room into a swimming pool. It’s the latest indication that he wants to evict reporters from the building. ICE said its agents didn’t hit a cyclist in California with a car before detaining him. Video tells a different story. Midterms Trump’s super PACs have spent a staggering amount on the midterms. Term-limited presidents don’t normally do that. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, made his own 11th-hour midterm push, giving Democrats about $80 million. In a new attack ad, the estranged mother of Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, called her a liar. They were estranged after Acton’s stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her when she was a child. Acton’s brother called the ad “despicable.” Around the World Off the northeast coast of Scotland. Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Britain approved more gas drilling in the North Sea, potentially undercutting one of its government’s climate change pledges. The Houthis have cut off access to one of Yemen’s largest cities. People there are running out of food and water. The death of a mayor in Haiti who promised to stay in his town after it was overrun by gang violence is a symbol of how the state has effectively collapsed. Trump is downplaying Russian attacks on Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back. Other Big Stories The woman who said she was raped at Cornell University wrote to faculty leaders that she felt “disbelieved” by the school’s president. Read her letter. Boeing won U.S. regulatory approval for the largest version of the 737 Max after a six-year delay for reasons that included two fatal crashes of a smaller model. Drug companies are developing new ketamine products as the Trump administration embraces psychedelic treatments. BUILT TO FAIL The New York Times Several public housing towers in Venezuela collapsed during an earthquake in June. A New York Times investigation found fundamental flaws in their design and construction. These graphics illustrate weaknesses that made the towers vulnerable. OPINIONS The affordability crisis is not just about expensive gas, a Yale law professor writes. It’s about long-term economic security. Trump is betraying Ukraine and appeasing Russia for his own benefit, the editorial board writes. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now TODAY’S NUMBER At Madison Square Garden. Caleb Bowlin/Getty Images $1,894 — That was the average price of a ticket for last night’s Knicks season opener at Madison Square Garden, the highest ever for a regular-season N.B.A. game. Meet the entirely rational fans who are happy to pay. (The Knicks lost to LeBron James and the Philadelphia 76ers.) RECIPE OF THE DAY Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Spencer Richards. Here’s some comfort food of the first order: matar tofu, a cousin to matar paneer, the northern Indian masala of peas and cheese in a warmly spiced tomato gravy. The cheese is gone here, replaced by cubed baked tofu, and the result, as one of our readers commented, is “wow wow wow.” CRUZ CONTROL Paul Kooiker for The New York Times Penélope Cruz has spent 30 years masterminding one of the most versatile careers in Hollywood history. Marcela Valdes profiled the actress for The Times and learned a great deal about her craft. About interpreting a role, Cruz said: “It’s like making a soup. I have an empty bowl that needs to be filled with things.” She looks at art, listens to music, talks to people who remind her of the character. She might put on a wig. And one day it clicks, she continued. “That person to whom you’re going to give life is already in you.” Read the whole thing. More on culture In 2021, the actress Christina Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She now says she was misdiagnosed. Jeffrey Schmalz was a New York Times editor and reporter who began chronicling the AIDS epidemic for the paper in 1992, even as the disease ravaged his own health. Before he died the following year at 39, Jeff wrote poignantly — yet unsparingly — about why the political and medical cavalry would not arrive in time for him. Read Maureen Dowd’s reflection on his legacy. A late night host supported Trump’s man crush on Senator Jon Husted. Richard Cooke’s book “The Last Best Place on the Internet” retells the history of Wikipedia with an emphasis on the human. In the video below, Jennifer Szalai, a Times critic, gives her review. Click to watch. The New York Times THE MORNING RECOMMENDS “Stephen Tucker and Members of the Arthur Doyle Concert Band” (1981), by Peter Freeth. Peter Freeth Keep those blurry photographs children take with your phone. They might be art! Manage your bunion. You don’t need to walk in pain. Affix a Bluetooth tracker to your key ring, bicycle or luggage. The recovery experts at Wirecutter found the best ones for Apple and Android phones. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was munchkin. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted Sunday at 02:54 AM Author Members Posted Sunday at 02:54 AM October 22, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Fights between rallygoers and protesters interrupted President Trump at an appearance in South Carolina last night. And doctors said that Pope Leo needs no further treatment for lung cancer. There’s a lot more below. But first, I’m going to turn to Mike Bender, who covers the Trump administration, to tell us about how Title IX keeps changing. At Cornell University this month. Lauren Petracca for The New York Times A shifting standard By Michael C. Bender Cornell has a process for complaints like the one from Jane Doe, the pseudonymous former Cornell student who says seven men raped her at a frat party. All universities do. It’s called a Title IX investigation, and its purpose is to figure out whether and how much to punish the accused. That might surprise people who know Title IX for something else — building up women’s sports in the United States. And now Trump’s vision for the law, too, has expanded beyond athletics and sexual misconduct. His administration is using it to prevent