The New York Times

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October 11, 2025

Good morning. We love it when people cancel plans, but the cost may be steeper than we realize.

María Jesús Contreras

Following through

	By Melissa Kirsch

I can’t remember when it started, but over the past several years, it’s become a common comedic refrain among busy people of my acquaintance to declare how much they love it when someone cancels plans. What a gift, a last-minute reprieve! One moment you thought you were going to a movie and dinner after work, the next you have a totally unscheduled evening with which to do whatever you’d like. Get in your jammies early and watch TV? Order in? The night’s your playground! The plans you made eagerly, once canceled, reveal themselves to have been a distasteful obligation on par with returning a router to the cable company.

An old John Mulaney clip puts it plainly: “Percentagewise, it is 100 percent easier not to do things than to do them. And so much fun not to do them!” he says. “Especially when you were supposed to do them.”

I used to cancel passively, letting the day grow late without confirming an evening’s plans so that their certainty grew hazy. Then I or my friend would send that text saying, “Hey, are we on for tonight? No worries if you’re not up for it,” handing the other the privilege of canceling without guilt. The result was the same: an unexpectedly unscheduled night, an obligation removed.

Technology makes backing out frictionless. And that, I think, is what’s made me reconsider my position. The ease with which we can back out via text renders every plan a phantom. It makes it possible, whether we mean it or not, to treat our relationships with a lack of commitment. And, crucially, easy asynchronous communication allows us to be careless with other people’s time. My friend Indrani pointed out how she bristles when someone cancels plans by saying, “I’m freeing up your evening!” as if assuming she had other options when she was truly looking forward to seeing them.

Maybe it’s the coming winter and its promise of more nights at home, or the research I did about loneliness for a recent story, but I’ve been cherishing and looking forward to the plans I’ve made. I’ve enjoyed looking at the month’s calendar and seeing a night at the theater with an old friend, a drink date I scheduled months ago for “when things get a little less crazy,” even though things aren’t any less crazy. And I’ve gotten a little pickier about what I say yes to, trying to forecast my energy levels when I’m agreeing to attend an 8:30 p.m. breathwork workshop on that Wednesday in November, asking myself if I really want to do the thing before I consent.

Brad Stulberg wrote a lovely guest essay for Times Opinion a couple of years ago about the importance of showing up, even if it’s a drag. The ultimate goal in keeping plans, he says, is creating community — a necessary component, we’re reminded over and over, to happiness and longevity. This may involve giving up some control of our time in the short term in the interest of giving our lives meaning in the long run.

We chafe at relationships that feel like obligations, but Stulberg sees obligations as “a mutual contract of responsibility” in the service of our larger goals for our lives. “If we commit to certain people and activities, if we feel an obligation to show up for them, then it’s likely that we will, indeed, show up,” he writes. “And showing up repeatedly is what creates community.”

When I asked friends about their feelings about canceling plans, they all said something about wanting to be people who show up, that this was important to their self-conception. We want community, to cultivate our relationships, but we also want to cultivate a character that we and others like and trust. Making plans and then actually showing up, even if we’re spent or cranky, is a simple way of acting with integrity. There’s so much that’s unsteady in the world, so much that feels inconstant. Being a dependable presence, keeping our word and our plans, is a small but indisputable way of resisting that.

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics

President Trump on Friday. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

The White House began laying off federal workers, following through on President Trump’s threats before the shutdown. The layoffs appeared to target more than 4,000 employees across seven major departments. M.I.T. rejected the Trump administration’s offer to extend funding advantages if it agreed to certain changes. It’s the first school to say no. The Trump administration canceled an enormous solar power project in the Nevada desert that would have been one of the world’s largest. The E.P.A. asked scientists to look into methods to detect traces of abortion pills in wastewater — a practice sought by anti-abortion activists. Marc Benioff, the C.E.O. of Salesforce, said that Trump should send National Guard troops to San Francisco. Trump announced a deal with the British drugmaker AstraZeneca to lower Medicaid prescription prices, similar to the deal he struck with Pfizer last week.

Trump’s Foreign Policy

Trump threatened 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods after China announced restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals. The stock market had its worst day in months. Melania Trump said she was working with Vladimir Putin to return Ukrainian children who were separated from their families during the war.

International

Palestinians traveling on Friday. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Crowds of Gazans began a long march home after Israel announced that a cease-fire had begun. Many walked north toward Gaza City, carrying bags and children. “People are so happy, even if what they’re going back to is destruction,” one said. President Emmanuel Macron of France reappointed Sébastien Lecornu as the country’s prime minister, less than a week after Lecornu had resigned amid political turmoil.

Other Big Stories

WTVF-TV, via Associated Press

A powerful explosion ripped through an ammunition plant in Tennessee, rattling residents for miles and leaving half a square mile of fiery debris. At least 19 people are missing. The Las Vegas Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury in the W.N.B.A. finals to win their third title in four seasons. A snowstorm buried tents and stranded people on Mount Everest last weekend. Some experts think it may have been the mountain’s most intense storm on record.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film and TV

Joshua Woods

Glenn Close graced the stage and screen for half a century. Now, the actress wants one more shot at the role that helped make her a star. The former “West Wing” co-stars Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford are returning to the Oval Office in “The Diplomat.” It’s familiar territory: “We have been arguing in fake government buildings for over 20 years,” Janney said. For the first time in the “Tron” movie franchise, the signature light cycles make their way into the real world. Watch how directors brought the scene to life. It’s tough to make a film about a guy everyone loved. The new documentary about John Candy, the late actor and comedian, is good evidence of that.

Music

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, attacked the country music star Zach Bryan for a new song that says ICE “is going to come bust down your door.” Bryan said the lyrics were “misconstrued.” A federal judge dismissed Drake’s defamation lawsuit against his own record label for releasing a diss track by Kendrick Lamar that accused him of pedophilia. A Times reporter sat down for a four-hour breakfast with Tyler, the Creator to understand how he thinks.

More Culture

Dozens of Christopher Columbus statues were toppled by protesters or removed by officials in 2020. Now, some are being restored in churches, museums and Italian American social clubs. What would Elphaba grow? A new “Wicked”-themed plot at the New York Botanical Garden has some ideas.

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CULTURE CALENDAR

	By Desiree Ibekwe

? “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (Out now): In this dark comedy, Rose Byrne plays Linda, a therapist, a mother of a chronically ill child, a wife to an absentee husband, the occupant of a disintegrating home and a woman on the verge. It’s stressful viewing, which has earned the movie — directed and written by Mary Bronstein — comparisons to the work of the Safdie brothers (“Uncut Gems”). “Wrenching and at times suffocating, ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ is a howl of maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor,” our reviewer writes. Oh, Conan O’Brien’s in this movie. And A$AP Rocky, too.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

By Melissa Clark

Eggplant lasagna

Use the last of the season’s eggplants to make Lidey Hueck’s supremely comforting eggplant lasagna, in which she swaps the usual noodles for slabs of eggplant that have been roasted until soft. Then they get layered with soft ricotta, stretchy mozzarella and sweet tomato sauce for a gluten-free take on everyone’s favorite pasta bake.

REAL ESTATE

Mike and Maria Francis in Berkeley, Calif. Carolyn Fong for The New York Times

The Hunt: After a medical crisis, a couple decided to make one last move in Berkeley, Calif., with a $1.6 million budget. Which home did they choose? Play our game.

What you get for $650,000 in the English countryside: a thatch-roof cottage built in the 17th century; a three-bedroom house in a quiet village; or a two-bedroom stone cottage with a picket fence.

LIVING

Joshua Schauert likes to turn his lawn into an interactive maze for Halloween. Joshua Schauert

Seriously spooky: For some Halloween superfans, preparations begin in April. These are their tips.

Bending borders: A family’s home has stood for a century — in four different countries.

Salty solution: Got cramps? Football players on the San Francisco 49ers are reaching for pickle juice and bananas.

Grip strength: You can do this effective exercise routine without even standing up.

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

The beauty of French pharmacy products

Most French pharmacies are bastions of comfort and care, where anyone can walk in with clogged pores, chapped lips or cracked heels and leave with the exact thing they need. Part of the appeal is the pharmacists, who are more like primary-care providers, but it’s also the breadth of doctor-developed products these pharmacies have on hand. Happily, many of the best products from French pharmacies are sold in the U.S. Wirecutter’s beauty experts found the 13 best French pharmacy products you can get stateside, including multipurpose salves, soothing hydrators, refreshing sunscreens and comforting cleansers. — Jennifer G. Sullivan

GAME OF THE WEEK

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Chicago Cubs vs. Milwaukee Brewers, N.L.D.S. Game 5: The Brewers had the best record in baseball this year, and a two-games-to-none lead in this series. Now they’re on the verge of elimination. They were one of the league’s top-scoring teams thanks to unrelenting small-ball. But the bats went quiet in Game 4, and their once-great pitching staff has looked vulnerable. The Athletic’s Andy McCullough says this series could come down to Jacob Misiorowski, a rookie pitcher for Milwaukee who had a phenomenal start to the season but faltered later in the summer. He looked like his old self in Game 2 — three scoreless innings out of the bullpen, with a fastball that hit 104 m.p.h. Can he do it again?

Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on TBS, TruTV and HBO Max

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

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

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Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 12, 2025

Good morning. Today, we’re looking at a little-known chapter in the life of an American rock icon.

Bruce Springsteen in 1975. Tom Hill

Bruce’s darkness

	By Ben Sisario I write about music and the music industry.

The history of rock ’n’ roll is filled with mythic narratives that aren’t as fixed as they might seem. The documentary “Get Back” revealed that the Beatles’ waning days were as joyful as they were contentious. A recent biography argued that Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wasn’t the exploitative Svengali he’s often made out to be.

And a powerful new film, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” makes the case that Bruce Springsteen — perhaps rock’s ultimate macho hero — was at his creative best as he struggled through a crippling depression when making his 1982 album, “Nebraska.”

It’s a twist, or at least a complication, to the familiar story of Springsteen as New Jersey’s anointed son, who rose without deflection to Bossdom and never looked back. Details of his emotional crisis surrounding “Nebraska” have trickled out over the years, and after Springsteen addressed it briefly in his 2016 memoir, “Born to Run,” the musician and writer Warren Zanes interviewed him to get a more thorough narrative. Zanes’s book “Deliver Me From Nowhere” became the basis of the new film’s screenplay.

Still, even for the dedicated Bruceologists who have kept up, it is striking to see a major motion picture depict mental health struggles as a central piece of the Springsteen story.

A quiet masterpiece

“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” which comes out Oct. 24, opens with a scene that is about as canonically Bruuuuce as can be. As played by Jeremy Allen White of “The Bear,” a bucket-sweating Springsteen hoarsely belts out “Born to Run” before an adoring arena crowd. Once the tour ends, though, his life is isolated. He searches for inspiration for his next album, fending off pressure from his record company to deliver the next radio hit.

In a typical music biopic, our hero would triumph by delivering a smash bigger than anyone could have imagined. Instead, Springsteen created “Nebraska,” a haunted, low-fi solo album, working with a rudimentary cassette recorder in a rented house in Colts Neck, N.J., just a quick zip in the Camaro Z28 from where he grew up.

The songs he recorded, like “Atlantic City,” “Johnny 99” and “Highway Patrolman,” were stories of desperate, despairing characters, animated by acoustic guitar, harmonica and Springsteen’s raw voice, which held traces of Woody Guthrie and early Bob Dylan. He had intended the songs as demos, to be fleshed out later with his full band. But the material was intensely personal; in the film, as Springsteen writes, we see him having flashbacks about his brooding, heavy-drinking father.

So Springsteen decided to release “Nebraska” exactly as he had captured it on his cassette, recording flaws and all. He left the album intentionally mysterious, refusing to promote it through any singles, tours or even interviews — a courageous but risky left turn by an artist who was then still on an upward trajectory in his career.

“‘Nebraska’ is the most punk thing Bruce ever did,” Scott Cooper, the film’s director and screenwriter, told me in a recent interview. “Not in sound, but in spirit.”

Generating buzz

From its earliest appearances in film festivals, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” has arrived preloaded with hype. Surely that has to do with its subject: Until now, Springsteen, 76, has never allowed his story to be dramatized in a feature film. Also fueling the buzz are strong performances by White and Jeremy Strong (“Succession”), who plays Jon Landau, Springsteen’s longtime manager.

But it also provides Hollywood with plenty of material to engage one of its great obsessions: wrestling with the art of filmmaking itself. Is “Deliver Me From Nowhere” a biopic or isn’t it? The studio behind the film, 20th Century Studios, which is part of the Walt Disney Company, has framed it as not fitting that format, because the film portrays a short episode within a life, rather than a cradle-to-stardom biography. That’s true. But it is also unmistakable as an exercise in the rock biopic subgenre, from its scenes of stirring performances to its closing title cards summarizing Springsteen’s later success.

These kinds of debates have a habit of elevating films come awards season.

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics

In Washington this month. Alex Kent for The New York Times

Over the first week of the government shutdown, the White House has started to lay off federal workers and said it might deny some back pay. Democratic leaders say it has strengthened their resolve to keep the shutdown going. The shutdown’s effects are starting to become more pronounced, with services for veterans, Native Americans and farmers starting to strain. President Trump said the government would be able to pay members of the military during the shutdown, even though Congress has not approved additional money for the troops. Joe Biden is undergoing radiation therapy for prostate cancer, his spokeswoman said.

War in Gaza

At Hostages Square in Tel Aviv yesterday. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Israelis and Palestinians are waiting for the exchange of all the living hostages in Gaza for about 2,000 prisoners in Israel, which is expected to begin tomorrow morning. There is relief — and mourning. Thousands of Palestinians have started walking to northern Gaza to try to find out what happened to their loved ones and their homes. Their joy at the pause in fighting has been tempered by the destruction they face.

Tennessee Explosion

Officials said that 16 people had been killed in the blast at an ammunition plant on Friday. The plant has long been an economic bedrock in a rural area. People know the jobs are risky, a former employee said: “You’re working with explosives every day, and any little thing can set it off.” “You can’t even fathom this at all,” Gary Moore, whose 37-year-old son was killed, said, adding, “Your children are supposed to bury you.”

Diane Keaton

Getty Images

The vibrant, sometimes unconventional actress Diane Keaton died at 79. She won an Oscar for “Annie Hall” and shone in comedies like “The First Wives Club” and dramas like “The Godfather.” She wielded her style in her roles, building characters out of clothing. “Keaton’s, well, Keaton-ness was also one of her great skills,” Esther Zuckerman writes in an appraisal. See pictures of her life and stream her great performances.

Other Big Stories

At least nine people have been killed in shootings across Mississippi since Friday. Iran is trying to become a destination for affordable gender transition operations. Its doctors have decades of experience because the government has long forced transgender Iranians to undergo the surgeries. The trade war between the United States and China has kicked back into high gear: Trump said he would impose 100 percent tariffs next month; China accused the U.S. of double standards.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Does Trump deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for the Gaza cease-fire deal?

Yes. Trump’s involvement got Israel and Hamas to enter the first stage of a cease-fire and made the world safer. “If Trump’s accomplishments with foreign policy in 2025 alone have not surpassed those of these recipients, they are at least on par with them,” Nicole Russell writes in USA Today.

No. Trump’s violent orders elsewhere and his effort to bully his way into the prize are enough to disqualify him. “The Nobel Peace laureate is decided by five otherwise-ordinary Norwegian citizens, and Trump has reportedly already tried to strong-arm Norway’s finance minister to put pressure on them,” Jonah Blank writes for The Indian Express.

FROM OPINION

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign succeeded because of its meme-able slogans and anti-establishment ideas — just like Trump’s, Michael Hirschorn writes.

Immigration enforcement fails when it starts creating the chaos the system was designed to target, Jason Houser, a former leader of ICE, writes.

Here are columns by Ross Douthat on Trump’s domestic policy and Maureen Dowd on the Nobel Peace Prize and Trump.

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MORNING READS

Leighton Hardy as Escanor, a Manga god. Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Cosplay superstars: See some of the best looks from New York Comic Con, the annual gathering of comics, anime and expressions of nerd culture.

Where is God in Gaza? In Believing, we explore how people have grappled with faith during two years of brutal war.

Smoky and sweet: Forget about Texas and the Carolinas. For many Americans, Kansas City barbecue is barbecue.

Vows: Love bloomed onstage at “a mini-Pride just for women.”

SPORTS

Baseball: The Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners are sparring for a spot in the World Series. They face each other tonight in Toronto.

Soccer: English fans are chanting far-right slogans and pledging support for Reform UK, an anti-immigrant party.

Golf: Tiger Woods, 49, had another back operation. He has not played competitively since March.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

	By Elisabeth Egan

“Heart the Lover,” by Lily King: Once again, King — author of best sellers like “Writers & Lovers” and “Euphoria” — proves herself the master of relationships with long shadows. In this unassuming yet profound novel, she traces the sunbeams (and the darkness) cast by a trio of friendships that begin in college and stretch into middle age. At the center of the story is Jordan, who befriends two guys in her 17th-century literature class and falls in love with one of them and then, later, with the other. The romance is fun, sexy and will-they-or-won’t-they, but the real appeal of this story named for a card game is the way King keeps reshuffling the deck and inviting us to take a long, hard look at the face on top. (Read our review.)

More on Books

Laszlo Krasznahorkai, a Hungarian novelist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Find out more about him here. In “Paper Girl,” Beth Macy revisits her hometown in Ohio, documenting its descent into poverty and acrimony. Read our review here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Photo illustration by Alice Isaac. Source photographs: Donna Alberico, Katherine Marks and Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times; Adobe Stock; Getty Images; Reuters.

Read this week’s magazine.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Watch Rose Byrne in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a wrenching portrait of a mother on the edge.

Block out the world with noise-canceling headphones.

Reduce your scars with silicone sheets.

MEAL PLAN

Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susie Theodorou.

Emily Weinstein is making olive oil and chile eggs for dinner this week. They add protein and verve to toast, yogurt or just about anything else: The edges crisp and the yolks run, but the savory, spicy oil is the star of the dish. To round out the week, sizzle spiced ginger shrimp with burst tomatoes and whip up a comforting tofu and broccoli.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

Can you put eight historical events and figures — from Alexander the Great to Mister Rogers — 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.

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Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 13, 2025

Good morning. Hamas has released all the living hostages. We explain what is happening in Israel and Gaza.

In Hostages Square, in Tel Aviv. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

A hostage and prisoner exchange

	By Jodi Rudoren I am the former Jerusalem bureau chief.

They’re free. Two years — 737 days, to be exact — after the Hamas terror attack that set off the war in Gaza, the last 20 living Israeli hostages left Gaza this morning. In exchange, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are being let go; the first buses filled with them just started arriving in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The releases are part of the first phase of a cease-fire deal that took hold Friday. A triumphant President Trump, the force behind the deal, flew in Air Force One over jubilant crowds in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and timed the plane’s touchdown to coincide exactly with the first hostages’ arrival in Israel. He is about to address Israel’s Parliament and then will head to a summit of world leaders in Egypt, where the agreement was negotiated.

“Israel has won all that can be won by force of arms,” Trump planned to say, according to prepared remarks released by the White House. “Now, it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”

A convoy of Red Cross vehicles ferried the hostages through tent encampments in Gaza and streets in southern Israel lined with people waving flags in solidarity. They were checked by doctors and given kits including laptops, mobile phones and a note from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that said, “We have been waiting for you.”

The father of one hostage, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, said he planned to tell his son, “The nightmare is over” and “We’re never leaving you again.” Friends of Alon Ohel, a 24-year-old pianist, sang and danced on a Tel Aviv rooftop after waiting up all night to welcome him.

Celebrations were far more muted in Gaza, where about 200,000 Palestinians returned this weekend to areas the Israeli military retreated from as part of the deal. They found flattened neighborhoods where there was still nowhere near enough to eat. “There’s nothing to be happy about,” Saed Abu Aita, 44, said. “My two daughters were killed, my home was destroyed and my health has deteriorated.”

The bigger picture

The release came on a significant day for many Jews, during the harvest festival known as “the time of our rejoicing.” Sunset on Monday is the start of Simchat Torah, the holiday during which the Hamas attack occurred two years ago.

Despite the elation and relief at the homecoming, gaping questions about the future remain. The primary one being: Is the war actually over? Benjamin Netanyahu has not said those words publicly. But when Trump was asked this by a reporter as he walked through a hallway of Israel’s Parliament this morning, he replied: “Yes, as far as I’m concerned, yes.”

Other key questions include: Will Hamas actually disarm, as Trump’s deal demands? Who will pay to rebuild Gaza, and who will govern it? Will Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, be re-elected? What will become of the genocide charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court?

As my colleagues David Sanger and Adam Rasgon wrote yesterday, it was “a brutal war that left Gaza destroyed, and Israel at once stronger and more diplomatically isolated than ever.” A recent New York Times poll showed that, even in the United States, a majority now sympathizes more with the Palestinians than with Israel.

And in Israel, Trump is the hero of the day. At the main entrance to Jerusalem, Israelis erected an eight-foot billboard depicting the president with a Nobel Prize-like medal and the caption “You are our winner.”

What to know

Who was freed? The 20 living hostages are all men, ages 21 to 48. Among those released today were 28-year-old twins who were abducted from a kibbutz, and the father of twin girls who were also abducted on Oct. 7 but returned in an earlier exchange. The remains of 26 others killed in captivity are expected to be returned soon. Read more about the hostages.

Two missing hostages: The list Hamas released today did not include the names of two hostages whose fate had been unclear, including a student from Nepal.

The Palestinian prisoners: Israel has promised to released 250 prisoners, most of whom are serving life sentences for killing Israelis and are expected to be deported. One such prisoner’s father, Fuad Kamamji, told The Times he was feeling “a strong sense of relief and peace.” The deal also calls for the release of 1,700 people detained as part of the war in Gaza.

A Palestinian family gathered in the hope that their son would be among released prisoners and detainees. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

The toll of the war: Gaza health officials estimate 67,000 Palestinians were killed in the past two years, a figure Israelis have not disputed. Virtually all of Gaza’s two million residents have been displaced, many multiple times, and are living in tents. Many have faced starvation. In Israel, 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted in the initial attack on Oct. 7, 2023. About 1,000 Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting since.

What’s next? Some 20 world leaders are expected at today’s summit, including the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu said he could not go because of the Jewish holiday. Hamas is not joining the talks.

Humanitarian help: Cooking oil, frozen meat and fresh fruit have begun entering Gaza, where 17 bakeries were back up and running this morning. “Today is better than yesterday,” the head of the bakers’ union said, “and tomorrow will hopefully be better.”

Follow our live updates here.

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics

It’s the 13th day of a government shutdown, and there is extra attention on the air traffic controllers who are working without pay. A Christian group that helped topple Roe v. Wade is now focused on tightening alliances between MAGA and the rising British right, which it hopes to use as a launchpad to empower conservative Christianity across Europe. Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago has escalated rapidly. Watch these videos that show how officers are detaining people — including American citizens.

War in Ukraine

Destroyed ammunition depots in Russia. Maxar Technologies

The war is at a bloody stalemate. So Ukraine is striking western Russia, home to much of the country’s oil industry, to bring Moscow to the negotiating table. The strikes are having an impact: There are gasoline shortages in Russia, and fuel prices are up. Our colleague Maria Varenikova traveled to a secret Ukrainian launch site, from which the country is attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure.

