Members phkrause Posted June 9, 2025 Author Members Posted June 9, 2025 June 8, 2025 Good morning. The White House called up the National Guard to help quell protests in Southern California. Plus, we have a Q&A about the pressures of parental summertime planning — and the latest on the Trump-Musk fight and the French Open. Immigration clash In Compton, Calif. Philip Cheung for The New York Times President Trump ordered at least 2,000 National Guard members to Los Angeles County. For two days, hundreds of demonstrators have faced off with immigration agents in riot gear. More protests are expected today, and a Trump official said that troops would arrive in L.A. within 24 hours. Here’s what we know: Protests: Some of the most active demonstrations took place in Compton and in Paramount, a majority Hispanic area about 25 miles southeast of the Hollywood sign. Agents used flash-bang grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets on crowds of protesters. Some demonstrators threw fireworks and rocks at police officers. The L.A.P.D. detained a number of protesters but also said that demonstrations in the city of L.A. were peaceful. Deployment: Trump’s order is the first time that a president has activated a state’s National Guard without a request from that state’s governor since 1965, an expert said. Then, Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators. Trump said he considered efforts to block ICE agents a “form of rebellion.” Context: Protests broke out on Friday as federal agents rolled through L.A.’s garment district in search of undocumented migrant workers. The raids signaled a new phase of Trump’s immigration crackdown focused on workplaces, Lydia DePillis and Ernesto Londoño wrote. Response: California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, described Trump’s order as “purposefully inflammatory,” saying that federal officials “want a spectacle.” Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, said the presence of the troops would “not be helpful.” Follow live updates. Camp out Tatsiana Volkava/Getty Images By Adam B. Kushner I’m the editor of The Morning. The trope of the overscheduled child doesn’t go away just because the school year ends. Type A parents, panicked about falling behind, increasingly use summer camp to build our kids’ skills and pad their résumés. We stress about the best offerings and rush to reserve spots as soon as admissions open up. I registered my middle child for his Pennsylvania sleepaway camp all the way back in August. Yes, I recognize that’s absurd. Some parents, though, are exhausted by the rat race, exasperated by the cost and desperate to give their kids a bit of unstructured time. Maybe 9-year-olds don’t need to be entertained around the clock! These families are opting their children out of summer plans altogether. Hannah Seligson, a freelance reporter, profiled them for a story The Times published today. I spoke to her about what she found. Are we more reliant on camps than we used to be? Yes. “Demand is at record levels,” Steve Baskin, the head of the American Camp Association, told me. Why? Baskin points to a surge after Covid and lockdowns, when parents wanted to get their kids off screens and make up for prolonged periods of social isolation. But larger trends are at play, too. One researcher, Katherine Goldstein, mentioned three: “There is no country other than the United States that has such a long summer, a high supervision culture for children, and not a lot of publicly funded options.” Can you explain the argument of the refuseniks you write about? First, they say camp is too expensive. Then it sometimes requires perfect timing to get in — and a zillion forms. Some parents also say they want their kids to experience boredom, which is not only free but can also teach valuable life skills. So what are these people doing? So many things and also nothing! Like, zero plans? Literally. There are camp refuseniks who are fine with their kids watching a bit more TV because their school year calendar is so packed — or, in the parlance of modern parenting, “optimized.” Everyone needs a break, right? Others are using the time and money they save to travel. Partly this is a response to insane price tags — and not just in Manhattan. What are some of the egregious ones you heard about? Some of the toniest sleepaway camps ask $17,000 for seven weeks. But often tuition doesn’t even include all the costs. Hali Berman, who runs a site that resells camp items, told me some people spend up to $3,000 on sheets and towels for sleepaway camp. Obviously that’s an extreme example. Plenty of parents, I assume, can’t opt out. Don’t working people need someone to supervise the kids? Yes, “summer break” is a bit of a cruel joke, or misnomer, for parents who don’t have a ton of flexibility. One mom had to remind her 8-year-old boys that it’s illegal for her to leave them home alone. So summer often brings a scramble to find child care. But babysitting, especially for more than one child, can be much cheaper than a summer full of camps. Do you have kids? What are they doing? Last summer, my daughter, now 7, attended seven different day camps in Manhattan. (We showed up at the wrong camp only once.) This year, she’s going to sleepaway camp in Canada. My 5-year-old has no plans. I didn’t want to feel pressure to send him every day just because I’d paid a fortune to do so. What did you do for camp as a kid? I went to sleepaway camp for many years but stopped to do something résumé-padding: academic and volunteer programs. Ha, that’s the spirit! Read Hannah’s story here. THE LATEST NEWS Trump and Musk Trump’s decision to pull an Elon Musk associate out of the running to lead NASA helped doom the Trump-Musk alliance. Read the inside story of the rupture. MAGA-friendly podcasters, including Joe Rogan, just want Trump and Musk to get along — but they have ultimately sided with the president. The Trump-Musk breakup is more than an interpersonal conflict: It’s a sign that Trump is struggling to hold his populist conservative coalition together, Nate Cohn writes. More on the Trump Administration In Butler, Pa., last July. Kristian Thacker for The New York Times Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to kill Trump in Pennsylvania last year, was a nerdy engineering student on the dean’s list. As his mental health eroded, he stockpiled explosive materials. Read a Times examination of his path to the deadly shooting. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would reveal deep-state secrets linked to conspiracy theories. Justice Department and F.B.I. leaders are struggling to fulfill the promise. A university founded by George Soros had to leave Hungary after Viktor Orban targeted it. Academics at the school say Trump is using a similar playbook against Harvard. International In public, Vladimir Putin says Russia’s friendship with China is unshakable. But a secret Russian intelligence document shows deep suspicion of Chinese espionage. On nights when Russia tries to overwhelm Kyiv’s air defenses, civilian volunteers guard the skies with the help of caffeine and vintage guns. Italians will decide in a referendum whether to make it easier for immigrants to become citizens. The right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, opposes the rule change. Other Big Stories Coco Gauff Thibaud Moritz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Coco Gauff won her first French Open title, defeating Aryna Sabalenka in the final. The match was chaotic and intense: Read a recap. In Washington State, the National Guard is joining hundreds of law enforcement officers in their search for a man the police say killed his three young daughters. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Who lost the most from the Trump-Musk feud? Musk. Polling shows that Republicans side with Trump over the billionaire by almost 12 to one. “Musk already lost his war,” The Washington Post’s Philip Bump writes. Republicans. Trump and the Republicans believed they could control Musk, and thus his money. “The deal Republicans made with the rocket-building devil is coming back to haunt them,” USA Today’s Rex Huppke writes. FROM OPINION The Trump administration’s war on the government is meant to save democracy from a ruling class of unaccountable bureaucrats, Nathan Levine argues. To distinguish themselves from corruption under Trump, Democrats should reduce the influence of wealthy donors and special interests in their party, Ben Rhodes writes. Here are columns by Ross Douthat and Maureen Dowd on Trump and Musk. Subscribe Today The Morning highlights a small portion of the journalism that The New York Times offers. To access all of it, become a subscriber with this introductory offer. MORNING READS Jonathan Groff in the musical “Just in Time.” Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Predictions: The Tony Awards ceremony is tonight. Here’s who The Times’s theater reporter Michael Paulson expects to win. Travel: Art, jazz and East African food are among the highlights of 36 hours in Detroit. Vows: First came Forbes’s “30 Under 30.” Then came love. Your pick: The most clicked article in The Morning yesterday was about the risks of proactive peeing. Trending: A Colombian senator, Miguel Uribe, was shot at a campaign event in Bogotá. The attack recalled the political violence of past decades. Lives Lived: Bill Atkinson was a designer for Apple who created the software that made it possible to display shapes, images and text on the screen and present a simulated “desktop.” Atkinson died at 74. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Mother Emanuel,” by Kevin Sack: In this devastating, meticulously researched account — our reviewer called it “a masterpiece” — Sack, a former reporter for The New York Times, examines the hate crime at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2015, in which nine congregants were murdered by a white supremacist during Bible study. The book covers the massacre, but dwells in the lead-up, with a focus on the history of the Methodist church in the South. Sack also considers the role of forgiveness — in the aftermath of the tragedy, in the government’s response to it and, most important, in the families of victims and survivors, some of whom struggle to muster compassion for a killer who showed no remorse. More on books Here are the best thrillers of the year (so far). Writers and artists remember Edmund White, “the Cole Porter of literature.” THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is Misty Copeland, the first Black female principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater. In our conversation, she announced that she was retiring after a groundbreaking 25 years. We talked about the obstacles she has overcome, the value of diversity and why she’s ready to move on from this stage of her career. You’ve been ramping down dancing for a while. Why does now feel like the time to make an official retirement announcement? In all honesty, I’ve wanted to fade away into the background, which is not really possible. The legacy of what I’ve created, the way that I’m carrying so many stories of Black dancers who have come before me — I can’t just disappear. There has to be an official closing to my time at American Ballet Theater, this company that has meant everything to me. You’ve expressed your gratitude toward A.B.T., and at the same time you talk about feeling stifled or thwarted there. Whenever you’re approaching a situation where things have been done a certain way for forever and change needs to happen, there are going to be difficult and uncomfortable times. That was 15 years of my career. I felt like I needed to fully be who I am and not bend to fit what I thought they wanted or what I’m seeing in front of me, which I will never be able to be because I’m not a white woman. So my relationship with the company, with my artistic director, with the dancers in the company has evolved through that time. It took a lot of patience. When you go onstage for your last performance in the fall, what do you hope you’ll feel in that moment? I don’t have hopes and dreams for what’s going to happen that night. I think that I’m going to go out there feeling in control of the decision that I’ve made, the pieces that I am choosing to dance, the shape I’m going to be in. I only have control over so much. So I want to allow myself the freedom to do what feels right and feels good. Read more of the interview here. You can also watch a longer version of this interview on YouTube. And big news: The Interview is doing its first live show at the Tribeca Festival on June 12. Lulu Garcia-Navarro will be interviewing Sandra Oh. If you’re in the New York area, join us! THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photo illustration by Justin Metz Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Buy a Father’s Day gift. Get stronger and avoid injury. Keep your car clean with a “carbage can.” MEAL PLAN James Ransom for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests budget-friendly recipes including white chicken chili, gochujang buttered noodles, and smashed beef kebab with cucumber yogurt. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were facelift and facilitate. Can you put eight historical events — including the birth of French wine, the Stonewall riots and the invention of duct tape — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 9, 2025 Author Members Posted June 9, 2025 June 9, 2025 Good morning. The National Guard is in Los Angeles. The U.S. is meeting with China for trade talks today in London. And Israel intercepted a ship headed to Gaza with some aid — and Greta Thunberg — onboard. More news is below. We also have an in-depth look at Trump’s failure to meet his foreign policy goals. Los Angeles protests In downtown Los Angeles. Mark Abramson for The New York Times Los Angeles is waking up on edge. Yesterday, hundreds of National Guard troops arrived in the city, and crowds of people demonstrated against President Trump’s immigration raids. They clashed with federal agents, leaving burned cars, broken barricades and graffiti scrawled across government buildings downtown. (See photos and video of the protests.) The gatherings were isolated to pockets of the city, and mostly peaceful, but clashes flared for hours before sunset. Officers fired munitions and tear gas, while protesters aimed fireworks and stones at police vehicles. They also lit several Waymo driverless taxis on fire and briefly shut a freeway. Still, much of Los Angeles is living as normal. It’s supposed to be 77 and sunny today. The response Police: The L.A.P.D. chief said that clashes were getting increasingly violent and the police department declared any gatherings downtown unlawful. State: Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, formally asked the Trump administration to pull National Guard troops out of L.A. “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” he said on X. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty.” Trump administration: For the president, the protests are a chance for a standoff with a political rival in a deep blue state over an issue core to his agenda. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, posted on social media that “this is a fight to save civilization.” The protesters Downtown. Philip Cheung for The New York Times Some people demonstrating said they were doing so for their friends or neighbors. Many are carrying Mexican and other Latin American flags as emblems. Immigration raids have increased across Southern California over the last week, and officials vowed to continue immigration enforcement “every day.” The Los Angeles Times explains your rights. A man accused of assaulting a federal officer at an immigration protest in Paramount has been added to the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list. Police officers and protesters physically fought after a solidarity protest in San Francisco turned violent. For more: The Daily is on the protests today. President Trump Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Mirage of power? By German Lopez President Trump returned to the White House with big promises on foreign policy. He would get a peace deal in Ukraine within 24 hours. An agreement between Israel and Hamas would follow. China would stop taking advantage of the United States on trade. For that matter, Europe, Japan and the rest of the world would stop, too. Things have not worked out as promised. Trump has not ended any wars. His only trade deal to this point is a limited, and temporary, one with Britain. His administration has claimed progress in nuclear talks with Iran, but so far they have produced no agreement. It’s still early in his term, but he has failed to meet the extremely high expectations he set for himself. Why? The United States may not have as much leverage as Trump believed. Overplayed hands Consider Trump’s troubles in Ukraine. He once told Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, “You don’t have the cards.” Ukraine is so dependent on the United States, Trump suggested, that he can demand anything he wants. Yet Zelensky stood his ground. He rejected a peace proposal from the Trump administration that would force Ukraine to give up nearly 20 percent of its territory and its chances of joining NATO. And Zelensky’s concessions either work in his favor (accepting a full cease-fire) or don’t mean as much in the face of his country’s extinction (giving the United States access to some minerals). In the Oval Office. Doug Mills/The New York Times Last week, Zelensky demonstrated that Ukraine does have some cards. It covertly launched drones across Russia that blew up airfields and bombers — an attack that Russian bloggers compared to Pearl Harbor. Ukraine operated alone; it didn’t give Trump a heads-up. Separately, Ukraine got Germany to promise more military support, including $5.7 billion in new aid. Zelensky has cajoled European leaders to step up as Trump has suggested backing out of Ukraine. All of this adds up to a sort of message: Ukraine can act on its own, and it has other options. It doesn’t need to go against its interests to appease the United States. This story, of America’s insufficient leverage, repeats with issue after issue. Russia has rejected Trump’s friendly overtures, continued to align with China and launched new salvos in Ukraine. China believes it can win a trade war. Europe levied counter-tariffs. Israel has prioritized its desire to crush Hamas over keeping Trump happy. Even a decimated Hamas has refused to go along with America’s proposed peace terms. New era Trump grew up when America’s world dominance was unquestioned. His aggressive “America First” approach seems ripped from the Cold War, in which the United States could push around other nations and bend the global order to its terms. But the world has moved on. Countries don’t treat the United States as a superpower to appease but simply as another factor among their many other problems and interests. They will go along with America only if they feel they truly have something to gain. Even Trump’s victories prove the rule. His administration, for example, seems close to landing a deal with Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. But the context is key. Iran’s economy has collapsed after years of sanctions, and its military and its proxies around the Middle East are diminished from U.S. and Israeli attacks. A deal is as much about Iran’s weakness as America’s strength. To put this in Trump’s terms: America no longer has all of the cards, and other nations have learned they can call its bluff. INSIDE OUR GAZA REPORTING The New York Times A few weeks ago, a haunting video of a girl in a burning building in Gaza circulated online. She had survived an Israeli airstrike on a shelter and former school that killed 31 people, including 18 children, according to Gaza’s emergency services. Israel said that militants were hiding there. Lauren Jackson, an editor on The Morning, asked Nader Ibrahim, a video journalist based in London, how he and his team found the girl, Hanin al-Wadie. Here’s what he said: Using social media: We traced the video’s trajectory online to find the person who shot the original. We contacted him, a young man who lived across the street from the school, and asked for the full, unedited clips. We also found witnesses who appeared in the footage and contacted them to confirm how the events unfolded on that morning in late May. Creating a timeline: The video files’ metadata told us exactly when the clips were filmed. Other videos from the same time frame helped us piece the story together. Reporting on the ground: One of our freelancers in Gaza, Bilal Shbair, helped the London team identify a medic seen in the videos. Bilal called sources and showed them the picture of the medic until he was able to identify him. We then interviewed the medic from London and confirmed he was the one who rescued the girl. Separately, Saher Alghorra, a freelance Gaza photographer on assignment for The Times, used a similar approach to find the girl in the video. He called sources until he found the girl’s uncle, who told him she was at a hospital in northern Gaza. Saher went there, identified her and filmed her and her uncle. See The Times’s reporting. More on Gaza Greta Thunberg and activists in Italy before sailing toward Gaza. Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images The Gaza-bound ship that Israel intercepted also carried Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament. Israel called it a “selfie yacht.” Patrick Kingsley, The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, toured a tunnel underneath a hospital in southern Gaza. The passageway embodies a narrative battle over how the conflict should be portrayed, he writes. THE LATEST NEWS Tariffs U.S. and Chinese officials are expected to meet in London today for a second round of talks aimed at a truce in the two countries’ trade war. The U.S. government is also scheduled to submit a legal brief outlining why Trump’s tariffs should be preserved after a trade court ruled many of them unlawful. More on the Trump Administration Trump’s travel ban on citizens of 12 mostly African and Middle Eastern countries took effect. Read more about the ban. Lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the man the U.S. mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March and brought back last week, asked a judge to still pursue contempt proceedings against Trump officials. Democrats in Congress have fiercely opposed Trump’s policy bill, but some speak more supportively about some of its tax cuts. Trump threatened to cut off Elon Musk’s federal contracts. It’s more evidence that the president looks at the government as a means of penalizing those who cross him, Peter Baker writes. Other Big Stories “I just can’t go through with it”: The Times listened for a day as a nurse practitioner who prescribes abortion pills and sends them into states with bans took calls from patients. Read about her conversations. Southern Baptists plan to vote this week on acting to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage. Read what they could do. Before Russia began seizing territory from Ukraine, Crimea was famous for its beaches. It still gets Russian tourists, but things are volatile. The authorities in Tennessee caught an escaped pet zebra and airlifted it to an animal trailer. See a video from The A.P. OPINIONS “MAGA plays to a social desert”: Arlie Russell Hochschild visited Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District to learn how people there see Trump now. Here’s a column by David French on the L.A. protests. “America is no longer a stable country, and it is growing less stable by the day,” he writes. Subscribe Today The Morning highlights a small portion of the journalism that The New York Times offers. To access all of it, become a subscriber with this introductory offer. MORNING READS The 2000s are back. Big hair and wired headphones: Millennial trends are cool again. Dumpster diving: Graduation season, when some students leave behind expensive household items and luxury goods, is a great time for scavengers. Metropolitan Diary: Like liquid gold. Your pick: For the second day in a row, the most clicked article in The Morning was about the health risks of going to the bathroom “just in case.” Lives Lived: As a Navy pilot, Conrad Shinn was the first person to land a plane at the South Pole. His feat, on Oct. 31, 1956, helped to open Antarctica to scientific research and bolster American strategic interests during the Cold War. Shinn died at 102. SPORTS Carlos Alcaraz Denis Balibouse/Reuters Tennis: Carlos Alcaraz won his second French Open title, defeating Jannik Sinner in a six-hour thriller. N.B.A.: The finals are 1-1 after the Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Indiana Pacers, 123-107, in Game 2. ARTS AND IDEAS At Radio City Music Hall. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times The Tony Awards ceremony was last night. “Maybe Happy Ending,” about two discarded robots who go on a road trip, won six awards — the most of any show — including best new musical. “The triumph of a show with a puzzling title and tough-to-explain themes was a vote of confidence in originality by an industry often dominated by big-brand intellectual property and big-name Hollywood stars,” writes Michael Paulson, The Times’s theater reporter. Here are more winners: Best musical revival: “Sunset Boulevard” Best play: “Purpose,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Best leading actress in a play: Sarah Snook for “The Picture of Dorian Gray” Best leading actor in a play: Cole Escola for “Oh, Mary!” See the full list here. More on culture James Frey Erik Tanner for The New York Times Twenty years after the memoir “A Million Little Pieces” became a national scandal, its author, James Frey, is ready for a new audience. “Did I lie? Yup,” he told The Times. “Did I also write a book that tore people to shreds? Yeah.” A new two-part documentary series, out tomorrow, explores the rise of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. Win the cookout with this wine-soaked, salt-grilled beef tenderloin. Protect your rental deposit with removable wallpaper. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were adaptation and adoption. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 11, 2025 Author Members Posted June 11, 2025 June 10, 2025 Good morning. Trump is sending hundreds of Marines into Los Angeles, where police officers broke up protests last night. We’re covering that first, then we have more news — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to fire all members of a C.D.C. vaccine panel and Meta’s new A.I. lab to pursue “superintelligence.” In front of the Federal Building in downtown L.A. Mark Abramson for The New York Times Troops in Los Angeles By the staff of The Morning The Marines are heading to Los Angeles. The Trump administration deployed a battalion of 700 to the city, along with 2,000 additional National Guard troops, in response to days of protests in the city. The demonstrations were more limited last night, and state officials criticized Trump’s orders. “This is a provocation, not just an escalation,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with The Times. “This is intended to sow more fear, more anger, and to further divide.” The Pentagon did not make clear why it would need more National Guard troops in the city. The state has also sued to block the use of the National Guard. And Democrats expressed alarm about the arrival of Marines. As our colleagues explain in this article, American military troops are supposed to be used inside the U.S. only in the rarest and most extreme situations. Strangely, even as his administration deployed the armed forces, Trump said the situation in Los Angeles had already calmed down. “It’s still simmering a little bit,” he told reporters at the White House yesterday afternoon. “But not very much.” The police and small groups of protesters clashed in the Little Tokyo neighborhood yesterday, where the L.A.P.D. made arrests, and used tear gas to disperse crowds. But there generally seemed to be fewer clashes between protesters and police officers. So far, the National Guard appears to have largely stayed out of those confrontations. ICE’s escalation ICE agents outside a federal building downtown on Sunday. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Why are the protests against Trump’s immigration raids happening now? Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration, explains: The eruption in Los Angeles began when immigration agents showed up to arrest people at their jobs. They hadn’t told the city they were coming, and protesters tried to stop them. This probably won’t be the last such conflict. The Trump administration is escalating its immigration crackdown, and worksite raids are the next major step. Future arrests are likely to be disruptive. Finding more migrants: For most of this year, officials from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement have snagged the easiest-to-find migrants: People with criminal records, court petitions, asylum requests. Agents often knew where these people would be. The result: The government was deporting about 700 per day, not much more than the Biden administration. Last month, Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar, delivered a message: ICE needed to hit a “minimum” of 3,000 arrests a day — about 10 times the figure under Biden. Creative answers: To get there, the agency is seeking new tactics. The government has dismissed criminal cases against migrants and then arrested them as they left court. It is showing up at workplaces. And it has asked the National Guard and the Marines to help with enforcement. Can Trump do that? The White House says it deployed federal troops to Los Angeles because the local police need help to counter “insurrectionists.” But the Posse Comitatus Act says the armed forces aren’t law enforcement. We asked Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, what’s allowed. Is this all legal? The founders wanted to prevent the president from using federal troops against “we the people” because of the way the Red Coats used warrants to do whatever they wanted in people’s homes. But National Guard troops are local citizens; they live in their communities. So they’re allowed to help with police work — until they’re federalized. Which is what Trump did last weekend. Then they became indistinguishable from active-duty military. All they can do is defend federal workers like ICE agents, and federal buildings like an ICE detention center. So the California National Guard and the Marines can’t contain the protests? Not unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act! That law lets troops police our streets to suppress insurrections and help execute federal law in the face of rebellion. Trump said yesterday that the protesters were “insurrectionists.” What counts as a rebellion? It’s very vague — the law doesn’t say. It could be people trying to stop ICE agents from doing their job. I don’t think courts are going to want to argue about what constitutes a rebellion. The founders gave the president discretion here, so if Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act he’s on firm legal footing. More on the protests An officer struck an Australian television journalist with a rubber bullet while she was on the air. At least two other journalists, including a Times reporter, have also been struck during the protests. In Santa Ana, Calif., city officials said that federal agents used tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets against protesters who threw bottles and rocks. Protests spread to cities including San Francisco, Dallas and New York. They remained largely contained with brief clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement. The union leader David Huerta was released from detention. Union members across the country had marched in support of him after federal agents arrested him at a protest on Friday. More on the responses Immigrants are being cautious about going to work and school because they fear ICE sweeps, The Los Angeles Times reports. On social media, people are posting misleading photographs and conspiracy theories to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats. Waymo, the driverless taxi company, is limiting services in San Francisco after protesters set fire to five of its cars. On “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart addressed residents of L.A.: “Is your city ever not on fire?” THE LATEST NEWS Health The panel of vaccine experts that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired at the C.D.C. made significant decisions about who receives immunizations, including vaccines for children. In a sharply written open letter, dozens of employees at the National Institutes of Health accused the government of undermining the agency’s work and endangering people’s health. More on the Trump Administration A group of Democratic-led states sued to challenge the reversal of a Biden-era effort to ban devices that turn semiautomatic rifles into makeshift machine guns. Trump is asking federal job applicants to describe their allegiance to administration policy in an essay. He’s the first president to take that step, experts said. The Smithsonian said it retained authority over personnel, including at the National Portrait Gallery, whose director Trump says he’s fired. Israel-Hamas War Omer Shem Tov Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Omer Shem Tov was 20 and not particularly religious when gunmen took him hostage on Oct. 7. He found God during his 505 days of captivity. Read his interview with The Times. The Israeli-backed group set up to bypass the U.N. in Gaza aid distribution said Hamas had threatened its workers. Hamas denied the accusation. Israel said it was preparing to deport Greta Thunberg and other passengers of an aid ship it intercepted on the way to Gaza. War in Ukraine In Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Reuters Russia launched almost 500 drones and missiles at Ukraine, the largest drone barrage of the war, Ukrainian officials said. The leader of NATO urged member states to spend more on their military or “learn to speak Russian.” More International News In Tehran. Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Iran is cracking down on pet dogs, which its Islamist authorities regard as impure and a sign of Western influence. Several people were killed in a school shooting in Austria. The authorities are rushing to figure out what happened. Violence has surged in Peru. Gangs are extorting people and businesses and attacking those who won’t pay. Pesticides are a leading method of suicide in agricultural areas of developing nations. Suriname, a tiny nation on South America’s Atlantic coast, is working to restrict access. Business The U.S. needs samarium, a rare earth metal, to build fighter jets and missiles. One problem: China produces the entire world’s supply. Meta’s new lab dedicated to pursuing “superintelligence” wants to develop a hypothetical A.I. system that exceeds the powers of the human brain. The company is spending billions in a tech arms race. Apple revealed a new design for its software. While most of tech is building A.I. systems, Apple is focusing on making its products look prettier, Tripp Mickle and Brian Chen write. Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting into two companies, separating its cable networks and streaming business. Other Big Stories Firearm deaths of children rose in states that have loosened gun control laws since 2010, a study found. The New York State Senate approved legislation that would allow people with a terminal illness to end their lives on their own terms. The bill will now head to the governor for her signature. OPINIONS Trump’s order to send the National Guard into Los Angeles is creating the chaos it was supposed to prevent, the Editorial Board writes. Democrats can’t create a “Joe Rogan of the left” because Rogan doesn’t represent a political agenda; he represents a culture, Michael Hirschorn writes. Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg on resisting autocracy. The Games Sale. Our best offer won’t last. Let the fun begin. Subscribe to New York Times Games for up to 75% off your first year. As a subscriber you can strengthen your strategy with Wordle Bot, reach Genius on Spelling Bee, play the Crossword and more. MORNING READS Jens Mortensen for The New York Times Taxicab geometry: The Etch A Sketch is more than a toy; it’s a gateway to a different kind of math. Reborn dolls: Extremely lifelike baby dolls set off a political debate in Brazil. Kindergarten: Boys lag behind girls from the start. Your pick: The most-clicked article in The Morning yesterday was an Opinion essay about Trump’s appeal in increasingly empty American towns. Trending: A judge dismissed the defamation lawsuit that Justin Baldoni filed against his former co-star Blake Lively; her husband, Ryan Reynolds; and The New York Times. Lives Lived: Frederick Forsyth used his early experience as a British foreign correspondent and an occasional intelligence operative as fodder for swashbuckling, best-selling thrillers in the 1970s and ’80s, including “The Day of the Jackal” and “The Dogs of War.” Forsyth died at 86. SPORTS N.H.L.: The Panthers have a 2-1 series lead in the Stanley Cup Final. They defeated the Oilers, 6-1, in Game 3. Broadcasting: ESPN announced a multiyear contract extension with Dick Vitale. The deal will bring Vitale’s tenure to nearly 50 years. ARTS AND IDEAS Nic Antaya for The New York Times For decades, the Goodyear blimp has been ubiquitous at major sporting events. Blimps may seem a quaint technology in the age of drones, but their ability to capture a skyline, a stadium or the flight of a golf ball has made them an indispensable part of broadcasts. Read more about why the blimp endures, 100 years after its debut. More on culture Sly Stone in 1973. Michael Putland/Getty Images Sly Stone died at 82. His run of hits with his band the Family Stone helped redefine the landscape of pop, funk and rock, and showed his talents as an eccentric and preternaturally rhythmic singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Abby Jimenez writes best-selling romance novels. She owns three bakeries. She’s really tired. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Todd Wagner for The New York Times Make strawberry fool, a three-ingredient dessert you’ll want to make all summer. Find a great book for Dad, as recommended by The Book Review. Throw a stress-free party with these tips from the crew of “Below Deck.” GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was habitability. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 12, 2025 Author Members Posted June 12, 2025 June 11, 2025 Good morning. We’re covering the latest from the now nationwide immigration protests. That’s first. Then we take a close look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s firing of an entire vaccine advisory panel — and cover the latest news from the U.S.