the government from recognizing genders besides men and women. Title IX is just one provision in a 1972 education law. The provision was not the main concern of the lawmakers who passed the bill. President Richard Nixon, who enacted the measure, didn’t even mention Title IX when he signed the law. Yet its enforcement has reshaped education — and also changed drastically based on the politics of the time. A twisting history Richard Nixon on the day he signed Title IX into law. White House Photo Office, via Getty Images The law took years to fully take shape. Origins. Initially, Title IX forced universities to dismantle sex-based admission caps and expand women’s sports. Many credit the strength of U.S. women’s sports today to the pipeline created by this measure, which forced schools to spend the same amount on athletics for men and women. A new view. In 1975, though, an instructor at Cornell, Lin Farley, coined the phrase “sexual harassment” to describe how female students and staff members were being fired, demoted or forced to quit because of unwanted advances from male bosses and co-workers. Soon, federal courts started allowing cases of sexual harassment under Title IX. For the next three decades, Republican and Democratic administrations told schools that Title IX banned sexual harassment. Enforcement. But activists increasingly complained that federal oversight was so lax it jeopardized women’s access to education. So in 2011, the Obama administration told schools they needed a system to file complaints, an official to coordinate Title IX compliance and sexual harassment training programs. It also told schools to judge cases based on a “preponderance of evidence” (more likely than not that sexual harassment had occurred) instead of, say, “beyond a reasonable doubt” (the criminal standard). The Education Department’s top civil rights lawyer, Catherine Lhamon, threatened to strip federal funding from schools that failed to adequately respond to sexual misconduct allegations. University officials told me she threatened to wield a “huge hammer” to enforce compliance. (I asked her about it: “That sounds exactly like me,” Lhamon replied.) Backlash. At the same time, legal scholars, civil liberties groups and faculty associations warned that accused students were being punished without the due process they’d normally receive in the criminal justice system. From 2011 to 2020, students filed more than 700 lawsuits claiming universities had mishandled cases that accused them of sexual misconduct, according to a database maintained by an advocacy group that thought things had gone too far. Reversal. Trump rescinded the guidance from the Obama administration, and his administration also rewrote — and codified — Title IX rules, which made them harder to change. The result was a 554-page addition to the Federal Register that provided more protections for the accused. It replaced administrative reviews with courtroom-style proceedings that required live hearings in which the accused and the accuser could see and hear each other. Lawyers for both sides could present evidence and cross-examine witnesses. A court stopped President Joe Biden from overhauling the rules again. A swinging pendulum The broad language of Title IX has let successive presidents reinterpret its scope — and rewrite enforcement guidelines — with each shift in the cultural landscape, including the #MeToo movement and the aftermath. But college officials say the swinging pendulum of federal enforcement creates confusion on campuses, sowing doubt among students considering whether to report incidents. That won’t change anytime soon. Trump is pulling back the Education Department’s focus away from sexual misconduct. Now it plans to use Title IX to formalize his order that male and female are the only sexes. Read about how schools have tried to manage this chaos in my story. FREE TO READ Zoos South Australia Endangered species: An Australian zoo played matchmaker for two rare southern cassowaries, the world’s deadliest bird. See more of their fluorescent green eggs. Incentives: Trump announced a new $25 million whistle-blower rewards program — and said he would decide who gets the money. How would that work? Lost and found: These photos survived the Holocaust. Then they were left in a library book. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about how dangerous it is to be pregnant in Idaho. THE LATEST NEWS Midterm Elections Young voters are overwhelmingly backing Democrats in the midterms, a new Times/Siena University poll found. Neil Bush, a brother of George W. Bush and son of George H.W. Bush, said he had voted for the Democrat James Talarico in the Texas Senate race. Trump used an antisemitic slur while defending aggressive debt-collecting tactics used by Senator Roger Marshall, the Republican fighting for re-election in Kansas, during his medical career. The economy is a top concern for many voters in the midterms. In the video below, our chief economics correspondent, Ben Casselman, explains. Click to watch. The New York Times Michigan Senate Race AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, generally supports Democrats, but quietly donated to support Mike Rogers, the Republican running against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a critic of Israel. El-Sayed’s opponents have worked to link his family members to Islamist groups. The Times investigated. Around the World Vladimir Putin and Trump in Alaska last year. Doug Mills/The New York Times Vladimir Putin of Russia appears to be getting closer to restoring relations with the United States without making any compromises on Ukraine. The United States and Israel drew up plans to renew strikes on Iran after the midterms. A.I. “deepfake” political videos are flooding the internet in Brazil. Could they sway the presidential election? Tech Security researchers using OpenAI’s advanced A.I. models unearthed major security flaws in a piece of software used widely across the internet. A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for deceiving users about its data privacy practices. It’s one of the largest penalties ever levied against a tech giant. Mark Zuckerberg pressured Meta’s board to remake the company’s stock structure to shield him from California’s proposed billionaire tax. YOUR A.I. BOP Keith Collins/The New York Times If you were listening to music made by artificial intelligence, would you know? Would you want your streaming service to block it? A Times analysis of nine popular streaming platforms found that listeners don’t always know what they’re getting. QUOTE OF THE DAY John Geddes was a managing editor of The Times from 2003 to 2013 who helped oversee our transition from a print newspaper to a digital entity. He died this week at 74. Read his obituary, which among other things captures what John thought about The Times’s role in journalism, and what we’re all trying to do here. He told one of our editors: “I don’t think there can be a ‘paper of record.’ The term implies an omniscient chronicler of events, an arbiter that perfectly captures the significance and import of a day in our lives.” “I don’t work at that place,” Mr. Geddes continued. “I work at a newspaper that exists in a world where there are constraints of time, resources and knowledge. The wonder of the paper is that knowing the everyday limits to our ambitions doesn’t prevent us from trying to exceed them.” THE MORNING QUIZ This question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) A reader recently wrote to our fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, asking for advice. What did he want to know? Does his suit make him look MAGA? Can boomers pull off colorful and mismatched Gen Z styles? Can you wear a baseball cap at a family dinner? Is the half-tuck a good look for men? OPINIONS Trump can hurt Ukraine, but he can’t determine the outcome of the war, a scholar of U.S.-Russia relations says. In Israel’s upcoming elections, Palestinians can shift the country’s politics, a Palestinian researcher says. TODAY’S NUMBER 42 — That is the percentage of seats held by women in Taiwan’s legislature, the highest in Asia. The island has been running one of the world’s longest experiments in political affirmative action. The upshot? Today, few women need quotas to get elected. SPORTS W.N.B.A.: The Atlanta Dream romped the Golden State Valkyries 97-71 to take a 2-1 lead in the finals. N.F.L.: The Tennessee Titans released the defensive tackle Jordan Elliott for having a firearm on team property. RECIPE OF THE DAY Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Steak au poivre, but make it chicken. This terrific recipe brings the classic French bistro sauce to pan-fried thighs, and the result makes for a lovely weeknight dinner. There’s no Cognac on the ingredient list, but you can use a glug of it right after searing the chicken to deglaze the pan. Indeed, you ought to. Serve with egg noodles, generously buttered. BROOKLYN BORN John Turturro Brian Karlsson for The New York Times John Turturro has his first starring role in a movie in years, playing a career crook in “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.” “To carry the whole thing, that’s a big responsibility,” he told The Times. It’s a great conversation. More on culture Here’s a lovely profile of the rapper Cardi B, a “regula, degula, shmegula girl from the Bronx” with personality to spare. “This — is — my — job,” she told us, tapping her phone with a long, mint green nail. The fall season for the New York City Ballet came to a close this week and Gia Kourlas, our dance critic, counted its highlights. Videos help tell the story. Watch! Late night hosts noted how Trump can’t stop talking about Senator Jon Husted’s rear end. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Oliver Parini for The New York Times Visit Burlington, Vt., with the rugby powerhouse, podcast star and Vermont native Ilona Maher. She shared her five favorite places there. Listen to Serial’s new podcast about New York City, “METRO with Sarah Koenig.” It mines a city packed with personality to bring you investigations, personal stories, interviews and essays that will make you feel like a local, no matter where you live. The first episode drops today. Check it out here. Age in place. The youthful gerontologists at Wirecutter found the tech that’ll make it easier. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were lapidary and rapidly. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted yesterday at 08:02 PM Author Members Posted yesterday at 08:02 PM October 23, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Happy Friday. Let’s start on our southern border. Bora Erden/The New York Times You’re being watched You think Americans don’t like Flock cameras reading their license plates? The federal government has installed hundreds of powerful new A.I.-enabled cameras on tall towers all across the southern border of the United States, with plans to cover the nation’s perimeter, according to new reporting from Bora Erden and Nicholas Nehamas in The Times. President Trump’s 2024 campaign soared partly on the popularity of his argument that too many immigrants had crossed the border illegally. Large majorities back tough enforcement there. And for decades, Republicans and Democrats have agreed that a high-tech “smart wall” would be a good and cost-effective way to stop people sneaking in. That wall is rising now during an outcry about A.I. in general and mass surveillance in particular. It’s a stark illustration of a political axiom: Every policy choice comes with trade-offs. This one brings a potential loss of privacy. The new technology can see for miles in all directions, tracking people and vehicles for 24 hours a day, without a human at the controls. A tireless A.I. algorithm does the work. Many of the cameras are in remote locations deep in the desert. But others are in more populated areas, where they can see into bedrooms, watch over public beaches, track children on playgrounds and transmit footage back to the authorities. At least one million people in the United States and Mexico live in areas along the border where they can be seen by the