More International News

A deadly border clash between Afghanistan and Pakistan is threatening to spill over into a broader conflict. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is facing a particularly strong rival.

Trade

China has new export restrictions — on goods like cars, computer chips and fighter jets. The limits have set off a renewed trade fight between Beijing and Western countries. After Trump threatened to impose more tariffs on China, Asian markets fell.

Wildfires

Firefighters looking for hot spots after the Palisades fire in California in January. Max Whittaker for The New York Times

In California and elsewhere, “zombie fires” — blazes that firefighters thought had died but then came roaring back — have become more common. Starting next year, Californians who survive wildfires will no longer have to tally every item in their homes to get the bulk of their insurance payouts.

Other Big Stories

At least four people were killed in a bar shooting on St. Helena, an island off South Carolina. Emergency crews rescued dozens of Alaskans from floods.

OPINIONS

Wealthy countries have slashed billions in foreign aid. But developing countries have started taking greater responsibility for their own welfare by leveraging private investment, Rajiv Shah writes.

Universities are supposed to champion free speech. Citing security concerns as an excuse to cancel campus events contradicts that foundational principle, Danielle Sassoon writes.

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MORNING READS

Renato Casaro in 2021. Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

‘Michelangelo of movie posters’: Renato Casaro, an Italian artist, was beloved by directors for his ability to, as he put it, “capture the essential: that moment, that glance, that attitude, that movement that says everything and condenses the entire story.” He died at 89.

The churners: They own dozens of credit cards. Should you?

Turbocharged: If an energy drink drank an energy drink, you’d get a Celsius.

Visiting Europe? Expect to give more personal data.

Metropolitan Diary: Your fancy degree is no good here.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: Americans were searching online for the latest results. The Green Bay Packers beat the Cincinnati Bengals 27-18. The Los Angeles Chargers beat the Miami Dolphins 29-27 in the final minute — and the Chiefs-Lions game ended with a brawl.

N.B.A.: A Las Vegas casino mogul helped bring the league back to China. Read how.

Baseball: The Seattle Mariners beat the Toronto Blue Jays in the first game of their competition to play in the World Series, thanks in part to a game-tying homer from Cal Raleigh.

College football: Penn State fired James Franklin, the head coach, a day after losing its third game in a row.

GALES OF NOVEMBER

A Great Lakes freighter that survived that fateful storm in 1975.  Erinn Springer for The New York Times

New England has “Moby-Dick.” The Mississippi River has Mark Twain. The Great Lakes have … “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”?

It’s a folk-rock shanty from Gordon Lightfoot about a boat that sank in 1975 — and it became an unlikely hit. It’s had a long afterlife not just on the airwaves, but also through bumper stickers, beer labels, Lego kits and memes. “It’s a kind of Midwest Titanic,” Jennifer Schuessler writes about its legacy.

Now, the region is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the wreck. Read more here.

More on culture

Diane Keaton in “The Godfather.” Paramount Pictures

Diane Keaton could communicate a world of feeling with a single look. Watch her realize her husband’s true nature in “The Godfather” and the subtlety of her sacrifice and power in “Reds.” (One of the most-clicked stories yesterday showed her life in pictures.) The de Young Museum in San Francisco is hosting the first manga exhibit in North America. The genre’s reach has stretched past Japan and gained international recognition as an art form. On “Cannonball,” Wesley Morris and Bill Simmons of The Ringer talk Robert Redford’s legacy — and wonder if there are any true movie stars left.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff.

Smoke salmon without a smoker. (This recipe uses a dry brine that mimics the fiery scents.)

Use the internet with a free VPN.

Cozy up with a new throw blanket.

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were balletic, celibate and citable.

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 14, 2025

Good morning. We speak with our colleagues about Zohran Mamdani’s surge toward the New York City mayor’s office. We also have more news on the hostage-prisoner swap between Israelis and Palestinians, turmoil in Madagascar and the final episode of Marc Maron’s “WTF.”

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Meet Mamdani

Who is Zohran Mamdani, likely the next mayor of New York?

Is he the future of the Democratic Party or a liability in an age when voters have veered right? Is he a pragmatist whose charisma will win over business leaders — or a doctrinaire socialist who will never recruit enough support for his agenda?

Times journalists have spent much of this year reporting on those questions and more about Mamdani, a figure of fascination on the left and the right.

A canny pol

Mamdani has recalibrated his brand since his primary victory, tweaking the us-versus-them language of his democratic-socialist values to be a tad less punitive, writes Astead Herndon, author of a perceptive profile of Mamdani published in the Times Magazine today. Astead goes on:

Mamdani understands that his goals — no-cost universal child care, free buses for all, a four-year rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments — will require a broad political coalition to achieve. So he set about crafting it.

For months now, Mamdani has been meeting privately with former leaders in city government, business executives, heads of New York arts and cultural institutions and skeptical local Democrats. In these chats, he says he wants to support renters, not punish landlords. He wants to support public education, not take a hammer to specialized schools with elite admissions. He says he supports Palestinian rights; he’s not anti-Zionist. He made key concessions when it comes to policing. Importantly, he made clear that he was open to compromise when it came to his proposed millionaire tax. He is now open to keeping on a police chief whom progressives dislike.

The effort began after Mamdani won the Democratic primary. His campaign compiled a list of the city’s top 25 business leaders and called each of them one by one, underscoring his desire to build coalitions and establish an open line of communication. His gifts at retail politics are evident on the stump, too. He loves a rope line as much as Joe Biden. Loves a selfie like Elizabeth Warren. And he stays until the end of a Black church service.

Mamdani’s policy goals are ambitious, and he may not achieve them. But one surprising thing I learned in my reporting is that a hard-line backbencher from the State Assembly has already remade himself as a builder of consensus. As the Manhattan borough president told me: “I want to emphasize how unprecedented this is — the first nominee in memory that has made a concerted effort to reach out to people who were against him in the primary.”

A sticking point

As Mamdani’s campaign upends New York politics, no single stance has polarized New Yorkers as passionately as his pro-Palestinian activism and caustic criticism of Israel, writes Nicholas Fandos, who covers local politics:

Mamdani has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and said the country should not exist as an officially Jewish state. (He has also denounced Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.) Those positions have cost him the support of some pro-Israel New Yorkers. Not long ago, they would have been unthinkable for a major New York mayoral candidate not long ago. How did he arrive at them?

In many ways, Mamdani’s views track with those of other young Americans on the left. But in my reporting, I found roots tracing back much further — to Mamdani’s own family history with colonialism and his parents’ intellectual careers in India, Africa and New York. At Bowdoin College, he founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and his experience helped push him onto the leftward path that could end at City Hall. Read my story about the evolution of his anti-Zionism here.

The question now, as Hamas and Israel wind down their conflict, is whether the temperature will also come down in the city Mamdani is trying to lead — and whom that might help just weeks before Election Day. His leading rival, Andrew Cuomo, is counting on Jewish New Yorkers angry at Mamdani to turn out in huge numbers. On the other hand, backlash against Israel has helped motivate Mamdani’s progressive base. Will this fight matter less as the war in Gaza ends?

A model Democrat?

At 33, Mamdani is calling for a new generation of leadership. Voices across the right and the left are already heralding Mamdani as a model for the future of the Democratic Party. Emma G. Fitzsimmons, the Times’s City Hall bureau chief, asks: Is he?

Yes and no.

Affordability, his animating issue, is something that moves most Americans. And Mamdani is truly native to social media. (Watch him interview Trump supporters about the high cost of living or enlist an actor from “The Gilded Age” for a dramatic reading.) That’s something other candidates could copy. It’s also possible that his populist quest for universal child care could take hold elsewhere.

But Mamdani’s far-left views might not do as well in a swing state like Pennsylvania. He once called for defunding the police. He wants to freeze rent and bar immigration agents from New York City. President Trump calls him a communist, and even some New York Democrats are wary of his agenda and have not endorsed him.

In many ways, Mamdani is unique. He has charisma that charms people who disagree with him. His biography as a Muslim immigrant appeals to New Yorkers in a city that is known for welcoming immigrants. But it might be less helpful elsewhere. He may someday seek higher office, but — because he is a naturalized citizen who was born in Uganda — he’s ineligible for the presidency.

HOSTAGE AND PRISONER EXCHANGE

Evyatar David, one of the hostages freed from Gaza yesterday. Amit Elkayam for The New York Times

Yesterday, Hamas and Israel took a significant step toward a truce, exchanging 20 living hostages in Gaza for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Trump claimed: “It’s peace in the Middle East.”

The reality on the ground is a little more complicated. Our colleague Katrin Bennhold, host of our global newsletter The World, wanted to understand how close the hostage-prisoner exchange has brought the region to a lasting peace. (After all, we’ve seen something like this before.) So she called David Halbfinger, our Jerusalem bureau chief, to ask him.

What are the potential sticking points in the next phase of this truce?

Hamas has said it wants a full Israeli withdrawal. The Israelis are saying they’re not pulling out until they get everything that was in the Trump plan. So we have the ingredients for a standoff.

Israel and Trump both want Gaza to be run by someone other than Hamas. But Hamas hasn’t agreed to lay down its weapons. So who steps into that breach?

And yet some people describe this as the best hope for peace since the Oslo accords.

The fact that you have so many countries in the Arab and Muslim world backing the U.S. and its push not just for a cease-fire, but for a greater peace, is enormously promising. So there’s reason to see this as a promising moment. It’s just, again, easier to see this running into great difficulty than it is to see it accelerating from here.

Read more from their conversation.

For more

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

Palestinians, some of whom had received life sentences, were freed by the busload. “Just as Israelis worry about their hostages, we worry about our prisoners," a woman in Gaza said. Israel experienced a rare moment of unity after two years of polarizing war. Humanitarian agencies have increased aid to Gaza under the cease-fire, the U.N. said. Trump addressed Israel’s Parliament. He urged a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges. He said little about what it would take to rebuild Gaza.

THE LATEST NEWS

Business

OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, signed a deal to design its own A.I. chips. High-tech weapons companies are reviving manufacturing towns across America, drawn by cheap labor and state incentives. A group of financiers is trying to convince the public to put savings into private equity and crypto — a risky gambit with echoes of 1929, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes. Coal miners are protesting the Trump administration, saying it has failed to protect them from black lung disease.

International

In Madagascar.  Luis Tato/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Madagascar’s president went into hiding after weeks of bloody protests against his government. Catastrophic rains brought floods and landslides in Mexico, killing at least 64 people. Dozens more are missing. At least 42 people, including seven children, were killed when a bus plunged off a road in South Africa. France has a new cabinet — to go with its reappointed prime minister — but the political turmoil looks unlikely to be over.

Other Big Stories

The New York Times, NPR and other outlets rejected a new set of Pentagon reporting restrictions. The economics Nobel honored work on how technology drives growth. In the weeks since Charlie Kirk’s murder, millions of Americans have flooded one another’s feeds with accusations and attacks. Who are they in real life?

OPINIONS

Like many Muslims in America, Zohran Mamdani is being asked to prove that he’s one of the “good” ones to be accepted, Meher Ahmad writes.

Erin White used to make dinner for her family every night. Then she stopped. And everything is fine — maybe even better. “Now our time together is about everyone’s pleasure,” she writes, adding, “including mine.”

Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg on the politics of victimhood.

New: The Times family subscription is here.

One rate. Four individual logins. Savings for all. Now you and three others can enjoy unlimited access to The Times, while personalizing your own experience. Learn more.

MORNING READS

Marc Maron Chantal Anderson for The New York Times

The end of “WTF”: Marc Maron wrapped up his landmark podcast by interviewing Barack Obama. “It’s hard to find a way through, in terms of hope,” he said. “So, I went to the hope guy.”

“Job hugging”: The great resignation is over. Now, people are holding on for dear life.

Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday included videos of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago.

A leading ecofeminist: Susan Griffin linked violence against women to the ravaging of the environment in her writing. She died at 82.

SPORTS

Baseball: A jaw-dropping double play from the Brewers wasn’t enough to keep the Dodgers from winning Game 1 of the NLCS. The Mariners won a second straight game against the Blue Jays in the ALCS.

Men’s soccer: A rat on the field disrupted the World Cup qualifier between Wales and Belgium. Belgium won, 4-2.

N.F.L.: Americans were searching online for results. The Chicago Bears beat the Washington Commanders, 25-24, and the Atlanta Falcons beat the Buffalo Bills, 24-14.

IS ‘GOING VIRAL’ DEAD?

Javier Jaén

Remember “Chewbacca mom”? What about the “BBC dad”? Or how about that dress — was it blue and black, or white and gold? They may all be relics of an earlier internet, where just about anyone could go viral.

Now, algorithms hypertailor each user’s feed, which means no one sees the same version of the internet. And “if everyone is going viral,” Madison Malone Kircher writes in an essay on the death of virality, “that means no one is.”

More on culture

In San Francisco. Aaron Wojack for The New York Times

San Francisco wants to remove the Vaillancourt Fountain, a large, and now dry, concrete sculpture. Fans want to save it: “It’s weird and unusual,” one said. “It’s a symbol of San Francisco.” Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” broke a music industry record with opening-week sales. Apple TV+ is now just Apple TV. The late night hosts acknowledged Trump’s role in the hostage-prisoner exchange — and also discussed his domestic crackdown.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Grate frozen butter to make these flaky folded biscuits.

Read “Workhorse,” a thriller set in the heyday of print media.

Play board games with the kids in your life.

Illuminate an awkward corner with a cordless lamp.

GAMES

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

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 15, 2025

Good morning. The government shutdown is entering its third week.

We have more on that below, plus news about another deadly U.S. strike in the Caribbean and a coup in Madagascar.

Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Still shut down

	By Evan Gorelick I’m a writer for The Morning.

Flights are delayed. Tax hotlines are quiet. Farmers can’t get their loans. The government shutdown, two weeks old, is beginning to reach Americans.

Congress has moved no closer to a deal to bring the government back to life. And in the meantime, President Trump is using the impasse to shrink the government and to punish political foes. His administration has frozen or canceled around $28 billion for projects primarily in places governed by Democrats. (The president posted a parody video last week that depicts his budget director as Democrats’ “reaper.”)

Today’s newsletter is a guide to what’s happening.

An opening

From the start, Trump has hailed the shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to trim fat from the government. The administration has so far targeted two main buckets of federal funding, a Times analysis found.

Source: New York Times reporting and analysis. Lazaro Gamio/The New York Times

Transportation. Trump withheld billions of dollars that Congress had approved for transportation projects in New York and Illinois. The White House said it was checking to see whether the contracts contained diversity provisions. But Trump has muddled that story by talking openly about targeting Democrats amid feuds with party leaders in those states.

Energy. The administration said it would terminate at least $7.6 billion in grants for energy projects in 16 states, 14 led by Democrats. The Energy Department said the projects were “not economically viable” or did not advance Trump’s agenda.

At the same time, the administration says it will fire more than 4,000 government workers. The White House insists the cuts are necessary to keep essential government services up and running. But budget experts say that’s a pretense, and the maneuver may be illegal.

Trump promised that he would soon publish a list of agencies and programs he plans to cut permanently. “We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open again,” he said. The president has also threatened to deny furloughed workers back pay, which would violate a federal law he signed in 2019.

Carve-outs

Not everyone is feeling the pain.

The administration used money from customs duties to fund a federal nutrition aid program, and it worked to keep rural airports open. It also reversed layoffs for hundreds of C.D.C. scientists who it said were fired by mistake. My colleagues Tony Romm and Catie Edmondson explain:

Mr. Trump has behaved much differently with agencies and programs he supports, or those that present risk of political blowback. There, the administration has relied on creative accounting to keep some workers paid and programs functioning.

Now Trump says he has “identified funds” that would allow the government to pay military troops during the shutdown, even though Congress hasn’t allocated money for that purpose.

Usually, more than one million active-duty service members stop receiving paychecks while the government is closed. It’s politically unpopular to let the troops languish, so during previous shutdowns, their financial hardship brought lawmakers to the negotiating table.

But Trump is circumventing the problem, which means the shutdown may drag on longer this time.

More coverage

More than a dozen airports refused to display a video of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, blaming Democrats for the shutdown and any travel disruptions it causes. Trump’s layoffs at the Education Department affected employees working on special education, funding for low-income students and civil rights enforcement.

THE LATEST NEWS

Supreme Court

Alex Jones David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Alex Jones must pay $1.4 billion in damages to the families of the children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal. Recent Supreme Court decisions have weakened the Voting Rights Act. The justices will hear arguments today over one of the law’s remaining pillars, on race and voting districts.

U.S. Boat Strikes

The U.S. killed six people when it struck another boat in international waters near Venezuela, Trump said. The military has now killed 27 people on boats like this, treating them like enemy soldiers in a war zone rather than criminal suspects. As with the other strikes, Trump declared without evidence that the victims were moving drugs. Look at a map of how drugs arrive in the U.S. by sea. Most enter via the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean Sea.

More on Politics

In Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Some Chicago residents are openly fighting back against ICE. Others have formed volunteer groups to monitor their neighborhoods or are honking when they see agents. Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, to Charlie Kirk. Erika Kirk, his widow, accepted it on what would have been his 32nd birthday. The Democratic governor of Maine, Janet Mills, will run to challenge Susan Collins, a Republican, for her Senate seat next year.

Israel and Gaza

Israel may limit aid to punish Hamas for not immediately returning the remains of some hostages. A Hamas official said Gaza’s devastation made the bodies difficult to retrieve. A lasting peace could bring a new wave of business investments in the Middle East, the DealBook newsletter explains.

More International News

After the impeachment in Madagascar. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Madagascar’s military seized power after its Parliament voted to impeach the president, who went into hiding after weeks of bloody protests. France’s prime minister made a significant concession as he seeks to avoid having to resign for a second time: He offered to delay an unpopular pension overhaul until at least 2027. Thousands of Guatemalan police officers are searching for 20 escaped inmates, all accused of being members of the same major gang.

Other Big Stories

Hundreds of Texas schools have adopted a Bible-infused curriculum for English classes. The lessons feature extensive content about Christianity, a New York Times analysis found. A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to firebombing Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence. The charges he admitted include attempted murder: He faces 25 to 50 years in prison. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, vetoed a bill that sought to ban so-called forever chemicals in nonstick cookware. He said it could have raised prices.

D’ANGELO, 1974-2025

Mark Guthrie/Time Out

The R&B star D’Angelo died yesterday at 51. His family said the cause was cancer. D’Angelo found fame in the 1990s and early 2000s with an innovative and sensuous take on the genre, but he spent much of the rest of his career removed from the public eye.

Jon Pareles, a pop music correspondent, writes:

He could be a one-man studio band in the mold of Prince and Stevie Wonder, overdubbing nearly all the instruments. He had a silken falsetto to rival Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield and Al Green. He could also multitrack himself to simulate the collective yowl and cackle of Funkadelic or Sly & the Family Stone. He had voices to convey richly seductive physical pleasures, unwavering devotion and gritty political resistance.

Americans were searching online for news about D’Angelo. For a sampling of his extraordinary musical scope, Jon put together a list of D’Angelo’s 14 essential songs. We also have an account of how he made his most acclaimed album, “Voodoo.”

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.)

Aaron Wojack for The New York Times, Yonhap/EPA, via Shutterstock, Getty Images, Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

Which famously beautiful city has proposed removing an unusual public fountain?

A. San Francisco: the Vaillancourt Fountain

B. Seoul: the Banpo Bridge Fountain

C. Paris: the Stravinsky Fountain

D. Valencia, Spain: the Water Boat Fountain

OPINIONS

“The enthusiasm gap is real”: New Jersey will vote for its next governor this November. Eleven local leaders assessed the candidates’ qualifications and visions for the state.

The best safeguard against tyranny is the belief in something greater than the authority of one man, be it family, equality or God, Jonathan Freedland writes.

Here’s a column by Thomas Friedman on Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas.

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

“I’m losing who I am”: Dr. Sue Goldie found acclaim explaining the world’s biggest health problems. Now, she’s trying to understand how one disease — Parkinson’s — is changing her own body.

An industry of theft: About 80,000 phones were stolen in London last year. The police finally know where they went.

Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was an Opinion article by a woman who decided to stop making family dinner.

Art investigator: Milton Esterow, a culture journalist who broke stories of artwork looted by the Nazis, died at 97. He started at The Times in 1945 and wrote for the paper until his death. (His final article is forthcoming.)

SPORTS

Baseball: The Dodgers have won two straight games against the Brewers. Now, the 2018 NLCS rematch is heading from Milwaukee to Los Angeles.

Gymnastics: Simone Biles is sure she’ll be at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. But she’s not sure she’ll compete.

KEVIN FEDERLINE’S MEMOIR

Kevin Federline Sam Holden

In 2021, the “Free Britney” movement helped get Britney Spears released from a conservatorship that had overseen her life and finances for over a decade. Now, the father of her children, Kevin Federline, is arguing that those fans should be concerned about Spears’s well-being in the wake of her emancipation.

In a memoir scheduled to publish next week, Federline, 47, recounts how his sons returned from Spears’s house in recent years and told him they woke up to her watching them sleep with a knife in her hand. “It’s become impossible to pretend everything’s OK,” he writes in the memoir, adding: “My biggest fear is that our sons will be left holding the pieces.”

A spokesman for Spears declined to comment. Spears has said that the custody battle with Federline was traumatizing and that he had “tried to convince everyone that I was completely out of control.”

More on culture

Netflix is stepping into the world of podcasts: Starting next year, it will stream shows from Spotify about sports, culture, entertainment and true crime. Matcha, the green powder once mostly confined to formal tea ceremonies, is now everywhere — and counterfeiters are taking advantage. Can it survive its own popularity?

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Bake these Southwest-inspired enchiladas. They can be ready in about an hour.

Visit Madison, Wis., for impressive meals and good music.

Cozy up with a slouchy sweater and a woody candle.

Paint your walls with dirty pastel colors.

GAMES

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

Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands.

And you may recognize one of the creators of today’s crossword puzzle: Nick Offerman of “Parks and Recreation” fame.

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 16, 2025

Good morning. Here’s the latest news.

Gaza: Hamas has handed 10 bodies to Israel, but said it would need more equipment to recover any others. The remains of more than a dozen Israeli hostages unaccounted for, which could jeopardize the cease-fire. Venezuela: The Trump administration authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, and President Trump is considering possible ground strikes. Supreme Court: The justices appear poised to weaken the Voting Rights Act.

We have more on those stories below. But first, a look at the government’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, and how residents are responding.

Chicago crackdown

	By Julie Bosman I’m the Chicago bureau chief.

During a recent run near Lake Michigan, I watched a black S.U.V. make a U-turn and chase down three young men. Two armed immigration agents, their eyes peeking out from behind their balaclavas, jumped out and approached them. One asked what visas they held.

“H-1B,” they responded, looking bewildered. That’s the visa for foreign workers with special expertise.

Nothing that I could see would have attracted the attention of the agents, except for the fact that the men had brown skin. After questioning them, the agents let them go.

This scene is now unfolding across Chicago every day.