-China trade talks, an Austrian school shooting and the Southern Baptist Convention. Nationwide protests In Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times By Lauren Jackson The protests, once contained to small corners of Los Angeles, have spread across the country. And cities are waking up to more. Downtown Los Angeles is currently under a curfew. Police officers wrestled protesters to the ground in New York, used chemical agents in Atlanta and monitored large demonstrations in Chicago, where people vandalized vehicles and threw water bottles at them. In Los Angeles, the police flew in a helicopter and threatened over a loudspeaker to arrest anyone who broke the curfew downtown. The fight between California and the Trump administration has also escalated. In a nationally televised speech, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who may have presidential ambitions, argued that Trump’s deployment of nearly 5,000 federal troops to Los Angeles was a dangerous authoritarian step. “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “The moment we’ve feared has arrived.” The protests are expected to continue today: Marines will be in Los Angeles to protect immigration agents and federal buildings, expanding the government’s rare use of military forces on domestic soil. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has called in the National Guard ahead of protests planned in San Antonio. Trump threatened that protesters across the country would be met with “equal or greater force” than those in Los Angeles, which he called “a trash heap.” He promised to “liberate” it. Below, we explain what is happening. The raids continue The protests are a widespread rebuke of Trump’s immigration policies. The president won the election on a pledge to conduct mass deportations, and he has used cinematic raids to signal he’s making good on that promise. As anger spreads in cities, Trump is digging in. Agents are rushing to arrest undocumented migrants, and he has sent federal troops to work with them. National Guard troops accompanied federal immigration officers on raids across Los Angeles. The Marines will also provide security to ICE agents as they do their work today, a government spokeswoman said. Since Trump took office, ICE has arrested more than 100,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to data obtained by The Times. Former government officials said the push to detain record numbers of undocumented immigrants increases the chances of mistakes, my colleague Hamed Aleaziz reports. The Trump administration said it is taking steps to mitigate that risk. Hamed went with ICE officers as they tracked down and arrested people in Miami. In one case, a Honduran man who was the brother of an ICE target was arrested when he happened to show up to drive him to work — an example of how the agency is making collateral arrests to increase its numbers. See a video of the arrests. More on the protests Gov. Gavin Newsom Office of the Governor of California, via Associated Press Newsom blamed Trump for stoking the protests. He also framed his rebuke of the federal government as a proxy for national resistance: “California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here,” he said. “Other states are next. Democracy is next.” Los Angeles was quiet last night, and the streets downtown were desolate under curfew. “By doing what I did, I stopped the violence in L.A.,” Trump said in the Oval Office. Some protest organizers signaled the demonstrations were a prelude to nationwide ones planned for Saturday against Trump and a military parade in Washington he organized for the Army’s 250th anniversary, on his own 79th birthday. Protesters have continued to wave Mexican flags in solidarity, even as Republicans have criticized them. The protests have been dangerous for reporters. In the video below, Livia Albeck-Ripka, a Times reporter who was shot with a crowd-control munition while covering the protests, describes the experience. Click below to watch. A vaccine panel Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times By Adam B. Kushner I’m the editor of The Morning. Not all government advisory panels are created equal. Some offer comfy posts where allies of the president can spitball about big ideas. In other cases, agencies rely on outside advisers to get the job done. The committee that recommends vaccines is in the latter category — and the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired its members this week despite having promised during his confirmation that he wouldn’t meddle with the group. The body that Kennedy hollowed out, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, decides what shots you get. To understand how, it helps to know more about how vaccines are developed. First, researchers come up with a new medicine and try it on animals. That usually takes more than a decade. Then the Food and Drug Administration gets involved: It signs off on clinical trials. If those go well and the factory passes hygiene checks, a drugmaker can begin manufacturing. A.C.I.P. comes near the very end. It’s part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose director has to sign off on its findings. The 17 members are scientists, epidemiologists and clinicians. They recommend who should receive the vaccine (for instance, kids), when (every decade for your tetanus shot) and whether it’s safe to take alongside other shots. According to the law, if A.C.I.P. says that teens should get the HPV vaccine to stop the spread of cervical cancers, for example, then insurance companies must cover it. What now? Kennedy is expected to name new members of the panel before its next meeting on June 25. I spoke with Apoorva Mandavilli, who covers infectious diseases for The Times, about the stakes. Could they change what vaccines we get? They could revise current recommendations for vaccines, yes. That’s not unheard-of — A.C.I.P. does sometimes revisit decisions. The members initially voted that some people 60 and older should get the vaccine for a respiratory disease, for instance. But in April, they heard new data suggesting that it was also helpful for people 50 and older at high risk. So they changed their advice. That means they could take a second look at the measles vaccine? Yeah, they could revisit every recommendation they have ever given. Kennedy has disparaged most childhood vaccines, including for measles and polio, and it’s a good bet his appointees will agree with him. Could my kids still get polio shots if they’re no longer recommended? Probably. The government’s advice might be: “Talk to your doctor.” That’s where they eventually landed with the Covid vaccine. Most doctors would endorse measles and polio shots, but some might defer to patients who are on the fence. It leaves the door open for a lot more decision-making — and confusion — at the local level. Would it cost me more? Right now, insurance companies cover the four-dose polio series. But without an A.C.I.P. recommendation, the shots might cost you more than $300. The C.D.C. director doesn’t always follow the panel’s recommendation. That’s true. In 2021, the C.D.C. director overrode advice that frontline workers could skip a Covid booster. Kennedy said A.C.I.P. members had conflicts of interest — and you showed in your story how that was wrong. He says advisers should be unbiased. Kennedy has his own conflicts of interest: He was getting money from plaintiffs to sue Merck over an HPV vaccine. Also, he may name vaccine skeptics to the committee. Isn’t that a form of bias? Kennedy has already ended work to develop an H.I.V. vaccine and killed a contract for a bird-flu vaccine. What’s the outlook for our population immunity overall? This really discourages vaccine development in a big way. The government is making sudden decisions but without showing the data they’re based on — and without consulting staff scientists or external advisers. That makes vaccines an unpredictable business proposition. Companies may decide it’s not worth the trouble to invest in them. More coverage Kennedy also fired members of the vaccine panel because of their ties to the Democratic Party, according to a White House official. Democratic senators questioning Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the National Institutes of Health, criticized him for not taking responsibility for Trump’s cuts. The F.D.A. plans to use artificial intelligence to speed up approval of new drugs and devices. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Administration Elon Musk said that he regretted some of his online posts about Trump last week. “They went too far,” Musk said on X. The U.S. and China agreed to return to a trade truce they reached in May and pull back from some punitive measures. Trump said he would restore the names of all the Army bases that were once named for Confederate generals. Middle East Five Western countries, including Britain and Canada, jointly imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, called for Hamas to free all hostages and cease ruling Gaza. More International News In Graz, Austria. Erwin Scheriau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A former student at a high school in Austria shot and killed 10 people on campus before apparently killing himself. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a former president of Argentina, was sentenced to prison for corruption and barred from public office for life by the country’s Supreme Court. Other Big Stories Mikie Sherrill, a congresswoman and former Navy helicopter pilot, won the Democratic primary in the New Jersey governor’s race. She will face Jack Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker endorsed by Trump. Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, overwhelmingly backed an effort to overturn the legality of same-sex marriage. THE MORNING QUIZ Here’s a game we run from time to time. The question comes from a recent edition of The Morning. Click your answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) The authorities in Tennessee recently captured an escaped animal that a local resident had been keeping as a pet. What type of animal was it? Giraffe Hippopotamus Lion Zebra OPINIONS At the Vuong family home. Ocean Vuong When the author Ocean Vuong’s mother died, his young brother came to live with him. “I had become, oddly enough, a kind of father,” he writes. Trump’s disproportionate response to protesters in Los Angeles will further radicalize them, Barbara Walter writes. The Games Sale. Our best offer won’t last. Let the fun begin. Subscribe to New York Times Games for up to 75% off your first year. As a subscriber you can strengthen your strategy with Wordle Bot, reach Genius on Spelling Bee, play the Crossword and more. MORNING READS Ayesha Kazim for The New York Times A pint and a pencil: A woman wants to draw a picture of every pub in London — and, in the process, create an archive of city life. Want more excitement from the N.B.A.? Watch this over-the-top Korean broadcast. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was this strawberry fool recipe. Trending: Aaron Rodgers says he got married a couple of months ago, The Cut reports. The internet isn’t quite sure who his wife is. Saving prehistoric paintings: Niede Guidon was a Brazilian archaeologist whose work called into question a longstanding theory of how humans first populated the Americas. Her discoveries almost single-handedly transformed a hardscrabble region of northeast Brazil into the Serra da Capivara National Park. Guidon died at 92. SPORTS Soccer: The U.S. men’s national team fell 4-0 to Switzerland. The crowd booed at halftime: It was the first time since 1980 that the U.S. had trailed by four goals at the break. N.F.L.: Aaron Rodgers stepped in front of his new team for the first time as the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback. A teammate said Rodgers told them he’s “all in from now on.” ARTS AND IDEAS Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson in “Materialists.” Atsushi Nishijima/A24 Smoking is back — in pop culture, at least. Dakota Johnson’s character in the new film “Materialists” is a smoker. Addison Rae and Lorde mention cigarettes in recent singles. Even Beyoncé lights up onstage during her Cowboy Carter tour. The trend resurrects an idea that not long ago seemed to have vanished along with Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man: that smoking, regardless of its health risks, looks cool. More on culture Vanity Fair named Mark Guiducci, the creative editorial director at Vogue, to be its new top editor. The late night hosts discussed the protests. “There’s no riot outside. We have more so-called ‘unrest’ here when one of our teams wins a championship,” Jimmy Kimmel said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times Upgrade your spaghetti and tomato sauce with preserved lemon. Find the best travel bargains. Play a modern alternative to Yahtzee. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was legitimize. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 15, 2025 Author Members Posted June 15, 2025 June 12, 2025 Good morning. A passenger plane bound for London crashed in western India with more than 200 people aboard. Western officials say that Israel appears to be preparing to attack Iran. Plus, we have the latest from the immigration protests. More news is below. But first, we take a look at the New York mayor’s race. Andrew Cuomo Vincent Alban/The New York Times Cuomo’s comeback By Emma G. Fitzsimmons I’m the New York City Hall bureau chief. Andrew Cuomo shot to national fame in 2020 for his daily pandemic briefings as governor of New York. His political star fell just a year later, when he resigned in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal. Now he is attempting a comeback in the New York City mayor’s race. The race has been turbulent. The incumbent, Eric Adams, was indicted on federal corruption charges that the Trump administration later dismissed. He is running for re-election, but not as a Democrat. That means the party’s nomination is up for grabs, and nearly a dozen candidates are on the ballot. Recent polls show that Cuomo is roughly 10 percentage points ahead of the No. 2 candidate, Zohran Mamdani. The Democrats’ final debate is tonight, and the primary is June 24. In today’s newsletter, I’ll answer some questions about Cuomo’s campaign, the field of competitors and what it all means for Democrats. Why is Cuomo ahead? He has broad name recognition after having served more than a decade as governor. He also has a huge campaign war chest and a $10 million super PAC behind him. His critics point to his baggage: the sexual harassment allegations, his handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic, his vindictive management style. But many New Yorkers appear ready to give him a second chance. They seem to look back fondly at some of his achievements as governor, including the rebuilding of LaGuardia Airport. And this week he scored a coveted endorsement from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a major Democratic donor. Do other candidates have a chance? Mamdani, a democratic socialist who is popular with younger voters, has risen in the polls. He promises to freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments and to make buses free and fast. But several other candidates are trying to make a late surge. Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker (who is not related to the mayor), has argued that she has the most experience in city government. She has proposed the nation’s largest guaranteed income program. Brad Lander, the city comptroller, is running as an earnest technocrat. He vows to end street homelessness for people with severe mental illness. The city uses ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates they support. If your top choice is eliminated, your vote is transferred to the next candidate on your ballot. The system can produce interesting alliances. Mamdani has forged a coalition with Lander and Adrienne Adams. If voters rank the three of them, and leave Cuomo off their ballot entirely, it could lead to an upset. What is the biggest issue? Many New Yorkers say working-class people can no longer afford to live in the city. Rents have soared, and homelessness is at record levels. Cuomo wants to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, which would be among the highest in the nation. Mamdani has called for an even higher minimum wage, $30 an hour by 2030, and wants to create city-owned grocery stores. And all of the candidates are talking about building affordable housing. The Times recently interviewed the eight leading candidates and asked them how much they pay for their rent or mortgage. Cuomo’s Manhattan apartment costs about $8,000 per month — far above the median rent in Manhattan of roughly $4,800. Mamdani says he pays about $2,200 in Queens. Does it matter outside New York? Many New Yorkers say they want their mayor to stand up to President Trump’s budget cuts and mass deportations. The election could reveal what type of Democrat they believe is best suited to do that. Cuomo is a moderate who has criticized the left wing of his party. He said at the first debate that he knew how to deal with Trump because he had warred with him as governor. “He can be beaten, but he has to know that he’s up against an adversary who can actually beat him,” Cuomo said. “And I can tell you this. I am the last person on this stage that Mr. Trump wants to see as mayor.” Mamdani, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman. He said at the first debate that Cuomo was unlikely to stand up to Trump because they had similar donors and wealthy supporters. “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in,” Mamdani said. The Sprint for City Hall: The Metro desk has a weekly newsletter about the mayor's race with behind-the-scenes details from the campaign trail. Get it in your inbox IMMIGRATION PROTESTS In Los Angeles. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Demonstrations against Trump’s immigration raids continue to percolate across the country. Yesterday’s most intense clashes were on the West Coast. In downtown Los Angeles, police officers on foot and on horseback dispersed crowds in front of City Hall with flash bangs and foam rounds, shortly before a curfew took effect for a second night. Officers later fired foam bullets at dozens of protesters who marched in Koreatown, outside the curfew area. Hundreds of protesters in Seattle marched toward federal buildings. A few started a fire and blocked an intersection. And in Spokane, Wash., officers arrested more than 30 people during a demonstration that officials said had started when protesters tried to prevent an ICE vehicle from transporting detainees. Demonstrations outside the West Coast wound down with little confrontation: Protests in St. Louis ended by 6 p.m., and the Texas National Guard were absent at a march in San Antonio, although Gov. Greg Abbott had said he would deploy them. Follow our live blog for updates. For more This afternoon, a federal judge in California will hear the state’s request to restrict the troops Trump has deployed to protecting federal buildings. National Guard members have accompanied federal agents on immigration enforcement raids. In New York City’s immigration courtrooms, masked agents are making surprise arrests of migrants who appear for routine hearings and check-ins. The administration’s immigration crackdown has reached California’s farms. Farmworkers hid in fields, according to a community activist, as word of ICE raids spread. Congressional Republicans are set to question the Democratic governors of Minnesota, Illinois and New York today about their states’ immigration policies. An interview with Gavin Newsom The New York Times A day after his fiery speech describing Trump’s deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles as an assault on democracy, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, spoke to Michael Barbaro on “The Daily.” Newsom, a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, called Trump a “stone-cold liar” and accused him of “trying create a problem so he can, quote unquote, solve it.” He invoked an exhibit at a Holocaust museum to describe the challenge facing Americans today. “I think we need to wake up, that what he wants is our silence,” he said. “And if we’re silent about that, then we are complicit as we see these fundamental rights erode.” Listen to the podcast interview. THE LATEST NEWS India Plane Crash In Ahmedabad, India. Ajit Solanki/Associated Press An Air India flight from western India to London crashed this morning with 242 passengers and crew on board. The plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, came down shortly after takeoff in Ahmedabad. Officials say it crashed near the residential part of a local medical college. The airline said those on board included 169 people from India, 53 from Britain, seven from Portugal and one from Canada. There was no immediate information about survivors, but India’s health minister said “many people” had died. Follow updates here. Middle East Israel appears ready to launch an attack on Iran soon, according to U.S. and European officials. A strike could further inflame the Middle East and derail U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. Concern about an Israeli attack, and possible Iranian retaliation, prompted the U.S. to withdraw diplomats from Iraq and to allow military family members to leave the region. A U.N. watchdog ruled that Iran was not complying with its obligations under a treaty to restrict the spread of nuclear weapons. A U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza aid group said Hamas attacked a bus carrying some of its Palestinian workers to a distribution site, leaving at least five people dead. Trump Administration Senate Republicans are seeking ways to save money in Trump’s domestic policy bill. On the chopping block: some of his prized tax cuts. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed eight new members to the vaccine advisory panel he fired earlier this week. Four have spoken out against vaccination in some way. When Elon Musk said on X that he regretted his posts about Trump, the mea culpa didn’t come from nowhere: Musk had spoken with Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, about a truce. Other Big Stories Harvey Weinstein was again found guilty of a felony sex crime. It was a partial verdict: The judge sent jurors home after the foreman complained of threats and yelling. They will continue to deliberate today. David Hogg, the young vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, will exit his post. Democrats have been furious at his plan to challenge sitting lawmakers. Do you have a question about the news? Let us know here, and we might answer it in a future newsletter. IN ONE GRAPHIC Source: U.S. Treasury Department | Data is monthly. | By The New York Times Most government revenue comes from income taxes. When the House passed a bill to cut them, Republicans argued that Trump’s tariffs would make up the difference. The charts above show why that’s unlikely. In May, the Treasury collected more than $22 billion in tariff payments — a record. But it was still just 6 percent of that month’s total government revenue. Read our full analysis of the tariff plan. OPINIONS The New York Times Who should lead New York City? Times Opinion asked 15 New Yorkers to size up the Democratic candidates in the mayor’s race. Here’s who they think would be the best choice. Kathleen Kingsbury, the head of Opinion, explains the motivation behind the project: “In conversations with readers over the years, I’ve found that some of them don’t want simply a one-size-fits-all endorsement and seek deeper, more varied perspectives, reporting and ideas to help them ultimately make their own decisions.” If New York City is going to be a better place to live for the millions who call it home, the next mayor must address these six high-pressure issues, writes Mara Gay, a member of the editorial board. The Games Sale. Our best offer won’t last. Let the fun begin. Subscribe to New York Times Games for up to 75% off your first year. As a subscriber you can strengthen your strategy with Wordle Bot, reach Genius on Spelling Bee, play the Crossword and more. MORNING READS Brian Wilson in 1966. via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images A sonic genius: Brian Wilson, the leader of the Beach Boys, who transcended the breezy surf genre to create some of the most complex and beautiful pop music of the 1960s, died at 82. First look: Scientists captured footage of an Antarctic gonate squid, a deep-sea creature never before seen alive. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was this video from Livia Albeck-Ripka, a Times reporter who was shot with a crowd-control munition while covering the L.A. protests. Trending: Silentó, the rapper known for his viral hit “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the fatal shooting of his cousin. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Indiana Pacers reserve guard Bennedict Mathurin scored a game-high 27 points to secure his team a 116-107 win and a 2-1 series advantage against the Oklahoma City Thunder. M.L.B.: The Red Sox pitcher Hunter Dobbins created a stir by saying he would never play for the Yankees, adding that the team had drafted his father and then traded him. That story wasn’t true. MEET OUR NEW RESTAURANT CRITICS Ligaya Mishan, left, and Tejal Rao. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Yes, we said critics with an “s.” For the first time, The Times will have two chief restaurant critics, and we will expand the franchise of full-length starred reviews beyond New York City. Tejal Rao, who has been on our staff since 2016, is based in Los Angeles and will spend most of her time traveling the country. Ligaya Mishan, who wrote our Hungry City column from 2012 to 2020, lives in Manhattan. We’re also no longer trying to hide their faces — they’ll make videos like this one to go with their reviews. We asked Ligaya and Tejal about their earliest restaurant memories, what they eat when off-duty, how they read menus and how they stay fit. Read our Q&A. More on culture Disney and Universal sued the A.I. company Midjourney for copyright infringement. Desi Lydic of “The Daily Show” discussed Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg. “He was there to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Army, so, of course, he ended up discussing Joe Biden.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Rachel Vanni for The New York Times Put coconut water in your Paloma. Pack for a three-day trip in one “personal item.” GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was uncloak. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 15, 2025 Author Members Posted June 15, 2025 June 13, 2025 Good morning. Israel attacked Iran, targeting nuclear facilities and wiping out Tehran’s top military chain of command. We have the latest on those strikes. Then, we explain what to look for during Trump’s military parade tomorrow — plus, we have news about the immigration protests and the Air India crash. A major attack In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Israel launched a major attack on Iran. The strikes killed Iran’s top three generals, according to Iranian state media, and targeted military bases and nuclear sites across the country. Tehran launched drones at Israel in response. Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks on Iran would last “as many days as it takes.” Here’s what we know: Targets: Israel described the strikes as a last resort to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Its military said it struck Natanz, Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility. Israel also killed top Iranian generals and scientists, including Mohammad Bagheri, the second-highest commander after the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s response: The Israeli Air Force began intercepting drones fired by Iran. Khamenei said Israel “should anticipate a harsh punishment. The strong hand of the Islamic Republic will not let them go.” U.S. response: The Trump administration had been in nuclear talks with Iran. “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump said on social media. He warned Tehran to make a deal “before there is nothing left.” Scale: The Israeli military says 200 warplanes participated in the attack, dropping hundreds of bombs across the country and striking over 100 targets. Follow our live blog for updates. Showcase of force Clockwise from top left: England, Thailand, North Korea and China. Pool photo by Wpa; Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images; Ng Han Guan/Associated Press; Xinhua/EPA By Marco Hernandez I report on visually driven stories. Authoritarian regimes use them to intimidate. Democracies use them to commemorate. Military parades are both grand spectacles and potent messages. They are rare in the United States. But tomorrow, Washington will host one of its own. The occasion, at least officially, is the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. It also just so happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday. The motives of countries that stage such parades may vary, but the events all tend to share a common visual vocabulary. Here is what to look for. Iconic settings Military parades often take place against the backdrop of a country’s most recognizable landmarks, such as Tiananmen Square or the Arc de Triomphe. It signals that military power is intertwined with the fabric of the nation. Tomorrow’s event begins after soldiers march from the Pentagon. They head to the National Mall, passing Trump’s viewing stand on Constitution Avenue, according to Army officials. Strategic seating charts Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron on Bastille Day in Paris in 2017. Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press Military parades offer a perfect photo op for leaders who want to show the world who their allies are. For Russia’s Victory Day parade, Vladimir Putin hosts the heads of nations who stuck with him after his invasion of Ukraine. French presidents frequently invite leaders of nations they wish to court. At different Bastille Day parades, they’ve sat next to Narendra Modi of India, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Trump. In fact, that seems to be where Trump got the idea for his own parade. Displays of might These events are displays of power. For Kim Jong-un of North Korea, they’re a chance to showcase aspects of a closed-off country and to advertise its most advanced weapons. Pyongyang’s parade often features nuclear weapons. Some experts believe these are actually props, not functional equipment. But in the world of propaganda, that doesn’t really matter. “You can have obsolete tanks, undertrained soldiers and failing logistics, but the image is what matters. In fear societies, perception is power,” said John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute. China makes an impression through sheer volume. In 2019, its National Day parade stretched for miles and featured more than 500 pieces of military equipment, including tanks, intercontinental missiles and hypersonic drones. It is an unmistakable message for Taiwan, upon which Beijing has designs, and the United States, experts say. Intimidating choreography Indian soldiers on motorbikes in 2024. Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Formations of soldiers marching in perfect sync are a hallmark of every military parade. The message is not subtle: These are disciplined troops, well trained and ready to defend their homeland. For citizens at home, it stirs up pride; for potential adversaries abroad, it may give pause. Some countries incorporate acrobatic performances by soldiers or showy aircraft flyovers. Tomorrow’s event will feature 50 helicopters and parachutists who deliver a flag to Trump. Click here to see more details and photos of military parades around the world. For more: Opponents of Trump have organized “No Kings” protests nationwide to coincide with his parade in Washington tomorrow. Trump has bristled: “I don’t feel like a king, I have to go through hell to get stuff approved,” he said. THE LATEST NEWS Immigration Protests The California National Guard in downtown Los Angeles. Philip Cheung for The New York Times Hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to return control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, an appeals court paused the ruling so the administration could appeal. Federal agents forcibly removed and handcuffed Senator Alex Padilla of California after he interrupted a news conference in Los Angeles held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary. Video of the incident is circulating online. More than a dozen law enforcement agencies were on the ground during the protests in Los Angeles this past week. See where they went and what weapons they carried. As Trump has deployed troops to California, his administration has unleashed a P.R. campaign intended to make clear it will not tolerate resistance to its mass deportation goals. More on Immigration The Trump administration sued New York over a state law that largely blocks ICE agents from arresting people in state or local courthouses. A Harvard-based Russian scientist who spent four months in federal detention has been set free on bail. She still faces charges for failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the U.S. Trump acknowledged that his immigration policies were hurting the farming and hotel industries. He said that there would be an “order” soon on the matter. In the video below, Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration, embeds with ICE to see how agents are carrying out Trump’s deportation push. Click to watch. The New York Times More on Politics Senate Republicans plan to restore some of the food stamp money slashed in the House version of Trump’s domestic policy bill. They also want to roll back cuts to Medicaid. Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, the front-runners in the New York City mayor’s race, traded barbs in the final debate before the primary. Read takeaways. The House voted to claw back $9.4 billion that lawmakers had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. The proposal’s fate in the Senate is unclear. Washing machines, refrigerators and other common household appliances made with steel parts will soon be subject to expanded tariffs. India Air Crash Mourners near a hospital in Ahmedabad. Atul Loke for The New York Times Emergency crews recovered more than 260 bodies from the wreckage of a London-bound Air India flight that crashed just moments after takeoff in Ahmedabad, India. Only one passenger, a 38-year-old man, is known to have survived. “I don’t know how I am alive,” he told his family after the crash. The dead included at least four students from a medical college, which the plane struck. Students who witnessed the crash described their shock. Other Big Stories Two of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group, want to merge. As a condition of approval, the F.T.C. is considering a rule that would bar them from political boycotts. The owner of a popular Dominican Republic nightclub, where 236 people died after the roof collapsed, was arrested and charged with involuntary homicide. ONE FAMILY’S GROUP CHAT In February, immigration agents detained Carlos Enrique Itriago Arevalo as he was on his way to an early morning softball game. Over the next three months, Arevalo was moved between detention facilities in three states and eventually deported to Venezuela. All the while, his family members kept one another updated through texts and audio messages on WhatsApp. His relatives shared the messages with The Times; you can read their conversations here. They offer a glimpse into the challenge families face as they try to keep track of loved ones moving through the deportation process. OPINIONS Phone videos of police brutality helped bring awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement. Videos of ICE arrests could do the same for immigration activism, Jean Guerrero argues. Here is a column by Tressie McMillan Cottom on Barack Obama’s undeserved popularity. The Games Sale. Our best offer won’t last. Let the fun begin. Subscribe to New York Times Games for up to 75% off your first year. As a subscriber you can strengthen your strategy with Wordle Bot, reach Genius on Spelling Bee, play the Crossword and more. A.I. FOR EVERYTHING The founders of the A.I. start-up Mechanize. Manuel Orbegozo for The New York Times Most artificial intelligence companies say their aim is to make our lives easier — maybe by offering assistance at the tasks we’re bad at, or automating mundane parts of our day. Mechanize, a new A.I. start-up, has a different goal: It wants to take our jobs, and it isn’t shy about saying so, writes Kevin Roose, a Times tech columnist. “We want to get to a fully automated economy, and make that happen as fast as possible,” Tamay Besiroglu, a co-founder of Mechanize, told Kevin. That’s not something today’s A.I. systems are capable of. And “fast” is relative: One of the company’s three founders says he expects the project to take 10 to 20 years; the other two believe it may take up to 30 years. But, eventually, the company dreams of creating an A.I. system that can do the work of doctors and lawyers, engineers and architects, teachers and journalists. Like many other A.I. companies, though, Mechanize has “no brilliant ideas about expanding the social safety net or retraining workers for new jobs — only a goal of making the current jobs obsolete as quickly as possible,” Kevin writes. MORNING READS Auditioning. Vincent Tullo for The New York Times Pint-size singers: The Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus is an elite training ground for young singers. Getting in requires grit, personality and a soaring voice. Learning to flirt: Inside the real-life autism dating boot camp that inspired “Love on the Spectrum.” Surprise side effects: In some Ozempic households, the weight loss is contagious. Your pick: The most clicked article in The Morning yesterday was about the first sighting of an elusive Antarctic squid. “Lady Mindbender”: Amanda Feilding was ridiculed for drilling a hole in her skull to increase blood flow. But her foundation’s research into the therapeutic use of counterculture drugs proved visionary. She has died at 82. SPORTS N.H.L.: The Edmonton Oilers rallied to defeat the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. N.C.A.A.: The College World Series starts today and L.S.U. is chasing its eighth title. Read what to know. ARTS AND IDEAS Sly Stone ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty Images Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were California pop stars and world-building visionaries. Their deaths this week — just two days apart — highlight just how much the two had in common: their age, their joy-filled music and their haunted personal lives. Jon Pareles, chief pop music critic at The Times, writes about the musicians and what they shared. More on culture To promote its new film, “Materialists,” A24 worked with the New York Stock Exchange to display the “romantic value” of the city’s single men. Trump attended the opening night of “Les Misérables” at the Kennedy Center. “It’s a musical largely about a revolution,” Jimmy Kimmel said. “After Act 1 last night, Trump called in the National Guard and squashed the whole thing.