surveillance towers, the Times analysis found. And at least four million more live under the gaze of an older generation of cameras that the government plans to retrofit with A.I. technology. There are many more to come. The Trump administration wants them in Florida, Puerto Rico and the nation’s northern border. America has Ring cameras on its entryways now — and they can pick up a lot. A security blanket The New York Times In the late 18th century, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham came up with the idea of the panopticon, a prison design that put guards in an all-seeing tower at its center. Panopticons have always made people uneasy. Modern thinkers came to view them as a metaphor for an omniscient watchfulness that would turn people docile and obedient. And some leaders are already wondering if the loss of privacy brought by these cameras is worth the gain in security. “We don’t want to be surveilled by our government,” a Republican former city councilman in Texas told The Times. He urged members of the G.O.P. to imagine the towers under the control of Democrats. To get a sense of what the cameras do, Times reporters went to two dozen A.I.-enabled camera towers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and launched a drone with a camera aboard it to approximate what the tower can see. And it’s a lot. The cameras can detect people coming in and out of houses. They can identify and track vehicles. They can follow people and cars from camera to camera as they move from one vantage point to another. And they can alert agents of the Border Patrol, who can view the footage and decide whether to dispatch agents to intercept the targets. Those agents can also share the footage with local, state and federal law enforcement authorities, and even foreign governments. “Any capability that improves an agent’s awareness and ability to assess potential risks helps protect agents, migrants and the public,” an official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. The official from C.B.P. said the agency “employs technology while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.” But there’s a catch. Its privacy guidelines say that people near the border can’t “opt out” of surveillance and affirm that the cameras could record people engaging “in First Amendment protected activities” or “complying with the law.” The watched public Bora Erden/The New York Times And what if people don’t know that the cameras are there, watching them? Most of the people The Times spoke to who live or work near the surveillance towers did not know their purpose, or their power. “Most thought they were cell towers or radar equipment,” my colleagues write. Others shrugged. Surveillance is a way of life now. “This is the world we live in,” said a councilman in San Clemente, California, who supports the towers. “There are cameras everywhere. You walk down the street here, you’re being recorded. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” Read and see much more — including how the cameras work and how much of the border they can see. The link is free. FREE TO READ Nariman El-Mofty for The New York Times World Nomad Games: Horseback archery is making a comeback. In Israel: Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, is challenging Benjamin Netanyahu in upcoming elections. Can he beat him? Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning was about an Australian zoo playing matchmaker for giant birds. Take our news quiz. THE LATEST NEWS Around the World Trump called Elon Musk and asked him to restore Ukraine’s full access to the Starshield satellite communications network. Ukrainian officials said limited bandwidth had affected the country’s ability to fight. The United States told some of its government employees and their families to leave Saudi Arabia as attacks by the Houthis continue. The authorities in France have banned gatherings in some cities this weekend after last week’s violent protests. A typhoon battered Taiwan with high winds and heavy waves, shutting down schools and businesses and killing at least one person. It could affect an upcoming election. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Tibet killed at least 16 people and destroyed hundreds of homes in a remote, high-altitude region. Climate Change Severe heat killed an estimated 50,000 people in European cities this summer, a likely record. Global warming is projected to reach 2.6 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a U.N. report, after the United States abandoned its climate pledge. Almost all of the world’s shallow-water coral reefs are now critically endangered because of climate change. Midterm Elections The Michigan Senate race just keeps getting nastier. Most voters believe the election results will be accurate, a poll found. A highly personal attack ad by the Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has split his party, drawing local Republican condemnation but praise from Trump. Trump’s policies could cost Republicans in Iowa, where farmers face higher prices for diesel and fertilizer, and lower sales to China, Canada and Mexico. A federal judge in California blocked the Homeland Security Department from carrying out most field operations focused on uncovering voter fraud. Tech Google announced a deal that will pay homes and businesses to use less electricity to free up power for data centers. The courts, not Congress, are forcing tech giants like Google and Meta to behave differently. For one thing, they now have to pay real money for past abuses. Other Big Stories Could the shape of our heads increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease? Some scientists think it might. The former director of Florida’s gambling addiction hotline was sentenced to prison for stealing to feed his own gambling habit. The New York City Council voted to ban horse-drawn carriages starting in 2028. SHOT BY ICE Daniele Volpe for The New York Times The ICE officer shot José García-Sorto in the chest. His lung collapsed, and the bullet lodged in his spine. That was about a year ago. He still does not know why the officer did it. García-Sorto crossed the border illegally in 2023 but had no criminal record. And he was never charged with a crime as a result of the ICE encounter, suggesting that the authorities did not find evidence he had put anyone in danger. He is one of at least 25 people whom federal immigration agents have fired upon since Trump returned to office. Many of them are quickly forgotten. But García-Sorto let The Times document the aftermath of his shooting over several months. Here’s what he went through. OPINIONS No matter who wins in Israel’s elections, the United States needs to rethink its foreign policies there, writes a former national security adviser under President Joe Biden. Threatening to revoke Representative Ilhan Omar’s citizenship is an authoritarian move, the editorial board writes. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now TODAY’S NUMBER Jamie Squire/Getty Images 0 — That is the number of World Series championships won by either the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays, who are set to face off in Game 1 of the best-of-seven Fall Classic tonight. Whatever happens at the end, we’ll have a first-time champion. SPORTS N.B.A.: Many longtime employees at Madison Square Garden got an email from the New York Knicks saying they would get championship rings. It turned out to be a phishing test. N.B.A.: LeBron James posted the biggest rally of his career as the Philadelphia 76ers stormed back from a 29-point deficit to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 114-106. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer, is leaving millions of sponsorship dollars on the table. He has his reasons. RECIPE OF THE DAY Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Yossy Arefi. It is not too soon to start auditioning recipes you might want to cook for Thanksgiving. Start with Melissa Clark’s for apple bourbon Bundt cake, which absolutely could follow a roasted turkey. (Thanksgiving pie is so 2024.) It’ll last you a few days: The whiskey syrup that soaks the cake helps keep it from going stale. Toast slices for breakfast, and spread with cream cheese. SYNCOPATION AND SURPRISE Isabella Cotier In his latest close read of a poem, A.O. Scott turns his attention to Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility —” just 50 words long — a single, elaborate metaphor about art and the artist’s home. Won’t you take a minute and read the poem with him? You’ll think about it all day. More on culture The new film “A Talent for Murder” follows a mysterious young man from a New York publisher who goes to Switzerland to persuade the renowned writer Patricia Highsmith to write a final installment of her series about the fictional con man Tom Ripley. It stars Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich. “Watching it,” Alissa Wilkinson writes in her review, “gives a sensation akin to curling up under a cozy crocheted blanket with a novel and a hot toddy nearby.” Meet the Brooklyn woman who cracked up Conan O’Brien on a recent episode of “Subway Takes,” spontaneously telling the host that she had two kids with the comedian. “One’s in medical school,” she said. “One’s in jail.” They riffed from there. The New York City subway remains a magical place. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Watch Billy Corgan, who sat for an interview with “Popcast.” “I maybe had one of the most unusual careers in the history of pop and rock, and I don’t think that’s an oversell,” he told Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. Keep your anger in check. We’ve got tools for that. Dry your dank basement — or any room that leaves you feeling clammy — with this whisper-quiet dehumidifier tested by the home health aides at Wirecutter. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were attachable, catchable and teachable. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted 21 hours ago Author Members Posted 21 hours ago October 24, 2026 Good morning. New York has plunged fully into fall, complete with cozy scarves and puffy vests. Let’s go outside. María Jesús Contreras Outside chance By Melissa Kirsch Walking home late one night this week, I paused to register the perfect quiet, the air sweet with the scent of decaying leaves: the city in October, when the cold is still just flirting. The simple delight that Emily Brontë observed — “Every leaf speaks bliss to me / Fluttering from the autumn tree” — seemed attainable. What a waste to go inside and go to sleep when being out in the fresh night feels this good. Fall is a season that rewards outdoorsy people, those who have been waiting patiently for the heat to break and the mosquitoes to retreat so they can layer on their wicking fabrics and take to the trails. The word “outdoorsy” is one that bedevils me: It’s one of those noun-turned-adjectives that purports to simply describe a person who likes to be in nature, but implies virtue. An outdoorsy person is healthy, active, connected to the earth. An indoorsy person, by contrast, is sedentary, vitamin D-deficient, screen-addicted. I aspire to all the moral characteristics of the outdoorsy set, and so have spent my adult life trying to become a person who can follow color-coded trail markers through the spruces. Outdoor Boys, a YouTube channel with over 20 million subscribers, features people going to the furthest extremes of outdoorsiness: camping on frozen oceans, building survival shelters in blizzards, catching and cooking snakes. Natalie Berry, a freelancer, wrote about the phenomenon in The Times this week. The videos are “usually enjoyed indoors, by a predominantly male audience, who find comfort in watching others overcome discomfort,” she noted. They’re like housecats watching pumas and jaguars stalk jungle prey from the comfort of their living-room sun puddles. Getting comfortable with discomfort seems to me to be the key to living a bigger, more fulfilling life. A few years ago, I had the rather rudimentary realization that my aversion to being cold was causing me to shrink my life to fit within the walls of my