Federal immigration agents have been asking people about their legal status outside churches, homeless shelters, apartment buildings, parks and even a cemetery. Officers have questioned both U.S. citizens and legal residents, asking for passports and visas as proof of identity.

The presence of officers from Border Patrol and ICE has brought forth an intense backlash. Chicagoans are shouting at immigration agents, calling them fascists and Nazis, throwing objects at them and chasing their unmarked S.U.V.s or minivans, honking their horns to warn bystanders of ICE’s presence.

In response to what a Homeland Security official called “a surge in assaults,” the officers are using increasingly aggressive tactics. In recent days, they’ve hurled tear gas, pepper balls and smoke bombs at the public, protesters, journalists and even Chicago police officers, often without warning. Today’s newsletter is about the conflict on the streets of Chicago.

The intervention

Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The Trump administration began a crackdown on illegal immigration here five weeks ago, promising to help the city by arresting “criminal illegal aliens.” But the tactics are unusual.

Schools. Officers are lingering just off campus in some places. So principals have ordered “soft lockdowns,” keeping students in classrooms until the agents are gone. Last month, ICE tried to arrest a father after a day care drop-off; in the confrontation, he was shot and killed. Now some schools use neighborhood volunteers, at parents’ request, so white adults can walk Latino children home.

Restaurants. Kitchens are often staffed by undocumented immigrants, and ICE knows it. Workers are afraid to leave their homes, and many have cut their hours. One Mexican spot I like keeps its door locked — even when it’s open — as a shield against ICE, allowing customers in one at a time.

Public spaces. Many people, even those with legal status, are asking friends to do their grocery shopping for them. Streets are quieter. One man with legal residency got a $130 ticket for not having his papers, The Chicago Tribune reported.

Why here? It is not surprising to people here that the administration has focused on Chicago, which calls itself a sanctuary city. That means it doesn’t help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants. Half a million Chicagoans, nearly one-fifth of the population, were born outside the United States, and support for immigrants is generally strong in the area. Local police officers won’t ask suspects about their immigration status.

Trump and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, have an adversarial relationship, and Trump regularly criticizes Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson. The president wrote online that they “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” City and state leaders said they were receiving no communication from the Department of Homeland Security or the White House about the operations.

The backlash

Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The fury over immigration enforcement has expanded in the last few days. After a car chase and crash involving agents, more than 100 people came out of their homes and shouted, “ICE go home.” At least one person threw eggs at the agents, hitting an agent directly in the head. (Trump ordered National Guard troops into Illinois over Pritzker’s objections, but a federal judge blocked their deployment last week.)

In response, federal officers released tear gas on the crowd, including 13 Chicago police officers who had been called to the scene. For weeks, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have disbursed people filming and shouting at them by shooting pepper balls and tear gas.

This is very different from norms of modern policing: Officers typically release chemical agents only in extreme situations, and only after warnings. Agents have pointed guns at people who get in their way.

On Wednesday, Pritzker complained that ICE was causing “mayhem” and warned that other cities would face the same fate. In the Oval Office yesterday, Trump named San Francisco. He said, “We’re just at the start. We’re going to go into other cities.”

ASSAD’S ENFORCERS

No dictator rules alone. For two decades, and amid a 13-year civil war that left half a million people dead, the Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad relied on a network of henchmen to support his rule, writes Christiaan Triebert, a reporter on our Visual Investigations team.

These men tortured civilians. They built and used chemical weapons. They ran drugs that helped fund the government. They ordered the bombing of hospitals. And when the regime fell in December 2024, many of them simply vanished. My colleagues and I set out to uncover evidence of their alleged crimes and find out where they might be now — in Russia, for instance, or plotting revenge from Lebanon.

We chased down fragments of information — a photo of a lavish Damascus home posted to a neighborhood Facebook page, the name of a small village mentioned in a sanctions document, a phone number with a Russian country code discreetly shared with reporters — and added the normal journalistic legwork of reading legal filings, knocking on doors, calling people’s friends, family and co-workers. Read about how the officials got out, including the middle-of-the-night flight that carried many of them away.

Related: Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Shara, just met with Vladimir Putin. Putin backed the regime al-Shara’s rebels overthrew.

Vladimir Putin and Ahmed al-Shara, Syria’s president, at the Kremlin yesterday. Pool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko

THE LATEST NEWS

Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court heard arguments about whether to preserve a section of the Voting Rights Act that lets states consider race when drawing congressional districts. The rule sought to undo the suppression of Black voters. But it is decades old, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that race-based remedies should have expiration dates. If the justices strike the provision, Democrats would be in danger of losing around a dozen districts across the South, writes Nate Cohn, our chief political analyst.

Note: The current map depicts districts enacted as of Oct. 14. The plausible redistricting scenario is one of a range of possible outcomes. It includes expected redistricting in Florida and North Carolina, including districts that may be redrawn regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision. | By The New York Times

Immigration

Trump may overhaul the U.S. refugee system to give preference to English speakers, white South Africans and anti-migration Europeans. Los Angeles declared a state of emergency over federal immigration raids. It lets officials give financial aid to people affected. The State Department says it has revoked the visas of at least six foreign citizens it accuses of celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The Justice Department asked Meta to take down a Facebook group where members shared information about ICE agents in Chicago. The tech company complied.

Venezuela

Trump acknowledged that he has authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela. “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Trump said. U.S. attacks on boats have killed at least 27 people.

War in Gaza

After the cease-fire, Hamas is pursuing a bloody crackdown. A video captured its militants executing rivals in public. Israelis are burying their dead hostages. “Rest,” a father said, “after a journey of two years in worlds unknown to us.”

More International News

Hundreds of South Koreans are missing in Cambodia. They traveled there to take up high-paying job offers from online scam centers. Some have been kidnapped, tortured or killed. Afghanistan and Pakistan announced a cease-fire after a week of deadly border clashes. People in China are frustrated by the government’s plan to attract foreign scientists who struggle to get U.S. visas under Trump. The Gen Z protests that have swept through Kenya, Madagascar and now Morocco reflect governments’ failure to provide economic opportunities for them.

Other Big Stories

Katie Porter, a leading Democrat in the California governor’s race, said she “fell short” after videos showed her berating a staff member and belittling a reporter.

The Trump administration has targeted a federal birth control office for layoffs, which could leave millions of low-income women struggling to get contraception.

China is turning to Brazil instead of the U.S. for its soybeans. That means trouble for Brazil’s rainforests. In Greenville, Miss., local leaders imposed a strict evening curfew to curb gun violence. It’s working.

OPINIONS

The autism spectrum is too broad. We need more specific diagnoses, Emily May writes.

Here is a column by Nicholas Kristof on Trump’s Middle East win. And M. Gessen profiled Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories.

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MORNING READS

The almighty hole. Evan Jenkins for The New York Times

Chicago rat hole: This rodent-shaped hole in the sidewalk is famous. But it wasn’t made by a rat.

Wesley Morris on D’Angelo: “Many great singers aim for the stratosphere. His vocals pooled around you. He multiplied himself and blanketed you with his devastating stank.” Read more.

Modern Love: Malala Yousafzai talks about her new memoir on the podcast. Listen here.

Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about why London became a global hub for phone theft.

Formal wear for the bedroom: Derek Rose sold luxury pajamas for men that were akin to high-end suits. He died at 93.

SPORTS

Baseball: The Blue Jays hit five home runs to rout the Mariners, 13-4, and they now trail the ALCS 2-1. They play again in Seattle tonight.

N.B.A.: Americans were searching online for news about Malcolm Brogdon, who will retire from the league after nine seasons.

Tennis: Players on the A.T.P. tour were wondering why organizers didn’t stop play in extreme heat. “You want a player to die on the court?” one asked after Novak Djokovic vomited at the Shanghai Masters.

HOW TO SAVE WINE

Jon Reinfurt

Wine is in trouble: People are drinking less, climate change is threatening vineyards and tariffs are disrupting trade. Eric Asimov, who has covered wine for more than 20 years, says the challenges have never seemed greater.

So what can be done to save it? Eric has ideas. One of them is that the industry could lose the snobbery and become more accessible. “Nobody explains how an electric guitar works before a concert,” he writes. “Let those who want to be educated come to you.”

More on culture

Britney Spears said that “constant gaslighting” from Kevin Federline, her ex-husband, was “extremely hurtful and exhausting.” (He’s publishing a memoir next week.) Stephen Colbert joked about Trump’s picture on the cover of Time magazine: “Worst Georgia O’Keeffe ever.” Here’s a late night roundup.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Toss ramen noodles in chile oil and sesame paste for a dan dan noodle salad.

Read “The Wayfinder,” Adam Johnson’s novel about the ancient South Pacific.

Test your drinking water.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were ejection and injection.

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 17, 2025

Good morning, and happy Friday. Here’s the latest news:

President Trump has a meeting at the White House with Volodymyr Zelensky today. And after a “productive” call with Vladimir Putin, Trump said they would speak again soon to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during President Trump’s first term, was indicted on charges of mishandling classified information. In the first debate of the New York City mayor’s race, Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa sparred. Watch a recap.

More news is below. But first, we explain America’s directive for spies in Venezuela.

In Caracas. The New York Times

Psychological warfare

	By David E. Sanger I’m a White House correspondent focused on national security.

There were two remarkable parts to what President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week about Venezuela: what he said, and what he didn’t say.

The president confirmed a New York Times scoop, published a few hours earlier by my colleagues Julian Barnes and Tyler Pager, that he had secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action inside the country, part of a U.S. campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader who clings to power there.

That was a remarkable statement because presidents don’t acknowledge directives that allow spies to accomplish a secret mission. The whole idea of having a C.I.A. is to allow the United States to operate in the shadows and conduct “deniable” operations. The normal answer to questions about such authorizations, used by almost all of the presidents since World War II, is something along the lines of I don’t know what you are talking about, but if I did, I couldn’t comment.

But in this case, commenting may have been the point. Privately, Trump administration officials have said they want to drive Maduro from power. In that context, the warships massing off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, the 10,000 troops poised nearby and the bombing of boats allegedly filled with “narcoterrorists” are efforts at psychological warfare. Trump hopes to scare Maduro into exile. Trump added to the pressure on Wednesday when he said the next step might be a land attack.

The rationales

Which takes us to the second point: what Trump has never talked about. He has declined to explain, to Americans or even to many in Congress, what exactly he is trying to accomplish. What interests are being served here? How is this “America First”?

Stopping the flow of cocaine? Well, that makes sense, but in that case the Navy is on the wrong coast: Drugs headed to the United States largely come from the Pacific Coast, not the Caribbean, where the naval buildup is happening. Access to oil? That is what Maduro’s government claims this is all about. But there are ways of negotiating over oil short of military or covert action, and Trump cut off those talks weeks ago.

Sources: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Samuel Granados/The New York Times

Reviving democracy? Maybe, but that’s what the old neocons attempted in the forever-wars era, American First adherents say — an era they discredit as a huge error. And promoting democratic values has never been a big priority for a president who openly admires authoritarians, in Russia, Turkey, Hungary and elsewhere.

Which leaves regime change as the all-but-certain explanation.

Interventions past

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas. The New York Times

One problem for Trump is that his pretexts for action keep falling apart. Intelligence agencies have already shot down the idea that the Maduro government is sending criminals to sabotage the United States. (The analysts were either shut down or fired.) Drugs are an issue, but Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl, the most damaging narco-import. Its ingredients come from China and are brewed in Mexico, and Trump doesn’t advocate regime change in those nations.

America has engineered many attempts to remove one leader and install a more pliant one. That history is checkered at best. It might be helpful for the president and his aides to remember them, says Tim Weiner, a former Times reporter whose new history of the C.I.A., “The Mission,” reminds readers of what happens when regime-change operations go wrong. “Think Iran, Guatemala, the violent overthrow of Diem in South Vietnam,” he told me. Many resulted in unnecessary deaths, but almost all led to unintended consequences, often disastrous ones.

More coverage

The military commander who oversees U.S. operations in Central and South America is stepping down. Two officials said he had raised concerns about the recent attacks on boats. U.S. aircraft, including B-52 bombers and Army helicopters, have been flying off the coast of Venezuela in an apparent show of force.

CEASE-FIRE STICKING POINTS

Palestinians returning to Gaza City on Saturday. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has held for almost a week now. But the deal rests on shaky ground. Liam Stack, reporting from Tel Aviv, explains some of the points of contention:

Exchange of remains. The cease-fire agreement stipulates that Hamas will immediately return the remains of all the Israeli hostages who died in Gaza. So far Hamas has returned 10, out of around two dozen; it says it has recovered all the bodies it can without special equipment.

Israel, for its part, is supposed to return 15 Palestinian bodies for every one that it receives. So far, it has returned 120 — also short of its obligation.

Humanitarian aid. The deal calls for more aid in Gaza, including the entrance of at least 600 aid trucks a day. The U.N. says that Israel is allowing more aid into Gaza now, but not enough to address the humanitarian crisis. A spokesman was unsure whether the 600-truck goal had been reached.

Border crossings. Israel agreed to reopen the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. That hasn’t happened yet, though officials say they still plan to open the crossing.

Related: Trump warned Hamas of more strikes if militants continue to execute people in Gaza.

THE LATEST NEWS

Bolton Indictment

John Bolton’s indictment accuses him of emailing “diary” notes about his official day-to-day activities to people without security clearance. Those emails were later hacked by someone associated with Iran. (Read the full indictment.) The investigation of him began under the Biden administration. “What makes the Bolton indictment so unusual in the Trump era is that it is so usual,” wrote Glenn Thrush, who covers the Justice Department. It followed established channels that other prosecutions of Trump antagonists have appeared to defy.

N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

New York’s mayoral debate was bitter and combative. The candidates traded personal attacks, disagreed fiercely over the Israel-Hamas war and questioned their rivals’ credentials. Read takeaways. “He couldn’t name a single mosque,” Mamdani said of Cuomo. See the harshest attacks of the night. Mamdani is leading in polls of the race, with Cuomo second. The candidates debate again on Oct. 22, and Election Day is Nov. 4.

More on Politics

Many Pentagon reporters handed in their press passes rather than agree to new rules that would restrict their journalism. See how the rules differ from the old ones. Harvard got even richer this year, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to pull its federal funding. Young Republicans traded racist and homophobic texts for months in a group chat. Some are losing their jobs, but party leaders, including JD Vance, have dismissed the messages as jokes.

International

In Alaska in August. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Trump announced his plan to meet with Putin after musing about supplying Ukraine with more powerful missiles. Families of people who died in the Jeju Air crash in South Korea last year sued Boeing, accusing the company of failing to update the systems on the plane. France’s new government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote. Now, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has to pass a budget.

Business

Ryan Sun/Associated Press

Smucker’s accused Trader Joe’s of copying Uncrustables, the premade PB&J sandwiches that have become a mainstay of kids’ lunchboxes. (The Washington Post has an in-depth analysis of the two products.) Airlines in the U.S. are separating into two groups. Delta and United make lots of money. Then there’s everybody else.

Other Big Stories

On May 16, just after midnight, 10 inmates escaped a New Orleans jail. By this month, one was still on the run. But that was only the latest twist in his saga. JB Pritzker, Illinois’s billionaire Democratic mayor, disclosed $1.4 million in blackjack winnings. He says it all came from one trip to Las Vegas.

OPINIONS

Young Americans are frustrated with how baby boomers have designed America to benefit themselves and hurt future generations. Some of them spell it out in this Times Opinion video.

It’s a myth that Trump got Benjamin Netanyahu to a cease-fire through pressure or threats. Trump got a deal by promising to help Netanyahu get re-elected, Dana Stroul argues.

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MORNING READS

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Rising waters: Floods are coming for New York. If the city wants to survive, it must adapt. Here’s how.

Skater’s paradise: One of America’s most iconic lost skate spots has been rebuilt in Sweden. Our writer, who’s good with a board, made the pilgrimage.

Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about the Chicago “rat hole.”

Familiar voice: Susan Stamberg, a longtime NPR journalist and the first woman to anchor a national evening news broadcast, died at 87.

SPORTS

M.L.B.: The Toronto Blue Jays took down the Seattle Mariners last night to pull even in the ALCS. And the Los Angeles Dodgers are on the cusp of another World Series trip after taking a 3-0 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS.

N.F.L.: The Cincinnati Bengals sealed a 33-31 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers with a field goal.

N.H.L.: The league’s newest team, the Utah Mammoth, unveiled its mascot. Meet Tusky.

CODE CRACKERS

"Kryptos,” unveiled in 1990. Drew Angerer/The New York Times

For decades, amateur cryptographers have obsessed over “Kryptos,” an enigmatic sculpture outside the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., that contains four hidden messages. They decoded three, but the fourth and final passage remained unsolved.

The sculpture’s creator, Jim Sanborn, was finally ready to reveal the solution through an auction, which he said would help pay for his medical expenses. Shortly before it was set to take place, however, he received an email: A Kryptos superfan had uncovered the decoded passage, not through puzzle-solving, but through sleuthing in the Smithsonian.

Read more about the discovery.

More on culture

Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times

Each week, The Times celebrates street style. Simbarashe Cha spotted this look — a funky fall outfit with pops of red — on the streets of Paris. Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist of Kiss, who often performed in white-and-silver makeup, has died at 74. The late night hosts joked about a Trump dinner with donors.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Grate Parmesan on top of this creamy tortellini soup.

Swing a kettlebell the right way.

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

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

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 18, 2025

Good morning. A lazy day during which we do absolutely nothing sounds heavenly, but how much unstructured time can we comfortably abide?

María Jesús Contreras

Down time

	By Melissa Kirsch

A real, honest-to-goodness day off is, for many of us, but a fantasy. There’s always obligation of some sort that intrudes: laundry, errands, parenting duties, social engagements that seemed like a good idea when you committed, work from the week that seeps into Saturday. A day with nothing scheduled becomes, too often, a fertile expanse within which all the undone things from the week will get done.

Sometimes, though, you find yourself with a truly empty day, one in which you’re determined to do as little as possible and your productivity compulsion is quiet enough that you can actually just be. “What do I want to do right now?” you can actually hear yourself ask yourself. “Lie in bed and watch old episodes of ‘High Maintenance,’” you might answer, and next thing you know, there you are, under the covers at 10 a.m., actually watching TV, like a person who understands the power and value of true leisure.

If you’re anything like me, this feels indulgent, delicious, for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour, and then the uncomfortable feelings set in. Some gross admixture of guilt, restlessness, FOMO, maybe even boredom. You feel like the kid who stayed home from school when she wasn’t really sick, lying on the couch watching “The Price Is Right” as a dusty beam of sunlight streams in. What made you think this level of laziness would feel restorative? Whose idea was this anyway?

I had a day like this recently, one in which I tried to do as little as possible, telling myself all the while that I needed a lazy interlude, a total pause from responsibility. I convinced myself that lying low would be not only restorative but also enjoyable. I put on my most comfortable version of what my friend Alice calls “hangaround bangarounds” — cozy, unrestrictive house clothes — and ordered food for delivery. By the time night fell, I was so cabin-feverish that taking a shower and going for a walk made me feel like a jaguar busting out the gates of a zoo. Instead of the relaxing break from responsibility I’d hoped to engineer, the day was a strange and lonely aberration, too much time spent wasting time.

I asked some colleagues if they’d ever successfully executed a totally intentional day of sloth without descending into self-loathing, and they were eager to share their secrets. “Baking,” one declared immediately. Baking, she explained, is an activity, but it’s not a chore. It’s not even cooking, which could be contorted into meal-prepping and thus become a chore. She recently spent a lazy day making Marion Burros’s plum torte, which we should all be making this month, before plums are out of season (although it’s infinitely customizable with any fruit — I always forget!). A baking project gives you a built-in timer so you won’t climb into bed and rot away. You have something to attend to, which gives the day the tiniest bit of structure. And of course, at the end, you have a baked creation. How satisfying!

The formula for a lazy day that doesn’t become a depressing day, we decided, is incorporating an activity just taxing enough to keep you from total passivity. That could be baking. It could be an art project, or writing a letter, or even a scheduled long catch-up phone call with an old friend. We considered whether tidying the house first thing so that your laziness is conducted in a pleasant space might qualify, but decided that as soon as you start slipping chores into the agenda, the day ceases to be relaxing.

I exited my unsuccessful relax-a-thon thinking, “Be careful what you wish for.” But next time I find myself with an expanse of time to devote to next-to-nothing, my mantra will be, “When the day goes limp, go bake.” Go do something enjoyable, inessential, but just substantial enough to give the day the barest bit of scaffolding.

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics

Outside the White House yesterday. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Volodymyr Zelensky, visiting the White House, pressed President Trump to supply Ukraine with new weapons to fight Russia. Trump expressed trepidation, saying he would prefer to negotiate an end to the war. Trump commuted the seven-year prison sentence of George Santos, the former Republican congressman whose lies made him a national figure. “Good luck George, have a great life!” Trump wrote on social media. John Bolton, a Trump adviser turned critic, pleaded not guilty to charges that he had mishandled classified information. Obamacare prices for next year went public in some states yesterday, showing that health insurance premiums will be higher if Congress does not extend subsidies. Marc Benioff, the Salesforce C.E.O., apologized for saying that Trump should send the National Guard to San Francisco. Federal employees responsible for boosting fossil fuels and eliminating green energy remain at work — even as more than 700,000 other workers are furloughed during the shutdown.

Venezuelan Conflict

Note: Some U.S. ship locations are approximate. Source: The New York Times analysis of satellite imagery, U.S. Naval Institute, LatAmMilMovements, Michael Bonet and M.T. Anderson.

The Navy detained two people who survived the latest strike on a ship in the Caribbean, this one a semi-submersible vessel. It’s unclear whether officials will release them, hold them as wartime prisoners or turn them over to law enforcement. The U.S. has sent roughly 10,000 troops, along with dozens of military aircraft and ships, to the Caribbean Sea. It’s the largest deployment in the region in decades.

A bipartisan group of senators wants to force a vote on legislation that would prohibit the U.S. from attacking Venezuela without explicit approval. Despite the Trump administration’s threats, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader, has found a pillar of support in an American oil giant.

Other Big Stories

Prince Andrew of Britain, a longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein’s, surrendered the use of his royal title, the Duke of York. Hunger and disease have surged among children in Somalia after the U.S. slashed aid to the country. OpenAI blocked users from creating videos with Martin Luther King Jr. on Sora, its new app, after fake videos showed the leader delivering vulgar and racist remarks.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film and TV

Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Ken Woroner/Netflix

For Guillermo del Toro’s take on “Frankenstein” — the movie he was born to make, our critic writes — he conjured a monster unlike any that came before. (Read the review.) How does one lead an artistic life while supporting a family? Ben Stiller confronts that question in a new film about his comedian parents. Tyler James Williams endured some fallow young adult years to emerge as a skillful, likable performer and director on the ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary.”

Music

Gothic spectacle is the mood of the moment in pop music. Lady Gaga was way ahead of the curve, Wesley Morris writes. Sandra Oh, who starred in “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Killing Eve,” is taking a musical turn with her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. The Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, who died this week at 74, scored his only Top 20 solo hit with a cover track. This is how he made “New York Groove” his own.