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times Bake these easy biscuits that “swim” in melted butter. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were clodding, coddling, colliding and condoling. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 16, 2025 Author Members Posted June 16, 2025 June 14, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the news you need to start your day: Middle East: Israel and Iran exchanged a new wave of attacks, striking one another with missiles and drones. Military parade: Tanks and troops will make their way through the streets of Washington, D.C., today. “No Kings”: Today is also expected to be the broadest day of demonstrations against President Trump’s second term, with protests in all 50 states. We have more on these stories below. But first, Melissa Kirsch writes about staying centered when the world feels chaotic. María Jesús Contreras Breathing room By Melissa Kirsch Last week, a friend read my tarot cards. It was a lark — neither of us had much experience with the occult, but it seemed a diverting enough way to spend an evening, to engage with the messiness of our lives in a way that might offer some clarity. We drew the cards, then used the book that came with the tarot deck to interpret them. I made a note of one passage that seemed to invite further consideration: “Practice being present in the here and now. It’s all we have, and it’s a lot.” I read this two ways. On the one hand, the present moment contains a rich bounty of content. No need to trouble yourself with the past or the future, there’s abundance right here. On the other hand, I hear that understated response we often give these days when asked how we’re handling a particularly stressful moment: “It’s a lot.” In modern parlance, “It’s a lot” says a lot without saying anything specific. It encapsulates a general feeling of being overwhelmed without getting into all the reasons why. I noticed people saying “It’s a lot” early in the Covid pandemic, a slightly deadpan assertion that captured the experience of feeling swamped by a deluge of information. There’s been an uptick in “It’s a lot” in my conversations and group chats and self-reflection recently. The quantity of news we’re trying to process, and the pace at which that news seems to break, seems to require constant vigilance just to keep up. Refresh, refresh, what’s happening, what’s new. Or there are those who avoid the news altogether — it’s not just a lot, it’s too much, and they’re opting out. There has to be a middle ground, a balanced way to keep up without losing perspective, and without burying our heads in the sand. My own tactics are not that different from what the tarot advised: “Practice being present in the here and now.” What that looks like for me is deliberately feeling my feet on the firm ground, reminding myself that I’m here, in my living room or on this street or in this park. My brain may be spinning, trying to make sense of everything happening everywhere, but I’m right here on this patch of grass. I have agency. I can decide, for a minute or an hour, an afternoon or a weekend, to really try to observe what’s happening around me, to take one deep breath of this delectable spring air. There is a lot going on in the world, but there’s also a lot going on in my world that I don’t want to miss. A wise friend advised me when I was worrying recently to “move the horizon closer.” I love this. My eyes are always cast on some distant point in the future. Moving the horizon closer means to keep my thoughts and fantasies and fears contained to this plane, this moment, without spinning out into the atmosphere. The here and now is all we have, and it’s a lot, for everyone. You don’t have to consult an oracle to know this. But the reminder is useful: Where are you right now? What is happening in that space, in that moment? How can you inhabit it fully? How can you move the horizon closer? THE LATEST NEWS Iran-Israel Conflict Projectiles over Israel on Friday night. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times Israeli aircraft bombed more nuclear facilities and military targets in Tehran last night. Iran’s U.N. ambassador said the strikes had killed 78 people over two days. Here’s the latest. Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes. Some hit buildings in Tel Aviv, killing at least three people and injuring dozens. Israel badly damaged one of Iran’s key nuclear sites. But much of the country’s nuclear program remains intact. Where were the strikes? See maps and photos here. To prepare for the attacks, Israel spent years collecting intelligence, infiltrating Iran and tracking the officers and scientists it would eventually target. Iran’s tough choice: Give up its nuclear program or respond with more force. Each option has its perils. Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan was to derail diplomatic negotiations and cripple Iran’s nuclear program. He may also want to cement his legacy in Israeli history, writes Patrick Kingsley, our Jerusalem bureau chief. D.C. Parade The military parade in Washington, D.C., today will celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary. But planning documents suggest that Trump himself will be a major focus. The last time tanks paraded through the streets of Washington, just after the Gulf War, the Army was at the peak of its confidence. Today, it’s in a much more uncertain place. Weather forecasters say rainstorms might disrupt the day’s events. Other Big Stories Flash floods overwhelmed parts of San Antonio, killing at least 11 people. Hundreds of households in eastern Oregon were evacuated because of wildfires. Viswash Kumar Ramesh was one of 242 people aboard the Air India flight when it barreled into a medical school. Here’s how the man in seat 11A became the crash’s sole survivor. Trump’s domestic policy bill would be more regressive than any major law in decades. The Upshot analyzed the tax cuts in the Republican megabill. Kim Sajet, the Smithsonian Museum director whom Trump said he would fire last month for being “partisan,” has decided to step down. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Broadway From left, Marcus Choi, Helen J Shen and Dez Duron celebrating a big night for “Maybe Happy Ending.” Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times “Maybe Happy Ending,” a musical about love, isolation and robots in near-future South Korea, was the big winner at the Tonys. But the show’s success was far from assured when it began previews, as our theater reporter, Michael Paulson, explains: Broadway is dominated by big-brand shows — well-known titles, well-known music, well-known stars. So “Maybe Happy Ending” faced an uphill climb from the get-go. Then supply chain problems forced a monthlong postponement. Fund-raising was hard, and ticket sales were low. Things were so grim that I prepared an article about the show’s closing, to be published if it shut down. Instead, the show turned its fortunes around. Michael’s new article examines how that happened. Film and TV Celine Song’s “Materialists,” starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans, is a seductive, smartly refreshed addition to the rom-com canon, our critic writes. In an interview with The Times, Song makes the case for rom-coms: “Why is it that we no longer talk about it as a serious genre about things that actually affect us and our society and our life?” A live-action remake of “How to Train Your Dragon” is out this week. Our critic called it entertaining, if somewhat mechanical. Read our review. Music Ayesha Kazim for The New York Times The rapper Pitbull has inspired young fans with his distinctive style — so much so that they’re donning bald caps to look like him. On the cover of her upcoming album, “Man’s Best Friend,” Sabrina Carpenter is pictured on all fours, while a faceless man grabs her hair. Some people really dislike it, The Cut reports. The genius of Sly Stone, who died this week at 82, came from his understanding of not just of harmonics but human cohesion, Wesley Morris writes. There was a commotion during Sean “Diddy” Combs’s trial yesterday when Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, entered the court building. Save up to 75% on Games. Our best offer won’t last. Add some play to your day with Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more. Subscribe to New York Times Games and save up to 75% on your first year — get full access to our puzzle archives, play ad free in the app, use tools to help you improve and more. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski ? “28 Years Later” (Friday): Life moves pretty fast. And sometimes zombies do, too. “28 Days Later,” a bleak, slick undead flick directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, came out in 2002. A sequel, “28 Weeks Later,” arrived in 2007. If “28 Years Later” has jumped the temporal gun, well, as many have learned to their peril, it’s hard to keep a zombie infected with rage virus down. Boyle and Garland reunite for the threequel, which picks up long after the events of the first films, as a group of survivors defend their small island community against the infected. That should go well. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes star. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. By Melissa Clark Orzotto alla Carbonara Father’s Day is tomorrow. How about cooking dinner for dear old Dad? If he’s a spaghetti carbonara lover with a sense of adventure, try Eric Kim’s orzotto alla carbonara. For an easy skillet meal, Eric swaps out the spaghetti for orzo, which he deftly cooks in chicken broth until it takes on the glossy look and creamy texture of risotto. Bits of porky guanciale (or you can use bacon), pecorino cheese and black pepper season the dish, adding brawny, salty, spicy notes. Then right at the end, he mixes in a couple of eggs to add silkiness and heft to a dish that feels both special and comforting. REAL ESTATE Katie Fahrland and her daughter Zoe in Montreal. Renaud Philippe for The New York Times The Hunt: After years of false starts, a Connecticut native over the overcame the red tape and moved to Montreal with her daughter. Which home did she choose? Play our game. What you get for $365,000: A bungalow in Elgin, Texas; a 1920 Craftsman house in Oklahoma City; or a 1958 cottage in Lancaster, Pa. LIVING The corner of Kingsland Road and Middleton Road. Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times Spend 36 hours in East London: Highlights include a museum of the home, a trendy listening bar and (perhaps) the best chicken wings in the city. Not fine wine, fine water: Bottled waters from small, pristine sources are attracting a lot of buzz. Look of the week: Clothes fit for a Wonderland tea party. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER The art of a great souvenir I have a distinct memory of visiting Istanbul with my family when I was 15: We spent an afternoon at the Grand Bazaar with the express purpose of buying gifts for friends back home. The task bored teenage-me, but I now know that done right, a souvenir is neither an obligation nor a flex; it’s a way to share the privilege of travel long after you’ve come home. A rule of thumb to score a great (not cheesy) souvenir: Look for a unique version of an everyday item that would be hard to come by at home. For instance, a couple of years ago, I returned from Japan with loads of fragrant tea from a city famous for its tea shops. I’ve since relied on this stash when in need of a last-minute gift that still feels special. — Brittney Ho For more travel advice, sign up for Wirecutter’s daily newsletter, where next week we’ll be diving into our best tips for weekend trips. GAME OF THE WEEK Aleksander Barkov of the Panthers battling Ryan Nugent-Hopkins of the Oilers. Lynne Sladky/Associated Press Florida Panthers vs. Edmonton Oilers, Stanley Cup Finals: This series is tied, 2-2, after Edmonton mounted a thrilling comeback in Game 4, coming back from a 3-0 deficit to win in overtime. The Cup is now within reach for the Oilers — and for all of Canada, which has not won an N.H.L. title in more than 30 years. We reached out to Ian Austen, an Ontario native who covers Canada for The Times, and asked: What would a Stanley Cup mean for Edmonton? “When I was in Rogers Place last year during a Stanley Cup finals game, the crowd was so loud that it seemed like all of Canada had squeezed into the arena,” Ian said. “Trump’s calls for Canada’s annexation have further boosted the nation’s hopes for the Stanley Cup’s return. And Edmonton, a city whose residents often feel overlooked and misunderstood, is Canada’s current center of gravity.” Game 5 is tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern, on TNT and TruTV (and streaming on Max) NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was applicant. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Correction: The caption for a grid of photos of military parades in yesterday’s newsletter misstated the order of the photos, transposing China and North Korea. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 16, 2025 Author Members Posted June 16, 2025 June 15, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the news you need to start your day: Manhunt: The authorities are searching for a suspect they say assassinated a Minnesota state representative and wounded a state senator. Middle East: Israeli jets attacked Tehran’s main fuel depot, while dozens of Iranian missiles rained down on Israel. Shows of force: Tanks paraded through Washington as anti-Trump protesters marched in cities across the U.S. We have more on these stories below. But first, a renowned travel writer reflects on his role sending tourists to quiet corners of the world. A torii gate outside a shrine in Kyoto. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Hidden gems By Lyna Bentahar I’m a member of the Morning team. I spent September traveling by myself along the length of Japan, from Nagasaki to Tokyo. I spent some of the hottest days of the late summer lying in the forested onsens of Mount Aso and eating sushi with strangers in Tokyo. I walked dozens of kilometers every day, sweating under cloudless skies. Along the way I visited Kyoto, a city steeped in both history and novelty. I had a plan to see the sights: the hundreds of torii of Fushimi Inari, the bamboo forest of Arashiyama. I did not expect that I would spend much of my time in one little bar filled with an eclectic mix of regulars, who pointed me to the city’s hidden gems. This bar made my whole trip. It’s every right of a travel writer to share with you the name of this bar. But should I? For 30 years, the writer Pico Iyer lived near a different, noiseless Kyoto. In an essay for today’s Travel section, he wrote about the difficult choice between sharing the secrets of his chosen home or protecting the quiet city from being trampled by tourists: “What’s a travel writer to do? The very premise of the job is to tell you about attractive possibilities that you might not otherwise know about. But as those little-known jewels become better known, readers grow understandably indignant (that quiet and reasonably priced cafe is suddenly unquiet and unreasonably priced), while locals wonder how much to curse the onslaught of visitors and how much to try to make the most of them.” The various signs warning foreigners away from private residences made clear that my presence in Kyoto was an inconvenience. Posters on crowded buses encouraged tourists to please take the train instead. When I walked among the crowds of Kiyomizu, I felt less like a traveler and more like a body in a mob. Iyer told me he believed this was evidence of a change not just in Japan but in the culture of travel itself. Travel writers should share the secrets they find, he said, but also encourage travelers to get lost in the places they visit. “If you travel in search of consumption, then you’ll be really frustrated these days,” he said. “If you travel in search of curiosity, you’re never going to be disappointed.” For more: This weekend, The Times’s Travel section is devoted to stories about the secrets of travel. If you’re trying to take the road less traveled, you can do so for cheap by visiting during the off-peak season, our Frugal Traveler columnist writes. If you’re in New York, you can plan a day in one of these six appointment-only shops. And if you want to go even more underground, have a drink at one of the world’s 10 most alluring hidden bars. (Don’t worry, we’ll tell you how to find them.) THE LATEST NEWS Minnesota Shootings Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor, called the shootings “an act of targeted political violence.” Jerry Holt/Star Tribune, via Associated Press A gunman impersonating a police officer killed a Minnesota House member and her husband, and seriously wounded a state senator and his wife, in the Minneapolis suburbs. The police are still searching for him. The police identified the suspect as Vance Boelter, 57. Records show that he had served on a state board with one of the victims. Both of the targeted politicians — State Representative Melissa Hortman and State Senator John Hoffman — were Democrats. Read more about them. The police said the gunman’s car contained a manifesto and a list of about 70 more potential targets, including politicians, doctors and Planned Parenthood sites. Israel-Iran Conflict The fighting between Israel and Iran is growing increasingly destructive and deadly. In Israel, at least eight people were killed as Iranian missiles struck cities in the north and just outside Tel Aviv. Israel’s latest wave of attacks on Iran took out Tehran’s main gas depot and its central oil refinery, engulfing the city’s sky in smoke and flame. These maps show the locations of attacks in both countries. Parade and Protest Washington, D.C., left, and Portland, Ore. Haiyun Jiang and Jordan Gale for The New York Times President Trump hosted a military parade the same day that hundreds of protests took place, in what amounted to a split-screen show of force, David Sanger writes. In around 2,000 places across the U.S., including major cities and rural communities, people marched in so-called No Kings demonstrations against the Trump administration. See photos here. Trump spent hours watching the parade in Washington, which honored the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — on his own 79th birthday. On Fox News, hosts gushed over the display. Other Big Stories Pope Leo delivered his first public address to an American audience. The speech, fittingly, was shown at the stadium of his favorite team, the Chicago White Sox. Trump abruptly paused immigration raids in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, after intensive lobbying by his agriculture secretary. Canada’s new prime minister plans to spend billions to revitalize the military. The goal, in part, is to reduce the country’s dependence on the U.S. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Should Trump have deployed the National Guard to quell the Los Angeles protests? No. Trump deployed the National Guard without an invasion or rebellion — just protests. “A president who can mobilize military forces against protesters, and chooses to target those upset with his policies, is assuming the power to suppress speech he personally finds threatening,” Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman writes. Yes. There is a long history of presidents sending troops where protests threaten the enforcement of federal law. “Trump is doing nothing more than his job, something the Biden administration and Newsom himself largely abdicated,” David Mastio writes for The Kansas City Star. FROM OPINION Trump should not let Israel drag the U.S. into a doomed war with Iran, Rosemary Kelanic writes. A successful protest doesn’t bring immediate, easily visible change. It succeeds when it leads to change over time, David Wallace-Wells argues. Here are columns by Ross Douthat on assisted suicide and Thomas Friedman on Iran and Israel. Save up to 75% on Games. Our best offer won’t last. Add some play to your day with Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more. Subscribe to New York Times Games and save up to 75% on your first year — get full access to our puzzle archives, play ad free in the app, use tools to help you improve and more. SPORTS W.N.B.A.: In her first game back from an injury, Caitlin Clark went off for 25 points in the first half, leading the Indiana Fever to victory over the previously unbeaten New York Liberty. Minnesota shootings: The attacks on lawmakers cast a somber mood over a nearby W.N.B.A. game between the Minnesota Lynx and the Los Angeles Sparks. The tragedy “puts basketball into perspective,” the Lynx star Napheesa Collier said. Advice for grads: What do Derek Jeter, Simone Biles and Carmelo Anthony have in common? They all gave commencement addresses this year. Read highlights from the speeches. MORNING READS Peter Listro and his son, Matt. Elinor Carucci for The New York Times From beyond: As their father grew ill, a family decided to create an A.I. avatar of him that they could talk to after he was gone. Modern men: On a recent workday in Manhattan, dads attended a summit on the future of fatherhood. (It was organized by moms.) Your pick: The Morning’s most-clicked link yesterday was about the sole survivor of the Air India crash. Rabbit holes: They asked a chatbot questions. Its conspiratorial answers sent them spiraling. Vows: What’s black and white and began with a message on LinkedIn? This wedding. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “The Doorman,” by Chris Pavone: Welcome to the Bohemia, one of the Upper West Side’s most opulent apartment buildings, where priceless art and designer dogs are de rigueur and every resident has a secret. So does Chicky Diaz, who holds the door, collects packages and functions as the eyes and ears of the place. In Pavone’s sixth (and, arguably, best) thriller, citywide unrest begins to penetrate the Bohemia’s fortresslike walls, edging uncomfortably close to the Big Apple’s most cosseted denizens — and to Chicky himself. Our reviewer described the book as a “laser-sharp satire” that “gathers force like an impending storm.” More on books The Book Review has a quiz to help you find your perfect summer read. Down to the wire on Father’s Day shopping? Here’s a list to consult during your trip to the bookstore this morning. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, whose new memoir, “Far From Home,” publishes this month. We spoke twice over the course of a very busy week — first on a day Trump and Elon Musk were attacking each other on social media, and again just after the president had deployed Marines to Los Angeles. We talked about both of those situations, but also about Murkowski’s sadness at the state of the country. You recently went viral for a comment you made at a conference in Alaska. In response to a question from the audience, you said, “We are all afraid” of retaliation, and that it made you anxious to use your voice. Can you explain what you meant by that? I didn’t say that we’re all afraid of retaliation. I did say we’re all afraid because I was in a room of about 500 nonprofits, many of whom had received notices that their grants had been canceled or frozen. There was just so much uncertainty. Were they going to lose their employees? Were they going to be able to continue to provide services for vulnerable women and kids? Were they going to be able to continue to build out that small hydro project so that they could finally get that village off diesel? Everyone was on edge and afraid. And the question to me was, What do you say to those who are afraid? And it was one of those moments where you’re looking out to this sea of people, and they needed to hear the honest answer that not only do I hear how afraid you are, but we are all afraid of this uncertainty. We are all afraid of what may be coming next because we do not know. And then I said: Retaliation is real. I wasn’t saying anything that was new to anybody, because people were seeing that, whether it was retaliation to universities or to individuals or at the time, the targeting of specific law firms. And so I acknowledged what people were feeling. And it made the news. It sure did. Because it seemed like nobody was willing to verbalize what everyone was feeling. And I think sometimes, as elected officials, we feel we have to be that strong voice. We have to pretend that everything is OK. I raised two boys. We fly a lot. And I can recall one trip we were flying, and there was a lot of turbulence. I needed to be strong for the boys, and I came up with some crazy story about, oh, you know how when we go down the road and it’s just really bumpy and we hit that one pothole? It’s just like that. And inside I’m screaming, “We’re gonna go down!” So sometimes you need to be that strong figure and tell everybody it’s going to be fine. Other times, it’s OK to tell your kids: You know what? This is kind of scary right now. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE The cover story of this weekend’s magazine traces the pope’s ancestry 500 years into the past. Read about what the search revealed. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Tackle your to-do list, even if you struggle with executive functioning. Bring home the best souvenirs. De-grime your outdoor furniture. MEAL PLAN Julia Gartland for The New York Times The weather is getting better. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Mia Leimkuhler shares recipes with seven ingredients or fewer so you can spend less time in the grocery store and more time outdoors. Mia suggests making pork meatballs with ginger and fish sauce, crispy chicken with lime butter, and creamy miso pasta. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was mouthed. Can you put eight historical events — including the writing of “Good Vibrations,” the invention of the shopping cart and the downfall of Thomas Cromwell — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 17, 2025 Author Members Posted June 17, 2025 June 16, 2025 Good morning. The suspect in the killing of a Minnesota lawmaker is now in custody. That’s first. Then, we take a look at the independence of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Plus, we have the latest on the Israel-Iran conflict and tourism protests in Europe. MINNESOTA MANHUNT In Green Isle, Minn. Tim Gruber for The New York Times The two-day manhunt that rattled Minnesota is over: Last night, the authorities arrested a man suspected of assassinating a state lawmaker and shooting another. The suspect, Vance Boelter, 57, surrendered near his home in a rural area southwest of Minneapolis, according to a deputy police chief, after a resident spotted him on a trail camera and officers used a drone to track him as he crawled through an area with thick shrub. The police believe Boelter to be the gunman who killed Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, then, in a separate attack, wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife. Boelter had a notebook that mentioned about 70 potential targets, which included politicians and Planned Parenthood centers, officials said. He is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder. A JUSTICE APART Erin Schaff/The New York Times; Illustration by Matt Dorfman By Jodi Kantor I’m an investigative reporter focused on the Supreme Court. Two years ago, while reporting a story about how the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, I discovered something surprising about Justice Amy Coney Barrett. In a secret internal vote about whether to hear the case, she had voted no. This was unexpected. President Trump appointed Barrett to cinch a 50-year conservative legal revolution. A mother of seven, she is on the record as an abortion opponent. And she voted for the ultimate verdict in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the federal right to abortion. But her initial reluctance about the case was a clue that Barrett is a more independent figure than the stalwart that many on the right or the left believed her to be. With much of Trump’s agenda headed to the court eventually, she’s not necessarily the safe vote he wants. She is the Republican appointee who has voted most often against Trump’s position. I spent this spring interviewing Barrett’s friends and colleagues as well as people from the court; examining her many years of speeches; and, with the help of scholars, analyzing her voting record. Read the full story. Here are some of the things I learned. Leftward drift Barrett is changing, and a new analysis of her record shows how. She has become the Republican-appointed justice most likely to be in the majority in decisions that reach a liberal outcome. Source: Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael J. Nelson, Penn State | Note: Data includes nonunanimous decisions that were orally argued and signed | By The New York Times Or take cases in which liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted together. In Barrett’s first term, she was aligned with them only 39 percent of the time (this was in nonunanimous cases for which the justices heard arguments). This term she was aligned with them 82 percent of the time. But Justice Barrett is still very conservative. She helped end federal affirmative action and expand gun rights. When she breaks for the liberal side, it’s rarely in a marquee case. Opposing Trump So far, Barrett’s record on Trump-related votes is short but suggestive. Usually, justices show what scholars call “appointment bias,” leaning slightly in favor of the presidents who install them on the bench. Emergency orders are tentative, and not every vote is disclosed. But she has gone in the other direction. Trump has privately complained about her, according to two people familiar with his thinking. On a podcast this spring, Mike Davis, a close Trump ally who once clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch, tore into her in such crude terms that Gorsuch later called to reprimand him, according to people aware of the exchange. Differences with a colleague Differences between Barrett and Justice Samuel Alito arose in her earliest days on the court. In the first major argument she heard, he tried to expand the role of religion in public life. She declined to go along. Next, he wanted to overturn the Affordable Care Act; she voted no on procedural grounds. Alito wanted to hear the abortion case, and she didn’t. In a patent case later that term, they wrote dueling dissents both claiming that Justice Scalia would have favored their positions. For five years, that debate has continued about how far and how fast to go. Alito, 75, is in a hurry to take advantage of the six-seat conservative majority. Barrett, who at 53 is likely to have a long future at the court, is cautious and controlled. He barely disguises his annoyance when the other conservatives don’t go along with him, and he sometimes vents in epically long opinions. After Barrett’s second term, her agreement on outcomes with Alito slid from 80 percent to 62 percent. A justice without a team On the court, Barrett sits somewhat apart from the others. Her signature move is joining only slices of her colleagues’ opinions, agreeing with some bits but not others. Even when she agrees with the supermajority, she sometimes argues some of the justices took the wrong route. (One person from the court called her the Hermione Granger of the conservatives, telling the men they’re doing it wrong.) Barrett, a longtime academic, initially wasn’t sure she wanted to be a judge. She still calls herself “a law professor to my bones.” Among the nine members of the court, she is the least experienced judge and the youngest. The one justice not educated at Harvard or Yale, she is a foreigner to the power-player Beltway posts that shaped most of the others. In speeches, she has told striking, and sometimes personal, stories about family, faith, the law and the enormous transition she has been through. Read some excerpts here. THE COMING STORM Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times Some of the most consequential decisions of this term still loom. Abbie VanSickle, who covers the Supreme Court for The Times, explains what to look for. If it’s late June, we reporters who cover the Court are on high alert, prepping for major rulings before the official end of the term. This week, we expect some decisions to be announced on Wednesday — and possibly Friday. There are about 20 outstanding cases; here are the five major ones we’re watching. Health care for trans youth: Tennessee barred doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to minors (as did 25 other states). The ruling turns on the Constitution’s equal protection clause and may have broad implications for how gender identity fits into it. Birthright citizenship: The case appears to be about Trump’s executive order ending the longstanding concept that any child born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen. But the arguments are all about “nationwide injunctions” — when or whether a single federal judge should be allowed to temporarily block something from taking effect across the whole country. Congressional redistricting: Did Louisiana focus too much on race in drafting a new voting map that includes two majority-Black House districts? The decision could reshape the balance of power in Congress. Internet porn: Texas (along with 17 other states) has tried to limit access to sexual material for those under 18. The challengers say this violates the First Amendment. L.G.B.T.Q. in the classroom: After Maryland added books with queer themes to its curriculum, some families sued. The justices will decide whether those with religious objections must be allowed to opt out of class discussions. Check out our tracker for more detail, including polling on the issues and how the justices have voted on the cases decided so far. THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Iran Conflict In Tehran yesterday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Israel said this morning that it had struck the command center of Iran’s Quds force — a special military unit that coordinates support for allies including Hamas and Hezbollah, and that reports directly to the country’s supreme leader. Iran struck populated areas in Israel for the second night in a row, killing at least eight people. Iranian missiles also hit Israel’s largest oil refinery, in Haifa Bay. Though Israeli strikes scuppered the latest talks between the U.S. and Iran, the push for a deal on Iran’s nuclear program could be revived, Steven Erlanger writes. Israel and Iran have little incentive to stop fighting and no obvious route to outright victory. Their war is more likely to last weeks than days, Patrick Kingsley writes. Israeli strikes have killed at least 224 people in Iran, according to the health ministry there. Iranian strikes have killed at least 21 people in Israel. Read what to know. More on the Middle East France’s relationship with Israel has always been turbulent, but the prospect that Emmanuel Macron may soon recognize a Palestinian state has caused a new level of tension. U.S. investigators questioned a former top general in Syria about Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in 2012. The general said Tice was dead and named a potential gravesite. His claims could not immediately be independently verified. Immigration “What hospital were you born at?”: A raid east of Los Angeles has stirred fears about federal agents questioning the legal status of Americans who happen to be Latino. Two of the four men who escaped from an overcrowded immigration detention center in New Jersey last week have been captured. Immigration raids are prompting some parents to keep their children home from school, according to a recent study. More on the Trump Administration DOGE sought to run the Social Security agency through misinformation and social media blasts. Its work there thinned an already overstretched work force. Read the inside story of a chaotic takeover. Lawyers for Harvard will urge a judge in Boston today to block the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the university enrolling foreign students. Trump is in Canada for the G7 summit, which brings together the leaders of big Western countries and Japan. His aides say he will discuss fairness in trade and illegal migration. International In Barcelona. Edu Bayer for The New York Times Demonstrators in Italy, Portugal and Spain took to the streets with squirt guns, noisy roller suitcases and flares to protest mass tourism. Investigators are struggling to identify passenger remains from the Air India plane that crashed last week because the flames were so intense. Other Big Stories Records show that air traffic controllers for Newark Airport have grappled with equipment outages since at least 2023, a situation some of them call “plug and pray.” Flash flooding in West Virginia destroyed homes and killed at least five people. OPINIONS The government’s refusal to allow citizens to oppose its anti-immigrant policies feels like it imperils the worth of our citizenship, Dara Lind writes. Here are columns by Margaret Renkl on a civil rights museum and David French on Trump’s polling. Save up to 75% on Games. Our best offer won’t last. Add some play to your day with Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more. Subscribe to New York Times Games and save up to 75% on your first year — get full access to our puzzle archives, play ad free in the app, use tools to help you improve and more. MORNING READS Near Rate Field. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times Big Cheers for No. 14: Thousands of Catholic Chicagoans gathered at the home of the White Sox to celebrate the election of Pope Leo XIV. Low-key charm: Bali is among Indonesia’s most famous tourist stops. Sumba is its perfect foil. Bed bugs: Cities have offered bloodsucking insects the perfect 13,000-year partnership. Metropolitan Diary: Her fare was bananas. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about the nationwide anti-Trump protests. Women’s health: Norma Swenson was a proponent of natural childbirth when she joined the group that produced the feminist health classic “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” It became a cultural touchstone and a global best seller. Swenson died at 93. SPORTS P.G.A.: J.J. Spaun, 34, overcame soaking weather in Pittsburgh to win a wild U.S. Open, his first major title. Spaun nailed a 64-foot birdie putt to stay atop the leaderboard for good. Trending: The Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants completed a blockbuster trade 10 minutes before one of the pitchers involved was expected to start in a nationally televised game. ARTS AND IDEAS Photo illustration by Ricardo Tomas Pop songs have gotten shorter, novels have gotten slimmer and TV show seasons are tighter. In our age of distraction, the arts appear to be responding in kind. Biography, however, is an exception to this mass shrinkage. Read more about the modern biography. More on culture In Shanghai. Visual China Group, via Getty Images China is reaching for soft power. One of its victories is the Labubu doll. Leonard Lauder died at 92. With his mother, Estée, he helped build a family cosmetics business into a worldwide juggernaut. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Cover chicken breasts with lemon-pepper sauce. Relieve back pain with this gentle yoga routine. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were bacchanalia and bacchanalian. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 18, 2025 Author Members Posted June 18, 2025 June 17, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the news you need to start your day: Summit: President Trump left the G7 meeting in Canada early. He flew home because of the conflict in the Middle East, the White House press secretary said. Middle East: The Israeli military said it had killed the new most senior military commander in Iran. Ukraine: Russia pummeled Kyiv with drones and missiles overnight, killing at least 14 people. More news is below. But first, we take a look at the forces at play in the Israel-Iran conflict. In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Weapons grade By Jonathan Weisman I write about politics and other topics. Israel calls its attack on Iran’s nuclear program a justified response to an existential threat: Benjamin Netanyahu argues that Iran’s leaders should be taken at their word when they say they wish to wipe his country off the map. So Israel has spent the last several days razing Iran’s nuclear structures and killing the people in charge of them; more than 200 people have died, according to the Iranian health ministry. Iran has been shooting back, blowing up buildings in Tel Aviv; at least 24 people have died, according to Israel. Why are these two nations in this mess? Iran watched the United States fell governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government believes nuclear bombs (and the threat that it could use them) will protect it, just as they have protected North Korea. Israel does not believe in the power of diplomacy to solve this existential threat. North Korea has been tolerated as a rogue regime with nuclear bombs because nations assume Kim Jong-un won’t use them. But Israel and its supporters treat Iran as uniquely irrational. Netanyahu saw a previous deal as vulnerable to cheating, and he struck Iran last week while President Trump was negotiating a new one. But military intervention has its problems, too. Today’s newsletter is about that puzzle. The talking cure American presidents have chased a nuclear deal and asked Israel for restraint. The agreement struck in the last years of the Obama administration did not meet Netanyahu’s very high bar — the total elimination of Iran’s nuclear program — but it put inspectors on the ground to ensure Iran halted development. In exchange, Western nations loosened sanctions and unfroze Iran’s assets. But even the most ardent proponents of Obama’s deal had to admit that it was a temporary measure to hold off Iranian nuclear ambitions for a decade, with the hope that something — anything — would follow. By most accounts, Iran was abiding by the terms, but Trump shredded the agreement in his first term, promising in this term that he would deliver something more secure. Before he could, Jerusalem and Tehran went to war. Fighting it out Military intervention may get short-term results. But it won’t induce a regime to change its ambitions, and it almost always brings unintended consequences. Four decades ago, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, determined to nullify Saddam Hussein’s capabilities. World powers criticized the violation of another country’s sovereignty, but Israelis still see it as a success: Baghdad never became a nuclear power. On the other hand, the operation did not sate Saddam Hussein’s hunger for other weapons of mass destruction. He developed chemical agents — and later used them on his enemies. Eventually, George W. Bush used their existence to justify a U.S. invasion. The bombing over the past week has already achieved some results. Aside from the targets eliminated or badly damaged — Iran’s air defenses, the Natanz nuclear enrichment complex, key missile sites — Tehran said yesterday it wanted an end to the fighting and would negotiate. Yet there are few scenarios in which the regime changes. Maybe Tehran would sign a new nonproliferation deal. But even after these strikes, its store of enriched uranium still exists. Its underground lab to enrich more still exists (though Trump is weighing whether to lend a massive bomb to help destroy it, my colleagues reported last night). And the government’s desires — to have sanctions lifted and to prevent any future invasion — still exist. No wonder Netanyahu says he wants nothing to do with talks. Mutual destruction Israel’s perceived existential threat assumes that Iran’s leadership is irrational, or at least that it’s impervious to the theory of mutually assured destruction that has prevented a nuclear exchange since the outbreak of the Cold War. If an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel would mean the incineration of Tehran, would Iran’s government really carry out its oft-repeated threat to destroy the Jewish state? Israel thinks the chances are good enough that it started a war last week. In the end, mutually assured destruction, much like diplomacy, is based on faith — in the rationality of leadership, in the instinct of self-preservation, in a desired future for humanity. That faith is in short supply in the Middle East. More on the conflict Northern Tehran yesterday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times The Iranian military commander whom Israel said it killed had been in the job for about four days. Israel killed his predecessor last week. Israeli forces bombed the headquarters of Iran’s state TV station. It was broadcasting live, and the anchor scrambled for cover. Iran’s best-protected nuclear site, Fordo, is buried deep inside a mountain. Only the U.S. has a bomb that could reach it. Here’s a diagram. Iran is often portrayed as one of the world’s most dangerous powers. Israel’s attacks expose its weaknesses. THE LATEST NEWS Foreign Policy Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, with President Trump. Kenny Holston/The New York Times On the flight back from the G7, Trump told reporters that he wanted “a real end, not a cease-fire” in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Trump also said that he is considering sending Vice President JD Vance and Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy, to meet with Iran but it “depends on what happens when I get back.” Some Democrats want to curb Trump’s authority to use U.S. forces against Iran. They worry about entangling America in a broader conflict. Trump Administration The government is considering expanding Trump’s travel ban to as many as 36 more countries, mostly in Africa. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore some National Institutes of Health funding focused on minority groups, accusing the government of discrimination. Democrats see the governor’s race this year in Virginia, where many fired federal workers live, as a chance to make a statement against Trump. It’s been 10 years since Trump rode down a golden escalator to announce his run for president. He has dominated his era as few other presidents have, Peter Baker writes. Trump’s Businesses Trending: People online are talking about the Trump Organization’s new phone company, Trump Mobile. Details are murky so far. The Trump family also has a new Bitcoin-mining venture. It raises fresh conflict-of-interest concerns. More on Politics Senate Republicans proposed legislation that would cut Medicaid far more aggressively than is planned in the Trump policy bill that the House passed. Bob Menendez, the 71-year-old former New Jersey senator, is expected to start serving his 11-year sentence for corruption today. Bernie Sanders plans to endorse Zohran Mamdani, a progressive, for mayor of New York City. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez already endorsed him. Minnesota Manhunt The man accused of assassinating one Minnesota lawmaker and shooting another will face federal murder charges, which could allow for the death penalty. The suspect, Vance Boelter, drove to the homes of two other politicians with the intent to kill them, federal officials said. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, made two posts on social media mocking the shootings and blaming the left. Other Big Stories Haiti’s government is using drones fitted with explosives to fight gangs. Legal experts say that violates international law. U.S. officials say that pangolins — adorable armored mammals trafficked for their scales and meat — should receive endangered species protections. For years, WhatsApp avoided advertising, games and gimmicks. But the company, which Meta owns, now plans to start showing ads in its app. IN ONE CHART Source: Congressional Budget Office | By The New York Times Tax cuts don’t usually leave the poor significantly worse off. And cuts to the social safety net don’t usually include benefits for the rich. But as the chart above shows, the tax- and spending-cut bill that House Republicans passed last month does both. It would lower after-tax incomes for the bottom 30 percent of households while raising incomes for everyone else, particularly the richest 10 percent. See how the bill compares with other major tax and entitlement legislation. OPINIONS Protests against Trump can succeed only when they’re nonviolent, Omar Wasow and Robb Willer argue. Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on the “No Kings” protests and Thomas Friedman on the Israel-Iran war. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Ready for the pigeon pageant. Lucia Buricelli for The New York Times Pigeon Fest: Thousands gathered to celebrate New York’s most resilient bird. Lucky move: The woman who won a raffle for a country cottage in Ireland is a U.S. Marine Corps officer, and she paid about $13. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about anti-tourism protests in Europe. Lives Lived: Overcoming resistance from male sports officials, and even doctors, Nina Kuscsik was the first woman to enter the New York City Marathon and the first official female winner of the Boston Marathon. She died at 86. A CAREER DERAILED Maj. Erica Vandal Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The Army was the only life Maj. Erica Vandal knew. With a sterling performance record, accolades and more than a dozen years of service, she was on track to take command of a 650-soldier field artillery battalion as early as 2027. But in the first days of Trump’s second term, the president issued an executive order barring around 4,200 transgender service members, including the major, from the U.S. military. Trump said that they lacked the “honesty,” “humility” and “integrity” to serve. Now Vandal had to make a choice: Accept a “voluntary” separation from the Army and receive $320,000 — a fraction of the pension and benefits she would have received at retirement. Or contest her dismissal and receive even less. Read the rest of her story. SPORTS N.B.A: The Thunder downed the Pacers, 120-109, in Game 5 with the help of 40 points from Jalen Williams. Now, Oklahoma City seeks its second-ever title in Game 6 on Thursday. M.L.B.: He’s back. The Dodgers ace Shohei Ohtani flashed eye-popping stuff in his first big-league pitching performance in nearly two years. ARTS AND IDEAS Chris Evans, left, and Dakota Johnson. Taylor Miller for The New York Times Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans, the stars of the new movie “Materialists,” visited the NYT Cooking studio recently to answers some questions and make some pizzas. Johnson said she had never made a pizza before; Evans said he had, technically — English muffin pizzas. Though their co-star Pedro Pascal wasn’t in the studio, they tried to capture his essence: If Pedro Pascal were a food dish, what would he be and why? Evans: Does a daiquiri count? He’s fun! He’s colorful and exciting. Johnson: Flan. Evans: Flan! Don’t ask what food dish I would be. Johnson: Actually, you would be flan, and he’s like crème brûlée. He’s crème brûlée because he’s tough on the outside, but then, when you crack in there, he’s just soft little sweetness. Watch their playful pizza-making video. More on culture In HBO’s “Mountainhead,” a tech-bro satire from the creator of “Succession,” the most ostentatious display of wealth is an oddly shaped copper pot. The late night hosts gave their takes on Trump’s military parade: “A $50 million version of when a 5-year-old shows you every car in his Hot Wheels collection,” Jimmy Kimmel said. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times. Food stylist: Simon Andrews. Make “ice cream” with just one ingredient. Try one of Wirecutter’s favorite things from Trader Joe’s. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was fixation. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misstated the order of the attacks on Minnesota lawmakers. The gunman wounded John Hoffman before killing Melissa Hortman, not after. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 18, 2025 Author Members Posted June 18, 2025 June 18, 2025 Good morning. President Trump suggested that the U.S. could join the conflict against Iran. ICE agents arrested a candidate for New York City mayor. The Gaza health ministry said dozens of Palestinians were killed while awaiting food aid. More news is below. But first, we explain why Israel chose this moment to go to war with Iran. In Tehran yesterday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times The war, explained By German Lopez One way to look at Israel’s war with Iran is that it’s a natural escalation of the battles that the Jewish state has fought since the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has leveled much of Gaza to destroy Hamas, which is backed by Iran. It bombed Lebanon and Yemen to counter Hezbollah and the Houthi militia, both of which are also backed by Iran. Now, instead of focusing on proxies, Israel is taking its fight directly to Iran. But the timing matters. After all, the conflict between Israel and Iran isn’t new. Iran’s leaders have called for Israel’s destruction for decades. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has characterized Iran as an existential threat for decades. Western officials have debated the wisdom of a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program for decades. What’s new is that Israel now believes it can win. Why now? Three issues led Israel to strike last week: Nuclear weapons: Israeli officials claim that Iranian scientists are close to making a nuclear weapon — potentially months away. (U.S. officials are more divided on the topic, CNN reported.) Netanyahu said he had to strike now before they completed their work. More urgently, though, Netanyahu likely worried that President Trump would sign a new nuclear agreement with Iran’s leaders. Israel opposed the previous deal, established under Barack Obama, in part because it let Iran keep some nonmilitary nuclear capabilities. If Trump reached a similar agreement, Israel couldn’t strike without violating the spirit of that deal and upsetting its biggest ally. At least for now, Israel has global support in this mission. Western countries see Iran as a threat because it has supported militants around the world. They’re happy to let Israel take the burden of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, even if they disagree with Israel on other issues. Several Group of 7 countries condemned Israel last month for its offensive in Gaza but blessed it Monday for its strikes on Iran. Iran’s weakness: Iran is not doing well. Years of sanctions have eroded its economy. Israel and the United States have killed many of its military leaders. They’ve also pummeled its proxies across the Middle East. All of this limits Iran’s ability to retaliate. The decimation of Iran’s proxies is particularly important to Israel. Years ago, Hamas and Hezbollah would have responded to strikes on Iran with direct attacks in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. Now, Israel can hit Iran without stressing as much about the home front. Domestic politics: Since the Oct. 7 attack, Netanyahu has faced conflicting political pressure from his right and left flanks. The right wants a more aggressive war in Gaza, focused on obliterating Hamas and reoccupying the territory. The left wants Netanyahu to focus on bringing home the hostages taken by Hamas, even if it means letting the group survive. Netanyahu also faces corruption charges that could land him in prison if he lost power, and his governing coalition has strained over debates about military service requirements for ultra-Orthodox Jews. But strikes on Iran have widespread support. Israelis broadly see Iran as an existential threat, and they support destroying its nuclear capabilities. It’s a winning issue, with an election slated for next year. What’s next? Israel’s war with Iran is likely to last weeks, not days, my colleague Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem. That’s a lot of time for escalation. One unknown: Trump says he may join the fray. To truly dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, Israel needs a particular U.S. bomb to strike facilities buried deep underground. But Trump ran for president promising “no more wars,” and parts of his MAGA base take an isolationist view of the world. Trump, however, might go back on his word. Yesterday, he reiterated that Iran should never get nuclear weapons, demanded the country’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and threatened to kill its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. HOW WE COVER THE CONFLICT In Tabriz, Iran. Matin Hashemi/Associated Press Trump’s posture toward Iran keeps changing. I spoke with David Sanger, a White House correspondent who covers national security and has written extensively on Iran, about how he reports on this story. — Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor We hear from readers regularly about how Trump veers around erratically with his positions. But he’s the president — his language can’t be dismissed. How do you deal with that as a reporter? It’s always a challenge. Just two weeks ago, the president was saying he was confident in a diplomatic deal with Iran. That didn’t match our reporting. Of course, Trump thinks he is the master deal maker. So you report what he is saying and doing — he is the president, as you point out — but remind yourself that his views could change overnight. He ran for president as the man who avoided wars; now he seems on the cusp of a bombing campaign. When Trump’s intentions and tactics are opaque, how do you sift through them? You’re a journalist who doesn’t jump to conclusions. So where you do start? I’ve spent nearly half my reporting career at The Times — and I’ve been here more than 40 years — examining Iran’s capabilities. So you test the president’s comments against what we know. Trump doubted the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies and issued his own proclamations about how close Iran is to being able to produce a bomb. So we reminded readers of what intelligence reports say and what outside experts have concluded. (Inspectors were inside Iran’s nuclear facilities until last week, so we have a lot of data.) Your colleagues help, too. Yes, fortunately The Times has reporters who are expert on nuclear technology, on Iranian politics, on intelligence. It’s my job not only to sift what the president says, but to make sure we bring readers the totality of that expertise. People can lose faith in journalism when we make assumptions and get ahead of the story, especially a fast-moving conflict. What goes into producing work that people can trust? The first rule of journalism is “write what you know.” Not what you suspect. Not what partisans need for their own political narratives. Not what intelligence officials may tell you to fit the White House’s desire. We use satellite photographs. We talk to nuclear inspectors. We talk to foreign intelligence agencies. And yes, when we can, we talk to the Iranians. Of course, the hardest thing to assess is what’s going on inside a president’s head. Whatever one thinks of his rhetoric, Trump is in command of the world’s biggest and most powerful military. And the path he takes in the next few days may reshape the Middle East and our world. More on the U.S. response Trump threatened Iran’s supreme leader and referred to Israel’s war efforts using the word “we” — signs that the U.S. might enter the war. Since Israel struck Iran last week, Trump has at different times embraced diplomacy, noninvolvement and direct intervention. His comments have left a trail of confusion. Trump didn’t want Israel to attack Iran. Here’s the inside story of how he changed his tone. More on the conflict More people fled Tehran after the Israeli military said it would target “military infrastructure” in the northeast of the city. Iran has prepared missiles for strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East should the U.S. join Israel’s war, according to American officials. Despite Russia’s close ties with Iran, the Kremlin is not getting involved, Paul Sonne writes. Israel long avoided all-out war with its biggest enemies. The assault on Iran highlights how its strategy has shifted since the Oct. 7 attacks, Patrick Kingsley writes. Strike sites, nuclear facilities, evacuations: The Times maps the conflict. THE LATEST NEWS Immigration Federal agents arrest Brad Lander. Olga Fedorova/Associated Press ICE agents arrested Brad Lander, a Democrat running to be New York City’s next mayor, as he tried to escort a migrant out of an immigration courthouse. Images of handcuffed Democrats are starting to pile up. The scenes of chaos reflect the tinderbox nature of this political moment, Katie Glueck writes. Trump has sent conflicting messages on workplace immigration raids, promising a reprieve for some industries while also vowing to press ahead with mass deportation. In Los Angeles, some Latino students and their families skipped their graduations for fear of ICE raids. More on the Trump Administration Trump plans to again extend the deadline for TikTok to separate from its Chinese owner or face a ban in the U.S. It’s the third reprieve this year. The N.A.A.C.P. will not invite the president to its national convention, breaking a 116-year tradition. Congress The House Republicans’ policy bill would add about $3.4 trillion to the national debt, nonpartisan congressional analysts found. Senate Republicans published their own version of the bill, with tax tweaks that would primarily benefit businesses. The Senate passed legislation to establish federal rules for stablecoins, a victory for the cryptocurrency industry. G7 Summit Volodymyr Zelensky went to the G7 summit hoping for more support from the major countries gathered there. But the Middle East dominated talks, and he came away with little. Trending: Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, scrambled to pick up papers that Trump dropped, an image that went viral. He also got some wins. The late night hosts joked about Trump’s early flight home. More International News Gaza’s health ministry said more than 50 Palestinians were killed waiting for food aid yesterday, and 20 on Monday. It blamed Israeli troops; Israel said it was aware of the reports. British lawmakers voted to decriminalize abortions for women in England and Wales. Russia said North Korea would send thousands of construction workers to help rebuild a border area that Ukrainian troops had occupied for months. Other Big Stories Kraft Heinz promised to remove all chemical dyes from its products — including Kool-Aid and Jell-O — in the next few years. In the final days of the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Andrew Cuomo has a shrinking lead over Zohran Mamdani, a new poll found. The stock market is nearing record highs again. But the gains may not tell the full story. OPINIONS Neither parents nor young people believe students should have phones in school. It’s time for laws to ban them, Jonathan Haidt, Will Johnson and Zach Rausch write. Here are columns by Thomas Edsall on Trump’s impeachability and Jamelle Bouie on Trump and the public. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS On the Klamath River. Max Whittaker for The New York Times Dam fun: In rural Oregon, a sacred river is running free again. Kayakers are, too. Sharing tactics: Los Angeles’s restaurant industry is banding together against ICE raids. Math, revealed: This simple ratio links an apple, a pentagram and Leonardo da Vinci. Your pick: The most clicked article in The Morning yesterday has a diagram of Iran’s best-protected nuclear site. Lives Lived: Anne Burrell was a chef and Food Network star known for her kinetic swoop of blond hair and an energy to match. She died at 55. SPORTS N.H.L.: The Panthers convincingly claimed their second straight Stanley Cup with a 5-1 win over the Oilers in Game 6. Welcome to the dynasty discussion, Florida. W.N.B.A.: The Indiana Fever advanced to the Commissioner’s Cup final with an 88-71 win over the Connecticut Sun. The victory included a scuffle involving Caitlin Clark. ARTS AND IDEAS Michelladonna, the host of “Shop Cats.” Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times New York City is renowned, among other things, for the mysterious, semi-feral cats that prowl its bodegas. “Shop Cats,” a delightful video series described as “‘Cribs’ meets Steve Irwin,” seeks to get to know these felines better. It’s a very New York premise, with a very New York host: Michelladonna, a 26-year-old with a Queens accent and early-aughts MTV V.J. energy. Read more about the show here. More on culture Bruce Springsteen Daniel Arnold for The New York Times “The past always weighs heavy on me”: Bruce Springsteen is about to release an almost entirely unknown trove of songs that reveals musical paths not taken. Read his interview with The Times. Visitors broke a crystal chair at an Italian museum. See a video of the sit-and-run. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times Roast salmon with brown sugar and mustard. Choose the perfect swimsuit. Make your vacation rental kitchen feel more like home. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was infirmary. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 19, 2025 Author Members Posted June 19, 2025 June 19, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your day: Israel-Iran war: An Iranian missile hit southern Israel’s largest hospital, and Israel vowed to retaliate. Extreme weather: Hurricane Erick is expected to make landfall in Mexico soon as a Category 4 storm. Immigration: The U.S. plans to review the social media accounts of people who apply for student and visiting scholar visas. We have more news below. But first, we discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling on medical treatments for transgender kids. Outside the Supreme Court. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times A losing bet By Adam B. Kushner I’m the editor of The Morning. For years, the L.G.B.T.Q. movement racked up a slate of legal victories around marriage, military service and employment rights. But a political backlash has been brewing, and yesterday brought a profound setback: The Supreme Court ruled that states can bar doctors from providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors who identify as transgender. It wasn’t inevitable. The Supreme Court case turned on a particular argument: The plaintiffs, including three young Tennesseeans, said that when the state stopped them from taking these medications, it violated their constitutional rights. But the case was a legal and political gamble. It was rooted in uncertain science and contested ideas about sex and gender that most voters didn’t grasp or support, Nicholas Confessore reports today in The Times Magazine. The Biden administration, the A.C.L.U. and L.G.B.T.Q. groups threw their weight behind the case, United States v. Skrmetti. It was “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of trans activism,” Brianna Wu, a trans woman who serves on the board of Rebellion PAC, a Democratic political-action committee, told Nick. In today’s newsletter, I asked him to explain why. This case is the legal culmination of a larger cultural movement. What is that? Many L.G.B.T.Q. activists believe that gender identity should supplant older understandings of biological sex in the public sphere. In their view, one that emerged in recent decades from academia and left-wing political circles, people have the right to determine their own gender. And that determination should guide what appears on your driver’s license, what bathroom you use, what sports team you join. That goes for children, too. When did that idea take hold? Efforts to implement these concepts as federal policy took shape during the Obama administration. Next, in 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that employees could not be fired for being gay or transgender. Activists believed that gave them a firmer legal basis to seek expanded protections for gender identity. The Biden administration instructed federal agencies to interpret old civil rights laws against sex discrimination to include the newer concept of gender identity. Then came the backlash. I remember an ad in the closing days of the 2024 presidential campaign that said Kamala Harris was “for they/them” and that Donald Trump was “for you.” The ads spoke to a worry among some voters that trans activists were not simply asking for acceptance but demanding that other people reimagine their own identities. Once in office, Trump’s attacks went further: His policies express the view that being trans is a lie. Yet after the election, some polling showed that even most Democrats opposed allowing minors to get puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. That’s what yesterday’s ruling was about. Right. Americans generally support protecting trans people from discrimination in areas like housing, the workplace and public spaces. But in Skrmetti, the court was asked to consider a more fraught question: Do minors have a constitutional right to treatments that halt and redirect their adolescence? A majority of the Supreme Court justices — six of the nine — said they don’t. Protesting the decision. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times OK, but the justices aren’t supposed to concern themselves with public opinion. Why was this a risky legal argument? The Supreme Court has never ruled that transgender status entitles people to heightened constitutional protection, the way, say, that race or nationality do. To many experts — and even some L.G.B.T.Q. activists — it was unlikely the court would do so in a case involving medical treatments for minors. Why not? A big reason is that the scientific debate behind gender-affirming treatments has become so heated. Relatively few American adolescents identify as transgender; even fewer seek medical care for gender dysphoria, the distress some people feel when their physical bodies do not align with their sense of gender. When judged against the strictest scientific standards, existing studies have not shown that gender-affirming treatments for adolescents reliably deliver the intended benefits, such as improved mental health. That’s why some countries, such as Britain, have restricted access to these treatments. But many doctors still prescribe blockers and hormones. Influential groups like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which issues guidelines on pediatric gender medicine, assert that low-certainty studies, combined with “clinical consensus” — the real-world experience of doctors who have seen these treatments work — are a valid basis for prescribing them. Will the Skrmetti case affect other trans rights? Experts tell me it’s likely. If the court doesn’t believe that banning these treatments for minors violates the Constitution, it may hold that banning them for adults doesn’t, either. The court’s 2020 decision protecting trans and gay people from employment discrimination seems safe for now. But Skrmetti probably improves Trump’s chances of banning trans people from the military. Related: Listen to “The Protocol,” a new Times podcast that tracks the development of medical care for transgender teens. THE LATEST NEWS Israel-Iran War Iranian missiles hit several sites in Israel, injuring at least 44 people. The Israeli military said it would intensify its strikes on Iran. After an Iranian missile hit the hospital in southern Israel, an entire floor of the building collapsed. See a photo. Israel has killed hundreds of civilians in Iran, including an 8-year-old girl who loved dancing, a 28-year-old national equestrian champion and a graphic designer who worked at National Geographic. Read their stories. Iran’s state broadcaster urged viewers to delete WhatsApp. It claimed without evidence that the app was sending information to Israel. The Iran Debate Senator Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson Eric Lee/The New York Times; Saul Martinez for The New York Times Iran is the rare issue that divides Trump’s coalition. In a viral video, Tucker Carlson berated Senator Ted Cruz: “You don’t know anything about the country!” As Trump considers whether to send U.S. forces to Iran, the legacy of the Iraq war hangs over his decision. Trump is specifically deciding whether to drop 30,000-pound bunker-busters onto a famous Iranian nuclear site. Read more about the debate. If Trump attacks, thousands of American troops across the Middle East may become Iranian targets. More on Politics The Democratic Party’s cash reserves shrank this year, after last year’s elections upset major donors. The Justice Department plans to eliminate two thirds of the inspectors who monitor gun sales. The Trump administration told the national suicide prevention hotline to stop offering specialized support to L.G.B.T.Q. callers. Trump’s travel restrictions threaten hundreds of hospitals that depend on foreign medical residents. Health Regulars approved a twice-yearly shot of a new drug to stop H.I.V. infections. Florida tried to let teenage students sleep longer and start later. It reversed course after school administrators complained. “Americans are going to die”: A vaccine expert talked The Times through her decision to quit the C.D.C. Other Big Stories The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged. It appears to be waiting to see how Trump’s trade war and other policies affect the economy. Austria proposed new gun laws eight days after the deadliest school shooting in its history. Karen Read was acquitted of murder and manslaughter over the death of her boyfriend, a Boston police officer. OPINIONS Progressives should put national identity and citizenship at the center of their agenda, and start with tough immigration policies, Claire Ainsley writes. Samantha Williams’s daughter was at the center of the Supreme Court case on trans medical care. “I am beside myself,” she writes. Here is a column by Nicholas Kristof on a global problem we could solve. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. JUNETEENTH EATS A Juneteenth altar. Jim Wilson/The New York Times Creative chefs and home cooks are evolving Juneteenth cuisine. They’re still making staples like barbecue or drinks dyed red to symbolize the blood of enslaved ancestors. But they’re also adding holiday dishes representing the diverse histories and regional variations in Black American cooking. Here’s what some people are making today: Tamarind glazed oxtail: an ode to the flavors of the Caribbean. Tea cakes: a beloved Southern treat that moved north during the Great Migration. Jollof rice: a flavorful long-grain rice dish with roots in West Africa. See these recipes and more. MORNING READS Lauryn Ishak for The New York Times Mesmerizing: Indoor sky divers perform routines in wind tunnels. They’re giving floating ballerina vibes. Discovery: Scientists found the DNA of ancient humans in a fossilized skull. The key? Tooth plaque. The Ethicist: “I had an affair with a politician who denies being gay. Do I keep his secret?” Peacock chair: This regal seat makes you sit up straight. It has persisted as a Black American tradition. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, crouching to get papers that Trump dropped. Trending: Jeremy Allen White, of “The Bear,” will play Bruce Springsteen in a new movie. See the trailer. Lives Lived: Gary England’s childhood fascination with severe weather spawned a long career as a television meteorologist in tornado-plagued Oklahoma, where his storm warnings likely saved many lives. He died at 85. SPORTS N.B.A: The Buss family agreed in principle to sell the Los Angeles Lakers to a financier, Mark Walter. The deal values the team at a record $10 billion, The Athletic reports. M.L.B.: Boston traded Rafael Devers to San Francisco. Read about other potential trades. N.F.L.: The Cleveland Browns’ rookie quarterback, Shedeur Sanders, was pulled over early Tuesday and accused of driving at 101 m.p.h. ARTS AND IDEAS Filming “Jaws.” Peacock/Universal Pictures, via Associated Press “Jaws” created a playbook that filmmakers have followed closely for 50 years. The plot, replicated over and over, has nine parts. A creature stalks a remote location and attacks the first victim. Next, a reluctant hero challenges a local authority and enlists experts to help. Finally, a sacrifice and a confrontation lead to the creature’s death. This story shows you how other movies have filled in those blanks. More on culture Derek Dixon, an actor, accused Tyler Perry of sexual assault in a $260 million lawsuit. Dixon starred in one of Perry’s television shows. Perry’s lawyer called the case a “scam.” Can you match novels to their movie adaptations? Take this quiz. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Martha Rose Shulman’s chickpeas with baby spinach. Julia Gartland for The New York Times Cook chickpeas with baby spinach. Prevent bedbugs from coming home with you. Pack more into your luggage with a compression sack. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were cinephile and philhellenic. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 20, 2025 Author Members Posted June 20, 2025 June 20, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your day: Israel-Iran war: World leaders are accelerating diplomatic efforts to end the war. Iran’s foreign minister is expected to meet his European counterparts today. Espionage: China unleashed its hackers to seek Russia’s secrets. Dining: The World’s 50 Best list was announced. See the top restaurants for 2025. More news is below. But first, we explain how Iran’s nuclear program became a crisis so quickly. Smoke from Israeli airstrikes on Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times How urgent is ‘urgent’? By Robert Draper I cover politics and wrote a book about the run-up to the Iraq war. When President Trump said this week that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” but was perhaps “a few weeks away from having one,” he was in effect introducing a familiar feature to the public debate over America’s involvement in the Israel-Iran war: an element of urgency unsupported by any publicly available facts. Those of us who wrote about the 2003 decision to invade Iraq heard the echo immediately. The run-up to that conflict was replete with alarmist claims that turned out to be false. Vice President Dick Cheney declared, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” President George W. Bush dismissed fact-finding as an unaffordable impediment: “We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” This time, things are somewhat different. Israel is the nation that sprang to action and Trump is debating whether to help out. And if he does, it seems unlikely that he’ll want Americans to stay and reshape Iran, given his dislike of foreign entanglements. But in both cases, the rationale pointed to an imminent crisis that simply could not be ignored. Today’s newsletter is about that parallel. The smoking gun The Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran. Majid Asgaripour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images No weapons of mass destruction ever turned up in Iraq. A post-9/11 hysteria about what could happen next, rather than actual evidence, impelled American policymakers to war. Iran has spent decades building its nuclear program. It has enriched uranium — to generate energy, it said — but not yet enough to make bombs. Still, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saw this as intolerable. Iran’s leaders have threatened to destroy his country many times (and have often vowed “death to America,” too). So Netanyahu has spent a generation on a global public campaign to convey the urgency of the threat. Two decades ago, Netanyahu warned that Iran might be three to five years from making nuclear bombs. A decade ago, he said it could be “weeks away.” Because Trump agrees that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, he has been a receptive buyer of claims about imminency — even in place of his own government’s intelligence. He rejected the assessment of his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, that Iran hasn’t yet decided to build nuclear weapons. Trump warmed to Israel’s strikes after he saw their success, my colleagues reported this week. He may let Israel use America’s “bunker-buster” bomb — and the plane to drop it — to try to destroy a uranium-enrichment site buried underground. It’s possible Trump may be deliberately inflating the stakes to increase his own deal-making leverage. He spent much of this year trying to sign Iran to a new nonproliferation deal. He twice ran for president denouncing foreign entanglements and “nation building.” We’ll know soon about his plan: The White House says he will decide “within the next two weeks” if he’ll assist Israel’s effort. Unintended consequences The toll of the Iraq war on America and the Middle East cannot be fully conveyed in numbers. It also reshaped American politics. Trump rode to victory in 2016 in part by describing America’s misadventures in the Middle East as “a tremendous disservice to humanity” that had cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars that should have been “spent right here in the United States.” The Bush administration led America into war based on a threat that did not exist. Is the same true today? The chief of the C.I.A.’s Iraq analyst group at the time, Jane Green, told me recently that Saddam Hussein had been bluffing about his weapons arsenal to deter aggression from its neighbor Iran. In the same way, the Islamic Republic was probably trying to keep Israel at bay. “Even if Iran actually had nuclear weapons,” Green said, “it would be suicidal to use them. A first nuclear strike by Iran could turn that country into a parking lot.” This time, as last, U.S. involvement may bring aftereffects that the president did not anticipate. For instance, Iran’s “biggest claim to fame is supporting terrorism,” Green told me. A U.S. attack on Iran, she added, could prompt a wave of violent retaliation by Islamic extremists. That’s the domino effect Bush encountered, too — the nightmare scenario of “endless war” that Trump has pledged to avoid. More on Iran Iran built its most critical nuclear enrichment facility, Fordo, deep inside a mountain to shield it from attacks. See illustrations that show how tough it would be to attack. U.S. intelligence agencies continue to believe that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb, but that it may redouble its efforts if the U.S. attacks Fordo or if Israel kills its supreme leader. Israel accused Iran of using cluster munitions — a type of weapon that carries a high risk of causing harm to civilians, and which more than 100 countries have agreed not to use (though not Iran, Israel or the U.S.) More on Trump By saying he will take two weeks to decide, Trump is buying himself time to assess his options, David Sanger and Tyler Pager write. (Also, saying he needs two weeks is one of Trump’s favorite things to do.) A U.S. attack on Iran would show the limits of China’s power. China depends on Iran for oil and to counter American influence. TRUMP’S ABNORMAL TRADE TALKS Trump announcing tariffs in April. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Trump administration officials are racing to finalize trade deals with as many countries as possible before a July 9 deadline, when higher tariffs are set to snap back into effect. But these aren’t typical agreements. Ana Swanson, who covers trade for The Times, explains why. What’s in a normal trade deal? These cover a lot of ground, so they typically take years to negotiate — 917 days, on average. Trump signed a deal with Mexico and Canada in 2020 to update NAFTA, for instance. It’s more than 1,000 pages long and spells out rules for intellectual property, auto manufacturing, investment and other areas. Under what conditions can a carburetor made in Quebec travel tariff-free to Michigan for installation in a Chevy? From start to finish, that agreement took 2.5 years to conceptualize, negotiate and ratify in Congress. What’s happening this time? The Trump administration is seeking what might be better described as “framework deals” that set the terms of a future negotiation. A recent agreement with Britain, for example, is only a few pages long. On Monday, Trump said tariffs on British car and plane parts would fall, but details around agriculture, economic security and other areas still need to be figured out. There’s not much more that officials can accomplish in 90 days while talking to more than a dozen governments. In that short window, they’re supposed to open up foreign markets to U.S. products, remove discriminatory taxes and find common ground on dealing with China, among other difficult issues. Another impediment is that Trump officials want to avoid Congress. That means they can’t offer concessions that involve changing U.S. law. Europe, for example, has offered to drop tariffs on industrial goods if the United States does the same, but that requires Congress. (Instead, the American side is merely offering to roll back most of the tariffs that Trump imposed this spring.) In this video, I explain how the trade war is affecting America’s largest port: The New York Times THE LATEST NEWS Politics In Los Angeles last week. Alex Welsh for The New York Times A federal appeals court ruled that Trump could continue using the California National Guard to respond to protests in Los Angeles, overturning a lower-court judge’s ruling. The Department of Homeland Security said members of Congress could no longer make unannounced visits to ICE field offices, after several Democratic lawmakers attempted to visit the facilities. Trump granted TikTok another three-month extension on the 2024 law that requires the app to find a new owner. Juneteenth went uncelebrated at the White House. (Jimmy Kimmel discussed Trump’s silence on late night.) Republicans’ domestic policy bill would cut deeply into Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts. “Little lobbyists” — a group of children with serious medical issues — crisscrossed the Capitol to try to persuade lawmakers to protect the program. International In Thailand, lawmakers are calling on the prime minister to resign after a private chat, posted online, showed her acting deferential to Cambodia’s de facto leader. In Kenya, photos captured the police shooting a man in the head who was protesting police violence. He survived, and The Times decided to publish the photos. After 19 years, a crane that ruined photos in Florence is gone. Weather The U.S. is facing its first big heat wave of the year. Forecasters warn it could be dangerously hot in the Midwest this weekend and on the East Coast next week. Britain also is in a major heat wave. Other Big Stories A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a test in Texas, the latest in a series of setbacks for Elon Musk’s Mars ambitions. See the video. Safety standards virtually eliminated black lung in the U.S. a few decades ago. But the disease is back: Modern miners are contracting it at younger ages, and at rates not seen since the 1970s. Marijuana use is associated with a higher risk of stroke and heart attack, including among younger adults, new research shows. OPINIONS If Trump wants the U.S. to join Israel’s war against Iran, Congress should authorize the use of military force, the Editorial Board writes. Here is a column by M. Gessen on the Supreme Court’s trans rights ruling. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Syed Ali Zanjani’s family has been in the spiritual trade since 1945. Saiyna Bashir for The New York Times Spiritual practice: Pakistan is trying to outlaw black magic. Astrologers and healers worry they will be targeted. Social Q’s: “Was I wrong to tell my dead friend’s son that his father sold his sperm to a sperm bank?” Your pick: The most-clicked story yesterday was about Hurricane Erick. It made landfall and has been downgraded to a tropical storm. Lives Lived: Kim Woodburn was the platinum-haired, trash-talking darling of British reality television who found fame as a domestic dominatrix in the long-running series “How Clean Is Your House.” She died at 83. SPORTS N.B.A: The Indiana Pacers beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 108-91 in Game 6 of the N.B.A. Finals. M.L.B: The Los Angeles Dodgers denied ICE agents access to its parking lots. ARTS AND IDEAS Researchers are trying to figure out what staring at a screen is doing to kids. A major new report offers some insights: It found that longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later. But kids that have an “addictive” relationship to their phone, video games or social media were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves. Read more about the study. More on culture At the Met Gala. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times People were searching online for Megan Thee Stallion because she appeared on Love Island USA. Vulture has more. Brian Tyree Henry, star of the AppleTV+ series “Dope Thief,” shares his five favorite places in Philadelphia. The term “fridge cigarette” — that is, a quick break from work to drink a can of soda — has gone viral. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … James Ransom for The New York Times Drink a tinto de verano, made of ice, red wine and citrus soda, to kick off summer. See everything coming in iOS 26. Wrap yourself in a cozy robe. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was motivator. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 22, 2025 Author Members Posted June 22, 2025 June 21, 2025 Good morning. It’s the first full day of summer. Make sure you don’t miss a minute of it. María Jesús Contreras Season opener By Melissa Kirsch Last night, at 10:42 p.m. Eastern, summer arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. With it, a major heat wave is affecting large swaths of the U.S. Keep yourself safe and stay cool however you can this weekend. If you can find your way to some water — a pool, a lake or a river, the ocean, your trusty old bathtub — do it. Not only will you cool off, but you’ll also get the benefit that my friend Lori pointed out to me recently: Swimming is one of the only activities in modern life during which it’s nearly impossible to be on your phone. (Fine, it’s possible in the bathtub. But why are you on your phone in the bathtub?) The ideal of summer, the one that plays in my imagination during the colder months, is totally tech-free. It’s all real life, all sensation: sun on skin, sand between toes, picking the corn cob free of its waxy silk, always smelling something grilling somewhere. There’s no phone in this film, no text message or push alert, nothing vibrating in anyone’s pocket. My colleagues on the Travel desk have a new story this morning about far-flung resorts where people pay up to $32,000 a night to get away from civilization, to unyoke themselves from the stranglehold of Wi-Fi. This seems extreme. But I still get nostalgic remembering the phone-free week I spent in the woods nearly two years ago, what a relief it was not to have that parallel life to tend to for a spell. Last week, I wrote about how to find a middle ground between obsession and retreat in the face of what feels like an impossible-to-process volume of information. The solution, as with so many of our persistent complaints, is presence. The phone takes us out of the present like nothing else. I’ve been thinking about the moment when you return, after having been deep in your phone, oblivious to your surroundings. There’s this feeling of dislocation, like waking up. You have been traveling, you’ve been elsewhere, totally disconnected from the world, your home. You have this second where you aren’t sure where you were, as if you’ve lost your place. You lose bits of your life when you’re lost in your device. You know this, I know this, but somehow, in summer, it seems even more regrettable to miss out on the moment. It’s finally warm enough to linger outside. There’s enough daylight that, on a Saturday, you can get your chores done and still have time to lie in the grass with a book, to contemplate the leaves against the sky. On hot days in the city, you can see and smell the sun acting on the asphalt, refracting in blurry, mineral-y waves. The roses are almost obnoxious in their exuberance. Why would you want to miss a minute of this? THE LATEST NEWS Politics Mahmoud Khalil, center, after being released in Louisiana yesterday. Annie Flanagan for The New York Times Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian campus protester detained by the Trump administration, was released on bail, ending his three-month imprisonment. A federal judge sided with Harvard and barred the Trump administration from rescinding the school’s right to host international students. The university has restarted talks with the White House to potentially settle their acrimonious dispute. The Trump administration laid off more than 600 workers from the federally funded news outlet Voice of America, leaving the broadcaster with fewer than 200 staffers. On Juneteenth, Trump did not utter the name of the federal holiday. It’s part of a broader playbook to minimize the Black experience in America, writes Erica Green, a White House correspondent. This week, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that prohibits some medical treatments for transgender youths. In the video below, Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court, describes the three factions within the 6-to-3 decision. Click to watch. Iran-Israel War A day of talks between the European Union and Iran yielded no significant breakthroughs. An Iranian official said there would be “no room for talking” until Israel stopped its attacks. Israel and Iran traded fire for the ninth consecutive day after a European diplomatic effort — dismissed by President Trump — made little immediate progress in preventing the exchanges of fire from spiraling into a broader war. In a fiery U.N. Security Council meeting, Israel and Iran blamed each other for the war, and their allies took familiar sides. Trump says he wants to make a nuclear deal with Iran in two weeks. Veteran diplomats warn that his timeline may be too short for a notoriously slow process. More International News Microsoft recently suspended a European official’s email account, under orders from the Trump administration. The move stoked fears abroad: Can Trump use U.S. tech dominance as a cudgel? The crash of an Air India flight last week highlighted the danger of building busy airports within dense city neighborhoods. Vladimir Putin’s insistence on maintaining the Russian offensive in Ukraine has come at a diplomatic cost. Other Big Stories A law student at the University of Florida won a class award for a paper he wrote promoting racist views. It set off months of campus turmoil. The Republican plan to terminate billions in clean energy tax credits would result in a hotter planet, scientists warn. Trump’s funding cuts are forcing universities to consider tuition hikes and layoffs. Some New York City leaders want to include nearly two million noncitizens in the next census. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Film and TV Aaron Taylor-Johnson, left, and Alfie Williams in “28 Years Later.” Miya Mizuno/Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Flesh-shredding creatures are wandering, crawling and, most worryingly, running amok in “28 Years Later,” the third installment in the zombie film series. Read the review. Three directors are credited on Pixar’s “Elio,” about an orphaned boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens. But they’re not all listed onscreen at the same time. Here’s why. Times critics put together a list of the best TV shows of 2025 so far, including the animated conspiracy thriller “Common Side Effects.” In an era of skepticism around live-action remakes, Universal believed a new “How to Train Your Dragon” would draw audiences. Read the inside story of the studio’s big bet. More Culture Studio Ghibli Many modern video games take inspiration from Studio Ghibli, the famed Japanese animation studio. FIFA, soccer’s governing body, unveiled a luxury fashion line at a starry party in L.A. See inside. New York City restaurants won three of the six major awards at the James Beard Restaurant awards this week, including outstanding chef and outstanding hospitality. After a ban last year, Joey Chestnut will return to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Leonard Lauder, the visionary executive behind Estée Lauder who died last week at 92, was the original beauty influencer. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. CULTURE CALENDAR ? “F1: The Movie” (Friday): The ascent of Formula 1 racing in the U.S. continues with this glossy summer blockbuster, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”). The cars look sleek, the racing looks flashy, the stars (Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem) look handsome. And Lewis Hamilton, the sport’s biggest star, helped produce the film, so racing fans can expect it to be at least somewhat authentic. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Linda Xiao for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Strawberry Lemonade Cake It’s the first official weekend of summer, which is as good an excuse as any to bake a big, pink layer cake. And you can’t do better Yossy Arefi’s sweet, tangy strawberry lemonade cake. Yossy adds freeze-dried strawberries to the icing, which tints it a deep rose, while fresh strawberries on top enhance the rosy glow. It's stunning, uncomplicated and may be just the thing for any celebration calling for a cake. REAL ESTATE Jordan Lombardo, left, and Brad Senffner with their dogs Hudson and Haarlem. Katherine Marks for The New York Times The Hunt: A couple searched northern Manhattan for a sunny two-bedroom apartment that cost less than $800,000. Which home did they choose? Play our game. Hunts, revisited: The Times spoke with five first-time buyers previously featured in The Hunt to find out how things were going in their homes. What you get for $1.3 million: A farmhouse in London, Ky.; a 1906 bungalow in Seattle; or a 1900 Queen Anne Revival house in Somerville, Mass. LIVING The Meyers brothers’ podcast focuses on family travel. via Seth and Josh Meyers Vacations: Seth and Josh Meyers think family trips — even bad ones — are worth it. Read their interview with The Times. Look of the week: A stylish mash-up of baggy and groovy. Making time: Rolex and other luxury brands strive to increase the accuracy of mechanical watches. Do you really need that? Wait to renovate? When it comes to home transformations, patience is the most practical virtue. Ask Well: “Perimenopause is ruining my sleep. What can I do?” ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Extend your appliances’ life spans My outdated fridge and stove are ugly. But after spending nearly six months investigating why appliances seem to break so much faster than they used to, I now know that’s a good thing. In my reporting, I found out what’s causing shorter life spans for modern stoves, dishwashers, dryers and more. I also learned ways to make appliances last longer. Start by skipping features you can live without — they often make appliances more susceptible to breaking. It’s also a good idea to invest in extended warranty and maintenance plans. And make sure you actually sit down and read that manual: Simple maintenance, like vacuuming dust and pet hair from behind a fridge, can prevent a host of problems. — Rachel Wharton GAME OF THE WEEK Andrew Nembhard, left, and Chet Holmgren. Abbie Parr/Associated Press Indiana Pacers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder, N.B.A. finals: For the first time in almost a decade, the N.B.A. finals are going to a decisive Game 7. The Thunder have been the oddsmakers’ favorites in all seven games; that hasn’t seemed to bother the Pacers, who crushed the Thunder in Game 6. This series doesn’t have big-city teams or celebrity stars (though Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is on his way). It does, however, have great basketball: The Pacers’ offense moves at warp speed, while the Thunder’s pestering defense seems to steal the ball every other possession. Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern on ABC NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was alphabet. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 22, 2025 Author Members Posted June 22, 2025 June 22, 2025 Good morning. America bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. You're probably waking up wondering what is happening now, so we have the latest news: Iran is threatening to retaliate, and U.S. forces are braced for it. Israel and Iran exchanged missiles this morning. World leaders are responding to the U.S. attack. We’re also explaining everything we know about the strikes. At the White House. Pool photo by Carlos Barria American bombs by Lauren Jackson and Evan Gorelick Last night, the U.S. entered the war with Iran. President Trump upended decades of diplomacy when he sent American warplanes and submarines to strike three of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including Fordo, its top-secret site buried deep inside a mountain. The bombs fell at about 2:30 a.m. local time. In an address from the White House, Trump said the goal of the strikes was to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon. He claimed the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated,” but the extent of the damage is not yet clear. Trump also called for the war to end. “Iran, the bully of the Mideast, must now make peace,” he said. He threatened “far greater” attacks if it did not. Still, the war continues: Iran said today that it wasn’t open to diplomacy right now. It launched missiles into Israel early this morning, wounding at least 16. Israel responded with its own strikes on Iran. More than 40,000 American troops are stationed in the region, and the U.S. is expecting retaliation. (See American bases that Iran could strike.) The U.S. attack was an “extraordinary turn for a military that was supposed to be moving on from two decades of forever wars in the Middle East,” our colleagues Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Julian Barnes wrote. Below, we explain the strikes and what could happen next. What were the targets? The New York Times America targeted three Iranian sites, including the buried facility at Fordo, the crown jewel in the country’s nuclear program. The U.S. is the only country believed to have bombs big enough to reach it. Israel has been asking Trump to strike the site since its offensive began. Now he has. Here’s what we know about each target: Fordo: Iran built this site — where centrifuges concentrate uranium to a form used in nuclear weapons — inside a mountain to shield it from attacks. The U.S. military concluded that one “bunker-buster” bomb would not destroy it. So six B-2 bombers dropped a dozen of these 30,000-pound weapons, a U.S. official said. The attack was the first time the military had used the weapon in combat. See how the powerful bombs work. Natanz: This is the largest uranium enrichment site in Iran. Its centrifuge halls are also buried deep underground, but experts say this site is less secretive and less heavily fortified. Israel struck the site recently with warplanes; the U.S. struck it with cruise missiles launched from submarines. Isfahan: The U.S. also hit a site that holds Iran’s largest nuclear fuel stockpiles near the ancient city of Isfahan. Israel hit parts of the facility last week but avoided the fuel. Why did the U.S. strike? The U.S. says it is joining Israel in its war to keep Iran from creating a nuclear bomb. Trump pledged as a presidential candidate to keep America out of “stupid endless wars.” But he also vowed to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Israel and Iran, sworn enemies for decades, have been striking each other for more than a week. Israelis launched a surprise assault that targeted Iranian infrastructure, including nuclear installations, and military leaders. Israel wanted U.S. help, but Trump was noncommittal. When Israel began its attacks, the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, “We are not involved in strikes against Iran.” Trump said that he would decide “within the next two weeks” whether to help. He took two days. What’s next? It’s not clear. But experts at The Times, including our Cairo bureau chief Vivian Yee, outlined a few scenarios: Iran could retaliate: The U.S. has troops on bases and warships across the Middle East. Iran might attack them. It might also create havoc in international shipping: It could move to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit hub for the world’s oil and natural gas. All the options carry risks for Iran’s clerical rulers. Read more about their dilemma. Iran could negotiate: The strikes could give the U.S. leverage in its negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear capacity. They may also force Iran to the table. Still, the prospects for a diplomatic solution don’t seem promising, our colleague Michael Shear writes. The war could get messier: Iran’s allied militias in the region, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and armed groups in Iraq, have not fully joined the fight. But that could change. More news The U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had not detected any increase in off-site radiation levels at the nuclear sites the U.S. attacked. Read the latest news. Benjamin Netanyahu said that the U.S. strikes had been carried out “in full coordination” between the American and Israeli militaries. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been in a bunker, with limited communication, to protect him from possible assassination. Responses Israel: The Israeli foreign minister said that Trump “wrote his name tonight in golden letters in the history books.” Netanyahu also praised the attack. Iran: The Iranian foreign minister said that the attacks would have “everlasting consequences.” United Nations: António Guterres, the head of the U.N., called the U.S. attacks a “dangerous escalation” and “a direct threat to international peace and security.” Republicans, including Mike Johnson and John Thune, rallied behind Trump, calling the strikes a necessary check on Iran’s nuclear efforts. Some, including Mitch McConnell, criticized the strikes. Democrats condemned the attack as unconstitutional and warned that it could drag the U.S. into a long war. See more responses. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Mahmoud Khalil with his family, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at Newark airport. Todd Heisler/The New York Times Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia pro-Palestinian activist, returned to New York after months in detention. See video of him walking through Newark airport with his wife and child. A top Senate official rejected an attempt by Republicans to slash federal food aid payments as part of their large policy bill. New York Mayor The Democratic primary in the New York City mayor’s race is Tuesday. Bill Clinton will endorse Andrew Cuomo for mayor, the latest example of how establishment Democrats seem to favor Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani, his progressive rival. Brad Lander, a senior city official who is also running for mayor, appeared at a closing campaign event alongside two women who have accused Cuomo of sexual misconduct. Weather A dangerous heat wave baked the Midwest and Central Plains. The heat index reached triple digits in St. Louis and Chicago yesterday. Temperatures in New York this coming week are expected to reach the 90s and feel hotter. IN ONE CHART Source: New York Times analysis of internal and public databases | Data is as of May 7. Trump froze funds for foreign aid on his first day in office. Elon Musk’s DOGE team then cut most staff members at the U.S. Agency for International Development and canceled nearly all of its programs. But the agency isn’t fully dead yet. Some programs were subsequently restored, like ones addressing acute disease and hunger, after months of pleas from advocates and politicians. Aid workers say they have yet to see a realistic plan from the administration for how foreign aid will work. Read our investigation into what remains at U.S.A.I.D. THE SUNDAY DEBATE After conversations with the government, Kraft Heinz said it would remove synthetic dyes from its products. Will that make food healthier? Yes. Some synthetic food dyes are associated with behavioral issues and, potentially, cancer. “This is a cause with history, science and voters on its side and it’s one where both sides can actually agree,” The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board writes. No. Removing one category of dyes is a superficial change. “To truly ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ we must make nutritious foods more accessible and affordable,” Selina Wang writes for MSNBC. FROM OPINION The Flushing Meadows Corona Park Aquatics Center. Diana Markosian for The New York Times Swim in public pools to learn sympathy, forgiveness and competitiveness with strangers, Apoorva Tadepalli writes. Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on U.S.A.I.D. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS An object of desire. J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times Button pushing: Some young people love old BlackBerrys. Does it matter you hold a cello? It’s a centuries-old debate. Trending: People online are searching for information about a hot-air balloon that caught fire and crashed in a tourist region of Brazil. The crash killed at least eight people. Lives Lived: Nathan Silver was an architect whose elegiac 1967 book, “Lost New York,” documented many buildings that were demolished before the city passed a landmarks preservation law. Silver died at 89. SPORTS M.L.B.: After coming under pressure to take a stand against ICE raids, the L.A. Dodgers committed $1 million to aid immigrant families. Olympics: The Senegal women’s national basketball team canceled a 10-day training camp after the U.S. rejected visas for five players and six staff members. BOOK(S) OF THE WEEK Scribner By Elisabeth Egan “Never Flinch” and “The Life of Chuck” by Stephen King: At this point, Stephen King has a best seller every year. It’s not common, though, for him to have two at the same time, as he does his week. The first, “Never Flinch,” is a cinematic, propulsive follow-up to his 2023 thriller “Holly,” and the second, “The Life of Chuck,” is a 128-page stand-alone short story from 2020’s “If It Bleeds.” This special edition, timed to the release of a new movie starring Tom Hiddleston, feels more relevant than ever. The internet is failing; California is slipping into the ocean; bridges are falling and roads are undriveable. In short, we’re in “The Twilight Zone,” but it’s not so hard to get our bearings as Chuck, the man at the center of it all, progresses backward from death to his final months as a healthy man. In the introduction, King describes this as a tale of “the joy of life in the shadow of death.” Indeed, amid the devastation there is love and family and dancing in the streets. THE INTERVIEW Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is the comedian and podcaster Andrew Schulz, whose podcast “Flagrant” has featured interviews with President Trump and Bernie Sanders. We talked about his newfound political influence, along with what he’s learned about himself since he and his wife had a child via in vitro fertilization. I.V.F. was an important subject for you to bring up with Trump, and then when you’re having that conversation with him, you said — I’m paraphrasing — something like, I think it’s important for women moderates to hear that. I don’t recall saying that. Oh, was I saying, women who might be on the fence about who you are as a person and how much you care about their bodies and their ability to make choices with their bodies? Right. How’d it make you feel? Do you think I was trying to promote him to them? It made me confused, because there was no mention of the fact that Donald Trump was credibly accused of groping a bunch of women or found liable in a civil suit for sexual abuse. So why was one thing important to hear and not another? It’s a fair question. The reaction I would have is: What is less known? I don’t think there’s a person on the planet that doesn’t know that Donald Trump was like, “You can grab them by the [expletive],” that doesn’t know about the civil suit. What people might not know is that he wants to fight to protect I.V.F. By your standard, you wish that I brought up the things that he had done? To make the conversation feel more balanced. OK, I don’t think that that’s unfair. I guess what I would say is, as an interviewer, am I bringing that up for the person that hates Trump so that they’re disarmed? And then, am I doing this interview for the audience, not for what I authentically want to ask him? There’s a part of me that wonders as you ask me this question: Do you feel like you have to put some pressure on me with the Trump thing because your audience might be like, Why didn’t you ask him about having Trump on? Or do you genuinely want to do it? I think in this instance, it’s both. And that’s an honest, fair question. Read more of the interview here. And you can watch a longer version of this interview at youtube.com/@theinterview. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Illustration by Christoph Niemann Read this week’s magazine. MEAL PLAN Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Margaux Laskey — who is supporting her daughter’s experimentation with vegetarianism — offers up five quick, kid-friendly vegetarian dinners. She suggests making crispy halloumi with tomatoes and white beans, sheet-pan bibimbap and sticky, spicy tempeh. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were checking and chickening. Can you put eight historical events — including the first pay phone, the first opera, and the debut of “Star Trek” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 23, 2025 Author Members Posted June 23, 2025 June 23, 2025 Good morning. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception and a secret that almost got out. We tell it below. But first, the latest news: Iran and Israel traded missiles this morning. Vladimir Putin and Iran’s foreign minister are expected to meet today. Iranian officials appear to be considering their options for retaliation against the U.S. Trump raised the prospect of regime change in Iran in a social media post. A B-2 bomber returns to Missouri. David Smith/Associated Press How they did it A team of Times reporters — Mark Mazzetti, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper — have a new article revealing how Trump came to his decision to join Israel’s war against Iran, and how he and the military hid their plans to ensure that the attack remained a secret. Late last week, Trump said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. It was a deception: By that point, Trump had all but made up his mind. Military preparations were well underway. Trump began to muse about dropping massive bunker-buster bombs onto Fordo, Iran’s uranium-enrichment facility, just hours after Israel’s first wave of attacks, on June 13. A day later, one adviser told The Times, Trump seemed to have already decided to go through with it. At times, Trump’s penchant for social media was the biggest threat to the operation’s secrecy. Last Monday, he posted on Truth Social that “everyone should evacuate Tehran!” The next day, he revealed that he had left a meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada not to broker a Middle East cease-fire but for something “much bigger.” He added, “Stay tuned!” Inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command, military planners worried that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. So they worked up their own ruse: They had two fleets of B-2 bombers leave Missouri at the same time, one flying east and one flying west. Flight trackers spotted the westward planes, which offered some idea of the timing of a possible attack. But those planes were a decoy. The eastbound planes crossed the Atlantic undetected, joined with fighter jets and flew into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time yesterday, the lead bomber dropped two of the bunker-busters on the Fordo site. By the end of the mission, 14 of the bombs had fallen. A satellite image of Iran’s Fordo facility after the strikes. Maxar Technologies Was it legal? Michael Crowley and Edward Wong, who cover foreign policy, explain the constitutional principles. The Constitution: Article I assigns Congress the power to “declare war” and to “raise and support armies.” But Article II designates the president as the “commander in chief” of the military. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have argued that they have the authority to order military operations without Congress. U.S. law: After the worst fighting of the Vietnam War, Congress tried asserting itself with the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which says the American president must “consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated.” But presidents have ignored lawmakers, claiming a narrow definition of the “introduction” of forces. Congress has done little to enforce the resolution. International law: Some experts say the United States is permitted to act if it faces an imminent attack. “It is very hard to see how the administration can meet that test,” said Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department lawyer who now teaches at N.Y.U.’s law school. American intelligence reports said that Iran had not yet decided to make a nuclear weapon. Some scholars also say Trump violated the United Nations Charter by attacking another member state. More news Iran is firing missiles, and Israel said it struck “military targets” in Tehran. Israelis are huddling in bomb shelters. Read updates. U.S. officials signaled that Iran’s nuclear program may not have been “obliterated,” as Trump claimed. They conceded they did not know the whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium. U.S. officials detected some signs that Iranian-backed militias were preparing to attack American bases in Iraq, and possibly Syria. Stocks around the world dipped after the strikes. The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was an illustrated guide to how the American bunker-busting bombs work. Responses People protested against the U.S. strikes in Iran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Iran: Government officials are trying to project normalcy. But many feel defeated and humiliated, Farnaz Fassihi reports. Diplomacy: World leaders and diplomats were scrambling to prevent more violence. Russia: As Putin meets with Iran’s foreign minister, the Kremlin seems to be to pushing back against the suggestion that it was offering little support to Iran. China criticized the U.S. and said it had hurt its credibility. U.S. citizens: People protested the strikes in more than a dozen American cities. Turnout was lower than recent anti-Trump protests. THE LATEST NEWS Politics The U.S.A.I.D. headquarters. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images The rapid dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. remains one of the most consequential outcomes of Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government. Read the inside story of how it happened. “It felt like kidnapping”: Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia, gave his first interview since being released from ICE detention to The Times. A federal judge said that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and then returned, should be freed from criminal custody as he awaits trial on smuggling charges. Trump’s cuts to research at Harvard threaten work on cancer, mental health and drug abuse. These charts show what work is being stopped. International In Damascus. Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A suicide attacker killed at least 20 people at a church service in Damascus using a gun and an explosive vest. It was the first known suicide bombing in Syria’s capital since the Assad regime fell. A Russian attack on Kyiv killed at least six people, the second deadly attack on the capital in a week. Israeli soldiers recovered the bodies of three hostages in Gaza. The Dalai Lama is turning 90. Tibet’s exiles are questioning what their nation’s future could look like after him. As economic growth slows in China, the promise of upward social mobility there is eroding, especially for those from modest backgrounds, Li Yuan writes. Other Big Stories Clouds of hydrogen in pink, and hot stars shining blue. Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NSF/DOE A powerful new observatory, named after the astronomer Vera Rubin, released its first images. They show riotously pink nebulas. Severe storms killed three people, including two 6-year-old girls, in New York. THE GLOBAL A.I. DIVIDE Karl Russell Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano, technology correspondents for The Times, have a big story out today about how A.I. could deepen global inequality. They explain below. The A.I. boom requires huge data centers. Companies and countries are rushing to build them: The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are pouring billions into massive facilities in the desert. OpenAI, Amazon and others are building sprawling complexes in the U.S. Across Europe, governments are plotting “A.I. factories.” But most can’t keep up. Just 32 countries have the data centers needed to run tools like ChatGPT, researchers at Oxford found. Most have no major A.I. infrastructure at all. For much of the globe, the future may arrive on someone else’s terms. Why does this matter? The countries with the most computing power dominate innovation — from scientific research to weapons design. Talent follows the machines, and without them, startups struggle, scientists stall, and governments grow more dependent. Who’s being left behind? The divide is most striking in Africa and South America. By one tally, a single institute at Harvard has more A.I. computing power than all African-owned data centers on that continent combined. Across Africa, limited infrastructure has already stalled tech startups and curbed research. It’s slowing years of digital progress that were fueled by cheap smartphones and broader internet access. Who’s winning? The biggest winners of the A.I. boom are the U.S. and China. Their top tech firms provide more than 90 percent of the world’s publicly available A.I. data centers. That dominance has countries like India, Brazil and members of the European Union racing to catch up. They’re offering land, cheap energy and public funds to build data centers and buy the necessary chips. But for now, the A.I. divide looks likely to widen: This year alone, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft Google and OpenAI have pledged to spend more than $300 billion, much of it on A.I. infrastructure — an expenditure that approaches Canada’s national budget. See charts documenting the divide in our story. OPINIONS Democrats need their own Trump, Galen Druke writes: a candidate who will speak to the grievances voters have with the status quo of the party. Americans treat surveillance as something that protects us. China should be a reminder of its capacity for political abuse, Megan Stack writes. Trump’s decision to strike Iran was courageous and correct, Bret Stephens writes. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Heather Willensky for The New York Times Crunchwrap Supreme: Taco Bell’s experiment, now 20 years old, inspired a generation of chefs. Baby bust: The feminist case for spending billions to increase the birthrate. Trending: People online were talking about Kristin Chenoweth’s rendition of the national anthem at the N.B.A. finals. The New York Post has more. Metropolitan Diary: A lucky find near the Plaza. Lives Lived: When Fred Smith set out a vision for the future of shipping as a Yale undergraduate, his paper earned a C. But he went on to bet everything he had on his ideas, building FedEx and becoming a billionaire. Smith died at 80. SPORTS N.B.A.: In Game 7 of the Finals, the Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Indiana Pacers, 103-91, to win the franchise’s second championship. M.V.P.: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander tallied 29 points and 12 assists in the deciding game. Trades: The Suns sent Kevin Durant to the Rockets in exchange for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and a first-round pick. This will be Durant’s fifth franchise. ARTS AND IDEAS BTS in Times Square in 2019. Ben Hider/Invision, via Associated Press BTS could soon reunite. The wildly popular K-pop band has been apart for more than two years as its seven members completed their national service. This weekend, Suga became the final member to be discharged. Whether they can rekindle their popularity may be an open question, but their most loyal fans are waiting. “My life hasn’t been the same without BTS,” said one. “I’ve been counting down the days until they all returned to the outside world.” More on culture The Times is ranking the best movies of the century so far. We’ve released the first part of the list (including “Black Swan” and “Interstellar”). Sign up to get the rest before anyone else. Pixar released “Elio” and had its worst box-office opening ever. “I like drama”: Barbra Streisand looks back on the duets that define her. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Chris Simpson for The New York Times Put furikake on a classic tomato sandwich. Transform leftover rice into a meal. Sleep with these headphones. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was enjoinment. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misstated Senator Mitch McConnell’s position on the U.S. attack on Iran. He expressed support for the strikes, not criticism. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 25, 2025 Author Members Posted June 25, 2025 June 24, 2025 Good morning. Israel accused Iran of breaking a cease-fire between the countries that President Trump announced last night. Iran denied doing so, but the Israeli military has vowed to retaliate. Below, we explain what is happening and answer questions about the war. In Tehran yesterday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Uncertain peace By German Lopez Yesterday, President Trump declared that Iran and Israel had reached a cease-fire, bringing an end to what he called “the 12-Day War.” Iran and Israel later confirmed the truce. But it was tenuous: The sides traded fire until the last moments before it went into effect, and Israel said Iranian missiles had killed four people. Soon after the truce began, sirens again blared in northern Israel. Israel said Iran had launched missiles during the cease-fire, a claim Iran’s military denied. “We will respond with force,” the chief of staff for Israel’s military said. Trump’s announcement, which caught even some of his top officials by surprise, may not be the end of the conflict. We also don’t know if the war so far has accomplished the primary objective for Israel and the U.S.: to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. Whether last week’s American strikes actually destroyed their targets remains unclear. And what if Iran tries to rebuild its program? Today, I want to look at what the war with Iran leaves unresolved. Four questions Trump at first claimed that American bombs obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. So far, though, much remains unsettled: Did the U.S. strikes destroy their targets? American officials say that U.S. bombs and missiles did “severe” damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities. But we still don’t know much about their effect, particularly on Fordo, where Iran enriches uranium. The military had previously claimed that it could wipe out the site with just two bunker-busting bombs; it ultimately dropped a dozen. Officials may not get answers for days or weeks, if ever. The same trait that makes Fordo so hard to strike — that it’s deep underground — also makes gauging its status difficult. Does Iran have a secret enrichment facility? Before the U.S. attacks, Iran said that it had built a new enrichment site, its third, “in a secure and invulnerable location.” The facility is possibly under a mountain, similar to Fordo. If it’s up and running with the newest centrifuges, it could enrich uranium for nuclear weapons within months. Where is Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium? American officials concede that they don’t know. Iran might have moved it before the strikes, given all the warnings about a looming U.S. attack. The 880 pounds of uranium — enough to fit in the trunks of 10 cars — is enriched to 60 percent purity, below the 90 percent used in nuclear weapons, David Sanger, who covers national security, reported. Will Iran rebuild? Its leaders may decide that the pursuit of nuclear weapons is futile — that Israel and the United States will simply destroy anything Iran creates. But after seeing how easily Israel and America blew through its defenses, Iran may instead conclude the opposite: that the best way to protect itself is a nuclear deterrent. After all, that strategy has recently worked for Russia and North Korea. The inspectors How do we know anything at all about Iran’s nuclear program? That’s the job of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which reports to the United Nations. It checks on levels of enrichment and the whereabouts of bomb-grade uranium to ensure that Iran isn’t building a weapon. How? Evan Gorelick explains. What does the I.A.E.A. do? In 1968, Iran signed the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which requires it to declare the contents of its inventory. The I.A.E.A. ensures it’s telling the truth. To do that, inspectors visit nuclear sites to weigh uranium canisters and take samples to measure enrichment levels. One difficulty in getting an accurate view of Iran’s work: The inspectors did not make surprise visits. Instead, they sought permission before entering facilities. They were still doing so until Israeli bombs fell 11 days ago. And now? The agency is using satellite images to assess damage remotely, but experts say those tools don’t make up for on-site inspections. The I.A.E.A. wants to return to track Iran’s nuclear stockpile, including the near-bomb-grade uranium whose location remains unknown. But … After the attacks, Iran’s Parliament is said to have approved the outline of a bill that would suspend future cooperation with the agency. More on the conflict The cease-fire came hours after Iran fired missiles at an American military base in Qatar but gave the U.S. advance notice. The attack, which did not kill anyone, suggested Iran was looking for an off-ramp from the conflict. These graphics explain how missile defense systems like Israel’s Iron Dome work — and why it’s hard. The administration crafted a plan to attack Iran even as Trump publicly equivocated. Maggie Haberman, who covers the White House, explains what was going on behind the scenes. Click to watch. The New York Times Responses The State Department issued a worldwide security alert for Americans abroad. Trump’s decision to strike Iran without congressional authorization and little consultation has divided Congress and deepened rifts inside both parties. “We’ve definitely had our trust shaken”: The Times asked six Trump voters how they felt about his decision to bomb Iran. THE LATEST NEWS Immigration The Supreme Court will, for now, allow the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own. Florida is building a detention center for migrants nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. It will consist of large tents on an airfield; an official said the area’s dangerous wildlife would deter detainees from fleeing. Politics Sean Duffy was an MTV reality star. How did he become a Trump cabinet secretary focused on raising the birthrate? The administration is removing protections for 58 million acres of national forests, allowing road building and development to increase logging. Harvard is considering a truce with Trump. Behind closed doors, its officials are debating how to do it without appearing to capitulate. International In a suburb of Damascus, Syria. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times Can Syria put itself back together? Times journalists traveled the length of the country to answer that question. See what they found. Canada and the E.U. signed a defense agreement, a step toward military cooperation as their relationships with America sour. The British government plans to add a pro-Palestinian group to its list of banned terrorist organizations. The group has vandalized a Trump golf course and broken into an air base. New York Mayor’s Race Today is Primary Day in the New York City mayor’s race. The Times analyzed the closing statements of four leading Democratic candidates. A new Emerson College poll shows Zohran Mamdani inching past Andrew Cuomo in the final round of ranked-choice voting. See more polls on the race. Housing affordability and quality-of-life concerns are pushing Black New Yorkers out of the city. The trend may reshape New York politics. Weather Cities on the East Coast, including Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia, could surpass 100 degrees today as a heat wave spreads and intensifies. The thermometer tells only half of the story: Humidity makes this week’s temperatures feel even more oppressive. These maps show where the heat will be most intense in the coming days. Business and Economy A second official at the Federal Reserve suggested it should cut rates as soon as next month — the latest sign of internal divisions at the Fed. Factories are having trouble filling nearly 400,000 jobs. One executive said that for every 20 positions, there’s one qualified candidate. Other Big Stories In Cerro Pachón, Chile. Marcos Zegers for The New York Times The Rubin Observatory, a powerful new telescope, has already spotted 2,100 new asteroids. Scientists expect it to find millions of unknown objects in our solar system, and perhaps even a new planet. New York announced plans for a new nuclear power plant. It hasn’t said where it will go, how much it will cost or how long it will take to build. OPINIONS Congress should assert its authority and prohibit the president from using federal funds to start an illegal war with Iran, Oona Hathaway writes. A common attack on queer rights is that queerness is “unnatural.” But from birds to mushrooms, queerness is everywhere in nature, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian writes. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS In the Northern Territory, Australia. Matthew Abbott for The New York Times “Flying Padres”: Chaplains fly to remote parts of Australia for births, weddings and funerals. They’ve been in the air since World War II. A greener river: Solar-powered canoes ferry Indigenous people through the heart of the Amazon. Job hunt: Generative A.I. is flooding recruiters with more résumés than they can handle. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about storms that killed three people, including two children, in New York. Trending: People were searching online for Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate who has surged in the New York mayor’s race. The New Yorker wrote about him yesterday. Lives Lived: Arnaldo Pomodoro was a self-taught artist. His monumental bronze spherical sculptures — highly polished but jarringly fractured — stand outside the U.N. headquarters, inside Vatican City and in many other public spaces around the globe. He died at 98. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Celtics traded Jrue Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers, a team he played for a couple seasons ago, in exchange for Anfernee Simons and two draft picks. Soccer: Inter Miami drew 2-2 with Brazil’s Palmeiras. That means Miami will face Paris Saint-Germain next — Lionel Messi’s first match against a team he once represented. SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos. Danny Moloshok/Reuters Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest people, is set to marry Lauren Sánchez in Venice this week. Wedding experts estimate that their opulent Italian getaway will cost millions of dollars — certainly more than Bezos’ first wedding, to Mackenzie Scott in 1993, before he founded Amazon. The extravagant nuptials are in line with a trend in weddings, Sarah Lyall reports: Many couples go bigger the second time. The experience of the first wedding teaches couples what they want from their big day — and, just as important, what they don’t. And many brides and grooms have reached a higher income bracket by their second wedding, which can mean a more lavish affair, even if they don’t have Amazon money. Sarah herself was remarried in 2021, and she writes: I wore an ostentatious vintage red satin gown, despite being in my 50s, and tried not to fuss when the guests failed to eat much of the wedding cake, which looked beautiful but unexpectedly tasted kind of awful. The passage of time makes you realize that only one thing matters at a wedding: When it’s over, you get to leave with the person you love best. (Ideally, this is your new spouse.) More on culture The view from the View. Janice Chung for The New York Times One of our new restaurant critics, Ligaya Mishan, reviewed the View, the revolving Times Square dining room. She says it reminds New Yorkers of the city that many outsiders see, “in all its dripping neon, its cockiness, its refusal to accept things as they are.” It’s getting even more outlandish to spend summer in the Hamptons. Read these stories in The Cut about the lengths some people go. Late night hosts joked about Trump’s strikes. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Simpson for The New York Times Blend tomatoes, pepper, cucumber, onion and garlic for the best gazpacho — perfect for when it’s too hot to cook. Talk to your pet — well, maybe — by consulting an animal psychic. Garden in a heat wave with these tips from Country Living. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was hickory. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 26, 2025 Author Members Posted June 26, 2025 June 25, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your day. Zohran Mamdani claimed victory in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor. Much of the country is in a heat wave. The Israel-Iran cease-fire appears to be holding. U.S. strikes set Iran’s nuclear program back by only a few months, a preliminary report found. Also — women are joining the “We Do Not Care” club. All of that is below. Zohran Mamdani last night. Shuran Huang for The New York Times A shock in New York By The Morning Team It was a major upset: Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist who campaigned against New York’s affordability crisis, stunned the former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Mamdani’s victory is not yet official — the city uses ranked-choice ballots, and those votes are not yet tabulated. But experts say it would be exceedingly difficult for Cuomo to overcome Mamdani’s seven-point lead. Mamdani claimed victory and Cuomo conceded the race last night. The result has created a new star for the party: Mamdani is a state assemblyman who ran on a progressive platform that promised to make buses free and raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers. It is also a rebuke for Cuomo, who spent millions more than his opponents. He had the support of establishment Democrats, like Bill Clinton, but he struggled to overcome the scandals that ended his governorship. Cuomo told The Times last night that he was still considering whether to run in the general election as an independent. With Mayor Eric Adams also running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa on the Republican ticket, New York may have a crowded race for mayor in November. Here are takeaways on the results and five things to know about Mamdani. In Washington, D.C. Wesley Lapointe for The New York Times Mercury rising For much of the country, yesterday was a scorcher — in a week of scorchers. Sidewalks baked, windows shone, surplus clothing came off. New York City’s official thermometer notched a 13-year high of 99 degrees. Scores of other cities beat or tied heat records as a “heat dome” trapped hot air in the South, the Northeast and the Midwest. (Check out these maps and charts.) Alerts warned people to exercise caution or, better, to stay inside. “This is the deadliest weather threat we face,” New York City’s emergency management agency wrote on social media. “Don’t wait until you feel sick. Heat builds. It compounds. It kills quietly.” Two phenomena explain why heat waves are so horrid. One is about how we experience temperature; the other is about how we exacerbate it. Today’s newsletter covers both — and how to protect yourself from the weather. How humidity works A thermometer tells only part of the story. Nazaneen Ghaffar, a reporter with The Times’s weather team, explains. A dry 99 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix might feel harsh but bearable. The same temperature in New York or Philadelphia this week is oppressive, partly because of how much water vapor is in the air. Normally, when your body gets too hot, it perspires to cool down. The evaporation of sweat carries heat away, acting like a natural air-conditioner. But when humidity surges, the air is already saturated with moisture, slowing that evaporation process. To capture that effect, the National Weather Service uses something called the heat index — that’s when the meteorologist says, “It’s 85 degrees outside but feels like 97.” Greenville, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, reached only 92 degrees on Tuesday. But with a 64 percent humidity, the heat index was 107 degrees. And that was in the shade. The service says that standing in full sun can make the temperature feel as much as 15 degrees hotter. Pollution The twin health hazards of extreme heat and pollution can amplify each other, and the frequency of days that are both hot and polluted is rising, as Claire Brown and Christina Kelso report. After a few years of brutal wildfires, we know there’s often more junk in the air. Climate change is making the fires more frequent and intense, pumping smoke into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants to ease restrictions on emissions from power plants and cars, which could increase carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and other pollutants. It is also encouraging more mining and burning of coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. In Raleigh, N.C. Cornell Watson for The New York Times Two main air pollutants affect our health, and heat can worsen both. Ozone: Summer days tend to see higher concentrations of this gas, which is harmful when it forms near the ground. Hot and sunny conditions accelerate that process. Ground-level ozone irritates the lungs and can cause coughing and shortness of breath. Particulate matter: This refers to tiny pieces of solids and liquids in the air, all smaller than a grain of sand or thinner than a strand of hair. Particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers are the most dangerous. When inhaled, they can reach the deepest part of the lungs and pass into the bloodstream, hurting your heart, lungs and brain. Extreme heat also makes wildfires more severe, and the resulting smoke (full of particulate matter) can travel thousands of miles. What’s the effect? A 2023 analysis of more than 20 million deaths across the world found that hot days and days with bad air quality both resulted in higher than normal mortality rates. But periods in which heat and pollution were combined were even more deadly. Try this What should you do when it’s this hot? Simar Bajaj, who covers personal health, compiled several ideas from experts. Here are three of them. 1. Check your meds. Some drugs — including those for allergies, high blood pressure, kidney disease, hypothyroidism and various mental illnesses — make it harder for people to cool down. Others, like diuretics and certain antidepressants, can repress your thirst and cause more frequent urination and sweating. But don’t skip your doses without talking to your doctor. 2. Eat to hydrate. Your body gets about 20 percent of its water from food. Raw fruits and vegetables, including cucumbers, lettuce, celery, tomatoes, strawberries and melons, are among the most hydrating foods. Avoid alcohol and limit coffee; they are dehydrating. 3. Cool down before you lie down. Temperature is one of the most important factors for getting a good night’s rest, and experts recommend keeping your bedroom at 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. If air-conditioners and fans aren’t doing the trick, you can also take a cold shower, spray your sheets with cold water or put your pillow case in the freezer before bed. THE LATEST NEWS Iran-Israel Conflict The cease-fire between Israel and Iran appeared to hold after President Trump lashed out at them for firing on each other. Both sides are claiming victory. U.S. strikes set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months and underground facilities survived the attack, a preliminary U.S. intelligence report found. Trump said the report was “very inconclusive.” The American B-2 warplanes that bombed Fordo, Iran’s best-protected nuclear site, flew for 37 hours straight. Read about their mission. Qatari officials helped broker the cease-fire. Here’s how they did it. More than 50 years ago, the U.S. gave Iran its first nuclear reactor. Late night hosts joked about Trump swearing during his outburst at Iran and Israel. Katrin Bennhold and Christina Goldbaum, two reporters for The Times, explain how Iran became isolated from its allies in the war. Click the video to watch. The New York Times NATO Summit Trump is at NATO’s annual meeting in The Hague, pressing other member nations to raise their military spending. World leaders want to keep him happy. One complication to watch: Spain has said it’s unwilling to spend more. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are also overshadowing the talks. Follow updates here. Politics Anthony Weiner, the former House member who went to prison for sexting a 15-year-old girl, ran for a City Council district in yesterday’s New York primary. Results overnight put him in fourth. America’s rivals — including China and Russia — are happy about Trump’s decision to dismantle Voice of America, which helped market the U.S. to the world. The Courts The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to clarify whether the U.S. can send eight men from other countries to South Sudan after a ruling on deportations this week. Emil Bove III, a former Justice Department official, said he was willing to ignore court orders to enable the president’s deportation campaign, according to a whistle-blower. The attorney general predicted that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant mistakenly deported to El Salvador, would be easy to convict on federal charges. But a judge’s ruling suggests the case has serious cracks. A federal court ordered the administration to “facilitate the return” of another man it deported to El Salvador minutes after the court barred his removal. Other Big Stories Four astronauts took off for the International Space Station, including the first to visit it from Hungary, India and Poland. Amazon is building one of the largest computers ever on 1,200 acres of cornfield in Indiana. It will power an A.I. system intended to match the human brain. Investigators said a single bolt could have kept a panel from flying off an Alaska Airlines flight in midair last year. A 29-year-old man was struck by lightning and killed while on his honeymoon in Florida. A sudden storm killed eight people on a birthday boat ride on Lake Tahoe. IN ONE MAP U.S. officials have been asking countries around the world to take deportees who are not their citizens. The countries, shown in the map below, include places shattered by war, like Libya or Ukraine, and some known for human rights abuses, like Turkmenistan. So far, seven countries have agreed to take deportees. Read our investigation into the negotiations. Based on U.S. government documents and interviews. | By The New York Times OPINIONS Democrats should embrace the energy Mamdani brings to the party, Rebecca Kirszner Katz writes. America’s birthrate will fall toward South Korea’s if it continues to ignore the financial stress of motherhood, Jessica Grose writes. Here are columns by M. Gessen on false accusations of antisemitism and Thomas Friedman on questions for Israel, Iran and Hamas. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Jens Mortensen for The New York Times Math, revealed: Bees, beer cans and solar cells all show the might of the hexagon. Spill your guts: Where New York doctors share their triumphs, insights and anxieties. Scam or not: Do facials actually improve your skin? Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was a video explaining the inside story of Trump’s decision to strike Iran. Trending: A popular TikTok video offers a supposed trick to “delete your student loans.” It doesn’t work, experts say, and may cause long-term financial damage. Lives Lived: Marcia Resnick was a fine arts photographer who pivoted in the late 1970s to intimate portraits of New York City’s downtown “bad boys.” She died at 74. SPORTS Women’s hockey: The New York Sirens traded Ella Shelton, a 2024 defender of the year finalist, to the Toronto Sceptres for the third overall pick and a fourth-rounder in the 2025 draft. N.B.A.: The Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets are finalizing a three-team trade, sending Kristaps Porziņģis to Atlanta, Georges Niang to Boston and Terance Mann to Brooklyn. ARTS AND IDEAS Melani Sanders founded the “We Do Not Care” club. Martina Tuaty for The New York Times Dress codes. Painted nails. Separating laundry by darks, lights and colors. Some women have had enough. An influencer founded the “We Do Not Care” club, which celebrates women who have stopped trying to please everyone. It’s gained a cult following, especially among women who are going through menopause and feel they have spent their adult lives focused on caring for other people. You can read more here. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Beat the heat with limonada, Brazilian lemonade. Plant your indoor garden in gorgeous pots and stands. Upgrade your shower curtain. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were captivate and captive. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 27, 2025 Author Members Posted June 27, 2025 June 26, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your day: The C.I.A. director said U.S. strikes had “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program, after President Trump denounced reports about another agency’s initial assessment. NATO countries promised a big increase in military spending, pleasing Trump. Antigovernment protesters battled the police in Kenya. At least 8 people were killed. A Kenyan Olympic champion will attempt today to become the first woman to run a sub-four-minute mile. Plus, the Bezos wedding is beginning. We have more on that below. But first, we look at the state of the economy. Your questions about the economy In a recent newsletter, we asked readers for your questions about the economy. You wondered about tariffs, real estate, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and more. Today, reporters at The Times answer. The bill and the economy I’ve read about how the bill could hurt the economy. But are there any parts of it that mainstream economists believe will help? I’m specifically curious about any new provisions, not extensions of expiring policies. — Kerry Bloomfield from Minneapolis Ben Casselman, The Times’s chief economics correspondent, writes: Yes, there are some parts of the bill that economists think would be good. Many endorse a provision that would let businesses deduct costs of building new factories, which could encourage new investment. Other provisions — such as imposing stricter work requirements for public benefits like Medicaid — win support from economists who lean conservative but aren’t outside the mainstream of the profession. Still, as your question suggests, economists across the ideological spectrum say the overall bill would hurt, in part because of its cost. It would add trillions of dollars to the debt at a time when economists worry about the risks posed by the country’s record debt levels. What, exactly, are the tax breaks I keep hearing about in the “big, beautiful bill” that will favor the most wealthy? — Molly from Illinois Andrew Duehren, who covers taxes, writes: There are a few. First of all, much of this tax bill is dedicated to extending tax cuts that Republicans first put in place in 2017. So without this bill, Americans who earn more than $626,000 would face a 39.6 percent tax rate instead of 37 percent. Another measure in the bill would extend a deduction for owners of many businesses. Americans making more than $1 million reap the lion’s share of this tax break. Then there is the estate tax, the levy collected on rich Americans’ assets when they die. Under the bill, the tax would kick in only for Americans worth more than $15 million. Without the bill, the level would drop to $7.14 million next year. What is happening with the housing market? I’ve been told for years that it’s a bad time to buy, which is confusing and distressing as a wannabe first-time homeowner. — Kaitlyn from Portland, Ore. Nikita Stewart, The Times’s real estate editor, writes: Kaitlyn, there’s a saying in residential real estate: Date the rate; marry the house. Rates can be lowered, but the amount you spend on a house is permanent. Still, this is not a great time for buyers. As of Wednesday, a 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.81 percent. And from what I can see in Portland, buyers are in a competitive market, despite those rates. The advice of real estate agents is to perhaps look at more affordable suburbs. Think about how much space you need. Can you live in smaller quarters to make homeownership more affordable? If that is a nonstarter, go back to the thought of dating and marrying. Can you find a reasonably priced home now and simply refinance your mortgage in the future? The size of government DOGE says it cut a great deal of wasteful spending. So how is it possible that the bill in Congress would increase the debt? Where is all that “saved” money going? — Erica from Austin, Texas Tony Romm, who covers economic policy, writes: The simple answer is that the House tax bill is much, much higher than the amount saved by DOGE. We don’t have a precise accounting of the cuts achieved by Elon Musk and his team of young aides. But Musk said in April that the group would save about $150 billion by the end of the fiscal year. (My colleagues later found big errors in his figure.) Still, the House-passed tax bill is expected to add $3.4 trillion to the debt within the next decade. The Senate’s current version has not been calculated yet. Sources: Congressional Budget Office (historical); Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (projections) | By The New York Times There’s a lot of talk about Medicaid cuts. But how would the proposed bill affect Medicare? — Laura Classen from Delaware Margot Sanger-Katz, who covers health care policy, writes: The bill makes only a few changes to Medicare. The biggest one affects immigrants. Currently, those with lawful status become eligible for Medicare at 65 if they pay into the system for 10 years, the same way citizens do. The current bill would limit this benefit to immigrants with green cards and those from Cuba. The most dramatic change to Medicare probably won’t happen. A 2010 measure says that laws that increase the federal deficit automatically trigger cuts to government programs, including Medicare. Congress will almost certainly waive the rule before those cuts kick in. Trump and trade Who collects the tariffs Trump imposes? How much has been collected since he took office? Where does the money go? — Kathryn Anderson from Salvisa, Ky. Ana Swanson, who covers trade, writes: U.S. Customs and Border Protection collects tariff revenue when goods come into the country, often by automatically debiting importers’ bank accounts. The money goes into a general fund controlled by the Treasury Department that pays for lots of different government expenditures. In May, the Treasury took in more than $22 billion in tariff revenue, a record high. That’s more than double the monthly figure during the Biden administration — but still far less than what the government takes in through taxes. Source: U.S. Treasury Department | Data is monthly. | By The New York Times What are some ways Americans have been hurt by Trump’s tariffs? Am I just living under a rock to not have noticed any impact on my budget or spending yet? — Susie Prussack from Spokane, Wash. Lydia DePillis, who covers the economy, writes: Susie, I’m sure you’re not living under a rock. It’s true that tariffs have not made products, on average, more expensive — inflation has fallen slightly over the past few months. One reason may be that companies stocked up on imports before the new duties hit. They say they’re holding off as long as they can before raising prices, hoping Trump will strike trade deals and tariffs will plunge. Still, consumers may notice price hikes on some goods, such as strollers and other baby gear, that mostly come from China. And economists still think the tariffs will lift prices if they stay in place long enough. Do you have questions about the news for The Morning? Ask us here. THE LATEST NEWS Middle East Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, continued to insist that U.S. strikes had destroyed Iran’s nuclear program. The administration suggested an initial report of less-severe damage was outdated. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not appeared in public or been heard from in nearly a week. Political insiders are worried. Trump’s name may soon be emblazoned on the tallest hotel in Tel Aviv. NATO Trump has pushed NATO countries to spend 5 percent of their economic output on the military. The NATO summit said they would, in a statement that left wiggle room. Britain said it would buy a dozen F-35A stealth jets, which could let its military fire nuclear weapons from the air. New York Mayor’s Race Zohran Mamdani ran as a democratic socialist in the primary for New York mayor. That label has grown more popular in recent years: Here’s what it means. Many young Muslims love Mamdani, and some convinced their parents to vote for him. Mamdani succeeded as an outspoken critic of Israel in the city with America’s largest Jewish population. That reflects a shift in Democratic politics, including among some Jews. A prominent New York Jewish leader, Rep. Jerry Nadler, has now endorsed him. Late night hosts joked about the idea of a millennial mayor. More on Politics Usha Vance Emily Elconin for The New York Times Who is Usha Vance, really? The Times spoke to her old friends. Some said she must be appalled by Trump’s White House, but others said she likes the glamour and influence. The United States will stop funding Gavi, which helps buy vaccines for children in poor countries. The Trump administration’s funding cuts derailed a potential breakthrough in the fight against H.I.V. Other Big Stories After a drone attack. Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times Russia’s Shahed attack drones are 11 feet long and weigh more than 400 pounds. For Ukrainians, they’re the stuff of nightmares. An engine on an American Airlines flight caught fire just after it left Las Vegas. The plane landed safely 10 minutes later. A British man was charged over an attempted mock wedding with a 9-year-old at Disneyland Paris. TOXIC HOMES IN L.A. By The New York Times The homes that survived the Los Angeles fires did not escape unscathed. In many, toxic smoke seeped in through vents and under doorways. Industrial hygienists found alarming levels of carcinogens and poisons in every room of the home pictured above. Yet insurance companies often don’t test for toxic chemicals. Or they cover only limited tests that overlook many harmful substances. Read the full investigation. 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.) Three nations sent astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time. They are: China, France and Egypt Hungary, India and Poland Indonesia, Colombia and South Africa Germany, Mexico and Kazakhstan OPINIONS L.G.B.T.Q. activists broke an unspoken golden rule: Leave children out of it, Andrew Sullivan writes. Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on America’s role in fighting world hunger. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS In Burlington, Vt. Kelly Burgess for The New York Times Go, Green: This Vermont soccer club, which draws sellout crowds, is devoted to cutting carbon emissions. Unlettered: Men have stopped reading fiction. Some are trying to change that. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about women joining the “We Do Not Care” club. Lives Lived: The astrophysicist Fred Espenak created maps and charts showing where best to witness the breathtaking choreography of celestial bodies, earning the nickname Mr. Eclipse. He died at 73. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Dallas Mavericks picked Cooper Flagg No. 1 in the draft. It wasn’t a surprise. Business: The Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter is buying the Los Angeles Lakers at a record-setting $10 billion valuation. Read about the deal. ARTS AND IDEAS In Venice. Luigi Costantini/Associated Press Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are getting ready to marry in Venice — a city that centuries ago set the standard for ostentation. Emma Bubola, a Times reporter who’s from the region, writes about the reaction there: For many of the people who have made the uncommon choice to stay in an impractical city rendered almost unlivable by tourism in the easyJet age, the event was a climax of the city’s betrayal, an American-size display of its contradictions. It was the capitulation of Venice’s identity, they said, reduced to a glittery backdrop for the family photos of the world’s new oligarchy. More on culture On the first episode of “Cannonball,” a new culture podcast from the Times, host Wesley Morris explores his (slightly fraught) love of Bruno Mars. After a backlash, Sabrina Carpenter changed her album cover, The Cut reports. “Here is a new alternate cover approved by God available now,” she wrote, adding a white heart. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Julia Gartland for The New York Times Add spinach to cooked chickpeas. Read a great summer novel. These are the ones our readers are most excited about. Try to protect your privacy online (even if it’s hard). GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was nonbelief. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 29, 2025 Author Members Posted June 29, 2025 June 27, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your Friday: A new government panel changed longstanding recommendations for flu vaccines. The Supreme Court is expected to release the remaining decisions of its term at 10 a.m. Eastern today. Anna Wintour is stepping down as editor of American Vogue. More news is below. But first, we share the top 100 movies of the century. The best movies By Kyle Buchanan I cover Hollywood and pop culture. Ten years ago last May, I found myself so thunderstruck by a movie that I’m pretty sure my mouth hung open for nearly its entire two-hour running time. The film was George Miller’s visceral vision “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which I’d easily rank as the greatest action movie of the last quarter-century. Turns out, so does Hollywood. At 11th place, “Mad Max: Fury Road” was the highest-ranking blockbuster on our exciting new list, The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, compiled by polling more than 500 people in and around the film industry. Contributors included Oscar-winning directors like Pedro Almodóvar, Sofia Coppola, Guillermo del Toro and Barry Jenkins, and actors such as Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Julianne Moore and Chiwetel Ejiofor. We even got a ballot from 98-year-old Mel Brooks. We have made many of those ballots available for your perusal — you can find them here. I loved learning that the “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino has expectedly arty tastes but also included the mostly forgotten John Carpenter sci-fi film “Ghosts of Mars” on his list. As for the top films, I had an early hunch that the biggest vote-getters would be David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” and Bong Joon Ho’s best-picture winner “Parasite,” though I confess I had them in the wrong order: In the end, “Parasite” prevailed, while Lynch’s film earned second place. The rest of the top 10 are: 3. “There Will Be Blood” 4. “In the Mood for Love” 5. “Moonlight” 6. “No Country For Old Men” 7. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” 8. “Get Out” 9. “Spirited Away” 10. “The Social Network” Though the advent of streaming services has affected the way movies are made and watched over the last quarter-century, only one film from a streamer made the list: Netflix’s “Roma,” at No. 46. I think that’s a testament to just how profound the big-screen experience still feels. Our greatest cinematic memories, like the time my jaw dropped while watching “Fury Road,” are forged in the dark with a packed audience along for the ride. A few other things stood out about the full list: Around a quarter of the films on the list are in a language other than English, reflecting both the global scope of our voters and the international nature of the contemporary cinema scene. Eleven of the films were directed by women. Fewer best-picture winners made the list than you might expect. Though three are in the top 10 — “Parasite,” “No Country For Old Men” and “Moonlight” — only seven others are scattered throughout the rest of the list. The likes of “Crash” and “Green Book” may have charmed Oscar voters when they debuted, but have they stood the test of time? Check out the entire list here. Times readers can also submit your own ballots, which we will eventually compile into another list. I’m interested to see just how dramatically your choices may differ from the tastes of Hollywood insiders. Here’s mine: OUR IRAN REPORTING Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaking on Wednesday. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times On Wednesday, President Trump threatened to sue The Times. He demanded an apology and a retraction for our coverage of an initial U.S. intelligence assessment saying the airstrikes against Iran had set back its nuclear program by just months. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then gave a news conference yesterday lamenting what he described as The Times’s failure to report on the attack’s impact. Patrick Healy, who oversees Times newsroom standards, addresses those critiques. There are two problems here. First, the government keeps contradicting itself: Trump and Hegseth say the nuclear program was “obliterated,” but then they and Secretary of State Marco Rubio keep making statements that undermine their mission-accomplished narrative. Second, we published stories on topics Hegseth said we had ignored: Spy agencies are still refining the intelligence on Iran. We reported that here. The strikes on the Fordo complex destroyed key infrastructure. We reported that here. Expert analysts said U.S. and Israeli strikes had caused enormous damage to Iran’s nuclear sites. We reported that here. Israel’s military said its strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program by years. We reported that here. Assessments by the C.I.A. director and the director of national intelligence said that the strikes had severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program. We reported on them here. Hegseth also asked aloud yesterday, “How many stories have been written about how hard it is to fly a plane for 36 hours?” Read Greg Jaffe’s great story on the subject. As for Trump’s threats, The Times’s deputy general counsel, David McCraw, replied to the president’s lawyers on Thursday by quoting Trump’s shifting statements and explaining what it is we do. “No retraction is needed. No apology will be forthcoming,” McCraw wrote. “We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.” More on Iran Centrifuges at Iran’s Fordo enrichment plant are “no longer operational,” the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made his first public comments since the U.S. attack. He played down damage to his country’s nuclear program. Iran’s foreign minister, however, said the nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damages.” A TRUMP BEEF, EXPLAINED Donald Trump and Jerome Powell. Carlos Barria/Reuters President Trump wants the central bank to lower interest rates; the central bank won’t budge. Why do they have such a tense relationship? Evan Gorelick explains. A riddle: What’s “destructive,” “Too Late” and a “real dummy”? According to Trump, it’s Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. The president has been angry with Powell, whom he appointed in his first term, for years, my colleague Colby Smith wrote. The root of their tiff? Interest rates. What’s an interest rate? It’s what a bank charges to let you borrow its money. When the Fed lowers the rate, people spend more. When it raises it, people save more. Trump’s take: The Fed should cut rates, which would juice spending across the economy and make it easier for the government to pay off its debt. Powell’s take: Powell says the central bank needs to wait and see how Trump’s policies — tariffs, deportations — play out before deciding to cut rates. “It’s just a question about being prudent and careful,” he said. The context: Trump can’t technically fire Powell. But his term expires in 11 months, and Trump has toyed with the idea of announcing an early replacement, The Wall Street Journal reported. For more Investors are worried that Trump may try to replace Powell with someone who would focus on appeasing the president, the DealBook newsletter wrote. The Fed proposed a new rule that would let banks keep less money on hand, which critics warn could make a financial crisis more likely. Home buyers will soon be allowed to list crypto assets as part of their net worth when they apply for mortgages. THE LATEST NEWS Vaccines Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new advisers voted to rescind longstanding recommendations for flu vaccines. They said some vaccines contain an ingredient that the anti-vaccine movement has falsely linked to autism. Politics A top Senate official rejected provisions in Republicans’ domestic policy bill. Party leaders are scrambling to salvage the legislation. (One rejected item — a provision to restrict immigrants from Medicare — featured prominently in yesterday’s newsletter.) The Trump administration indicated that it planned to again deport Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador. This time officials want to send him to a different country. The administration has privately pushed for the University of Virginia’s president’s resignation as part of a Justice Department investigation into the school’s D.E.I. efforts. Carolyn McCarthy, a former congresswoman from Long Island who became a champion of firearms regulation after a gunman on a commuter train shattered her family, died at 81. New York Mayor’s race Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for re-election as an independent, met with New York City business leaders desperate to stop Zohran Mamdani, the likely Democratic nominee. National Republican figures are attacking Mamdani with Islamophobic tropes, linking him to the 9/11 attacks and calling for his deportation. Other Big Stories Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Gazans are risking their lives to get food at distribution centers. Officials in the enclave say hundreds have been killed this month. People across the southern U.S. reported seeing a fireball streak through the sky. Scientists say it was a meteor. Droughts forced Los Angeles to rethink its water usage. In the video below, Michael Kimmelman explores how the city’s adaptations could help it survive a drier future. Click to watch. The New York Times OPINIONS These maps of New York from Michael Lange help explain how Mamdani won the mayoral primary election. Here’s a column by David Brooks on agreeing with Netanyahu. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez. Luca Bruno/Associated Press Bezos-Sánchez wedding: Reporters are scrambling for the little information leaking out of the event. Read what we know. A.I. fakes: Misleading content is already tainting elections around the world. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday answered the question “What is Democratic socialism?” Lives Lived: Before Bill Moyers began his long, celebrated career as a broadcast journalist, he was a close adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson. A Times bureau chief said he was “the most able and influential presidential assistant I have ever seen.” Moyers has died at 91. SPORTS Four minutes: Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan Olympic champion, tried to become the first woman to break the four-minute mile — but she ran about six seconds too slow. M.L.B.: Wander Franco, 24, a former Tampa Bay Rays All-Star, was given a two-year suspended sentence after being convicted of sexual abuse of a minor in the Dominican Republic. ARTS AND IDEAS Anna Wintour Nina Westervelt for The New York Times Anna Wintour shocked the media and fashion worlds when she said she would give up her role as editor of American Vogue. It’s a shift in power, but not the end of her run as the world’s most famous magazine editor. Once she relinquishes the editor in chief title, that role will no long exist. Instead, a “head of editorial content” — a newly created role at American Vogue — will report directly to her. Read more about the shift. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Ryan Liebe for The New York Times Build your own crunchy queso wrap with the biggest flour tortillas you can find. Learn to make salad dressing, with help from Samin Nosrat. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was zirconia. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 29, 2025 Author Members Posted June 29, 2025 June 28, 2025 Good morning. Yesterday was a big day at the Supreme Court. We explain what to make of the rulings below. But first, Melissa Kirsch writes about the midpoint of the year — an opportune moment to look back at where we’ve been and set our sights for where we want to go. María Jesús Contreras Better half By Melissa Kirsch On Wednesday, we will be exactly halfway through the year — 182 days on either side of July 2, the precise midpoint of 2025. I’ve never clocked this date before: the year’s high noon, the moment when the teeter-totter is perfectly parallel to the pavement. There’s something satisfying about having exactly as much road behind you as you have before you. Look over your shoulder. Where have you been? And where on earth are you going? We usually make resolutions for the year on Jan. 1, in the grip of winter. The delirium of the holidays has concluded, it’s cold and likely gray outside, we are quite possibly hungover. Here’s where we traditionally set our goals for the year to come, in this depleted state. I’ve long endorsed the Always Be Resolving approach to change — you don’t need a special day in order to declare a resolution. But it does feel administratively appropriate to do it on the first day of the calendar year, when the months unfurl before us like an unpainted canvas. This year, I propose July 2 for a sunnier moment at which to take stock of the year so far and, if it feels right, to make some achievable resolutions for the second half of the year. The sun is out. We’re in summer mode, a little less coiled up than we might have been in January. Our resolutions might be more self-compassionate, more optimistic than they were in winter. Think of it as a resolution reset. When Dec. 31 arrives, how do you want your life to be a little different? Perhaps there’s something you resolved on Jan. 1 that you’ve fallen behind on and you want to reframe it for the back half of the year. Maybe there’s something you’ve been meaning to do and six months is the perfect window in which to achieve it. I’m skeptical of New Year’s resolutions as they’re usually executed: Here’s a way in which you’re falling short. No more horsing around, now it’s time to straighten up and fly right. The Summer Reset (if I capitalize it, it feels more official) is a different practice. These pronouncements should be summer-tinged, with an emphasis on possibility over punishment. A friend recently told me she’d resolved to ask “Does this make my life bigger?” before she made any decision. I might try this one. You might resolve to spend more time with people around whom you feel like the best version of yourself. Let the resolutions be additive, celebratory, exciting. Make them about increasing joy, about being new and radiant and more enthusiastic about the things and people you love. Happy New Half of the Year. Let’s make it the best half yet. THE SUPREME COURT Yesterday was the final decision day of the Supreme Court’s term. The justices made it count, releasing rulings that will affect presidential power, immigrants, schoolchildren, health care and more. German Lopez explains the highlights: Limits on universal injunctions: At face value, this case was about President Trump’s attempts to end birthright citizenship. But the court didn’t say much on that issue. Instead, it focused on lower courts’ ability to stop the president’s actions through injunctions that halt presidential policies nationwide. Members of both parties have complained that lower-court judges have too much power. The court agreed, in a 6-3 decision. It cited history: When Congress created the lower courts in 1789, it did not give these judges the power to impose their decisions on the rest of the country. Instead, they can grant relief only to the plaintiffs of the case they’re hearing. So a lower court can, for example, stop Trump from imposing his birthright citizenship order on the immigrants or states that file a lawsuit. But everyone who didn’t file the suit remains unprotected from the president’s orders, with some exceptions. In short, the justices limited lower courts’ ability to check the president. Trump celebrated the decision, calling it “brilliantly written.” Democrats criticized it; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it was a “terrifying step towards authoritarianism.” In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the decision prevents judges from blocking blatantly unconstitutional measures, such as a president’s trying to seize Americans’ guns. As for the legality of Trump’s ending birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court delayed the president’s order for 30 days. The issue will likely play out in lower courts before it ends up back with the justices. Opting out of L.G.B.T.Q. lessons: The justices ruled 6 to 3 that Maryland, and therefore other states, must let parents with religious objections opt out of lessons involving books with L.G.B.T.Q. themes. “The decision extended a winning streak for claims of religious freedom at the court, gains that have often come at the expense of other values, notably gay rights,” Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court, wrote. Free health care: The court upheld a provision in the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, that lets a federal task force decide which preventive health measures insurers must cover at no cost. The 6-3 decision preserves some free services, such as medications that stop the spread of H.I.V., for tens of millions of Americans. It also gives Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., more power to set rules for insurers; he appoints the board’s members. Restricting access to porn: The court upheld, 6 to 3, a Texas law that forces porn websites to check users’ ages. Critics argued that the law violated the First Amendment. The justices disagreed. More than 20 other states have similar laws. THE LATEST NEWS Trade The Ambassador Bridge, which links Ontario and Detroit. Brittany Greeson for The New York Times Trump said the U.S. would terminate all trade discussions with Canada, “effective immediately,” over the country’s plan to impose taxes on American tech giants. Trump may extend trade talks with some countries beyond his initial July 8 deadline while reimposing tariffs on others. (News of the extensions helped propel the stock market to a record high.) The Group of 7 nations agreed to exclude American companies from certain international taxes that Trump said discriminated against the U.S. Politics The Senate rejected a Democratic measure that would have forced Trump to seek approval from Congress for another military strike against Iran. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California sued Fox News, accusing the network of defaming him in its coverage of a phone call he had with Trump this month. Allies of Andrew Cuomo told The Times they believed he ran an out-of-touch campaign for New York City mayor and showed little interest in reacquainting himself with the city. Senate Republicans despise many parts of Trump’s domestic policy bill. But they fear tax increases and presidential retribution if they fail to pass it, Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson write. The Trump administration is terminating deportation protections for Haitians, declaring that the country, which is overrun by gang violence, is now safe to return to. Other Big Stories The University of Virginia’s president will resign under pressure from the Trump administration over his handling of D.E.I. El Salvador put tens of thousands of people in jail as part of a gang crackdown. Some police officers now admit they arrested people on flimsy evidence to meet quotas. The Navy renamed the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk, a vessel that had been named in honor of one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Television FX The award-winning FX drama “The Bear” is back for Season 4. If you haven’t binged it yet, here’s a primer; if you have, here is our recap of the season. “Squid Game” has also returned, for what is probably its final round. Read the review. Shane Gillis endured quasi-cancellation to become one of the biggest stand-up comedians working today. With his Netflix sitcom, “Tires,” he’s trying to map a leap to the mainstream. Film “M3gan,” a horror movie about a killer robotic doll, became an instant camp classic. Its sequel has just as much silliness — but also some serious (and smart) things to say about A.I. Denis Villeneuve, the director behind the “Dune” series, will direct the next James Bond film. In a new documentary, the actress Mariska Hargitay sets out to learn about her mother, the Hollywood legend Jayne Mansfield, through intimate conversations with her siblings. Music Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg. Meghan Marin for The New York Times Wet Leg, a British indie rock band, blew up overnight with witty, sharp-edged songs. Now they’re ready for stardom. Dr. Demento is retiring after more than 50 years on the radio. He introduced listeners to countless novelty and parody artists, including Allan Sherman, Stan Freberg and Weird Al Yankovic. Mick Ralphs, a guitarist and songwriter behind two formative bands of the 1970s, Mott the Hoople and Bad Company, died at 81. Art & Design From monumental reopenings — an expanded Frick Collection and the Met’s Rockefeller wing — to solo showcases like “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” these are our critics’ favorite art shows of 2025. The Getty Villa, which narrowly escaped the flames of the Los Angeles fires, has reopened its doors. The museum purposely left the charred stumps around its property as a reminder of what happened. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. CULTURE CALENDAR By Desiree Ibekwe ? Lorde, “Virgin” (out now): The last Lorde album, “Solar Power,” was an ode to maturing: stepping back, reflecting and choosing the best for yourself. Four years later, she is back with “Virgin,” an album that feels reflective of a different stage of life — she’s now 28 — when a kind of rage creeps in. It’s apt that the album’s lead single is called “What Was That?” “There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t think I’m a good girl anymore, a good woman,” Lorde told Rolling Stone. “It will be over for a lot of people, and then for some people, I will have arrived. I’ll be where they always hoped I’d be.” RECIPE OF THE WEEK By Melissa Clark Christopher Testani for The New York Times Mushroom Smash Burgers If the words “smash burger” make your heart beat a little faster but meat isn’t on the menu, you’ll be pleased to know that Ali Slagle captures a similar spirit in her mushroom smash burgers. Thick and meaty portobello caps, fried under a weight, flatten and crisp to chewy perfection. Add a slice or two of melty cheese, your favorite burger condiments and a toasted bun for an easy veggie burger with a satisfying bite. REAL ESTATE Holly Scheib and Paul Wisneskey in Taos, N.M., with their daughter, Kate, and son, Will. Jessica Lutz for The New York Times The Hunt: A couple set their sights on the art haven of Taos, N.M., with an $800,000 budget and a fixer-upper mentality. Which home did they choose? Play our game. Wright homes: Nonprofits around the country are devoted to preserving Frank Lloyd Wright’s creations. One, in Chicago, also helps owners sort out their maintenance issues. What you get for $700,000: A Federal-style home in Francestown, N.H.; a Craftsman in Los Angeles; and a Colonial-Revival in Bexley, Ohio. LIVING Christopher H. Warren for The New York Times Travel: A writer takes a journey from Winchester to Canterbury, along a route Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about in “The Canterbury Tales.” Look of the week: Loose white layers that dance on the wind. Rock-star makeover: The drummer of Fall Out Boy brought new life to his Los Angeles home, with bold, bright colors on every wall. Ask Well: “I’ve heard receipts are toxic. Is it safe to touch them?” ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Your data appeared in a leak. Now what? Data breaches are an unfortunate fact of modern life, and there’s not much you can do to prevent them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself before, and after, they occur. Using a password manager and enabling two-factor authentication can mitigate the damage. After your data is leaked, monitor your bank and credit card accounts, and freeze your credit if necessary. Finally, stay alert for scams purporting to help after a breach: Scammers sometimes send legitimate-looking emails or texts about data breaches that actually contain links to phishing sites, in an effort to convince you to divulge your sensitive information. — Max Eddy GAME OF THE WEEK Napheesa Collier Abbie Parr/Associated Press Indiana Fever vs. Minnesota Lynx, W.N.B.A.: The Lynx came one game shy of a title last year. This season, they’re at the top of the league standings. Napheesa Collier, their star forward, leads the W.N.B.A. in both scoring and defensive efficiency. She is the oddsmakers’ favorite to win M.V.P., just ahead of the Fever’s Caitlin Clark, who recently returned from an injury. The Fever hope that when Clark is fully healthy, she can carry them on a deep postseason run. This game will offer a glimpse of how ready they are to compete with the league’s best. Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern on Prime Video. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was gimmicked. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 30, 2025 Author Members Posted June 30, 2025 June 29, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your day: The Senate narrowly voted to advance President Trump’s policy bill. Hundreds gathered for the funeral of an assassinated Minnesota lawmaker and her husband. Chief Justice John Roberts urged political leaders to tone down heated rhetoric about judges. More news is below. But first, we take a look at a decade of same-sex marriage in the U.S. Derek Abella A decade of love By German Lopez I’m a writer for The Morning. In 2011, my now-husband and I made a pilgrimage that was then common for gay couples: We went to Massachusetts to marry. The ceremony, on a beach in the small town of Marblehead, was wonderful. Our families visited from Venezuela, Spain and across the U.S. An older lesbian couple who watched from afar later told us that they had teared up from admiration at seeing a young gay couple publicly declare their love. But when I went back home to Ohio, it was almost as if the wedding never happened. The state, where I still live, didn’t recognize same-sex marriages. For years, my husband and I couldn’t file taxes or claim benefits as a married couple. Only the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges — a case filed against Ohio’s health director — forced every state to legally recognize marriages like mine. No policy decision has had more of an effect on my life. Of course, there’s the legal side — the taxes and government benefits. But there has also been a cultural shift. Growing up, my peers routinely used “gay,” “queer” and the F-slur to insult each other. I distinctly remember a high school classmate interrupting health class to shout, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” Yet here was the country’s highest court legalizing my marriage. After the ruling, the president at the time, Barack Obama, celebrated the decision, lighting the White House in rainbow colors. I finally got the validation that teenage me, surrounded by bigotry, thought he never would. Thursday was the 10th anniversary of that ruling. As part of The Times’s coverage of the milestone, the Modern Love column asked readers to describe what the ruling has meant for them. I recommend reading all of their lovely stories. Below are some excerpts. Adam Wallenfang, Chicago: In America, we’re taught that we can become anything we want. But growing up gay meant putting asterisks next to my aspirations. I could become a teacher (which I did), but it would be touchy to be openly gay. I could fall in love (which I did), but my marriage would be only as binding as the Swiss cheese network of states that recognized it. I could become a father (which I did), but that act of devotion would be mired in legalities that felt designed to dissuade. Obergefell erased many of those caveats, making my and my husband’s hopes feel possible. Someday, our daughter will learn that her country once forbade her dads to marry. But when we tell her that she can become anything she wants in today’s America, the message will be truer. Neil Rafferty, Birmingham, Ala.: My partner and I were born and bred in Alabama. We learned to swim in these rivers. Our blood permeates this red soil. Alabama is our home. And we weren’t going to get married anywhere else. We met in 2004, served together in the Marines under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” survived it all. With Obergefell, we were finally able to marry. In our home, where we belong, with the people we love. Marina Rota, Los Angeles: For decades I felt superior to the institution of marriage. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that my relationships were valid or how they should be celebrated. But in 2022, my partner, Sara, was diagnosed with A.L.S. and would soon be gone. I was devastated — and, suddenly, desperate to marry her. Without marriage, there would be no legal record of our love, nor any spiritual record in the form of ceremony. I could not live with that. So there we were in our living room, just two days before Sara passed, saying our vows in front of a rabbi. I stood beside Sara in her wheelchair, while her sons and our friends held the huppah. Autumn light streaming through our windows, I was deeply grateful for the right to marry the woman I love. Brandon Carrillo, Stamford, Conn.: After the decision, my mother burst into my bedroom, yelling, “You can get married!” My sexuality felt taboo within my family of Filipino and Mexican immigrants. Their silence left me isolated and anxious. But that morning, that tension began to break. My mom’s face, filled with joy, ironically communicated so much of her unspoken fear. For both of us, Obergefell meant that I could be accepted and protected throughout our country. Smiling, I replied, “I can.” More anniversary coverage Nearly two thirds of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. But support has dropped among Republicans, and conservatives are soon expected to ask the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to Obergefell. Adam Liptak, The Times’s Supreme Court reporter, looked back on the day of the decision. Some veterans of the marriage equality movement see similarities between their struggles and battles over trans rights. THE LATEST NEWS Trump’s Policy Bill The Senate voted 51-49 to begin debating Trump’s policy bill. It’s still unclear whether Republican leaders can find enough votes to pass the measure and send it back to the House. The bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and add new ones, while slashing spending on safety-net programs like Medicaid. Experts estimate it would add around $3 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade. The House and Senate versions of the bill differ in important ways. See a comparison. Instead of explicitly reducing benefits for the poor under the bill, Republicans are making them harder to get and to keep by piling on paperwork. Weeks after a spat with Trump, Elon Musk criticized the bill again. He called it “utterly insane and destructive.” More on Politics At the Minnesota State Capitol. Tim Gruber for The New York Times Gov. Tim Walz gave a eulogy at the funeral of the assassinated Minnesota lawmaker, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were there. Catholic bishops across the U.S. are expressing opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda. Some have showed up at courthouses to deter ICE agents. New York Mayor’s Race Zohran Mamdani Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times One key to Zohran Mamdani’s success in the Democratic primary for mayor New York City: a visually rich social media campaign. Mamdani drew tens of thousands of new voters to the polls with the help of an army of volunteers and small donors. After Mamdani’s victory over Andrew Cuomo, The Times’s Emma Goldberg asked: Have Millennials finally figured out how to topple boomer bosses? International The Israeli military issued broad evacuation orders for neighborhoods of Gaza City, amid growing calls by Trump for a cease-fire deal. Iran’s leaders are at odds over how to address the crisis brought on by the 12-day war with Israel and the U.S., Roger Cohen writes. McDonald’s thrives in Ukraine, a testament to the country’s rebounding economy. Two assassins killed a Nicaraguan human rights activist in Costa Rica, increasing suspicions that Nicaragua’s government is targeting its enemies on foreign soil. Other Big Stories Mother and daughter. In the 1970s, when courts tended to deny custody to lesbian mothers, an underground network helped them seize back their children. Jurors in the federal trial of Sean Combs are set to begin deliberating tomorrow. Here are takeaways from the closing arguments. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Should establishment Democrats embrace Mamdani, a democratic socialist? No. Democrats shouldn’t capitulate to radical figures in the way that Republicans did. “It’s irresponsible for mainstream Democrats to think it can’t happen to us,” William Daley writes for The Wall Street Journal. Yes. Democrats must accept that Mamdani’s populist message is appealing and energizing. “They’ll have to get comfortable with the future of the party, which seems to be swinging far to the left,” USA Today’s Sara Pequeño writes. FROM OPINION The Trump administration’s proposal to cut NASA funding jeopardizes U.S. leadership in space and allows China to surge ahead, Bill Nelson, a former NASA administrator, writes. Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on the power of diplomacy with Iran and Maureen Dowd on Trump and the ayatollah. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS In Malawi. Amos Gumulira for The New York Times Chess in Malawi: Susan Namangale fell in love with the game as a child. Now she’s on a mission to change the narrative that it’s only for the elite. “No buy July”: Some people plan to swear off discretionary spending next month. Financial experts weighed in. Condé Nast: Magazines no longer rule the world. Why do we yearn for their glory days? Inside, outside: Crowds on a London street watch Rachel Zegler sing from a balcony — while paying theatergoers watch on a screen. Vows: They met at summer camp. Now their famous dog is stealing hearts. Your pick: The most clicked article in The Morning yesterday was about one couple’s hunt for a house in a New Mexico art haven. Lives Lived: Lalo Schifrin’s theme to the television series “Mission: Impossible” evoked the ominous suspense of espionage. His compositions won several Grammys, and his film scores were nominated for Oscars. Schifrin died at 93. SPORTS Baseball: Shohei Ohtani threw the fastest pitch of his M.L.B. career. N.H.L. draft: The New York Islanders impressed and the Toronto Maple Leafs fell short. Read more about this year’s winners and losers. Trending: Chelsea defeated Benfica in soccer’s Club World Cup. People online were discussing the many controversies of a game that ended four and a half hours after it started. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “The Compound,” by Aisling Rawle: We’re long past the embarrassment of watching reality TV; it has dominated our screens since the dawn of the century. So there’s something familiar but also surprising about Rawles’s clever, canny debut novel about a cast of young women and men coexisting on a compound in the desert, with cameras tracking their every move. Anyone who wakes up unaccompanied by a member of the opposite sex goes home. Food, seating, refrigeration and even a front door are earned through a series of increasingly degrading challenges. In Rawles’s hands, what begins as a fun lark morphs into a dark, twisty tale reminiscent of “The Hunger Games.” More on books In Leila Mottley’s novel “The Girls Who Grew Big,” a group of teen mothers band together to support one another. The author Lauren Groff considers why “Mansfield Park” is Jane Austen’s least understood novel. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Memorize these salad dressing recipes. Perfect your lunge. Stream these movies and shows before they leave Netflix. MEAL PLAN Alex Lau for The New York Times In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests recipes for when it’s too hot to cook much, including smashed cucumber and chicken salad, no-cook chili bean salad, and dumpling tomato salad with chile crisp vinaigrette. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were nonapology and polygonal. Can you put eight historical events — including Prohibition, the making of “Jaws,” and the invention of America’s first electric car — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. P.S.: The Interview is off this week. It will be back next week. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 June 30, 2025 Author Members Posted June 30, 2025 June 30, 2025 Good morning. The Senate is preparing to vote on Trump’s policy bill. Canada said it would scrap a tax that angered Trump. Much of Europe is enduring extreme heat. More news is below. But first, we take a look at why businesses are pulling away from politics. In Queens, N.Y. Gabby Jones for The New York Times Corporate politics By German Lopez Years ago, companies practically tripped over each other to show support for Pride Month, Black Lives Matter and other political causes. Now, businesses increasingly want nothing to do with politics. Elon Musk left the government after his companies’ fortunes plummeted. Target, Meta and others reversed D.E.I. policies. Nearly 40 percent of companies have scaled back support for Pride Month, Axios reported. Today, I’ll look at what’s changed — and why. Political activism Why do companies get involved in politics to begin with? In most cases, the people who run them believe it’s better for their bottom lines. Only rarely do they do it solely because they believe in a cause. Three forces shape the decision to take a political stance, experts told me: First, companies often follow other institutions. In 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, and the president at the time backed the ruling. These events signaled to businesses that gay rights causes had become mainstream, and many responded by supporting Pride Month. Second, companies face internal pressure. In 2022, workers at Disney walked out over legislation in Florida that restricted discussion of gender and sexuality in schools. Disney subsequently fought for months with the state government, particularly Gov. Ron DeSantis, over L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Third and last, businesses chase consumer sentiment. Most Americans opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and many companies, including Apple and Starbucks, responded by voicing their support for abortion rights. In Orlando, Fla. Octavio Jones/Reuters This is a balancing act. Every political stance alienates some people and pleases others. The risk of alienation is usually bigger than the potential benefit, studies have found, which is why companies typically choose silence over activism. But sometimes, there’s a clear upside. If all of that sounds cold and calculating, that’s because it is. Businesses look at activism almost in the same way they set a price, said Nooshin Warren, a marketing expert at the University of Arizona: They want to find an equilibrium that will gain them the most profits and lose them the least. Changing times Situations can suddenly change, too. In 2020, all three forces pushed companies to take racial justice issues seriously, with genuine bipartisan agreement in America that the killing of George Floyd was wrong. Many businesses embraced Black Lives Matter and D.E.I. initiatives. Over the past few years, the situation has become more complicated. President Trump opposes D.E.I. Surveys also show that such initiatives aren’t broadly popular and that half or even most Americans don’t want companies involved in politics. Now businesses have to rebalance the costs and benefits of pleasing Trump versus their divided customers versus their split employees. In this complex situation, more companies have opted out — to avoid linking themselves too closely to any particular cause. THE LATEST NEWS Congress Senator Thom Tillis Kenny Holston/The New York Times The Senate will begin voting on Trump’s policy bill today. Senator Thom Tillis, one of the bill’s Republican opponents, said he wouldn’t seek re-election. Trump had threatened him with a primary. The legislation includes hundreds of provisions and would add more than $3 trillion to the national debt. See a list of nearly everything in the bill, and how much it would cost or save. Trade Canada said it would cancel a tax on American technology companies that had led Trump to suspend trade talks. U.S. and E.U. negotiators are working to strike a trade deal before Trump’s July 9 tariff deadline. It’s likely to be more of an outline than an actual agreement. Trump wants America to make iPhones. Here’s how India is doing it. Immigration El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, in the Oval Office in April. Eric Lee for The New York Times Trump vowed to dismantle the MS-13 gang. Under an immigration deal with the Salvadoran president, the U.S. is returning the gang’s leaders — and threatening that effort. Immigration detentions have caused intense anxiety among Latinos in Los Angeles and prompted what some describe as a Covid-style shutdown of public events. Middle East The chief U.N. nuclear inspector said that Iran could be enriching uranium in a “matter of months.” Trump claims that Tehran gave up its nuclear ambitions after a U.S. attack. An Israeli attack on a Tehran prison last week killed 71 people, according to Iranian state media. The jail is known for holding dissidents and political prisoners. More International News Much of Europe is in the grip of a dangerous heat wave. Thousands of young people in Hong Kong lost careers and friends after joining mass protests six years ago. Read some of their stories. Two nuns in Brazil went viral for beatboxing. Jack Nicas, The Times’s Brazil bureau chief, followed them as they recorded their first music video. Click the video below to watch him explain their story. The New York Times Other Big Stories Trump’s supporters want his face on Mount Rushmore. This interactive story explores whether he should — or even could — be added. In Idaho, a gunman started a wildfire and shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another. OPINIONS Europe’s push to militarize risks breaking up the European Union as countries compete for arms contracts, Anton Jäger writes. When Tarek Ziad came out to his religious parents, they disowned him. It was price he paid to cultivate a new life of love, he writes. Here are columns by David French on a judicial nominee and Carlos Lozada on Trump’s favorite question. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Kelsey McClellan for The New York Times It’s not easy: For food manufacturers seeking to replace artificial colors, green can be an expensive challenge. Is he cheating? The world’s best squash player is testing the rules of the game. Summer jobs: Why a teenage rite of passage may be fading away. Impostor: The artist Emma Webster thought Lady Gaga had bought her work. Then things got strange. Sketched out: An illustrator confronts his fears about A.I. the best way he knows how. Illusion of the Year: Two neuroscientists started a contest to explore the gaps and limits of human perception. Metropolitan Diary: I give them my last dollar. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about the Senate and the policy bill. Lives Lived: D. Wayne Lukas was a Hall of Fame horse trainer who revolutionized thoroughbred racing with a corporate approach during a career that spanned nearly 50 years. Lukas died at 89. SPORTS Trending: People online were searching for news about LeBron James, who exercised his option to stay with the Lakers for his 23rd N.B.A. season. The team will pay him around $53 million. Soccer: Emma Hayes chose an entirely new lineup for the U.S. Women’s National Team’s friendly with Ireland. The result was familiar: a blowout win against an overmatched foe. W.N.B.A.: Caitlin Clark and Napheesa Collier will face off as captains of the 2025 All-Star teams in Indianapolis next month after winning a fan vote. ARTS AND IDEAS On Martha’s Vineyard. Thousands of “Jaws” superfans recently descended on Martha’s Vineyard to celebrate the movie’s 50th anniversary. The birthday festivities included meet-and-greets, book signings, film screenings and an exhibit. But for most fans, the real draw was the island itself: the sweeping, grass-fringed beaches and idyllic villages they had come to love from repeated viewings of Steven Spielberg’s first blockbuster. More on culture Kneecap backstage at Glastonbury festival. Christopher James Hoare for The New York Times The Irish rap group Kneecap has landed in trouble for anti-Israel statements. But at Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival, thousands cheered the group. In Season 4 of “The Bear,” the restaurant’s business challenge is balancing comfort food and haute cuisine. The show’s own creative issues are similar, our critic says. For “F1: The Movie,” real racers taught Brad Pitt and Damson Idris how to drive real racecars. The film has given Apple its first box office hit. These are the 21 best croissants in New York City right now. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Mark Weinberg for The New York Times Make fudgy s’mores brownies, even if you don’t have access to a campfire. Soothe a sore neck. Boost productivity and focus with these podcasts. Scrub your data from the internet. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was braving. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 July 1, 2025 Author Members Posted July 1, 2025 July 1, 2025 Good morning. Senators spent all night debating President Trump’s big policy bill — and some of them just paused to watch the sunrise from the Capitol. They may vote soon, and Vice President JD Vance just arrived in case he needs to break a tie. (Follow updates here.) Here's what else is happening: California rolled back a landmark environmental law. The dollar has had its worst start to a year in more than half a century. The Trump administration said Harvard was violating civil rights law. More news is below. But first, we look at some of the provisions in the policy bill. Sophie Park for The New York Times, Getty, Associated Press, Eric Lee, via The New York Times A very big bill By German Lopez The Senate is still debating a key part of President Trump’s domestic agenda this morning — what he has called his big, beautiful bill. Senators are racing to pass it before the July 4 deadline. By now, you have probably heard two things about the proposal. First, it would cut taxes in a way that would largely benefit the wealthiest Americans. Second, to recoup some of that lost revenue, it would cut health care programs, particularly Medicaid, and would leave nearly 12 million more Americans uninsured over 10 years. Those parts are important, but they are far from the only elements in the sprawling 940-page bill. The legislation also touches on food stamps, clean energy, mass deportations, student loans, military spending and more. Today, I’ll explain some of those less discussed provisions. The other pieces Because this bill is foremost about the federal budget, it goes through a special procedure — called reconciliation — that lets the Senate pass it with a simple majority, no filibuster allowed. Republican lawmakers have therefore treated this as a rare opportunity to accomplish a bunch of different priorities. Food stamp cuts: The bill would cut SNAP, the food aid program that 40 million people use, by about 20 percent. It would make work requirements stricter and ask states to pick up more of the cost. The work requirements alone would likely eliminate millions of people from SNAP’s rolls. Millions of others would likely have their benefits reduced. And depending on how states react to the cuts, those reductions could end up being even steeper. Supporters argue that these measures are needed to save money and to reduce what they see as Americans’ dependence on government programs. Critics of the cuts say that they will translate to more hunger and poverty, disproportionately hurting the working class. Clean energy disinvestment: The bill would roll back policies that support clean energy. That includes tax credits for solar and wind projects, as well as credits that help Americans buy heat pumps and electric cars. It would even impose a new tax on clean energy projects. Republicans, many of whom deny the science of climate change, have characterized these subsidies as giveaways to an industry that doesn’t deserve support if it can’t survive on its own. Critics of the proposal, including Elon Musk, say the tax credits are needed not just to address climate change but also to give an important U.S. industry a fighting chance against its heavily subsidized Chinese counterpart. Funding for deportations: Trump says he needs more money to carry out mass deportations, and the legislation would make sure he has it. New funding would support building more of the wall along the southern border, adding more border surveillance and constructing more prisons, among other measures. Less student loan relief: The bill would eliminate some of the more generous student loan repayment programs and limit the federal government’s ability to provide relief. The bill’s backers say the changes shift the burden of student debt off taxpayers, most of whom have not graduated from college, back onto the people who took out the loans. Opponents say the changes will keep people in debt longer and force more of them to default. More military spending: The legislation would add funds for shipbuilding, munitions, Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense system and other Pentagon initiatives. And much more: The proposal would create tax-advantaged savings accounts for newborns, called “Trump accounts,” that would start with $1,000 in government contributions. It would increase money for air traffic control and the Secret Service. And it would help pay for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations next year. To see all of the provisions — there are nearly 300 — check out this list that my colleagues have put together, which explains everything in the bill and how much it would cost or save. What’s next It’s still not clear whether the bill, as it currently stands, will become law. Senators need to vote on their version, and then it will go back to the House for final passage. Republicans control the House by a thinner margin than they do the Senate, and a few defectors could complicate things. Still, Trump has demanded they pass it — and Republicans have not bucked the president much since his return to office. The National Debt Clock in New York, in April. Yuki Iwamura/Associated Press How much is $3.3 trillion? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Trump’s domestic policy bill will add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That number is so large that it’s difficult for most people to comprehend. Our writer Evan Gorelick did the math. Say you start playing the lottery the day you’re born. If you somehow managed to win every game in every U.S. state, every single day — we’re talking everything from scratch-offs to Powerball jackpots — it would still take you around 75 years to rack up $3.3 trillion (assuming, of course, that you pay taxes on your winnings). Here are five other ways to think about $3.3 trillion: It’s enough to buy every piece of real estate in Manhattan — all 1.1 million residential and commercial properties — twice, based on recent valuations. It’s more than the combined wealth of Musk, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and the next 18 richest people in the world. If distributed evenly, it would be enough to give every U.S. household more than $25,000. Broken into $100 bills, it would create a stack 2,200 miles high — far beyond the orbit of the International Space Station. Laid end to end, those bills could wrap around the Equator 128 times. If you spent $1 every second without stopping, it would last more than 104,000 years. If you spent $1 million every day, it would last more than 9,000 years. More on the bill Senate Republicans have beaten back Democratic efforts to remove the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and tax cuts for the wealthy. Musk suggested that if the bill passed he would quickly form a new political party — “America Party” — and back primary challenges to Republicans. If four Republican senators vote “no,” they could block the bill. See the potential “no” voters. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Administration The government said that Harvard had violated federal civil rights law by failing to address the harassment of Jewish students. A federal court is considering whether Trump can use an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants he says are members of a Venezuelan gang. Countries are working to strike trade deals with the U.S. before this month’s tariff deadline. But further threats from Trump have slowed the talks. A Times fact-checker explains how Trump has used inaccurate claims to justify his executive actions. A Republican House member who has often criticized Trump, Don Bacon, said he would retire. He’s part of a wider pattern. More on Politics Democrats want to write their own version of Project 2025. The Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to longstanding limits on how much political parties can spend to help elect candidates. California Democrats agreed to roll back an environmental law that had bipartisan support for decades — but is now seen as a cause of the state’s housing shortage. A New York City panel approved increased rent on rent-stabilized apartments. Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ likely mayor candidate, has campaigned for a freeze. Economy The U.S. dollar has weakened more than 10 percent in the past six months — its worst start to a year since 1973. Trump sent a handwritten note to the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, demanding lower interest rates. Middle East In the West Bank. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times Dozens of hard-right Israelis clashed with Israeli troops outside a military base in the occupied West Bank. The Gulf states have moved quickly to invest in Syria, and to expand their influence, after its dictator fell last year. Trump signed an executive order that lifted most economic sanctions on Syria. More International News In Sri Ganganagar, India. Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times India is adapting to extreme heat. The Times spent a day in the country’s hottest region to see how people there cope. The Sinaloa Cartel has forged an alliance with a rival gang that could reshape global criminal networks. Other Big Stories The police in Idaho identified a 20-year-old man as their suspect in a deadly ambush against firefighters responding to a brush fire. The man was found dead after the attack. In the video below, Jordyn Holman, a Times retail reporter who also happens to be planning a wedding, examines how tariffs are affecting the experience of shopping for a dress. Click to watch. IN ONE CHART Immigration arrests rose sharply after Trump took office. In May, Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, met with immigration officials to set a target of 3,000 arrests a day. After that meeting, arrests rose sharply again: Source: Deportation Data Project | Data is through June 10. | By The New York Times Most arrests are in states with large immigrant populations, like Florida and Texas. But the pace is faster than it was last year in every state. See data from across the U.S. OPINIONS As Trump curbs free speech and focuses on strong borders, the United States is starting to look more like China, Jacob Dreyer writes. Here are columns by Carlos Lozada on his American dream and Michelle Goldberg on an anti-Israel chant. Last day: Vote for your top 10 movies. Notable names in film weighed in on the best movies of the 21st century. Now, it’s your turn. Vote today. MORNING READS Zoom in: Our critic helps you look very closely at this Cézanne painting — which contains some of his biggest ideas. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a video about two beatboxing nuns. Trending: Crew members on a Disney cruise rescued two passengers who went overboard as they were leaving the Bahamas. See a video. Lives Lived: Jane Stanton Hitchcock was a daughter of privilege who skewered the foibles of her tribe in a series of addictive crime novels. She then uncovered a real-life crime when her mother was swindled by her accountant. Hitchcock died at 78. SPORTS N.B.A.: Free agency opened with a flurry of activity, including an interesting trade between the Denver Nuggets and the Brooklyn Nets. Read a roundup. N.F.L.: The Miami Dolphins traded Jalen Ramsey and Jonnu Smith to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for Minkah Fitzpatrick. ARTS AND IDEAS Photo illustration by Tala Safie; Photographs via Getty Images On Friday, after a 16-year pause, the band Oasis will play its first reunion show in Wales. The band is huge in Britain: When British tour tickets went on sale last year, a reported 14 million people tried to buy them. Seats for the North American leg of the tour also went fast, and yet the band has never really shaken the perception that it failed to conquer the U.S. More on culture Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Jeff Bezos. @Laurensanchezbezos, via Reuters At her wedding, Lauren Sánchez Bezos committed to the corset, Vanessa Friedman writes. Test your knowledge of early American literature with this quiz. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Rachel Vanni for The New York Times Drizzle this perfect, shallot-y dressing over greens — or anything you like. Take advantage of early Fourth of July sales. Upgrade a small bedroom with smarter storage. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was upheaval. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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 July 2, 2025 Author Members Posted July 2, 2025 July 2, 2025 Good morning. Here’s the latest news to start your day: President Trump’s agenda passed in the Senate. It now goes to the House. Paramount said it would pay millions to settle a lawsuit with Trump. Russia, facing less intense U.S. sanctions, is replenishing its war chest. More news is below. We also take a close look at this Supreme Court term. The Republican bill clears the Senate Senator John Thune, the Republican majority leader. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times By the staff of The Morning The Senate narrowly passed Republicans’ sprawling bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs. Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote, after three Republican senators — Susan Collins, Thom Tillis and Rand Paul — voted no. The bill extends roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term and increases funding for border security and the military. It cuts about $1.1 trillion from health care programs, mainly Medicaid, which experts estimate will cause nearly 12 million Americans to lose coverage. The bill, which could affect millions of Americans, is a major political gamble, Carl Hulse writes. The House must now decide whether to pass the Senate’s version of the bill or try to reconcile it with its own. Any delays could mean that Congress misses the July 4 deadline that Trump set. The Morning’s readers were interested in the bill yesterday (it was our most-clicked link). Here’s more from Times reporters who were in the Capitol: In all, senators voted 49 times during a 27-hour marathon session. They wore fluffy blankets and pullover sweatshirts inside the chilly chamber. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, cast a deciding vote for the bill after winning carveouts for her state. “Do I like this bill? No,” she told NBC News afterward. “But I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests.” Trump and Elon Musk returned to jousting on social media about the legislation. The bill’s policies could inflict major financial pain on poor Americans. Republicans have insisted that the policy package will help seniors and the middle class. Here’s a fact check. Covering the court The end of June is some combination of Christmas and Tax Day for Adam Liptak, who has covered the Supreme Court for The Times since 2008. That’s when the justices release a dizzying array of rulings: This term’s major cases, some of which were decided earlier in the year, touched on guns, porn, police tactics, religion, citizenship, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, vapes and TikTok. Adam, a former lawyer who also writes the Sidebar column, is soon moving from daily coverage of the court to a broader legal affairs beat. Jodi Rudoren, who oversees newsletters at The Times, asked him to help us make sense of the recent rush of news. Jodi: This was your 17th term covering the court. On a scale of 1 to 10 — with 1 being “This is ho-hum, maybe I should try a different beat” and 10 being “This is the most interesting and important story line on Earth” — how did it rank? Adam: The last few terms were bigger and more varied, but this one sure had a story line: The court cleared the way for much of Trump’s aggressive agenda. So if the term that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 was a 10, this one was an 8. The story started on Trump’s first day in office. Three days earlier, the court unanimously upheld a law that required TikTok to go dark in the U.S. if the app remained under Chinese control. In a move that set the tone for the administration’s relationship with the judiciary, Trump issued the first of a series of executive orders ignoring the TikTok ban and the court’s ruling. That kind of thing continued through the spring as the administration peppered the justices with emergency applications asking them to undo rulings from lower courts on immigration, government spending, the independence of executive agencies and trans rights. The court gave Trump almost all of what he wanted. Then on Friday, the last day of the term, the court delivered its coup de grâce in Trump v. CASA, the birthright citizenship case. The justices basically eliminated universal injunctions, the key tool federal judges had been using to keep the administration in check. Another major case this term, United States v. Skrmetti, upheld a ban on medical intervention for trans youths. About half the states have such bans, similar to the post-Dobbs split over abortion access. Are we destined to be a divided country? Dobbs and Skrmetti didn’t simply return the issues to the states; the rulings said those questions should be decided by the people’s “elected representatives.” That includes Congress, so I wouldn’t rule out national legislative action. I can conceive of a patchwork approach in those two areas. On the other hand, if birthright citizenship or same-sex marriage were eliminated in parts of the country, that would give rise to really hard questions about how it would work and what sort of nation we are. I’m a big fan of dissents. I just love that this is an institution where the losers also get to make their case at length. What story do this term’s dissents tell? Dissents have different functions and are written for different readers. Some are simply expressions of frustration. Others mean to raise the dissenters’ reputations in their social and professional circles. Others are written to spur lawmakers to enact legislation overturning the majority. Still others are written for future justices, urging them to reconsider. The standard closing phrase is, “I respectfully dissent.” But this term featured some slashing dissents whose writers even refashioned the salutation. “In sadness, I dissent,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the case on trans care. In the case making it harder for judges to block the Trump agenda, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signed off, ”With deep disillusionment.” Sources: Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; Michael J. Nelson, Penn State from the Supreme Court Database | Chart shows 9-person decisions that were orally argued and signed. | By The New York Times As the chart above shows, this term had half the number of 6-to-3 votes as last term, but more 5-to-4 and 7-to-2 votes. What to make of these numbers? I’d start by noting the largest number: Twenty-two of the decisions in argued cases, or about 40 percent, were unanimous. And some of those decisions were important ones, on religion, guns and job discrimination. The justices like to tout that level of consensus, and they have a point. Cases that reach the Supreme Court present hard questions; finding common ground is not easy. Some of the shift in vote splits can be explained by Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal who has been voting somewhat more frequently with members of the conservative majority. Why is a bit of a puzzle. What about the fact that Brett Kavanaugh is the justice most often (89 percent) in the majority? Kavanaugh has been in the majority at a higher rate than any justice since 1953. But he’s not an authentic swing vote like his predecessor, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy sat at the court’s ideological center. When he voted with the court’s four-member conservative bloc, the law moved to the right. When he joined the four liberals, it moved to the left. The dynamic is different now that the court is dominated by six Republican appointees. What can we look forward to in the next term? The court has already announced two marquee cases, one on campaign finance and one concerning “conversion therapy” for sexual orientation or gender identity. Both involve the First Amendment — which Justice Kagan, in a 2018 dissent, accused the court’s conservative majority of “weaponizing.” Listen to Adam talk about the birthright citizenship case on “The Daily.” THE LATEST NEWS CBS News Paramount said it had agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris on the CBS News program “60 Minutes.” It was an extraordinary concession to a sitting president by a major media organization. The company needs federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale. Russia The U.S. has imposed no new sanctions against Russia related to its war in Ukraine since Trump took office. This has allowed Russia to get money and military equipment. Denmark began drafting women. It is expanding its armed forces to face threats from Russia and to meet American expectations of NATO members. Sean Combs Trial In the sex trafficking trial against Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul known as Diddy, jurors said they had reached a verdict on four of the five counts. The judge told them to keep deliberating on the other, a charge of racketeering conspiracy. Their verdicts on the first four charges are yet to be announced. Trump’s Wealth At a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Behind the golf courses and the gilded hotels, Trump found himself financially shaky before his political comeback. Russ Buettner, an investigative reporter, reviewed 2,000 court documents to assess his wealth. Crypto has fueled Trump’s financial rebound. Read what we know — and what’s impossible to know — about his wealth today. New York Mayor’s Race Zohran Mamdani Shuran Huang for The New York Times Zohran Mamdani is now the official winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. When the city finished tabulating ranked-choice ballots, he had a decisive 12-point lead over Andrew Cuomo. The general election is in November. Cuomo hasn’t decided whether he’ll run as an independent. Do you have questions about the race or our coverage of New York politics? Ask them here; we may feature them in a newsletter. Other Big Stories Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, resisted pressure from Trump and said he would wait to cut interest rates. The Dalai Lama gathered senior Tibetan Buddhist monks to discuss Chinese influence on the religion after he dies. Trump said that Israel had agreed to “conditions to finalize” a 60-day cease-fire with Hamas. He didn’t give specifics. The Trump administration is withholding nearly $7 billion in federal funding for schools. The money would go to after-school and summer programs. 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.) Two nuns recently went viral after they did what kind of performance on a Brazilian TV show? Beatboxing and dancing Playing electric guitars Operating marionette puppets Lifting massive weights OPINIONS The Republican bill would be disastrous for health care: Over 17 million Americans could lose their insurance or Medicaid, Larry Levitt writes. Here’s a column by Bret Stephens on the meaning of “intifada.” Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more. MORNING READS From top left: Chris Mottalini, Henry Bourne, Joyce Kim, Jason Schmidt Swim vicariously: Fantasize about taking a dip in the most beautiful pools ever to appear in T Magazine. Look of the week: Our photographer captured someone in a shorts suit and tabi shoes. See the outfit here. Math, revealed: How an ancient puzzle with triangles helped scientists see inside the brain. Trending: These are the most stylish people of 2025 (so far). Why retinol works: Yes, it does thin out a layer of dead skin cells — but that’s not a bad thing. It actually thickens skin overall. Lives Lived: In his prime, the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart strode the stage like a bear, his voice thundering with emotion as he spoke of his love for God and his disdain for the Devil. (“Satan, you’re in for a whupping!” was a typical warm-up.) He later tumbled from grace in a sex scandal. Swaggart died at 90. SPORTS Coco Gauff Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Wimbledon: Coco Gauff lost in the first round. Read more about the upset. W.N.B.A. expansion: The league says it will add three new teams — in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — in the coming years. That would bring the total to 18. ARTS AND IDEAS Kimberly Elliott What makes someone cool? People like David Bowie, Samuel L. Jackson and Charli XCX may seem to have little in common, but a study came up with six shared traits: Cool people are perceived to be extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous. Read more here. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … David Malosh for The New York Times Leave your potatoes to steam for a perfect honey mustard potato salad. Find a great read in this list of new releases from the Book Review. Block out distractions with Wirecutter’s new favorite noise-canceling headphones. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was bogeymen. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch 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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