apartment during winter. I’d decline invitations, measuring the worthiness of an activity by its proximity to a thermostat. When I realized being cold is not an emergency — it’s just discomfort, and discomfort can be tolerated — I got a better winter coat and stopped dreading February so much. Outdoorsiness as an identity, however, has continued to elude me. There’s a certain amount of skill that goes into erecting a tent, rappelling down a rock face. On message boards where people ask how they can become more outdoorsy, the advice is to start slow: Go to a park and build an evening campfire before planning a weeklong camping trip. Those of us who aspire to outdoorsy might embrace the alternate descriptor outsidey in the meantime. “Outdoorsy is nature for adventure. Outsidey is nature for leisure,” goes a TikTok on the distinction. Mountaineering is for the outdoorsy, it explains, whereas an outsidey person will “frolic upon the meadow.” It’s a lighthearted differentiation, but the ultimate effect is one of inclusiveness. You don’t have to summit a mountain in order to appreciate the foliage. You don’t have to be athletic or intrepid in order to be connected to the natural world. THE LATEST NEWS Alaska Senate Race President Trump Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times President Trump said he directed the Justice Department to block certification of the Alaska Senate election if the Republican incumbent loses by a narrow margin. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit yesterday arguing that the results could be tainted by voter confusion over the fact that there is challenger on the ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., whose name is so similar to the incumbent’s, Dan S. Sullivan. And these are just two of the steps raising fears that Trump is laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the election if he doesn’t like the outcome. More on Politics Senators from both parties have told the White House that they will block all Trump nominees from getting confirmed until the administration restores satellite communications capabilities used by Ukraine’s military. The Justice Department accused two former F.B.I. officials of lying to Congress about investigations involving Hunter Biden, the son of the former president. Here’s what Democrats plan to do with their power if they win back Congress Around the World Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three others in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Israeli forces shot dead the assailants, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a major operation on the neighborhood of Hebron where they are from. Melania Trump, the first lady, said that she had brokered a local cease-fire between Russian and Ukrainian forces in a southern Ukrainian city. France has deployed 70,000 police officers today in hopes of avoiding a repeat of last weekend’s unrest. Other Big Stories “I have to go in”: The father credited with stopping the gunman who killed three students and a teacher at an Oregon elementary school gave his first public account of how it happened. New data shows a drop in the number of ninth-grade girls who identify as bisexual. Researchers are debating what it means. Read our review of the new foldable iPhone. THE INTERVIEW Gina Hinojosa Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times “While we have been fighting these culture wars for 10 years in this country — culture wars that are not winnable because they depend on your personal experiences, your lived experience — the only winners have been the tech giants that are amassing our money and our power and all of our data.” — Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor of Texas. Click here to watch, listen or read her conversation with Lulu Garcia-Navarro. GAME OF THE WEEK Rick Osentoski/Associated Press Green Bay Packers vs. Detroit Lions: It’s a good time to be a football fan in the Midwest. N.F.L. teams in Chicago, Kansas City, Green Bay, Detroit, Minnesota, Cincinnati and Cleveland all have winning records as we approach Week 7, and the region’s N.F.C. North is the only division in which every team has better than 50 percent odds to make the playoffs. Tomorrow at 4:25 p.m. Eastern, two longtime rivals from that division face off in Detroit’s climate-controlled dome. The Packers are riding on momentum after three straight wins. The Lions have benefited from the steady hand of their quarterback, Jared Goff. —Matthew Cullen Plus: Here’s what they are talking about on all of those N.F.L. headsets. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Nathan Fielder, left, and Elizabeth Holmes, center, in a scene from “You Can See Everything.” A24 Elizabeth Holmes let the makers of “You Can See Everything” dissect her lies. On our “Hard Fork” podcast, three reporters who have covered Holmes dissect why no one can look away. In “A Talent for Murder,” Helen Mirren plays the reclusive and curmudgeonly novelist Patricia Highsmith — except she’s a suspicious character in a thriller. Is it believable? Music The music world for years sneered at Billy Corgan, the frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins. Now, as young fans rediscover his music, he’s sneering back. Listen to his interview on Popcast. Twenty years after Amy Winehouse released “Back to Black,” her fans still can’t get enough. Fine Art A Claude Monet painting of flowers in his Giverny water garden sold for about $56 million. Why do wealthy collectors covet his work? Art Basel announced that the Paris edition of the fair was ending early for safety reasons, as the city braces for another weekend of protests. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now RECIPE OF THE WEEK Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. By Melissa Clark Roasted Red Pepper and Feta Cornbread There are so many ways to bake a batch of cornbread. Sweet or savory, firm or fluffy, plain or loaded with aromatics and cheese: You really can’t go wrong. Lidey Heuck adds roasted red pepper and feta to her easy cornbread recipe, giving the loaf pockets of tangy cheesiness. The sour cream in the batter means this won’t dry out if you want to make it a day ahead — that is, if you can resist a pan of warm cornbread cooling on your counter. I can’t. REAL ESTATE Tony Cenicola/The New York Times The Hunt: A family with deep Chicago roots left Illinois for a job in New York with $1.8 million to spend on a new home. What did they find? Play our game. What you get for $1 million: A Colonial Revival in Janesville, Wis., a Second Empire house in Rollinsford, N.H., and a bungalow in Nashville are all on the market. Which would you choose? Settling down: Gig economy workers face higher scrutiny in getting a mortgage than those with traditional incomes. Here’s what to know. LIVING In California. Lance Gerber Compounding: A couple built a 10,000 square-foot residence in Palm Desert, Calif., to compel their adult children to visit. Did it work? Meaningful minimalism: A Los Angeles couple took inspiration from Shaker design to create an office that embodies work-life balance. High water mark: New innovations help homes in low-lying areas stay dry even as sea levels rise. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Ruthie Darling/NYT Wirecutter How to find the perfect jeans A great pair of jeans should survive every trend cycle, work with nearly everything in your closet and hold up to frequent wear. These are the things our experts considered as they tested nearly 100 pairs to find the very best men’s jeans and women’s jeans. Looking for your perfect pair? Consider what kind of shape you want. A slim-straight silhouette never goes out of style and works just as well with button-ups and blazers as with tees and sweaters. Opt for a relaxed, baggier pair if you want to feel more on-trend. You don’t you have to spend much to get something of quality. There are plenty of chic, well-made pairs for less than $50. —Erin Neil NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was toxicologic. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, 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. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted 20 hours ago Author Members Posted 20 hours ago October 25, 2026 Good morning. ICE pays local police to help with deportations. What’s that like for them? Jaron Alexander, of Ingram, Texas, is one of more than 29,000 local police officers on the front lines of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. Kirsten Luce for The New York Times One agent’s doubts By Adam B. Kushner I edit this newsletter. What does it feel like for ICE deputies who nab their neighbors and break up families? That’s the subject of this riveting look at one conflicted enforcer in The New York Times Magazine. Jaron Alexander is a police officer with a sideline helping ICE. He patrols Ingram, Texas, a town of 1.5 square miles and 1,900 people, where he sees his targets dropping their kids at school and shopping at Walmart. He has helped deport 200 people, and he defends his role: “If you’re taking federal money to do a job,” he said, “I think you should do the job.” But he also has misgivings. The Trump administration wants to rid the United States annually of one million (of the 14 million) people who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas. They hold jobs, raise families, pay taxes, run churches, grill for their block parties. They are enmeshed in American society. They and their communities pay a price when they vanish. So do some of the people who help deport them. Two arrests Alexander’s black Dodge Charger became well known around Ingram. Latino motorists began to drive the long way around his stakeouts every day. The New York Times But his deportation work began to weigh on him last Christmas, he told the reporters Francesca D’Annunzio and McKenzie Funk of ProPublica. Around then, he pulled over two Latino men in a GMC truck for failing to signal a turn — and recognized one of them. It was Ulices Macias, the father of a newborn daughter. He knew the man’s wife. “I don’t normally do this,” he told her when she showed up to help her husband, “but I’m going to open up the car.” Alexander removed the handcuffs he’d placed on Macias, who hugged his wife, embraced his 4-year-old stepson and held his 2-week-old girl. Then a waiting ICE agent, who appeared on the scene after the traffic stop, cuffed him and took him away. “I don’t enjoy when families are separated,” Alexander later told one of the family’s cousins. “That kind of fucked me up.” Later, he made a different choice when Norma Luján, who runs a housecleaning company, confronted him. Alexander was detaining the husband of one of Luján’s employees, who was pregnant. “I pray for your being, for your soul,” she recalls telling him as she cried. “I want you to think about what you’re doing. Feel it. Feel it, please.” She squeezed his hand. “I need you to look inside your heart,” she continued, “and let him go.” Alexander didn’t react at first, in Luján’s telling. “God wanted me to meet you,” she said. He met her gaze. Luján says that Alexander squeezed her hand back and then walked away to make a call. When he returned, he let the worker’s husband go, calling it a matter of “human decency.” He knew, he told the reporters, that a new father “needs to be there helping out.” Deputized ICE pays local police officers to help with deportations. A department can get a $100,000 vehicle stipend and, for every officer who pitches in, $7,500 for equipment. Then there is money to cover salaries, overtime and quarterly performance bonuses. Alexander made almost $19,000 in nine months, according to city records — a big boost for someone whose base pay is about $70,000. The immigration debate is ostensibly about U.S. policy. But immigration enforcement is about people. Their stories are complex, irreducible: Someone comes here and follows all the rules, except the ones about how to enter the country. Another takes money to help deport her but is anguished and haunted by his choices. This story, which you can read for free, captures how lives often resist easy caricature. They can be buffeted by