More Culture

The video game Little Nightmares III is tastefully morbid, our critic writes. It forgoes run-of-the-mill jump scares and excessive gore for just the right amount of creepy. What makes Mick Herron’s spy novels, the basis for the show “Slow Horses,” so good? Our critic A.O. Scott says it’s the sarcasm, not the plot twists, and he dives into the text of Herron’s latest to demonstrate. It was tie vs. tie in the New York City mayoral debate this week, writes the fashion critic Vanessa Friedman. Some American museums, trying to appeal to young people, are letting kids curate shows. The British Library barred Oscar Wilde in 1895, after he was convicted on a charge used to punish homosexual relationships. Now it’s reinstating his library card.

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CULTURE CALENDAR

	By Alexis Soloski

? “Nobody Wants This” (Thursday): There is a Hebrew word, dayenu, which translates to “it would have been enough.” That we had even one season of Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” a nifty, quippy romantic comedy about a rabbi (Adam Brody) who falls for a non-Jewish podcaster (Kristen Bell) — well, that’s dayenu to the max. But the streamers are occasionally kind, and the series has returned for a second season. Though some problems of the first persist (the goyish women are hip blondes, the Jewish women shrill brunettes), the characters have been deepened and complicated, and new guest stars include Seth Rogen and Kate Berlant. Mazel tov!

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susan Spungen.

By Melissa Clark

Chocolate Mug Cake

If you’d like to enjoy a quiet chocolate-filled moment by yourself this weekend, Deanna F. Cook’s chocolate mug cake (as adapted by Margaux Laskey) makes one perfectly sized portion. Bittersweet, moist and fudgy, it requires only a few pantry ingredients and less than five minutes in your microwave. A scoop of ice cream on top isn’t essential but does add a cool, creamy contrast — instant gratification of the sweetest kind.

T MAGAZINE

Joshua Woods; Hai Zhang; Luis Alberto Rodriguez

Read this weekend’s edition of T, The New York Times Style Magazine.

REAL ESTATE

Karina Banaduc and Babatunde Ebunola. Karsten Moran for The New York Times

The hunt: A former Navy submariner and an Army reservist had $700,000 to spend on a home in New York’s less-trafficked neighborhoods. Which did they choose? Play our game.

What you get for $1.5 million in Florence, Italy: a three-bedroom apartment in a historic villa north of the city; a five bedroom renovated farmhouse; or a ground-floor maisonette near the Arno River.

Mother lode: The Gold Rush towns of Nevada City and Grass Valley, Calif., host a surprisingly cosmopolitan mix of 49er descendants, former loggers, artists and mystics.

Hollywood flipper: Diane Keaton, who died last week at 79, was the daughter of a real estate agent. So it’s fitting that she made a second career renting, buying and renovating houses.

LIVING

The New York Times

The Eternal City: Your first trip to Rome can be overwhelming — where to start in a city with thousands of years of history? The Times’s Travel desk has put together a guide with everything you need to know.

Real-life Wonka: The internet’s most famous pastry chef has rapidly built his own dessert empire.

Four pages, single spaced: Our notes for pet sitters are getting longer and more ridiculous.

Grief: It’s normal to grieve even before a loss happens. Here is expert advice to navigate those feelings.

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Start your holiday shopping now

Yes, tariffs will affect holiday shopping. Wirecutter tracked the prices on 40 of our picks over six months, and many are more expensive than they once were. But they are still potentially less expensive than they will be in the near future. Gaming consoles, for instance, may become pricier in the coming months, so it’s best to buy now. And it’s a good idea to build in extra time for shipping this year, especially for anything coming from abroad, which can be delayed in customs. Our experts put together a guide to navigating tariffs this holiday season — and how you can still find great presents without overpaying. — Annemarie Conte

Know someone who’s impossible to shop for? Ask our gifting experts for advice.

GAME OF THE WEEK

Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs in a preseason game. Trevor Ruszkowski/Imagn Images, viia Reuters Connect

San Antonio Spurs vs. Dallas Mavericks: The N.B.A. is back, and story lines abound. Will this be LeBron James’s final season? Will the steadily improving New York Knicks finally break through? Can any team stop the Oklahoma City Thunder?

The most exciting matchup in the opening days, though, might be this glimpse of the league’s future. The Spurs are in Year 3 with Victor Wembanyama, the French superstar who is so tall that no one seems to know how tall he is. (He has been listed at 7-foot-3, 7-foot-4 and 7-foot-5; other very tall people speculate he might actually be 7-foot-7.) Wemby, as he’s known, came into the N.B.A. as one of the most hyped prospects ever, and he has lived up to those expectations. Now he takes on the next great prospect: Cooper Flagg, the 18-year-old phenom from Duke whom the Mavericks took with the No. 1 draft pick.

Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on ESPN

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were immobilize and mobilize.

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: Yesterday’s newsletter misidentified JB Pritzker as a mayor. He is a governor.

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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 19, 2025

Good morning. With the World Series just days away, we have an ode to the beauty of baseball — even if one team looks unbeatable.

Shohei Ohtani Ashley Landis/Associated Press

October magic

	By Carolyn Ryan I’m a lifelong Red Sox fan.

Good morning, everyone. Or should I say, “Good morning to everyone except fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers.”

Every morning is a good morning for Dodger fans. The rest of us who love baseball are out here hoping to enjoy the magic of October, yearning for the suspense and surprises of playoff baseball. But these darn Dodgers keep winning. And not just winning. This team looks unstoppable and almost superhuman.

They’re like the Goldman Sachs of baseball, with a payroll almost triple the size of the team they crushed in the National League championship, the Milwaukee Brewers. Even as the city of Los Angeles falters, its entertainment industry shrinking and its civic identity shaken, the Dodgers appear more exorbitant and unbeatable than ever.

As a lifelong baseball fan, I’m pleased to see postseason viewership at its highest in 15 years. I love the game for many reasons, but one is how it reveals a certain vulnerability. Baseball players are not as gigantic or as classically athletic as the stars of other professional sports. There’s an imperfection to them: They can be short, skinny, kind of chubby or kind of slow.

And they’re not covered in armor and headgear. We can see their expressions — pride, embarrassment, anger or elation — after a miraculous play or a humiliating stumble. That makes us feel as if we know them. It makes baseball’s characters, subplots and soap operas irresistible.

It’s why I’ve been so captivated by Pat Murphy, the Brewers’ manager. He’s a former boxer who has been married three times, survived a heart attack and alcohol addiction, and has Bruce Springsteen lyrics tattooed on his body.

It’s why I root for Cal Raleigh, the Seattle Mariners catcher. He’s nicknamed “the Big Dumper” for his oversized derrière, and is so tough and so determined that he once broke a tooth biting into a sandwich, then played a full nine innings through the pain and even hit a home run.

And it’s why I got goose bumps Thursday watching the Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer, who is 41 years old and coming off yet another injury, loudly and profanely refusing to come out of the game when his manager approached the mound. Scherzer promptly struck out the next Mariners batter and got the win.

I’m a Red Sox fan. So I’ve had a lifetime of roller-coaster Octobers. And of course I was gutted to see the Sox eliminated by the Yankees (again) earlier this month.

But I love the game enough to appreciate other teams, too. I love the Dodgers’ history and defining personalities, especially Sandy Koufax and Jackie Robinson. I applaud their talent and I admire their fans, who are knowledgeable and loyal.

These Dodgers, though, lack vulnerability. They seem inevitable. Invincible. They have Shohei Ohtani, who may just be the best in the game since Babe Ruth. He looked the part on Friday night, when he pitched six scoreless innings, struck out 10 batters and hit three home runs. The Athletic’s Jayson Stark called it “the single greatest game any human has ever had on a baseball field.”

These Dodgers have five All Stars and an ace-filled pitching staff. And everything seems to fall into place for them. When they moved their sidelined rookie starter, Roki Sasaki, to the role of closer this postseason, suddenly he, too, was perfect.

October baseball, at its best, is about nail-biters and unpredictable outcomes. It’s about extra innings and unsung utility players stealing a base and changing the arc of a series.

The World Series starts this week, with the Dodgers facing Seattle or Toronto, depending on who wins the American League championship. For the sake of the fans and the sake of the game, let’s hope it will offer a bit more drama and much-needed diversion. And that the Dodgers will get a bit of competition instead of what seems like certain coronation.

More on the playoffs

Witch spells from Etsy. A lucky bag of Cheetos. Mustaches galore. Seattle’s fans are trying everything they can to will the Mariners to their first World Series ever. Seattle leads Toronto, three games to two. They have a chance to close out the series tonight (8 p.m. Eastern on FS1). The Dodgers went from a pretty good regular season team to a steamroller in the playoffs. Chad Jennings of The Athletic explains how they did it.

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics

In Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Large crowds turned out yesterday at “No Kings” rallies against the Trump administration across the country. Vice President JD Vance’s trip to a military base in California illustrated rising tensions between the federal government and Democratic leaders, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Rachel Parsons write. The Trump administration is repatriating two survivors of a deadly U.S. strike on suspected drug runners in the Caribbean Sea. The federal shutdown has put President Trump and the Republican Party on the defensive on health care, an issue that has long been a major weakness for the party. The Department of Homeland Security bought two private jets for Kristi Noem, the secretary, and other top department officials, for $172 million.

International

The Louvre closed today after a brazen daylight robbery. Thieves made off with “priceless” jewelry, France’s interior minister said. “Everything is gone”: Residents who have returned to northern Gaza after the cease-fire have found many of their homes and neighborhoods obliterated. Sanae Takaichi is poised to break Japan’s political glass ceiling. But some worry she will maintain policies that have held women back.

New York

Before early voting begins in the New York City mayoral election, Andrew Cuomo is trying to tie Zohran Mamdani — the race’s front-runner — to figures who said they opposed homosexuality. Months of social media pleas and handwritten letters from solitary confinement: Here’s how George Santos won his freedom.

Other Big Stories

The Obama Presidential Center, under construction. Evan Jenkins for The New York Times

Barack Obama wants his presidential center, basketball court included, to be a “living, breathing” space. Not everyone is cheering. Money, women and taxes: Emails show how Jeffrey Epstein pressured Leon Black, his longtime friend and patron, to fork over millions for financial services. The police broke up a Lego theft ring in California. Officials discovered tens of thousands of pieces, including hundreds of beheaded figurines.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

The United States wants to bail out Argentina’s economy. Should it be helping at all?

Yes. Argentina is an important economy regionally, and keeping it stable can prevent American adversaries from growing their influence in the West. “For U.S. businesses, a stable Argentina is not only useful, it is a strategic necessity,” Tomas Ballarati writes for The Hill.

No. The United States’ bailout to Argentina, which would help that country’s soybean market, is a slap in the face to American farmers. “They’re not so sure which side Trump is on,” Chris Brennan writes for USA Today.

FROM OPINION

The Insurrection Act gives no opportunity for congressional oversight or judicial review. Congress should change that, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write.

It’s not fair that Virginia Giuffre had to retell her story of trauma, but it was the only way to get her power back from Epstein, Amy Wallace writes.

Here is a column by Maureen Dowd on Pete Hegseth.

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MORNING READS

Benjamin Cleeton for The New York Times

“Island of Misfit Toys”: A zoo in upstate New York, once one of the country’s worst, transformed itself into a beloved menagerie for disabled and older animals. But money is running low.

Stuck to a pole near you: Paper fliers aren’t going away. They’re evolving.

Vows: He had left a thriving career to become an artist. She invested in his dream — and in him.

Sasquatch studies: Jeffrey Meldrum, the leading academic authority to vouch for the existence of Bigfoot, died at 67.

SPORTS

College football: Arizona State took down No. 7 Texas Tech, No. 9 Georgia gave No. 5 Ole Miss its first loss and No. 6 Alabama rode a 99-yard pick-6 to a win over No. 11 Tennessee.

Tennis: Jannik Sinner won the latest matchup between him and Carlos Alcaraz, taking home $6 million in Six Kings Slam prize money.

Soccer: As the regular M.L.S. season wraps up, the playoffs brackets are set.

Musical Olympics: The International Chopin Piano Competition, which takes place every five years, is in its final round in Warsaw. Here’s how to watch.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

	By Elisabeth Egan

“A Guardian and a Thief,” by Megha Majumdar: Majumdar’s sophomore novel — following “A Burning” (2020) — is slim and fable-like while also feeling weighty and realistic. The story, set in a near-future Kolkata in the throes of climate disaster, follows a woman who is about to emigrate with her family to Michigan and the impoverished young man who steals their passports. “The title of the novel applies to both protagonists; each is a guardian and a thief,” our reviewer wrote. “As they struggle against each other, ultimately becoming mortal enemies, Majumdar creates a tense and deeply compassionate portrait of desperation, fear and the combined selflessness and selfishness of parenthood.”

More on books

Giuffre, Epstein’s chief accuser, tells the heartbreaking story of her short life in her posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl.” Read our review. New and selected poems in Ada Limón’s “Startlement” reveal her to be diplomatic even when she’s being a little wicked. Read our review.

THE INTERVIEW

Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

	By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

This week’s subject for The Interview is the Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who is publishing a new book this month titled “The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last.” I talked to Wales about his ideas on trust, truth and faith in others, and also about the attacks on Wikipedia from some powerful people on the right, who call the site biased.

The Heritage Foundation, the architect of Project 2025, has said that it wants to dox your editors. How do you protect people from that?

It’s embarrassing for the Heritage Foundation. I remember when they were intellectually respectable.

But it does seem as if there is this movement on the right to target Wikipedia, and I’m wondering why you think that’s happening.

It’s hard to say. Some of it would be genuine concern, if they see that maybe Wikipedia is biased. For example, Elon Musk has said Wikipedia is biased because of really strong rules about only citing mainstream media, and the mainstream media is biased. OK, that’s an interesting criticism worthy of some reflection by everyone, the media and so on. Then, in various places around the world, not speaking just of the U.S., facts are threatening. And if you and your policies are at odds with the facts, then you may find it very uncomfortable for people to simply explain the facts. But we’re not about to say: “Gee, you know, maybe science isn’t valid after all. Maybe the Covid vaccine killed half the population.” No, it didn’t. That’s crazy, and we’re not going to print that. They’re going to have to get over it.

Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

The New York Times Magazine

Read this week’s magazine.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Find someone the perfect gift.

Watch Jennifer Lopez dance in “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Try these exercises for stronger ankles.

MEAL PLAN

Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Sue Li.

Meatballs are a perfect weeknight food, Emily Weinstein writes. This week, she is recommending these chicken meatballs. Other options include classic Italian American meatballs and lion’s head meatballs.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

Can you put eight historical events — including the origins of mac and cheese, Molotov cocktails and miniskirts — 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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 20, 2025

Good morning. Apologies that you’re getting this newsletter later than usual. It’s because Amazon Web Services — which supports many websites, including nytimes.com — had outages overnight. It’s coming back online, but you may have trouble logging on elsewhere today. Read the latest.

Here’s what else is happening:

Gaza: Israel temporarily suspended aid and attacked Gaza after it accused Hamas of violating a cease-fire.

Crown jewel heist: Thieves used a portable electric ladder to break into a second-floor wing of the Louvre and steal jewels from Napoleon’s reign.

More news is below. But first, we look at how ultraprocessed foods overtook grocery shelves and American diets.

Jessica Attie for The New York Times

Ultraprocessed nation

	By Alice Callahan Alice Callahan, a Times reporter, has a Ph.D. in nutrition.

Humans have been processing food for millenniums. Hunter-gatherers ground wild wheat to make bread; factory workers canned fruit for soldiers during the Civil War.

But in the late 1800s, food companies began concocting products that were wildly different from anything people could make themselves. Coca-Cola came in 1886, Jell-O in 1897, and Crisco in 1911. Spam, Velveeta, Kraft Mac & Cheese and Oreos arrived in the decades that followed. Foods like these often promised ease and convenience. Some of them filled the bellies of soldiers in World War II.

Eventually, these products overtook grocery shelves and American diets. Now they are among the greatest health threats of our time. How did we get here? Today’s newsletter is a tour through food history.

Wartime innovation

During World War II, shelf-stable foods were developed to feed soldiers.

During World War II, companies devised shelf-stable foods for soldiers — powdered cheeses, dehydrated potatoes, canned meats and melt-resistant chocolate bars. They infused new additives like preservatives, flavorings and vitamins. And they packaged the foods in novel ways to withstand wet beach landings and days at the bottom of a rucksack.

After the war, food companies realized that they could adapt this foxhole cuisine into profitable convenience foods for the masses. Advertisements told homemakers that these products offered superior nutrition and could save them time in the kitchen. Wonder Bread commercials from the 1950s, for instance, claimed its vitamins and minerals would help children “grow bigger and stronger.” An ad for Swift’s canned hamburgers boasted that they were “out of the can and onto the bun” in minutes.

Getty Images

More women found work outside the home, and by the mid-1970s, they spent much less time cooking. But they were still expected to feed their families. Fish sticks, frozen waffles and TV dinners filled modern freezers, and convenience foods became more popular. These products weren’t all ultraprocessed — some were just whole foods that had been frozen or canned with a simple ingredient, like salt. Still, people got used to the idea that packaged goods could replace cooking from scratch.

An explosion

By the 1970s, innovations in fertilizer, pesticide and crop development, along with farm subsidies, led to a glut of grain. Companies turned it into ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and modified starch to fill sugary cereals, sodas and fast foods.

In the 1980s, investors wanted food manufacturers to show larger profits, so they developed thousands of new drinks and snacks and marketed them aggressively. (Have a look at how the ads changed over the last century.)

The tobacco companies Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds diversified into the food industry, dominating it through the early 2000s. They applied the same marketing techniques that they crafted to sell cigarettes — targeting children and certain racial and ethnic groups. Kraft, owned by Philip Morris, created Kool-Aid flavors for the Hispanic market and handed out coupons and samples at cultural events for Black Americans.

Obesity tripled in children and doubled in adults between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s.

A health crisis

Getty Images

By the 21st century, you couldn’t walk through a school cafeteria, a supermarket or an airport without being inundated by ultraprocessed foods. Obesity kept rising, and food companies addressed it by making products they marketed as “healthier,” like low-carb breakfast cereals, shakes and bagels; artificially sweetened ice creams and yogurts; and snacks like Oreos and Doritos in smaller, 100-calorie packs.

They were popular, but they did not make us healthier. Scientists soon linked ultraprocessed foods to Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline and cardiovascular disease. For generations, obesity had been seen as a problem of willpower — caused by eating too much and exercising too little. But in the last decade, research on ultraprocessed foods has challenged that notion, suggesting that these foods may drive us to eat more.

Today, scientists, influencers, advocates and politicians publicly condemn ultraprocessed foods, which represent about 70 percent of the U.S. food supply. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls them “poison.”

Are we at a tipping point? Maybe. There are signs that people are eating slightly fewer of these foods. But our reliance on ultraprocessed food was “decades in the making,” one expert told me, and “could take decades to reverse.”

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Administration

The U.S. military killed three men and destroyed another boat it suspected of smuggling drugs for Colombian rebels, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. Colombia’s president accused the U.S. of killing an innocent fisherman in a boat attack last month. President Trump said he would slash aid in response. An immigration raid on an apartment building in Chicago followed years of crime, and neglect by landlords. It swept up dozens of U.S. citizens who were detained in the middle of the night. The Trump administration is deploying the Border Patrol to arrest immigrants in cities farther from the border. What powers does it have across the country?

International

The Louvre in Paris. Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

In all, yesterday’s brazen daylight robbery at the Louvre in Paris took no longer than seven minutes. The stolen items include glittering royal tiaras, necklaces and earrings. See what they look like.

Middle East

The clashes in Gaza revealed the cease-fire’s fragility, with a rougher road ahead, David Halbfinger writes. Paterson, N.J., is the longtime center of New Jersey’s Palestinian community. Its members reflected on how the war in Gaza had changed them. Relief and grief: What Jewish New Yorkers feel after the hostage release.

Other Big Stories

An Emirates cargo plane slid off the runway at Hong Kong International Airport and hit a patrol vehicle, killing two ground crew members, local officials said. In China, a forbidden question looms: Who will lead the country after Xi Jinping? Food allergies in children have dropped since new guidelines encouraged parents to introduce infants to peanuts, a study found. Grand theft otter: Sea otters near Santa Cruz, Calif., have started taking surfboards from the area’s wave riders again.

OPINIONS

Prioritizing housing — not mental health services or employment — is what ends homelessness, Philip Mangano writes.

Chatbots might sometimes be able to stand in for therapists and teachers, but they can’t replace human creativity, Margaret Renkl writes.

Here are columns by David French on the Young Republicans and Carlos Lozada on speaking Spanish.

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

Patrick Hill, a registered nurse. Mark Abramson for The New York Times

From N.F.L. to nursing: A handful of players are choosing scrubs after leaving football.

Furry roommate: He swore he would never leave downtown Manhattan. But when a cat named Lucy came into his life, plans changed.

Travel basics: Oops! You broke something at an Airbnb. Here’s what to do next.

The New Yorker’s Femme Fatale: Alison Rose started at the magazine as a receptionist and found her way into its pages with her idiosyncratic essays and profiles. She died at 81.

SPORTS

M.L.B.: The Blue Jays forced a winner-take-all Game 7 in the A.L.C.S. with a 6-2 victory over the Mariners. Toronto hosts Seattle tonight, with the winner advancing to play the Dodgers in the World Series.

N.F.L.: The Broncos scored 33 points in the fourth quarter, the most a team has ever scored after being shut out through three periods, to pull off a 33-32 comeback win over the Giants.

N.H.L.: The Sharks apologized after a message displayed on the scoreboard appeared to praise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Hispanic Heritage Night.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Amina Gingold for The New York Times

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has long been heralded as a temple of beauty; a labyrinth of marble gods, shimmering Impressionist landscapes and silken kimonos that promises an orderly march of human history. But in October, the spookiest month, another museum reveals itself: a theater of phantoms.

Here are the museum’s 20 scariest artworks. They tell a story of saints and sinners, monsters and myths. Follow their trail and the Met Museum starts to feel like a haunted house.

More on culture: This week’s episode of “S.N.L.” featured Sabrina Carpenter as both host and musical guest.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Enjoy one-pot roasted garlic pasta.

Enhance your home with these essential-oil diffusers.

Spend 36 hours in Majorca.

Watch “Nobody Wants This” and six other recommendations.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were befitting, benefiting and benefitting.

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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 21, 2025

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening today.

Troop deployment: A federal appeals court said President Trump could deploy Oregon National Guard troops to guard an ICE center in Portland, for now. Further legal action is likely. White House: The facade of the East Wing came crumbling down as construction began on Trump’s ballroom. Middle East: Vice President JD Vance is traveling to Israel, as the Trump administration rushes to shore up the fragile cease-fire deal in Gaza.

More news is below. But first, a closer look at this weekend’s crown jewel heist at the Louvre in Paris.

Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

The Louvre job

	By Katrin Bennhold I host The World, our new international newsletter.

It took just eight minutes.

Thieves broke into the Louvre on Sunday while tourists were perusing art. They made off with jewelry said to be of incalculable worth.

My colleagues have been reporting on one of the most dramatic heists this century — how thieves pulled it off, why they did it and what precedents there are for this kind of brazen burglary. Here’s what we know.