political imperatives, the quest for safety, financial incentives and the most basic human emotions. That’s interesting. That’s affecting. That’s journalism. It can have the pathos of a novel, but it’s true. Related: In Republican-led states, officers from agriculture departments, gaming commissions and fish and wildlife agencies have been deputized by ICE in an effort to expand President Trump’s deportation campaign. FREE TO READ On Tristan da Cunha. Julia Gunther for The New York Times Far, far away: What’s it like to live on the world’s most remote inhabited island? Curds in their way: Canadian cheese makers are winning awards for their raclettes and Alpine styles. But Americans aren’t buying them. Slow TV: People in Finland are obsessed with a livestream of puppies. See the adorable video. Most shared: Times readers wanted their friends to know about Copenhagen’s hottest snack. THE LATEST NEWS Midterm Elections Barack Obama in Michigan yesterday. Nick Hagen for The New York Times Barack Obama sharply criticized Trump during appearances on the campaign trail in Michigan and Ohio. Trump cast his midterm ballot in Florida yesterday, 10 days before the election. He has repeatedly called early voting “stupid.” Americans in their 30s say the cost of living is keeping them from reaching milestones like buying a house or starting a family. It’s affecting how they vote. Democrats are winning back Latino voters who helped elect Trump in 2024, a new Times/Siena University poll shows. Use this interactive tool to explore how different demographic groups voted in the past two presidential elections, and what those shifts might mean for the midterms. The House Only a few districts will determine control of the House. See where they are. Democrats have an edge in four key House races in Pennsylvania, according to polling. More on Politics The Democratic field for 2028 is wide open, while Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are leading among Republican voters, a recent Times/Siena University poll found. Trump rolled back regulations meant to protect Americans from toxic air pollution. In the video below, our investigative reporter Eric Lipton explains how it happened. Click to watch. The New York Times Middle East Iran is in the “advanced stages” of planning attacks against Americans, U.S. officials said. These intelligence warnings, along with upcoming elections in the United States and Israel, are creating tensions that could prompt a return to full-scale war. Israel evicted hundreds of families and demolished buildings in the West Bank city of Hebron a day after Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers in the occupied territory. More International News In Paris yesterday. Abdul Saboor/Reuters Hundreds of thousands in France participated in marches yesterday. A heavy police presence helped prevent widespread violence and property damage. An enormous fire all but destroyed an infamous Nazi-era guesthouse known as the Eagle’s Nest in Germany. Other Big Stories At least 12 people, including six minors, were injured in a shooting near Florida A&M University’s football stadium after a homecoming game. Six Flags said it would add seatbelts to some roller coasters after a man who fell from a ride died. FROM OPINION Elizabeth Holmes is the perfect avatar for our age — a tech mogul who promised innovations that would help humanity but then unleashed deception, Maureen Dowd writes. The language of faith can help us live with one another, a minister writes, even without religious practice. Trump has robbed so much of what Americans hold dear, Nicholas Kristof writes. Voters can take it back in this election. Subscribe to New York Times Games. Get Super Duolingo for free. For a limited time, annual Games subscribers can enjoy 6 months of language learning with Super Duolingo. Subscribe now SPORTS M.L.B.: The Milwaukee Brewers erased a four-run deficit to defeat the Tampa Bay Rays and take a 2-0 lead in the World Series. W.N.B.A.: The Golden State Valkyries changed up their strategy after losing two consecutive games to the Atlanta Dream, winning, 67-62 and evening up the series. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Every Story Is a Love Story,” by Imbolo Mbue Wolo, a Cameroonian immigrant living in New Jersey, receives a letter from the person he least wants to hear from: Victoria Snow, the woman responsible for the accidental death of his pregnant wife, Yoma. “Everything will never be all right,” she writes. “We’ll never be all right. But maybe we’ll find some kind of healing if we meet?” It’s a lofty goal, as we learn when Mbue returns to Wolo and Yoma’s courtship, which reads like a rom-com in the best way. Fans of Mbue’s previous novels, “Behold the Dreamers” and “How Beautiful We Were,” will recognize her trademark tenderness and wit, even while placing characters in the most difficult circumstances. Wolo’s response to Victoria isn’t entirely unexpected, but the tension shimmering beneath it delivers on the promise of this book’s title. Read our review here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Max out your look with some kooky, over-the-top accessories. Or, go minimal. The perfect white T-shirt can be the sartorial holy grail. Open a durable and comfortable folding chair. MEAL PLAN Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Fall is here, which means autumnal ingredients. That doesn’t have to mean pumpkin, but these pumpkin cardamom crumb muffins are superb. For dinner, you can try this cozy new orzo dish made with browned Italian sausage and sage. Or, whip up a hearty, belly-warming bowl of roasted tomato and white bean stew. Find more recipes here. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was practical. Can you put eight historical events — including the sequencing of the human genome, the creation of Britain and the invention of the Pringles can — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, 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. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
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