How they did it

With a truck, a ladder, a disc cutter and some scooters.

Sources: Google Earth (basemap); Paris prosecutor. Samuel Granados/The New York Times

At 9:30 a.m., the thieves parked a truck under the windows of the Apollo Gallery. Then they climbed up an electric ladder from the back of the truck. (This truck-mounted ladder — a monte-meubles — may look odd or suspicious to non-French people, but it’s a pretty common sight on the streets of Paris, where it is used to lift bulky furniture through apartment windows.)

To break into the gallery, they carved the glass with the disc cutter, setting off the security alarm. They threatened guards with the disc cutter and smashed two display cases while the Louvre’s staff members evacuated the museum.

The robbers grabbed a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III. See their entire haul here.

By 9:38, the thieves had mounted two high-powered scooters waiting for them outside. They drove away.

Why they did it

Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The thieves weren’t after oil masterworks. They stole only jewelry — tiaras, earrings and necklaces. Experts say that means they probably wanted the diamonds, stones and precious metals. (One tiara, which once belonged to Queen Hortense, contained 24 Ceylon sapphires and 1,083 diamonds.) Those are easier to offload. Emeralds can be reset in new pieces. Gold can be melted down.

In that sense, the Louvre heist wasn’t really art crime, Vernon Rapley, a former leader of the London police force’s art squad, told my colleague Alex Marshall. It was “commodity theft.”

Commodity thieves don’t worry about leaving some valuable pieces behind. The robbers at the Louvre didn’t bother with high-profile and easily identifiable pieces, like the Regent and Sancy diamonds, which would have been tricky to resell, even broken up.

The robbery has raised questions about whether the Louvre could have been better protected. Labor unions at the museum said they had previously warned about technical and staffing issues, particularly among security guards.

The World is our new morning newsletter about international news. Subscribe below to get it in your inbox each weekday.

Sign up for the World newsletter. A guide to understanding the news without feeling overwhelmed, made for readers around the globe. Get it in your inbox

Is this common?

It happens more often than you may think!

National Museum, Oslo, 1994: Like the burglars at the Louvre, two men climbed a ladder and broke a window. They stole Norway’s best-known painting, “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. It took them less than a minute, and they left a note: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.” Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2000: On New Year’s Eve, a thief (or thieves) dropped through a skylight, filled the gallery with smoke and left minutes later with Cézanne’s “View of Auvers-sur-Oise.” It has not surfaced. Bode Museum, Berlin, 2017: Thieves stole a giant gold coin worth several million euros, rolling it out in a wheelbarrow.

CLOUD COVER

Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

Early yesterday morning, people around the world struggled to check in for flights, watch Hulu, wire money, play Fortnite, order McMuffins and, most important, read The Times. (Unbiased!) Our publishing software wouldn’t work, and one of my London colleagues, Claire, trekked to another colleague’s house to send Monday’s newsletter.

It doesn’t take much to crash the internet anymore. In this case, it was a glitch at Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, at a site in Northern Virginia. Instead of managing their own servers, most businesses pay cloud companies like Amazon to do it. Much of the modern internet lives and dies by AWS; it supports more than a third of the 100,000 busiest websites in the world.

Yesterday’s disruption was the biggest digital-services outage since last summer, when a buggy software update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike grounded planes and shuttered businesses for days. The fallout then wasn’t limited to tech workers. Travelers missed trips; retailers couldn’t make sales; bystanders couldn’t call 911. Companies lost billions.

Meltdowns like these are possible only because the internet is more interconnected than ever. Thousands of companies use the same third-party programs (like CrowdStrike) and send their data to the same third-party cloud providers (like AWS). “People have been putting more and more of their eggs in the same basket,” said Mehdi Daoudi, founder of the web-monitoring company Catchpoint.

With infrastructure concentrated among just a few big players that seem to prioritize profit over security, users are vulnerable. An issue at a single one, in a single location, can paralyze the economy. — Evan Gorelick

THE LATEST NEWS

Troop Deployments

A judge in Chicago questioned officials about whether the government had violated a court order by using tear gas as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Trump is redefining how presidents use the American military, explains David Sanger, who covers the White House and national security. Click below to watch.

Government Shutdown

The transportation secretary said air traffic controllers should expect to stop getting a paycheck next week if the government shutdown continues. Some states with Democratic governors have adopted a mirror image of a Trump administration tactic: They’re blaming Republicans for the shutdown on official websites.

More on Politics

Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom will transform one of the most recognizable buildings in the world and nearly double the size of the structure. The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a federal law that bars drug users and addicts from having a gun. The U.S. and Australia signed an agreement that would give the U.S. access to Australia’s rare earth minerals. China, which mines and processes most of the world’s supply, recently limited exports. The administration offered to steer more federal money to a handful of universities if they signed a compact aligning with Trump’s priorities. Nearly all have said no.

Middle East

American officials said they were increasingly concerned that Benjamin Netanyahu could dismantle the Gaza cease-fire deal. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the aid distribution effort run by U.S. security contractors, suspended its operations. Since May, hundreds of Palestinians had been killed trying to retrieve aid from the group, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Business

Amazon has a plan to automate 75 percent of its operations, internal documents show. That would mean robots replacing more than half a million jobs. As tech companies build A.I. data centers worldwide, vulnerable communities have been hit by blackouts and water shortages. More Americans are struggling to make monthly car payments, a sign that lower-income consumers are under financial pressure. Subscribers canceled Disney+ and Hulu at more than twice the usual rate last month, after Disney briefly pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

Other Big Stories

India and the Indian diaspora celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, yesterday. In New Delhi, it’s also the start of pollution season. Japan is getting its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. She’s a heavy metal drummer and a hard-line conservative.

OPINIONS

Seventeen-year-old Mateo’s family fled gangs and kidnappers in Honduras. As America’s immigration landscape shifts, they’re running again, Jake Halpern writes.

Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on Trump’s trolling and Thomas Edsall on Democrats’ candidates for governorships.

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

Emily Hlaváč Green

Feast your eyes: These are the best pastries in New York.

Travel tips: Marie Kondo, the master of tidying up, has advice on how to pack a suitcase.

Stargazing: The Orionids meteor shower peaks tonight.

Prodigy: Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who was the No. 1-ranked player in the U.S. when he was 9 years old, has died at 29. In 2022 he created an interactive puzzle for The Times, called “Chess Replay,” that dropped players into historic matches. Play it here.

SPORTS

M.L.B.: The Los Angeles Dodgers will take on the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series after Toronto eliminated the Seattle Mariners. The series begins on Friday.

N.F.L.: The former running back Doug Martin died in police custody in California this weekend. He was 36. His family members said they had sought medical assistance and help from local authorities before his death.

Soccer: The U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica announced a joint bid to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup.

HISTORY, RESHAPED

Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times

Over the past decade, as states and cities have pulled down Confederate memorials, a debate has raged. Should the statues be preserved and studied? Thrown in a junkyard? “Monuments,” a blockbuster art exhibition in Los Angeles, offers a third option: Let artists treat them as their inheritance and use the material as they like.

At the center of the show is a work by Kara Walker, “Unmanned Drone,” constructed from a monument of the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson that once stood in Charlottesville, Va. Walker has merged Jackson and his horse into a 13-foot-tall monstrosity — “an American centaur,” writes our art critic Jason Farago, “American in its bones and in its burdens.”

See more from the exhibition.

More on culture

Michelin stars have the power to make (or crush) a restaurant’s finances. An Apple TV show explores the secretive process behind how they are awarded. The late night hosts discussed the “No Kings” protests.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Julia Gartland for The New York Times

Simmer chicken in coconut curry.

Read John Updike’s letters.

Soak up fall splendor on these Western road trips.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were unheeding and unhinged.

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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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October 22, 2025

Good morning. Today, we’re covering President Trump and the Justice Department, JD Vance in Israel and renovations at the White House. But first, a look at Trump’s use of artificial intelligence. (Note: The Times covers A.I. images with a red bar to prevent misinformation from spreading.)

Fake news

	By Stuart A. Thompson I write about online influence.

In one fake image, President Trump cosplays as the pope. In another, he looks on as agents arrest Barack Obama. In a third, he stands atop a mountain, having conquered Canada.

The era of A.I. propaganda is here — and Trump is an enthusiastic participant. He has posted A.I. items dozens of times on his Truth Social account, according to a review by The Times. Over the weekend, he posted a video in which he flies a fighter jet and dumps excrement on protesters.

The fake imagery attacks his political rivals, depicts him flatteringly, mocks criticism, celebrates his administration and spreads falsehoods about his agenda. It’s a wild and often gleeful medium that matches his freewheeling populist style. Today’s newsletter looks at the way the president uses this new tech.

The new propaganda

Trump’s use of the tech has evolved alongside the tools, which have rapidly improved from producing obviously fake images in 2022 to more lifelike renderings — including video and audio — this year. The content is easy to create by typing descriptions of what you want into A.I.-generating tools. Some videos use multiple A.I. tools, such as a video of Robert De Niro that Trump shared last year: Someone replaced the actor’s lip movements with A.I.-rendered manipulations to match a voice sound-alike.

Political experts say that even the most anodyne uses of A.I. by the president normalize these tools as a new type of political propaganda. “It’s designed to go viral, it’s clearly fake, it’s got this absurdist kind of tone to it,” said Henry Ajder, who runs an A.I. consultancy. “But there’s often still some kind of messaging in there.” It redefines — or in some cases discards — the idea of being “presidential.” In the posts, he does a TikTok dance with Elon Musk, depicts a political rival as fat or wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

The White House has responded to questions over Trump’s use of A.I. imagery by describing it as part of his successful social media strategy. “No leader has used social media to communicate directly with the American people more creatively and effectively than President Trump,” Liz Huston, the White House’s assistant press secretary, said on Friday in an emailed statement.

Evolving medium

Trump’s use of A.I. began in earnest during his 2024 campaign. After his first debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, he claimed that Haitian immigrants in Michigan were eating cats and dogs — a racist conspiracy theory for which there was no credible evidence. A backlash followed. Trump responded by depicting himself embracing cats, ducks and dogs. His supporters shared the images widely online:

“The more ridiculous the photo or video, the more likely it is to dominate our news feeds,” said Adrian Shahbaz, vice president for research and analysis at Freedom House, a nonprofit focusing on democracy and liberty around the world. “A controversial post gets shared by people who enjoyed it and people outraged by it. That’s twice the shares.”

In office, Trump’s use of A.I. became more sophisticated. It’s not clear whether Trump posts the imagery or lets his staff members do so. But he likes to joke about policy issues. When he appointed himself as the head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he published an image depicting himself as a conductor.

Attack formation

Trump has also skewered opponents. During his campaign, he visualized the supposed effects of “open borders,” contrasting two A.I. images: one an idyllic scene, the other an overcrowded one with trash piled out in the open.

This month, he posted a video depicting the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, in stereotypical Mexican garb. The video used A.I. to make it sound as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, were disparaging the Democratic Party.

After the government shut down over a funding fight this month, Trump cast his budget director as the Grim Reaper. The video was created by a guerrilla messaging outfit loyal to Trump. Its leader, Brenden Dilley, a podcaster and former congressional candidate, declined to comment. But during the re-election campaign, he wrote on X: “The truth no longer matters, all you have to do is go viral.”

See more of the images.

THE LATEST NEWS

Washington

President Trump wants the Justice Department to pay him $230 million as compensation for years of F.B.I. investigations. Trump’s demand could be decided by officials who were once his personal lawyers. (An ethics expert told The Times that the arrangement was “almost too outlandish to believe.”) Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s pick to lead the office of the special counsel, withdrew his nomination. Ingrassia lost the support of several Republican senators after Politico reported that he had sent a series of racist text messages. Trump has no immediate plans to meet with Vladimir Putin, a reversal after Trump said last week that the two would meet soon.

The White House

The New York Times

Trump is remaking the White House with renovations to the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the Rose Garden, the West Colonnade and the East Wing. See what’s changing. (A story about the demolition was the most-clicked article in The Morning yesterday.) Someone drove a vehicle into a security gate outside the White House last night. A man was arrested, and there was no threat to the president, the Secret Service said.

More on Politics

Republican state senators in North Carolina approved a new congressional map designed to help their party keep control of the U.S. House. A New York man pardoned by Trump after participating in the Jan. 6 attack has been charged with a new crime: threatening to assassinate Representative Hakeem Jeffries. More than 50 federal agents descended on Lower Manhattan yesterday, brushing past confused pedestrians to detain several men near Canal Street. Protests ensued.

The Trump administration is relying on a 200-year-old legal precedent — stemming from the seizure of an old mare — to defend its deployment of National Guard troops.

Education

The government shutdown means there is, in effect, no Education Department right now. It’s a glimpse of what schools may lose if Trump succeeds in eliminating the agency. An elite Hawaii school’s admission policy gives preference to Native Hawaiians. A new lawsuit calls it “blood-based discrimination.”

The University of Virginia and the Trump administration are close to striking a deal. The school ousted its president in June as part of a monthslong standoff.

Middle East

Vance went to Israel and expressed optimism that the cease-fire deal would hold. He declined to set a deadline for when Hamas must disarm. Trump’s peace plan in Gaza calls for an international security force, but countries that might send troops are wary of danger, an unclear mission and being seen as occupiers. Pro-Palestinian activists welcome the truce in Gaza. But the backlash to their demonstrations, some told The Times, offered sobering lessons about power and politics.

More International News

Outside the Louvre on Monday.  Emma Da Silva/Associated Press

The jewelry stolen from the Louvre was worth over $100 million, the Paris prosecutor said.. Three British neo-Nazis were sentenced last week for “preparing acts of terrorism.” The case highlights a growing threat from right-wing extremism, experts said.

Other Big Stories

Warner Bros. Discovery — the owner of HBO, CNN and a movie studio — says it is considering a sale. A measles outbreak along the border of Utah and Arizona has sickened more than 100 people. It began in a rural town with a large population of unvaccinated children.

Ask The Times: Our executive editor, Joe Kahn, is going to answer readers’ questions about how The Times covers America and the world. Send us your questions.

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.)

According to a recent Times story, a number of former N.F.L. players are becoming:

Circus performers Contractors focused on kitchen renovations Nurses CrossFit instructors

OPINIONS

Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur, in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery, via For Freedoms

Despite the Trump administration’s claims, colonial America was ethnically and religiously diverse. That’s what made its achievements so remarkable, Leighton Woodhouse writes.

Career politicians care more about staying in power than serving the public. Congress needs term limits, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and former Representative David Trone of Maryland write.

Here’s a column by Jamelle Bouie on the “No Kings” protests.

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MORNING READS

Next to Heritage Park, in Staten Island.  Amir Hamja for The New York Times

Waterworks: Colin Jost and Pete Davidson bought a Staten Island Ferry four years ago. It has been nothing but a headache.

Mountaineer: Kilian Jornet gave himself a month to scale, by foot and by bike, the 72 tallest peaks in the contiguous United States. See how he did it.

Testosterone: Some middle-aged women talk about the hormone like a miracle drug that supercharged their libidos. But the side effects can be serious.

Lives Lived: In the 1960s and ’70s, Stephanie Johnson was a busy burlesque dancer in New York City. “I danced in so many mob clubs that I learned Italian,” she said. Johnson died at 81.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Giants quarterback Russell Wilson called the Broncos coach Sean Payton “classless” after comments the coach made about him.

N.B.A.: Michael Jordan made his league debut — in broadcasting. He appeared as a special contributor to the N.B.A. broadcast on NBC on the first day of the season, and he got personal.

Think you know ball? The N.B.A. season begins tonight. Try our basketball culture quiz — no stats here, but you will need to know a bit about Spike Lee and Larry David.

THE MIND’S EYE

At a retreat in New England, Chris Colin immersed himself in darkness for several days. Prolonged sensory deprivation is an ancient practice, though one that fell out of favor in part because participants are at risk of, well, psychic distress.

Ensconced in blackness, Colin writes, his mind created fantasy: “I was now inside a snow cave. The cave morphed into the Milky Way, so vivid that comets zipped by. Soon I was in an old stone fortress. (Habsburgian, I somehow knew.) Moonlight poured through a hole in the roof, bathing the floor in a pale blue and illuminating a column of dust.”

Read about the experience in The Times Magazine.

More on culture

Public benches are suffering death by a thousand armrests. Click the video above to watch. The late night hosts discussed the construction of Trump’s ballroom at the White House.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Armando Rafael for The New York Times

Bake a pumpkin cake with a crispy streusel topping.

Learn how the sausage is made. (Literally.)

Take a stunning fall road trip.

GAMES

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

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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 23, 2025

Good morning. President Trump is demolishing most of the east side of the White House. You may be asking: Can he do that? The answer is yes. We explain what’s happening below, and then we look at how Congress is struggling during the government shutdown.

Then, we have news on Trump’s strikes on boats, the New York mayoral debate and embroidery that is back in style.

A total teardown

Alex Kent for The New York Times

When Trump first announced his plans for his $300 million White House ballroom, he pledged to leave the East Wing alone. “It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it,” Trump said. “And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

Yesterday, The Times reported that Trump now plans to demolish the entire East Wing for the project. The White House determined razing the structure would be cheaper and more structurally sound than building Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom as an addition, an administration official said.

The teardown could be finished as soon as this weekend. It would be a swift farewell to a structure built at the turn of the 20th century, during administration of Theodore Roosevelt, and which for decades has housed the offices of the first lady and her staff.

Marco Hernandez/The New York Times

John Thune, the Senate majority leader, walking into his office.  Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

The abdication

	By Carl Hulse I’m the Times’s chief Washington correspondent.

By almost any measure, Congress is failing. And flailing.

The government is shut down for the 23rd day; many federal workers aren’t getting paid, agencies and museums are closed, and top lawmakers are making no serious effort to resolve the impasse. Congressional staff members have begun referring to themselves as volunteers. The House has not voted since Sept. 19, and Speaker Mike Johnson won’t call members back. He has refused to seat a new Democratic member from Arizona one month after her election victory.

As the Trump administration shifts billions of dollars around to take care of its priorities during the shutdown with scant input from lawmakers, ignoring Congress’s clear constitutional supremacy over the power of the purse, Republicans in control have done nothing to push back. Nor have they exercised oversight of President Trump’s legally questionable military moves off the coast of Venezuela, his imposition of tariffs or anything else that has challenged the authority of their beleaguered institution.

“The Congress is adrift,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. “It’s like we have given up. And that’s not a good signal to the American public.”

No leverage

Trump and his aides have usurped congressional power with little G.O.P. resistance. In many instances, House and Senate leaders have willingly ceded their prerogatives and cheered on the president. The Constitution gives Congress responsibility for levying tariffs, and Trump’s may hurt rural America, but the Republicans who represent it have been mainly silent.

The same goes for the administration’s operations against alleged drug runners from South America. Despite bipartisan support for sanctions on Russia, Republicans reversed course and delayed action because of mixed signals from Trump. He seemed willing to restrain Moscow, then pulled back, then finally imposed sanctions unilaterally yesterday.

Trump himself suggested this week that Congress had little left to do after passing its sweeping domestic policy and tax measure. “We don’t need to pass any more bills,” he told Senate Republicans at the White House on Tuesday. “We got everything in that bill.”

Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

Trump and his Republican allies have steamrolled Democrats this year. Now Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, is employing what little leverage Democrats have by denying Republicans the 60 votes they need to pass a short-term spending bill to fund the government. They want Republicans to extend health insurance subsidies and help millions avoid big premium increases.

But Republican leaders have made it clear that they view their role as subordinate to the president, saying they won’t open talks with their Democratic counterparts unless Trump allows them to do so. And he’ll sign off “as soon as Schumer reopens the government,” the speaker wrote on social media.

Balance of powers

There are evidently some limits to what Congress will swallow. Republicans this week pressed the White House to withdraw the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to head the Office of Special Counsel after Politico disclosed racist texts he had sent.

Senate Republicans also raised the alarm on behalf of cattle ranchers after Trump suggested that he might increase imports of Argentine beef to bolster markets there. The administration showed signs of heeding their calls.

But the funding impasse now has top Republicans talking about a yearlong extension of current federal spending, instead of a new budget. That would further undermine Congress’s authority, shifting the power to shape spending from the once formidable Appropriations Committees to the White House and its budget director, Russell Vought.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in the Rose Garden.  Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

At a White House luncheon with G.O.P. members of Congress on Tuesday, Trump celebrated Vought as “Darth Vader,” for the fear provoked by the man behind the administration’s drive to strip spending power from Congress. “You’re doing a great job, I have to tell you,” Trump told Vought.

Then Senate Republicans applauded the man eager to render them irrelevant.

THE LATEST NEWS

Politics

U.S. Navy personnel in Arroyo, Puerto Rico, last week. Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

The Trump administration again launched a deadly strike on a boat suspected of smuggling drugs. The latest strike was in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean Sea, and killed three people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. The University of Virginia struck a deal with the White House: The government agreed to halt investigations of the school, and the school agreed to follow the administration’s guidance on admissions. Cuts by the Trump administration have eroded America’s cyberdefenses even as foreign adversaries launch more, and more aggressive, cyberattacks.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, spoke on the Senate floor for nearly 23 hours about what he decried as Trump’s authoritarianism.

N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo attacked each other in the final New York City mayoral debate. Election Day is Nov. 4. Read takeaways from the debate. Friends and foes of Mamdani have one thing in common: They keep mispronouncing his name.

War in Ukraine

A kindergarten in Kharkiv, Ukraine, that was damaged in a Russian attack. Sofiia Gatilova/Reuters

Trump’s new sanctions on Russia are a sign of his frustration with Vladimir Putin after their plan to meet fell apart. The sanctions came after Moscow unleashed a broad attack on Ukraine, striking a kindergarten, power plants and other sites and killing six people. Europe is trying to turn frozen Russian assets into cash for Ukraine.

More International News

The graves in Gaza. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Gazans held a mass burial for 54 unidentified Palestinians returned by Israel in the cease-fire deal. China is racing ahead of the U.S. to become the global leader in nuclear power. It has nearly as many reactors under construction as the rest of the world combined.

Business

Tesla’s profit fell 37 percent last quarter. It sold more cars but made less money on each because of discounts and low-interest loans. Intense online stock trading, egged on by Reddit threads, drove up the stock price of the plant-based food company Beyond Meat by more than 1,000 percent. Google says its quantum computer performed a computation in about two hours that a traditional supercomputer would need more than three years to complete.

BETRAYAL IN SYRIA

At a hospital in Syria. Sweida National Hospital CCTV

Syria’s new government promised to end sectarian violence after more than a decade of civil war. Instead, gunmen aligned with — or part of — the new government have massacred religious minorities.

About 2,000 combatants and civilians, a vast majority from the Druse religious minority, have been killed since this summer. Fighters filmed themselves as they carried out murders and other atrocities. Many posted trophy videos on social media. The Times documented at least five episodes in which men in military fatigues executed Druse civilians.

One video shows fighters ordering three members of a Druse family onto an apartment balcony and forcing them to jump to their deaths. Another shows unarmed Druse men marching down the street to their deaths by firing squads.

The Syrian government has condemned the violence and promised to investigate. But our reporting raises questions about the government’s involvement in the massacres. The Times is not showing videos of the deaths, but you can see verified clips from the incidents here.

OPINIONS

The government should make public its legal justifications for attacking boats in the Caribbean. There is no good reason for keeping Americans in the dark, Jameel Jaffer writes.

The war on terror was an era when Americans were sheltered from the military’s vigilante misconduct. We’re now in an era where it is not ashamed of it, David Wallace-Wells writes.

Here are columns by Nicholas Kristof on the Argentina bailout and Lydia Polgreen on the death toll in Gaza.

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

In Sahel el-Tayeb, Egypt. Fatma Fahmy for The New York Times

A beach divided: Two stretches of near-identical coastline in Egypt are distinguished mainly by money, bikinis and booze. One is called “Good,” and the other is called “Evil.”

Poached pears: This dessert actually changed her life.

Luigi Mangione’s missing months: A backpacking trip through Asia seems to have been pivotal for his worldview. The Times spoke with people who encountered him along the way.

Ask Well: Should you really “feed a cold and starve a fever?”

Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a video about New York City’s new benches.

“The female face of punk”: With two tufts of hair on either side of her shaved head and long tendrils of eyeliner swiped across her lids, Susan Lucas turned herself into Soo Catwoman — a fashion icon of London’s 1970s punk movement. She died at 70.

SPORTS

Golf: A college golfer hit a hole in one at an invitational. One round later, he did it again.

N.F.L.: Gerald McCoy, a former defensive tackle, has had five former teammates die before age 40. The latest was Doug Martin, who died in police custody last week.

TRUTH AND THRILLS

Meghan Marin for The New York Times

Kathryn Bigelow is no stranger to tension. Her 2002 film “K-19: The Widowmaker” told a nail-biter of a true story about an accident on a nuclear-powered submarine; “The Hurt Locker,” from 2009, focused on a bomb-defusing unit in the Iraq War (and won her an Oscar). Her latest, “A House of Dynamite,” is about a nuclear missile heading toward the United States.

Manohla Dargis, our chief film critic, visited the director at her house in upstate New York to talk about her career and her new film. “I’d love to initiate, or help initiate, a conversation about reducing the nuclear stockpile,” Bigelow said. Read the interview here.

More on culture

Since Sabrina Carpenter wore a shirt from an embroidery shop in New York, the shop’s owner has gotten nonstop calls. Misty Copeland, the first Black female principal at the American Ballet Theater and one of the art form’s biggest crossover stars, made her final performance last night at Lincoln Center. Late night hosts joked about how Trump is seeking hundreds of millions from the Justice Department as compensation for the investigations against him.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Make chili with rotisserie or leftover roast chicken.

Trap yourself inside a great locked-room mystery book. Hank Phillippi Ryan, a best-selling author of thrillers, recommends her favorites.

Hike through the tundras and wetlands of Norway — or just see what it looked like when our photographer did.

GAMES

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

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 misidentified the state at the center of a conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants. It was Ohio, not Michigan. It also said the N.B.A. season began last night. It began Tuesday.

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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 24, 2025

Good morning. Late last night, President Trump said he was cutting off trade negotiations with Canada. And in Israel, Vice President JD Vance said an international security force would disarm Hamas. It’s not clear what that will look like.

More news is below. But first, we look at a cheating scandal in the N.B.A. and the demolition of the East Wing.

The future of cheating

Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier. Soobum Im/Getty; Nick Wass, via AP

They’re two of the oldest scams in gambling: Rigging a card game and rigging a ball game. Yesterday, federal officials charged dozens of people — including two active N.B.A. figures and several reputed mobsters — in schemes to carry out both.

But these scams were anything but old-fashioned. Each used high-tech methods that wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, according to officials.

The poker scheme: Officials said four New York Mafia families — the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese families — set up poker nights that swindled millions of dollars from unwitting players. Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was charged with playing the role of a “face card,” taking part in the games to attract high rollers.

In some of the rigged games, the poker chip trays had hidden cameras that could read the cards on the table. Sometimes, the cards had markings visible only to people wearing specially designed contact lenses or sunglasses, officials said.

The organizers are also accused of using a card-shuffling machine that could read the cards in the deck and predict which player had the best hand. That information would then make its way back to the table, through a relay of insiders who communicated with cellphones and secret signals.

The basketball scheme: With online betting, prop bets allow individual wagers on nearly every player and every statistic. Now players don’t need to throw a game to make gamblers rich. They just need to miss a shot — or take a seat on the bench.

In March 2023, the indictment says, the veteran guard Terry Rozier told an associate that he planned to pull himself out of a game in the first quarter, citing an injury. Word spread among a group of bettors, who placed hundreds of thousands of dollars of bets on Rozier to under-deliver that night. The bets on his points, assists and 3-point totals paid out — and the gamblers split the proceeds with Rozier, prosecutors said.

More coverage

Billups and Rozier were arrested yesterday morning. The N.B.A. placed them on leave from their teams. Damon Jones, a former player and coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers, was also charged in both schemes. He is accused of sharing inside information about one player who is unnamed in the indictment. The Athletic reports it was LeBron James. The poker indictment added to New York’s rich lineage of mob nicknames. This time, they include “Flappy,” “The Wrestler” and “Juice.”

The former east entrance at the White House. Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress

A demolition

	By Elisabeth Bumiller I’m a former Washington bureau chief.

The East Wing, the entrance to the White House for millions of Americans on official tours, the site of offices for every first lady for nearly half a century and the home of calligraphers who prepared thousands of invitations for White House state dinners, disappeared into a pile of rubble yesterday. It had stood for 123 years.

Built during the Theodore Roosevelt administration as an entryway for guests arriving in carriages, and rebuilt during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the East Wing met its end under orders from Trump. He dismissed it this week as “a very small building” that was in the way of his planned 90,000-square-foot, $300 million ballroom. With it went the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and the East Colonnade, which connected the East Wing to the White House and included the president’s theater. “It’s not just a building,” said Laura Schwartz, the White House director of events in the Clinton administration. “It’s the living history.”

Meeting a need

Joe Biden at a South Lawn state dinner last year for Kenya’s president, William Ruto. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Tearing down the East Wing to make space for the ballroom was an unfortunate necessity, said Gahl Hodges Burt, who was social secretary for three years under President Ronald Reagan. Since the largest spaces in the building have room for 200 seated guests at most, recent administrations have erected enormous tents on the South Lawn for ever larger state dinners.

“Putting up a tent does nothing but make people upset that they’ve come to a state dinner but they never get inside the White House,” Burt said. “The only bathroom facilities for a tent are porta-potties. Setting up a kitchen out there is hugely expensive. When the tent is up, the helicopter can’t land. And the grass dies.” (Ms. Burt was referring to the presidential helicopter, Marine One.)

The top diagram of the White House is based on a 3-D scene from Google Earth. The bottom diagram show a photograph of a physical model taken by Doug Mills. Marco Hernandez/The New York Times

Michael LaRosa, the press secretary to Jill Biden, lamented the loss but agreed that a ballroom was needed: “The French have the Élysée Palace, and here we are having a lawn party.”

A rich history

Dick Cheney beneath the East Wing on Sept. 11, 2001. Everett Collection, via Alamy

During its 123 years, two modern East Wing incidents stand out.

In 2009, in what passed as a scandal at the time, two uninvited guests and aspiring television reality stars, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, slipped into the first state dinner of the Obama administration. They rubbed shoulders with Vice President Joe Biden.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Secret Service agents grabbed Vice President Dick Cheney from his West Wing office and rushed him into a bunker below the East Wing, which had been built as a shelter for Roosevelt during World War II. Cheney headed underground the moment that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

The East Wing never had the political importance or cachet of the West Wing, which houses the Oval Office. But it became prominent, and controversial, when Republicans denounced the expensive new construction, built partly to cover Roosevelt’s new underground shelter, as wasteful.

The first lady’s spot

Laura Bush and Michelle Obama in 2009. Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

The personality of the East Wing was always calmer and less intense than that of the testosterone-filled West Wing. Until Thursday, the ground floor housed the White House visitors’ office and the Office of Legislative Affairs, while the second floor was home to the White House Military Office and the offices of the first lady.

Presidents watched the Super Bowl and showed movies before their release in the theater in the colonnade, which was used as a coat check for big events. During holiday parties, a band would often play Christmas carols just outside the East Wing entrance as guests arrived.

Betty Ford; Bill and Chelsea Clinton watching the Super Bowl with Gov. Ann Richards of Texas. National Archives, Associated Press Photo/Wilfredo Lee

Melania Trump visited the East Wing so infrequently during her husband’s first term that her empty office there was converted into a gift-wrapping room. It is unclear how many times she has been there in the second term, or if she had offered any feedback on her husband’s plans.

For more

The White House released a list of donors who are helping Trump pay for the $300 million ballroom he wants to build at the White House. “The Daily” podcast today is about the demolition. On late night, Stephen Colbert talked about the demolition.

THE LATEST NEWS

Troop Deployments

Trump called off plans to send federal agents into San Francisco. He wrote on social media that “friends” had asked him to reconsider, citing Marc Benioff, the C.E.O. of Salesforce. Who are the federal forces on the street? And what powers do they have? These graphics explain. A protester in Washington D.C. is suing National Guard members and police officers, saying they wrongfully arrested him for playing the “Imperial March” from “Star Wars.”

Boat Strikes

Trump said he would bypass Congress and expand his military operation against drug cartels, which has killed at least 37 people in nine airstrikes at sea. Soon after the U.S. began blowing up boats in the Caribbean, unidentified bodies with burn marks and missing limbs started washing up in Trinidad.

More on Politics

Vladimir Putin called Trump’s new oil sanctions “an unfriendly act” and warned of an overwhelming response if Ukraine were to get the powerful missiles it seeks. The administration says it will allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest tracts of pristine wilderness left in the country. Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering and has done business with the Trump family’s crypto operation. Virginia Democrats plan to redraw House maps, which could give them three extra seats. It’s the latest front in a national redistricting battle.

Four family members of a Republican candidate for Illinois governor, Darren Bailey, died in a helicopter crash. Mayor Eric Adams endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race, casting aside months of bitterness.

Other Big Stories

Kim Kardashian Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times

Kim Kardashian says that she has been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. The highest-ranking prelate of the Anglican Church in North America, a conservative breakaway from the Episcopal Church, faces accusations of sexual harassment, plagiarism and bullying from former employees. The man accused of starting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles, which burned more than 23,000 acres and killed 12 people, pleaded not guilty. Iceland lost the distinction of being one of the last places in the world without a confirmed sighting of wild mosquitoes. A bug enthusiast found three.

OPINIONS

Americans are thrilled with the Louvre heist. It’s because we need a story to escape into, Sloane Crosley writes.

The 2025 World Series will be the last with only human umpires. Savor it, Jane Leavy writes.

CHINA’S CHANGING WORKFORCE

The Chinese dream once followed a simple formula: move to a big city, work hard, and buy a home. But China’s economy is suffering. Young people are struggling to find the kind of lucrative office jobs that were once common after college, and some are rejecting the pressure to pursue prosperity at all costs. Meanwhile, the population is aging, and blue-collar jobs are becoming increasingly attractive.

In response, many workers are finding new careers in the digital gig economy — and in the process, redefining what work looks like. The New York Times profiled some of these workers: a mother helping people navigate China’s bureaucratic hospital system; a lifestyle influencer who urges people to “lie flat” and live affordable, stress-free lives; and a former retail manager who quit her office job to become a licensed electrician.

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MORNING READS

Graham Dickie for The New York Times

Tree pits: Your dog might be peeing on some of New York’s best folk art.

Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about Sabrina Carpenter’s embroidered shirt.

“Tainted Love”: Dave Ball, one half of the English synth-pop duo Soft Cell, died at 66. His bandmate Marc Almond found him, Ball said, because he “heard me making bleepy noises on a synthesizer.”

SPORTS

M.L.B.: The World Series kicks off tonight, with the Toronto Blue Jays taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers. Here are our experts’ predictions.

Olympics: Winter Olympic hopefuls have spent the past few months training on roller-skis, water-ramps, airbags — anything but snow — during the offseason. See how Team USA does it.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Ken Burns

“Almost all of American history is division,” the documentarian Ken Burns said recently. That’s true today, of course, but it was also true during the Revolutionary War — an era that has taken on a sentimentality that often strips it of nuance.

Burns’s new project, “The American Revolution,” set to air on PBS next month, aims to strip away the nostalgia. His team drew on two dozen historical consultants, and their differing views appear onscreen not as an argument, Jennifer Schuessler writes, “but as a kind of chorus — a reminder that the Revolution meant, and still means, different things to different people.”

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Smother chicken in gravy.

Choose the right running shoes for you.

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

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

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, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 25, 2025

Good morning. The good things in our lives are the result of fantastic webs of interconnected prerequisites.

María Jesús Contreras

Personal history

	By Melissa Kirsch

Consider the gratitude journal, in which you write three things each day that you’re grateful for. It’s similar to the gratitude jar: Each time you think of something worth appreciating, you write it on a slip of paper and drop it in, to be read at the end of the year. These activities, in modern wellness vernacular, would be considered part of a gratitude practice, the consistent and intentional effort to acknowledge the good things in your life. Gratitude, it’s been shown, is good for our mental health, our relationships and maybe even our physical health.

I have my own version of a gratitude practice, and I find it so effective at shifting my perspective that I feel like I need a whole separate gratitude practice for gratitude itself. But I get a little uncomfortable talking about it because I’ve seen the same hashtags and semi-smug social media posts that you have, the same living-room art with cursive script on distressed wood about the “attitude of gratitude” The concept has been so commodified, overprocessed, merched-up, that it seems as if there’s little else to say about it — call it the platitude of gratitude.

Lately, however, I’ve been meditating on what I’m grateful for and the process has gotten a little more ornate. I will think of something small — say, this weird little deck of “wisdom cards” that I draw from each morning as a sort of daily fortune cookie. Then I think about how my friend Melanie gave me the deck and how generous and playful she is, and how lucky I am to know her. But I wouldn’t know her if I hadn’t taught creative writing with her in a summer program in the 1990s. I wouldn’t have had that job if my friend Alden hadn’t recommended me for it, and I wouldn’t know Alden if I hadn’t gone to graduate school with her, and I wouldn’t have gone to graduate school without the encouragement of my undergraduate writing professor, and I wouldn’t have taken her class if not for … you get the picture.

It’s almost a game, tracing the present-day gratitude back through all the causes and conditions that gave rise to it. It’s also immensely satisfying, and mystifying — look how many things had to transpire in order to bring this deck of cards into my life. Simple gratitude is focused on a one-to-one relationship: These cards make me happy. Thinking through this circuit of prerequisites amplifies the gratitude, scales it, brings me into contact with the multiple interdependent factors necessary to bring these cards into my life.

As with all things related to gratitude, this isn’t an original practice. Buddhists have the concept of dependent origination. In Judaism, there’s “recognizing the good.” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote of “an inescapable network of mutuality.” We’re all connected, related, dependent on one another, but of course we forget this all the time. We forget that every action we take has a whole cascade of unintended consequences. We forget that we’re a factor in someone else’s circuit of gratitude, a link in innumerable chains. And so often we feel separate, lonely, disconnected. One way to challenge that feeling is to start with one small thing you’re grateful for. Then trace the gorgeous, improbable but very real sequence of variables that brought you the object of your gratitude. It may seem a little corny at first, but it works.

THE LATEST NEWS

Latin America

The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford in the North Sea in September. Jonathan Klein/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.S. deployed an aircraft carrier, and its accompanying warships and attack planes, to waters off Latin America, a major escalation of the operation in the Caribbean. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced that the U.S. had struck another ship in the region, killing six. In all, the U.S. has killed 43 people in 10 strikes. The White House has made no legal argument explaining its claim that it can summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs. Yet the campaign continues — a sign of the law’s weakness as a check on presidential power, Charlie Savage writes. The U.S. announced economic sanctions on Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, after he criticized the operation in the Caribbean.

More on Politics

Trump said a private donor — whom he described as a personal friend and a “patriot” — had given the government $130 million to help pay troops during the government shutdown. That comes to around $100 per service member. Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, pleaded not guilty to fraud charges brought by Trump’s handpicked federal prosecutor in Virginia. The Justice Department will monitor polling sites in California and New Jersey, two Democratic-led states with big races and issues on the ballot.

Other Big Stories

Consumer prices were up 3 percent in September, compared with a year earlier. Prices for a range of goods have risen in recent months as a result of Trump’s tariffs. The U.S. is flying surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip to ensure that both Israel and Hamas adhere to their fragile cease-fire agreement. The F.D.A. approved a new drug to treat hot flashes and night sweats in menopausal women.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film

Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. Macall Polay/20th Century Studios, via Associated Press

Our critic says “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” about an anguished time in Bruce Springsteen’s career, is a “solid, very likable, very affecting drama.” Read the review. The film largely sticks to the facts of Springsteen’s life — though it does give him a fictional girlfriend. Here’s a guide to what’s real and what isn’t. “Bugonia” is not Yorgos Lanthimos’s weirdest film, nor his funniest, nor his most fun. It’s mostly kind of sad, our critic writes. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” imagines unseen corners of California. Our photographer took a road trip to find them. Devon Sawa made millennials swoon in “Casper” and “Now and Then.” Thirty years later, he’s made peace with his heartthrob era.

Music

After the release of Taylor Swift’s latest album, an aquarium in California and a museum in Germany are feeling her Midas touch. Tom Morello, the firebrand guitarist from Rage Against the Machine, pulled songs from his catalog for a new musical about activists in Chicago. The National Symphony Orchestra now opens all its performances with the national anthem. It’s the latest change Trump has made at the Kennedy Center.

More Culture

Medieval folks had sex, too. At the Met Cloisters in Manhattan, paintings, statuettes and other objects show the timelessness of human desire. Broadway averted a strike that could have done serious damage to an already challenged industry. The puzzle video game Keeper, from the studio behind Psychonauts, is a mind-blowing adventure with bizarre creatures and whimsical art. The villains on preschool TV shows are cuddly, annoying and … morally interesting? “Paranormal Activity” is back. This time, the scares are onstage.

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CULTURE CALENDAR

? “Finding Mr. Christmas” (Monday, Hallmark Channel): Last year Hallmark, the biggest player in the Holiday Movie Industrial Complex, ramped up its Yuletide production efforts with this reality show. Ten hunks compete in challenges — unraveling tangled lights, cutting down trees, decorating ugly sweaters — to win a starring role in a Hallmark movie. (The first season’s champion got to play the part of Max, a dog shelter owner, in “Happy Howlidays.”) Check it out if you’re the type who likes to start the holiday season before trick-or-treaters hit the streets.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Armando Rafael for The New York Times

By Melissa Clark

Shrimp in Purgatory

A clever take on an Italian classic, Sarah DiGregorio’s shrimp in purgatory replaces the usual runny eggs with seafood. Roasted red peppers and capers are an especially tangy contrast next to the sweetness of the shrimp. A festive 25-minute dinner that would also make for an elegant brunch, it’s perfect for when you’re craving something spicy, garlicky and tomato-filled. Serve it with toasted bread and maybe some white wine or coffee depending on when, and with whom, you share it.

REAL ESTATE

Eileen and Michael O’Connor Katherine Marks for The New York Times

The Hunt: After passing on the Upper East Side, a couple ventured down to Battery Park City with a budget under $600,000. Which home did they choose? Play our game.

What you get for … $3 million in New Zealand: a steel-clad modernist house; an apartment with hotel amenities; or a sprawling lodge on five acres.

Buzzy décor: People are putting wasp nests in their homes. On purpose. “To me it’s art,” said one collector, who has some 150 of them.

LIVING

A martini at Gus’ Sip & Dip in Chicago. Lucy Hewett for The New York Times

Getting dirty: The classic martini isn’t cutting it anymore. Bartenders are in an arms race to make their brines even brinier.

Travel: Planning a trip to Miami? Our guide includes a quiet white-sand beach, the city’s first skyscraper and a Cuban-themed cocktail bar.

Ask the Therapist: “I relocated for my wife, and now I’m miserable. What should I do?”

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

How to shop secondhand like a pro

There are many reasons to shop secondhand — some tangible, some pleasurable. But it requires patience, strategy and a bit of luck. Wirecutter journalists went on missions to unearth the best secondhand tableware, designer clothes and vintage furniture and came back with a slew of practical tips. First, it helps to go in with some goals: Is the thing you’re looking for durable, repairable, even buy-it-for-life? Are you searching in trustworthy places? How will you know you’re getting what you pay for? A little know-how can make it easier to weed out the lemons and score some real hidden treasures. — Katie Okamoto

GAME OF THE WEEK

Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers in Game 1. Dan Hamilton/Imagn Images, Via Reuters Connect

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Toronto Blue Jays, World Series: Baseball hasn’t had a repeat champion since the Yankees did it 25 years ago. The Dodgers are knocking at that door, while Toronto is looking to win its first title since the early days of the Clinton administration.

The Athletic’s World Series preview highlights many of the most compelling matchups. Here’s one: Dodgers pitchers struck out nearly 25 percent of batters this season, the highest rate in the National League, while Blue Jays batters struck out at the lowest rate in baseball. Toronto won that battle in Game 1, emphatically, hitting a grand slam as part of an 11-4 rout.

Game 2 is tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were impediment and pediment.

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

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Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 26, 2025

Good morning. The French police made arrests in connection with the Louvre heist, the authorities said. We’ll start there, and then take a deeper look at the growing prominence of horror movies in Hollywood.

A forensic team at the Louvre. Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

News from the Louvre

The police have made arrests in the Louvre jewelry heist, the French authorities said.

One man was arrested at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was trying to leave the country, the Paris prosecutor said. It is unclear how many people were arrested in the robbery; she said that it was too early to provide further details and that she would provide more information after the police finish questioning the suspects.

It was not immediately clear if the police had recovered the jewelry, which is worth more than $100 million.

This is a developing story. Read updates here on the breakthrough in a case that has put an uncomfortable spotlight on security lapses at the museum.

For more:

The robbery shook France’s fragile pride at a time when the national mood was already low, Roger Cohen, our Paris bureau chief, writes in an analysis. We asked former jewelry thieves about the heist. They said they thought it had to be an inside job.

Jay L Clendenin/Getty Images

Favorite haunts

	By Tom Wright-Piersanti

It’s the season for scary movies. After I put my kid to bed on Friday, I plan to watch “The Shining” for the 300th time. Maybe you’re planning a “Friday the 13th” marathon. The home screen of every streaming service is full of options this week.

But for Hollywood, spooky season is a year-round affair. As the movie industry struggles to get people into theaters, horror is a bright spot. The genre has accounted for a growing share of ticket sales over the past decade. And this year, it hit a new high — 17 percent of the U.S. box office, more than drama and comedy combined.

Why is horror soaring? I asked Brooks Barnes, The Times’s chief Hollywood correspondent, to help me understand.

Tom: First, we should establish some horror bona fides. Do you have a favorite scary movie? Is there a limit to how scary you can go?

Brooks: I have a gore limit. My horror sweet spot is probably creeping dread, like when Clarice descends into the basement in “The Silence of the Lambs,” or when the cemetery Rottweilers are circling in the original “Omen.” My first horror movie was “Children of the Corn,” which I rented on VHS in secret as a fifth grader and watched alone.

You must have been terrified by yourself! People like getting scared together at the movies, right? I checked the Times archives from 1974, after “The Exorcist” came out, and we wrote that the movie was “drawing long lines at box offices from coast to coast.”

Horror has helped float Hollywood for generations, from the classic monsters of the 1930s to the B movies of the 1950s to the slasher films of the ’80s to the current boom in what I would call auteur horror — complex originals like “Sinners” or “Get Out.” And the reason is simple: It’s fun to be scared with other people. These movies play well in a crowded, dark room. Date night is also a factor: I’m scared! Let’s hold hands!

So what is going on with horror now? What makes this moment different?

Horror has become one of Hollywood’s last reliable ticket sellers. Dramas have almost disappeared from theaters — people are happy to watch those on streaming — but it’s hard to replicate that group scare dynamic at home. So studios have started to make more horror movies, which have the added benefit of being cheap to produce. Thirty-five will arrive in wide release this year, up from 18 in 2018.

Source: the-numbers.com (Nash Information Services). Note: Figures for 2025 are at an annualized rate. Karl Russell/The New York Times

How much horror is too much? Is there a limit?

Absolutely, and we’ve probably reached it. There have been big horror hits recently — “The Conjuring: Last Rites” is currently hovering around $500 million worldwide, and “Weapons,” an original about vanished children, has taken in $267 million. But there have also been a lot of flops. Those include “Wolf Man,” “M3GAN 2.0,” “The Woman in the Yard,” “Him” and “The Toxic Avenger.” Some of them were just bad movies, but the number of disappointments suggests market oversaturation.

At-home streaming and rentals are a big reason people stopped going to theaters. Do we know if horror movies are performing well there, too?

They perform OK in the home, in part because they’re perennials — people go looking for scary movies to watch around Halloween every year. Studios also time theatrical releases with home viewing in mind: “Weapons” and “The Conjuring: Last Rites” came out in theaters in August and September in part so they would arrive on streaming and rental platforms right about now. Over my husband’s objections, I paid $20 to rent “Last Rites” on Monday night.

Objections? Why?

$20 for a digital rental? That’s horrifying!

More on spooky season

Disturbing or funny? Grounded or supernatural? Our new quiz will help you find a good scary movie to watch. Or rewatch “Scream,” the self-aware-yet-scary 1996 slasher, and join our writers in the comments to chat about it. Wesley Morris, the host of “Cannonball,” says his favorite scary movies are the ones that eschew cheap jump scares for a sense of dread. On a new episode, he talks with a film curator about the scariest movies they’ve ever seen.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump’s Trip to Asia

President Trump with other leaders in Malaysia today. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

President Trump is in Asia this week. He is seeking to cast himself as a global deal maker and mediator. In Malaysia, he presided over a peace-deal ceremony between Cambodia and Thailand, whose brief war in July is one of the conflicts he has taken credit for ending. Trump said the deal would lead to the release of 18 Cambodian prisoners of war, a term the Thai prime minister said he agreed with. The biggest test lies ahead: talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

Politics

Trump said he would punish Canada with an additional 10 percent tariff on its goods. The move comes amid a feud over a TV ad that used audio of Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs. Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and Trump supporter, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to help pay the troops during the government shutdown. “I am not done.” Kamala Harris gave her strongest indication yet that she was considering running for president again.

Other Big Stories

Red sprites captured from New Zealand. Tom Rae Photography

These “red sprites” have appeared over New Zealand. See more rare photos of this atmospheric phenomenon. Argentina is holding critical midterm elections today, which are a key test of whether voters still back President Javier Milei’s cost-cutting experiment. The death of Daniel Naroditsky, a 29-year-old grandmaster, stunned the chess world. Some are accusing a Russian champion of bullying him by insinuating that he had cheated online. A Rutgers fraternity has been permanently closed after a hazing episode that critically injured a student.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Should we be scared of an A.I. bubble?

Yes. The correction is coming, and the damage will spread from Silicon Valley to the global markets that depend on it. “What’s unfolding now makes the dot-com bubble look almost quaint,” Chris Kremidas-Courtney writes for Euractiv.

No. A.I. spending is on trend with general tech spending and hasn’t reached its peak yet. “It is driving a large share of current U.S. economic growth, and if it were to end suddenly there would be unpleasant consequences, but at this point there’s nothing especially alarming,” Bloomberg’s Justin Fox writes.

FROM OPINION

It’s important to discuss the dangers of pregnancy. But it’s just as important to talk about the joy, Irin Carmon writes.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn brought a portrait of Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar enslaved in the U.S., back to the river that most likely carried him away from his home in Africa. It was a gesture of remembrance, she writes.

Here is a column by Ross Douthat on the White House renovations.

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MORNING READS

NASA

A close read: Astronauts were not only explorers. They were also photographers.

Vows: A Coachella encounter led to love and lots of caviar.

A mother in “Lassie”: Americans were searching online for June Lockhart, who exuded earnest maternal wisdom and wistful contentment on “Lassie” and the futuristic “Lost in Space,” two mid-20th-century TV classics. She died at 100.

SPORTS

Baseball: The mood is festive in Toronto, despite tensions between Canada and the U.S. The World Series is now 1-1 after the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays last night 5-1.

Football: Here’s the Week 8 round table.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times

	By Elisabeth Egan

“Joyride,” by Susan Orlean: Over the course of her four-decade career, Susan Orlean has written about animals and orchids, a library fire and a 346-year-old tree. The subjects of her books and her articles in The New Yorker, where she’s a staff writer, are eclectic, yet somehow we fall in love with them by the end. In “Joyride,” her rollicking memoir, Orlean turns a gimlet eye on her own life, from her childhood in suburban Cleveland to her first job at a weekly magazine in Portland, Ore., to her ascension to the highest ranks of journalism. Along the way, she delivers a masterclass on writing and the powers of observation that lead to sparkly prose.

More on books

In “Unabridged,” Stefan Fatsis delves between the covers of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. Read our full review here. In the mood for a locked-room mystery? Start here.

THE INTERVIEW

Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times

This week’s subject for The Interview is the legendary actor Anthony Hopkins, now 87, whose new memoir, “We Did OK, Kid,” will be published on Nov. 4.

We all have turning points in our lives, but you have a specific one. Can you tell me about what happened on Dec. 29, 1975, at 11 o’clock?

I’m always slightly reluctant to talk about it because I don’t want to sound preachy. But I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout, no clue where I was going, when I realized that I could have killed somebody — or myself, which I didn’t care about — and I realized that I was an alcoholic. I came to my senses and said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, “I need help.” It was 11 o’clock precisely — I looked at my watch — and this is the spooky part: Some deep powerful thought or voice spoke to me from inside and said: “It’s all over. Now you can start living. And it has all been for a purpose, so don’t forget one moment of it.”

It was just a voice from the blue?

From deep inside me. But it was vocal, male, reasonable, like a radio voice. The craving to drink was taken from me, or left. Now I don’t have any theories except divinity or that power that we all possess inside us that creates us from birth, life force, whatever it is. It’s a consciousness, I believe. That’s all I know.

There’s another epiphany in the book that I’d like to go back to. You were driving in Los Angeles in the late ’70s, and you felt a pull to go over to a Catholic church. You went inside and told a young priest there that you had found God. What is God to you?

What happened that morning — when that voice said: “It’s over. Now you can start living and it has all been for a purpose” — I knew that was a power way beyond my understanding. Not up there in the clouds but in here. I chose to call it God. I didn’t know what else to call it. Short word, “God.” Easy to spell. I recently wrote a piece of music that was conducted in Riyadh, a goodbye on piano and orchestra. [The piece was called “Farewell, My Love.”] And as I was composing, it came to me that that’s it. We come full circle and we dip down to that’s all, folks, it was all a dream anyway.

Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Balarama Heller for The New York Times.

Read this week’s magazine.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Watch “Mistress Dispeller,” a haunting documentary about a woman in China hired to break up a relationship.

Build a burger truck, a fox or a pirate ship — all in Lego.

Prepare for autumn weather with cozy accessories.

MEAL PLAN

Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Spencer Richards.

Emily Weinstein recommends this crispy gnocchi with sweet corn kernels, pesto and melted cheese. It’s a great weeknight option — especially if you have kids. Or, if you’re cooking for children who don’t want foods to touch on the plate, separate the salmon and the noodles in this dish.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

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

Can you put eight historical events — including the end of the samurai, the building of the Eiffel Tower and the discovery of Pluto — 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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 27, 2025

Good morning, and happy Monday. Here’s what’s happening today:

Asia tour: President Trump is in Japan. He met with the emperor and is scheduled to meet the new prime minister tomorrow. Trump ally: Javier Milei, Argentina’s budget-slashing president, won big in midterm elections. It’s a sign that many voters still back his austerity policies. Russia: Vladimir Putin said his country now had a nuclear-powered missile.

We look at Hurricane Melissa and America’s Halloween candy choices. But first: Is A.I. a bubble?

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Reality check

	By Evan Gorelick I’m a writer for The Morning.

How well is the stock market doing? That now depends, almost entirely, on artificial intelligence and the companies that make it.

Those companies, concentrated in Silicon Valley, are spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Investors think this tech is the future, so they’re snapping up shares. By one estimate, 80 percent of U.S. stock gains this year came from A.I. companies.

Does it feel like a bubble? Big names like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan) and David Solomon (Goldman Sachs) worry we’re on the cusp of a correction. They warn that valuations are getting too high and that eventually, reality may bite. And if those companies plunge, they’ll take the economy with them.

But nobody is acting like we’re in trouble. The S&P 500 has notched more than 30 record highs this year. The wisdom of the bet rides on a basic question: Is A.I. a boom or a bubble? Here are the arguments.

A boom

If A.I. tech can keep getting better, then A.I. companies can keep getting more valuable.

Many believe it. These companies assume that building out A.I. infrastructure — more chips, more data, more power — improves the technology coming out the other end.

This is called the “scaling hypothesis.” It helps explain why Nvidia and AMD recently announced $100 billion deals to install their chips in OpenAI’s data centers; why Amazon is spending more than $100 billion on A.I. data centers this year; why Meta will spend more than $600 billion over the next three years; and so on.

Sales at Nvidia jumped 56 percent last quarter. That could mean more growth ahead, justifying the dizzying share prices and massive investments. My colleague Joe Rennison, who covers financial markets, sums it up nicely:

Valuations have risen very quickly, but that’s because the main companies like Nvidia have had the earnings to back them up. We haven’t sated demand for chips yet, so we don’t know what the ceiling is.

Steady spending has allayed worries on Wall Street. Companies haven’t lost faith in A.I., so investors haven’t either.

A bubble

But what if A.I. doesn’t quickly transform the economy? Then, businesses and users won’t grasp as eagerly for it. That could spell ruin for investors who’ve staked their financial futures on an A.I. revolution.

Seven tech companies now account for more than a third of the value of the S&P 500 and trade at prices 70 times higher than their earnings, on average. And while nearly eight in 10 businesses already use generative A.I., just as many report “no significant bottom-line impact” from doing so.

The spending spree, explains my colleague Cade Metz, who covers A.I., is based on faith:

They’re banking on those scaling laws continuing indefinitely. They’re assuming that these really smart people at these companies will keep coming up with new ideas.

These investments, in other words, are speculative. Companies like Oracle are taking on billions in debt under the expectation that the tech will advance, but there’s no guarantee. OpenAI is still losing money, and many A.I. companies continue to buy from and invest in each other in “circular” deals, my colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote this month.

If it becomes clear, at any point, that A.I. will fall short of expectations, then investors will pull back, and the bubble will pop.

The stakes

We’ve been here before. In the late 1990s, investors poured their money into internet-based companies. Telecom firms built out infrastructure — tens of millions of miles of fiber-optic cables — to support the anticipated boom.

It was a bubble. The profits never materialized, so investors sold off their shares and the companies collapsed. The Nasdaq lost more than three-fourths of its value, and it took 15 years to recover.

This time, the companies involved are much bigger. Yet unlike their dot-com forerunners, they’re actually earning some money. Just not as much — for now — as investors hope.

More on A.I.: Big tech companies are making the Cal State college system a training ground for A.I. tools in education.

SEX-TRAFFICKING CORRIDOR

On “The Blade,” a 50-block stretch of Los Angeles where sex trafficking is rampant. Katy Grannan for The New York Times

Ana paces down the sidewalk, her front teeth missing and an ostomy bag taped under her hot pink lingerie. She’s 19, but many around her appear younger, writes Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, a reporter in Los Angeles.

On this notorious street in South Central Los Angeles, preteens hobble in stilettos and G-strings, waving down cars to help meet their traffickers’ quotas. Ana got her start like many other girls: She was a foster kid, then a runaway, then a trafficking recruit. It all began when she was 13. At first, her trafficker demanded she make $800 a night — roughly half a dozen customers. The quota later rose to $1,200.

This stretch, known as “The Blade,” is just an eight-minute drive from the University of Southern California. It’s the one place in Los Angeles where no car seems to honk: Customers wait politely, as if in line at a drive-through, to peruse the menu and take their pick.

Investigators have tried for years to pull minors off the streets. But progress has been limited. Many girls fear the police. They know their traffickers will punish them if it seems they’re cooperating.

The volume of child sex trafficking has exploded since the pandemic, when many girls were out of school and immersed in social media, where traffickers lurk. At the same time, the resources for L.A.’s vice squads shrunk, and changes in the law made it harder for the authorities to intervene.

Now, the streets are getting busier; traffickers, more brutal; the police, more frustrated. This economy, built on the desperation of vulnerable children, is thriving.

Read the full story here.

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia Tour

Trump is expected to meet with Xi Jinping this week. Chinese and American negotiators have already agreed to the outlines of a deal on tariffs. Japan’s new leader is facing a test: Can she win over Trump? Asian diplomats are bracing for Trump’s bombast, days after he abruptly ended tariff talks with Canada, David Sanger writes.

More on Politics

Today is the 27th day of the government shutdown. Unpaid federal workers have started to rely on food banks, which cuts to federal programs had already stretched thin. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said he would consider after the midterms whether to run for president. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Zohran Mamdani at a major rally in Queens. Early voting has started in the New York mayor’s race; Election Day is next week.

Hurricane Melissa

In Jamaica. Octavio Jones/Reuters

Hurricane Melissa is now a Category 5 storm. It could be one of the strongest ever to hit Jamaica. Meteorologists predicted about three feet of rainfall. At least four people have died in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where some areas are facing flash flooding and landslides.

Israel and Gaza

A memorial site to Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank. Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

When the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed in the West Bank three years ago, the U.S. said that Israel was “likely responsible.” But it said there was no reason to believe the shooting was intentional. Privately, some American officials thought it was. Mahmoud Abbas, the 89-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority, said the role would pass to his deputy if he died or stepped down. Egypt sent experts to Gaza to search for the bodies of hostages.

More International News

The Sudanese paramilitaries on one side of the country’s civil war seized an army headquarters in Darfur, which had been their last major obstacle to controlling the region. Diphtheria — a horrific disease that a vaccine can prevent — is resurgent in parts of Africa. Children aren’t getting vaccinated because war and climate change have displaced their families and because vaccine hesitancy is spreading online. Two Navy aircraft went down in the South China Sea within half an hour of each other, the U.S. said. Their crew members were rescued and in stable condition.

OPINIONS

Trump is running the U.S. like a casino. And the house — the already rich — always wins, Kyla Scanlon writes.

Roger Rosenblatt loves being in his 80s. It is a decade of less selfish thinking and more time and freedom to give to others, he writes.

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

In Maine.  Ryan David Brown for The New York Times

Can that pumpkin float? See videos from an experimental regatta.

Pumpkin spice in Europe: The Belgians are intrigued. The Italians? Not so much.

Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about arrests in the Louvre heist.

Judaism and social justice: Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who died at 92, sought to make worship more spirited and egalitarian — and called on Jews to work for peace and the environment.

SPORTS

Nick Mangold in 2012. Ben Solomon for The New York Times

N.F.L.: Americans were searching online for news about Nick Mangold, a former All-Pro center for the New York Jets, who died at 41 of complications from kidney disease.

College football: L.S.U. fired its coach, Brian Kelly, less than 24 hours after losing to Texas A&M.

Baseball: Game 3 of the World Series is tonight. Read our predictions.

TRICK-OR-TREATED

Morgan Ione Yeager for The New York Times

You can learn a lot about the American psyche from the candy we’re buying before Halloween. Here are some trends.

Chocolate waning: This may be an inflation indicator — prices are up at a time when some people are struggling to keep the porch lights on. Tariffs are part of the rise in chocolate prices.

Maximalism rising: Extremely sour candy and chile-coated gummies are becoming more popular. Why? It may be because we’re living “virtual, repetitive and isolated” lives and are looking to feel something, a food analyst said.

Eternal candy corn: It’s the most divisive staple of the spooky season. But it has become more popular online because it stars in ASMR and restocking videos.

Read more about Halloween candy trends here.

More on culture

Spanish police recovered a stolen Picasso, weeks after it disappeared on its way to a museum. A Norman Rockwell piece that once hung near the Oval Office will go up for auction next month in Dallas.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.

Bake these gooey double chocolate chip cookies.

Watch a scary movie in the run-up to Halloween.

Choose a carry-on that actually fits in the overhead bins.

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were amenity and anytime.

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

[phkrause]

October 28, 2025

Good morning. Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm, is heading directly for Jamaica. It is spinning with 175 m.p.h. winds and is forecast to dump nearly three feet — not inches — of rain on the island. The nation’s prime minister warned that no country in the Caribbean could withstand a storm this powerful. Follow the latest updates.

Jamaica, a small country that relies on tourism, will likely be devastated. At least three people have already died during preparations for the storm. Only about 1,700 people had evacuated by last night — even though officials think that the hurricane will displace about 50,000 people.

Melissa has rapidly grown stronger because Caribbean water temperatures are far warmer than usual. The hurricane is expected to slam into Cuba after Jamaica, but it will likely bypass the United States. Track its path.

Inside the storm: A hurricane-hunter flight entered Melissa’s eye, where birds are trapped but skies are blue. See the tremendous wall of wind and rain they found.

We have more news below. But first, we explain how the anti-vaccine movement is crossing species lines.

Desiree Rios for The New York Times

Long shot

Childhood vaccination rates have fallen. Once-vanquished diseases, like measles, are resurgent. Last month, Florida said it would end vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren.

What happens when anti-vax sentiment grows from a seed of doubt into a cultural movement? Two recent Times stories examine what that looks like on the ground. Some doctors now back patients who forswear vaccines. And some pet owners even tell their veterinarians not to inoculate the pooch. Here’s a look at our reporting.

A clinic for doubters

Pia Habersang at her clinic in Amarillo, Texas. Nick Oxford for The New York Times

Pia Habersang, a registered nurse, tells parents that vaccines with small amounts of aluminum salts can accelerate toxicity in the body and worsen the condition of kids who have a genetic predisposition to autism. “The autism increase, there has to be a reason,” Habersang told Edgar Sandoval, a Times reporter who visited her clinic, which offers solace to vaccine-hesitant families, in Amarillo, Texas.

Parents I spoke to say the measles outbreak in West Texas this year — in which hundreds were infected and two young girls died — had not shaken their vaccine skepticism. Instead, they said, financial motivations explain the number of vaccines that children now require. “You used to trust the government’s science — in my opinion, it’s all money-driven now,” said Gianni Amato, who is married to a nurse and wonders if his son became autistic as a result of being vaccinated.

This echoes the position of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Parents at Habersang’s clinic shared their stories with me in large part because they feel validated by the Trump administration’s stance.

Victoria Rodriguez at an appointment for her daughter Jazlynn Rodriguez, who is nonverbal and autistic. Nick Oxford for The New York Times

Habersang is a registered nurse with a doctorate in child and youth studies from Nova Southeastern University in Florida. As required by Texas law, she runs the small practice under the supervision of her physician husband, Rolf Habersang, who once served as the head of pediatrics at the Texas Tech medical school. Dr. Pia, as her patients call her, attributes a rise in autism to the fact that children receive more shots now than they did generations ago. “I am not for or against vaccines,” Habersang said. “I’m for safe vaccines.”

But doctors point out that kids’ actual exposure to antigens in those shots is actually lower than it was in the 1990s. Aluminum salts in tiny amounts — often measured in the one-millionth of a gram — have been added to vaccines since the 1920s to enhance their immune-stimulating effect. Experts say it’s safe.

Yet about 80 percent of parents in Habersang’s clinic choose not to vaccinate their children, or stop vaccinating them before completing all the recommended immunizations, she said. In Texas, the percentage of kindergartners without all their recommended immunizations has nearly doubled over the past five school years. Read about what parents are saying.

Fearing ‘pawtism’

Jimena Peck for The New York Times

After the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Kelly McGuire, a veterinarian in Colorado, found herself having long, sometimes adversarial discussions with pet owners about vaccines. Some accused McGuire of pushing them so she could profit. Increasingly, they have insisted on spacing out shots or refused vaccines altogether, including for deadly and incurable viruses like rabies, report Emily Anthes and Teddy Rosenbluth.

There was a dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted a bacterial disease carried by rodents. Several canine patients had such severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition,” McGuire said. And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had to euthanize a 20-week-old puppy with seizures. Those pets would likely have survived had they received their recommended vaccines, she said.

A 2024 survey estimated that 22 percent of dog owners and 26 percent of cat owners could be classified as vaccine-hesitant. They are often the same ones who’ve shied away from human shots. This spillover is not entirely surprising in a society where many people view their pets as full-fledged family members.

Kelly McGuire Jimena Peck for The New York Times

Some pet owners even say vaccines could lead to cognitive and behavioral changes in their pets, including conditions like autism. “It is out there — the concept of ‘pawtism,’” said Brennen McKenzie, a veterinarian in California. (Autism does not exist in other species.)

Veterinary medicine has attracted its own crop of anti-vaccine influencers, who sow doubt about vaccines. Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, recently published a book about what it calls the “tremendous harm” caused by annual vaccines in pets.

Experts fear all this could lead the nation down a familiar path, resulting in a loosening of animal vaccination laws, a decline in pet vaccination rates and a resurgence of infectious diseases that pose a risk to both pets and people. Read more about pet owners’ vaccine skepticism.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump in Asia

President Trump met Japan’s new prime minister as part of his six-day trip to Asia. The visit was heavy on flattery, but the leaders signaled no breakthrough in trade negotiations. Japan pledged to make a huge investment — equal to a tenth of its economy — in the U.S. over the summer. It was an effort to stay in Trump’s good graces, but the new prime minister now has to decide whether to stick to the deal. Trump is scheduled to meet with Xi Jinping of China this week. A possible trade deal could restore the U.S.-China relationship — and solve a crisis of Trump’s own making. Erica Green, a White House reporter, explains the stakes of his six-day trip through Asia. Click below to watch.

Politics

Trump told reporters that he “would love” a third term. It’s unconstitutional, but musing about it is a political boon, Jess Bidgood writes. Trump also said that he’d had a “perfect” M.R.I. He declined to say why his doctors had ordered one. Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, talked to The Times about his guilt as a parent after the firebombing of his home this year. It was his most detailed account yet of the attack.

Gerrymandering

Mike Braun, the Republican governor of Indiana, called a special legislative session yesterday to redraw the congressional map to benefit his party. Virginia lawmakers are preparing to redraw maps to help Democrats.

Government Shutdown

The biggest union of federal workers urged Congress to immediately reopen the government without the health care measures sought by Democrats, effectively siding with the Republicans. Tens of millions of Americans may lose assistance for food and child care within days if the government does not reopen.

A.I.

Photo Illustration by Mark Harris

Saudi Arabia exported oil for decades. Now, it has set its sights on another coveted export: A.I. computing power. Elon Musk unveiled his own, A.I. version of Wikipedia. Entries will be edited by xAI, his artificial intelligence company.

International

Produce for sale in Deir al Balah, Gaza.  Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

More food is reaching Gaza. But relief workers say most of it seems to be for sale, not to give out, and many Gazans say they cannot afford it. The world’s oldest president, Paul Biya of Cameroon, is set to serve another term. He would be nearly 100 years old by the end of his next term. A U.N. human rights commission said Russia committed war crimes by using drones to drop grenades on Ukrainians. In Sudan, the military has withdrawn from a key city in the west after a bloody, monthslong battle against a paramilitary group, the army chief said.

Other Big Stories

The CBS News anchor John Dickerson is leaving the network. It’s the first sign of a shake-up after Bari Weiss, a conservative columnist, took over the news division. Bill Gates, who has spent billions raising the alarm about the environment, now says that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”

OPINIONS

Partisans are wrong. To win competitive districts, moderation is key, the editorial board writes.

Nearly every major sports-gambling scandal centers on individual player performance. Banning those kinds of bets would limit the damage overall, Joon Lee writes.

Michelle Cottle writes about a standoff between Mike Johnson and a representative-elect.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

Keeping it weird: Spend some time with posters from Yorgos Lanthimos’s films.

Counting steps: Is one long walk better for you than many short ones?

Your pick: The most-clicked article yesterday went inside the trafficking of girls in Los Angeles. Read it here.

Metropolitan Diary: A rush-hour opportunity.

Electric-bass virtuoso: Anthony Jackson, a funk master, is credited with helping to invent the six-string contrabass guitar. He died at 73.

SPORTS

World Series: After 18 innings, the Dodgers won Game 3 with Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer. They have a 2-1 lead in the series over the Blue Jays.

N.H.L.: A fan was hospitalized after falling from an upper deck at a Penguins game. It was the third such fall this year for a sports venue in Pittsburgh — and the second in three days.

“Sports Equinox”: Yesterday, the N.F.L., N.B.A., M.L.B., N.H.L. and M.L.S. all competed at the same time.

DAEMONS AND DISCOVERY

Philip Pullman Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Philip Pullman is done with Lyra Silvertongue.

Pullman, the British author who penned the beloved “His Dark Materials” trilogy, has now published the final book in the universe. And this Lyra is older and more brooding than the mischievous, stubborn child who saved the universe in “The Golden Compass.” (So is Pullman, now 79.)

He kept writing, he told Sarah Lyall in his home in Oxford, England, because he wanted to see where life would take his character. Yes, she had helped save the universe, but she was still so young in the earlier books.

“What’s she going to do for the rest of her life?” he asked. He went on, “She needed another adventure. Besides, she was getting to a stage in her life where interesting things go on.”

More on culture

Jeremy Allen White has earned acclaim for his role as Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” But he’s still unsatisfied: “I never felt like I got it,” White told The Times. Watch him sing in this close look at a key scene. Late night hosts joked about Trump’s claims of considering a third term.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Prop Stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas.

Bake apple cider doughnuts in just 35 minutes.

Party, eat and sightsee in just 36 hours in Miami.

Thrift for true treasures.

GAMES

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

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

[phkrause]

October 29, 2025

Good morning. Hurricane Melissa is in Cuba, where it just passed Guantánamo Bay. It’s heading north after slamming into Jamaica as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes of all time. The winds, blowing through trees and towns, have slowed, and it is now a Category 3 storm. You can track it here.

We have everything you need to know about Melissa below. We’re also covering President Trump’s latest comments about a third term and the possibility of a blockbuster public offering from OpenAI.

In Jamaica. Matias Delacroix/Associated Press

In the dark

	by Lauren Jackson and Evan Gorelick We are writers for The Morning.

Melissa is twisting across Cuba, its eye passing over the long, thin island’s eastern shores. Cubans are huddled in the dark, many far from home. The country evacuated about 750,000 people, who are now searching for safety as winds whip and land slides in the fierce rain. Cuba’s president said it would be a “very difficult night.”

As dawn arrives in the Caribbean, the damage will become clearer. Yesterday, the storm’s center sliced through Jamaica, where boats washed ashore, roofs blew away and trees splintered under 185 m.p.h. winds. Officials reported catastrophic damage. Most people there are cut off from the internet and major airports are closed.

The New York Times

Melissa lost some of its strength as it crossed Jamaica, and it is now propelled by 115 m.p.h. winds. While hurricanes often pick up speed and strength over water, they can slow when they meet the resistance of land, trees and towns. The storm is crossing “rugged terrain” in Cuba, officials said, and it is expected to continue to slow as it moves north. Melissa’s rain is also reaching Haiti, parts of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos.

What happened?

Melissa is one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record — stronger than Katrina, which pummeled New Orleans in 2005 — and the most powerful ever to hit Jamaica. On the map of the storm, its angry red center seemed to consume the entire outline of the island.

The full scale of the damage is difficult to know. The storm knocked power and cut communications for much of Jamaica, making it hard for officials to assess the extent of the destruction. It also complicated our reporting. Yesterday, during The Times’s daily news meeting, our top editor asked for an update on the storm. An international editor replied that our reporter on the ground had lost signal. “We’re hoping to hear from him soon,” she added.

A few hours later, our team did hear from Jovan Johnson, who was in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. He sent us this update late last night:

Several of us who camped out in our newsroom tried to step outside Tuesday, but we just couldn’t conquer the howling wind. Power grew unstable, phone calls dropped easily. Then came images of despair — damaged hospitals, schools, homes. I saw a clip of the roof of my former high school lifted to the sky. I went into Tuesday’s dark night without power, worried about the scale of the destruction that Wednesday will unveil.

Photos and videos emerging on social media have begun to document the damage, showing damaged cars and debris. Parts of Jamaica are “under water,” a disaster-response leader said in an afternoon news conference. Flooding and storm surges damaged at least three hospitals, and local response teams said the country’s health care system was having “one of its most severe crises in recent memory.” Jamaica’s prime minister declared the country a disaster area.

We’ll get a clearer sense of the damage in Cuba, too, later this morning. You can follow updates here.

A displacement disaster

The storm has forced many people from their homes, as officials repeatedly warned residents to find safe cover.

In Jamaica, only 15,000 people had entered the country’s 800 shelters by yesterday afternoon. The country has a population of nearly three million. But in Cuba, hundreds of thousands of people left their homes. Some boarded crowded buses, while others packed a few belongings into plastic bags and hiked up muddy mountains, searching for safety. See photos.

In Cuba yesterday. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Today, Melissa threatens to overwhelm Cuba’s fragile infrastructure. Before the storm, the nation had already been battling a deepening economic crisis and frequent blackouts. The storm has plunged much of the country into darkness, with power failures reported in the east, according to the national electricity company.

It’s a disaster that leaders in the Caribbean have been warning for years could be coming. Melissa was strengthened by Caribbean water temperatures far warmer than usual, a sign of climate change’s burden on small island countries. “It has become a tired adage, but nonetheless true. The world’s poorest countries will suffer the most from climate change despite being least responsible for it,” my colleagues Max Bearak and Lisa Friedman write.

What is next

Budget cuts and reduced donations will reduce the amount of food that aid agencies like the World Food Program can provide to people facing hunger, contaminated water and disease outbreaks. The U.N. stored disaster aid in Barbados before hurricane season and is looking to deliver it to Jamaica when airports reopen.

Still, Trump said the U.S. was prepared to help Jamaica. “On a humanitarian basis, we have to, so we’re watching it closely,” he said.

Melissa is expected to remain an intensely destructive force in the coming days as it passes through the Caribbean, while bypassing the United States.

For more: See the wall of wind and rain inside Melissa’s eye. (This video was our most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday.)

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia Trip

South Korea said it reached a deal with the U.S. on tariffs. Trump is in South Korea as part of his six-day visit to Asia. He met with the country’s president, who offered him gifts and flattery. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, plans to meet with Trump in South Korea tomorrow, Chinese officials said. While traveling, Trump seemed to concede that he cannot seek a third term. “I guess I’m not allowed to run,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “So we’ll see what happens.”

Latin America

The Trump administration bombed four more boats in the eastern Pacific that it claimed were smuggling drugs, killing 14 people, officials said. Pentagon officials involved in the growing military campaign, off the Central and South American coasts, have been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, Reuters reports. That’s unusual: Officials are already required to preserve military secrets.

The U.S. tried to persuade the pilot of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, to fly him into U.S. custody, The Associated Press reports. The U.S. offers a $50 million bounty for Maduro’s arrest. Trump’s threat to cut off aid to Colombia jeopardizes U.S. antidrug efforts and other security arrangements, security analysts say, including what they say is a covert C.I.A. presence there.

Trump’s Crackdowns

Note: National Guard deployments to Chicago and Portland were temporarily blocked by a court order. Elements of the District of Columbia National Guard were activated and deployed to Washington, D.C.  Lazaro Gamio/The New York Times

Trump said he was prepared to send “more than the National Guard” into cities. (This chart shows where he has deployed Guard members.) A federal judge admonished the Border Patrol for using force and tear gas in Chicago.

Politics

Two dozen states sued the Trump administration for refusing to fund food stamps during the shutdown, now in its 29th day. Millions of people could lose SNAP benefits this weekend. The Texas attorney general sued the makers of Tylenol, claiming they hid evidence linking it to autism. The link is unproven. A House committee issued a report claiming, without evidence, that Joe Biden was too cognitively impaired to make his own decisions as president. Which New York City mayoral candidate do you most agree with? Take our quiz.

Other Big Stories

The Israeli military struck Gaza overnight, killing at least 100 people, officials there said. Israel accused Hamas of violating the cease-fire agreement. Hamas denied doing so. OpenAI has restructured to become a for-profit company. That could pave the way for it to go public. A flight from Chicago to Germany diverted to Boston because a passenger attacked two teenagers with a fork during meal service, prosecutors said. Ten people are on trial in Paris for online harassment of Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady.

12 HOURS IN THE SMOKE

Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Wildfire fighters in the U.S. are getting sick and dying young.

To find out what they’re exposed to, Times reporters brought sensors to the Green fire, an average-size blaze, this summer. They tracked levels of some of the most lethal particles in the air, called PM2.5, which are so tiny that they can enter the bloodstream and cause lasting damage. On the fire line, readings were often triple the concentration considered hazardous. (Our reporters wore respirators — which the firefighters don’t have.)

See the maps and videos of what these firefighters face — and how much poison they inhale as part of their work.

OPINIONS

New York City has rarely had a mayoral election so transfixing, or with such critical stakes. Fourteen panelists assessed the candidates’ qualifications and visions.

Here’s a column by Thomas Edsall on Trump as a Mafia don.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

Pope Leo with his gift. Vatican Media

Hometown pride: The leader of an Eastern church, who happens also to be from Chicago, gave Pope Leo a Cubs jersey. As a reminder, for anyone buying a gift for the pontiff, he is a White Sox fan.

Fast but not furious: Long stretches of Germany’s highways don’t have speed limits. That came in handy for our new Berlin bureau chief — a notoriously cautious driver in the U.S. — when he had to race to make a Wilco concert with his son.

A British TV icon: Prunella Scales, who acted for almost seven decades, was best known as Sybil Fawlty, the unflappable foil to John Cleese on “Fawlty Towers.” She died at 93.

SPORTS

World Series: It’s 2-2 after Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a two-run homer for the Blue Jays, who beat the Dodgers 6-2. Game 5 is in Los Angeles tonight.

N.F.L.: Read our Week 9 power rankings.

SLIP AWAY

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

For theatergoers, it produces an all too familiar sinking feeling. You open your playbill and a piece of paper flutters out, alerting you that a member of the cast is out and someone unexpected will be performing.

Soon, though, those slips will be replaced by QR codes. Understudies will mourn their loss. “This is a little piece of paper that makes sure they’re acknowledged by the people who are watching them,” said Julie Benko, an understudy in the recent “Funny Girl” revival.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Lennart Weibull for The New York Times

Toast grilled cheese in the oven.

See Bess Wohl’s “Liberation,” which opened on Broadway last night to a rave from The Times.

Watch “Down Cemetery Road,” an adaptation of the first thriller by the author of “Slow Horses,” on Apple TV+ tonight.

Read “Tom’s Crossing,” a Western set in 1980s Utah that our reviewer called “an epic about epics.”

Discover the best electric scooter, according to the scoot smarties at Wirecutter.

GAMES

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

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.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

[phkrause]

October 30, 2025

Good morning. President Trump and Xi Jinping struck a deal this morning in their first meeting since Trump opened a trade war against China. Xi agreed to postpone controls on critical rare earth minerals, Trump said. Trump also said the U.S. would reduce tariffs on Chinese goods. It’s, in effect, a yearlong truce in the countries’ intense economic feud.

We have more on the deal, and Trump’s tour of Asia, below. We’re also covering the latest news from Hurricane Melissa, the Louvre heist and Wall Street.

President Trump and Xi Jinping today.  Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Trump’s tour

	by Lauren Jackson and Evan Gorelick We are writers on The Morning.

This morning, as President Trump was arriving in Busan, South Korea, for a meeting with Xi Jinping, he made a threat on social media. He said the U.S. would begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time in more than 30 years.

His post heightened the stakes of an already fraught conversation on trade, and the mood was tense when Trump arrived. The leaders shook hands, then Trump did all of the talking about striking a deal. Xi was silent.

After an hour and a half of negotiations, though, the leaders emerged with an agreement: China, which has tightened its controls on rare earth minerals used to make cars, phones and fighter jets, would postpone those strict new rules for a year. Separately, Trump said he would halve the 20 percent tariffs he had imposed to pressure China to do more to fight fentanyl trafficking.

The deal wraps up Trump’s tour of Asia. Over the past six days, he has hopscotched the continent chasing trade pacts and peace agreements. “Trump came here seeking deals, plain and simple,” says Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent who is traveling with the president. He seemed to get what he wanted. As Trump boarded Air Force One to head back to Washington this morning, he waved and pumped his fist.

Today’s newsletter looks at the Busan meeting and what Trump accomplished.

A meeting with Xi

One of the biggest issues facing Trump and Xi was how to handle China’s extensive restrictions on exports of rare earth metals. These are minerals with obscure names that the rest of the world can’t live without, our colleague Keith Bradsher writes.

China has been restricting them for more than a year, and the export controls have given Beijing enormous leverage. Trump came seeking concessions, and China agreed to lift some limits — but not all of them.

In response, Trump offered to reduce some tariffs on Chinese goods. This would bring overall tariffs on Chinese goods to around 47 percent, he said. (See our tariff tracker.)

The two leaders also agreed to a détente. They said they would extend a truce on tit-for-tat tariff escalations for one year, Chinese officials said. To sweeten the deal, China would purchase “massive amounts” of American soybeans, Trump said. “Our Farmers will be very happy!” he wrote on social media. Neither Xi nor Trump mentioned nuclear weapons or testing in the meeting.

Xi is a careful student of Chinese history who has responded to Trump’s trade war with steely determination. Still, Trump seemed to be happy with the outcome. On a scale of one to 10, he said he would rate his meeting with Xi a 12.

Trump’s deals

This week was about seeking reprieves for some of the trade problems Trump helped create, writes Ana Swanson, who covers trade. Katie told us from South Korea:

Trump has used the strength of the United States’ economy to wrestle his allies on tariffs and trade, and he has said repeatedly throughout this trip that America is the “hottest” country in the world. It’s something he says often at home, but it has a different resonance across the world, where he is all but compelling governments and companies to invest in the United States economy.

Beyond his deal with China, here’s what else Trump secured:

South Korea: Seoul will invest up to $200 billion over a decade and set aside another $150 billion for its American shipbuilding operations. It’ll also buy 103 planes from Boeing, the White House said. The U.S. will lower tariffs on South Korean goods to 15 percent, from 25 percent. Japan: The country promised in July to invest $550 billion in the U.S. economy, and Trump lowered tariffs. During Trump’s visit, we learned where the money will go — A.I., nuclear reactors and elsewhere. Some pledges are not new. Many are not finalized. Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam: They agreed to work with Washington on export controls, sanctions and access to rare minerals — all of which help contain China. Trump said. Malaysia had agreed to invest $70 billion in the U.S., and Thailand had agreed to buy 80 American planes. Tariff rates stayed the same.

Trump also presided over a peace deal ceremony between Cambodia and Thailand and said he would reopen dialogue with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

A flattering trip

Asian leaders showered Trump with praise and adulation. South Korea’s president presented him with the nation’s highest honor for promoting “peace on the Korean Peninsula” and a replica of a golden crown excavated from an ancient tomb. (“I’d like to wear it right now,” Trump said.)

Officials in Japan and Cambodia told Trump they would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump and Japan’s new prime minister shared lunch at a gold-trimmed palace. On the menu was something unusual: American rice, along with American beef, “deliciously made with Japanese ingredients,” a White House statement said. Click the video to see how the new prime minister bonded with Trump:

More on nuclear power: Trump’s nuclear announcement may have been a response to Vladimir Putin, who said yesterday that Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-powered underwater drone designed to cause a tsunami that could devastate a coastal city.

HURRICANE MELISSA

Abbie Townsend for The New York Times; Yamil Lage/AFP, via Getty Images; Matias Delacroix/Associated Press; Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters

The full scope of destruction brought by Hurricane Melissa, now a Category 2 storm, is beginning to come into focus. Officials and rescuers in several countries are still mapping out recovery efforts and counting the dead.

At least five deaths are confirmed in Jamaica, officials said, and 23 in Haiti. Melissa is moving through the Bahamas and is set to hit Bermuda tonight.

Follow live updates and see photos and video of the destruction. Here’s what we know so far:

Jamaica: The storm devastated the country to an extent never seen before, a U.N. official said, adding that it had directly affected more than a million people, a third of the population. One port town, Black River, “has literally been totally destroyed,” according to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who saw it from the air.

Haiti: Children were among the 23 people confirmed dead. Dozens of people are missing.

Aid: The U.S. will help with disaster relief.

THE LATEST NEWS

Economy

The chip maker Nvidia is now worth $5 trillion, a record for a publicly traded company. The Fed cut interest rates for a second time this year. Officials were worried about the labor market, though job and spending statistics are on hold during the government shutdown.

Middle East

More than 430,000 Syrians have had to flee their homes in the year since the civil war ended, the U.N. says, driven by sectarian violence. Israel’s military released a drone video that it said showed Hamas members staging the recovery of hostage remains. The Times analyzed the footage and found that a body bag was shown to Red Cross representatives, then reburied and unearthed again.

Louvre Heist

The French police arrested five more people in the Louvre jewelry theft, the Paris prosecutor said this morning. The two men who were already detained have “partially admitted” to the theft, officials said. The authorities have yet to recover the jewels.

More International News

A Ukrainian soldier launching a reconnaissance drone. Reuters

Russian soldiers entered Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian stronghold. Street battles are raging in the city. A socially progressive party tied for first place in the Dutch elections with the far-right party of Geert Wilders, who had forced the election but suffered major losses.

The W.H.O. said it received reports that more than 450 people had been massacred at a hospital in a Sudanese city that paramilitaries recently seized. Bears have mauled more than 100 people in Japan this year. The government is preparing to send troops to stop them. A large police operation targeting drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro left more than 130 people dead, the deadliest crime crackdown in the city’s violent history.

Politics

Obamacare prices will go up by about 30 percent for a typical plan if Congress doesn’t extend subsidies, new data shows. The subsidies are a sticking point in the shutdown. The Trump administration said it killed another four people on boats it claimed were trafficking drugs in the Pacific Ocean.

Other Big Stories

The Justice Department put two federal prosecutors on leave after they described those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 as a “mob of rioters.”

Andrew Cuomo has criticized Zohran Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized apartment. But a Times investigation found he once lived in one himself.

A white former sheriff’s deputy in Illinois was convicted of murder for shooting Sonya Massey, a Black woman who had called 911 seeking help.

COLD PLUNGE

Kelvin Aitken/VWPics, via Alamy

Bowhead whales live a long time. Like, a really long time: 268 years.

For more than 1,000 years, the Inupiat people of Alaska have hunted the giant mammals, which can weigh as much as three garbage trucks. Generations of captains noticed the same individual whales at sea, over and over again. Some bowheads caught in the late 1900s had harpoons lodged in their blubber that dated to the mid-1800s.

New research reveals a possible source of the whales’ longevity: The Arctic water where they live puts stress on their bodies, and the proteins they make to protect themselves appear to extend their lives. Other mammals have that protein, too, but bowheads have much more. When scientists inserted the right bowhead gene into human cells, the rate of DNA repair in those cells doubled.

OPINIONS

Conservationists have spent too much time protecting animals and not enough supporting their coexistence with people, Arthur Middleton, Justin Brashares and Kaggie Orrick write.

Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens discuss the government shutdown.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

Karine Jean-Pierre Rob Kim/Getty Images

A tour to forget: The rollout for a new memoir by Karine Jean-Pierre, the Biden administration press secretary, has gone about as badly as it could. (Read her disastrous New Yorker interview and a searing review in The Washington Post.)

Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about a man who attacked two teenagers on a plane with a fork. The plane was diverted.

Sudden fame: Bjorn Andresen, who died at 70, attracted the world’s attention when he was 15 for his performance as an object of desire in the 1971 film “Death in Venice.” He came to resent how the movie used him.

SPORTS

Trey Yesavage achieved 12 strikeouts across seven innings. Kiyoshi Mio/Imagn Images

World Series: The Blue Jays beat the Dodgers, 6-1, in Game 5. That put them one win away from their first victory since 1993. Game 6 is in Toronto tomorrow.

N.B.A.: The players’ union will appeal the league’s decision to put the Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier on unpaid leave after his arrest over accusations about a gambling scheme.

PAGE TO SCREAM

Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, explains three Stephen King movie adaptations in the video above. One of them, “The Shining,” has an entirely different ending in the book. And a famous character from the movie version of “The Shawshank Redemption” gets just a few paragraphs in the written story.

“There’s something that, in my opinion, is inherently cinematic about the way he writes,” Gilbert says of King. Click the video to watch.

More on culture

Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author, said the U.S. revoked his visa. He has been a vocal critic of Trump. Late night hosts joked about Asian leaders flattering Trump.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Bake crispy tomato-oregano chicken.

Try this energizing yoga routine. Just 10 minutes and low intensity. You can do it!

Choose a Halloween soundtrack, with songs from Björk, Florence + the Machine, Kate Bush and more.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were include and included.

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.

Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to this newsletter.

Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

[phkrause]

October 31, 2025

Good morning and Happy Halloween. Today, we’re taking you to a few places. First, we’ll go inside the Supreme Court, where the relationship between the few liberal justices is straining. Then, we look at Jamaica, where the damage from Hurricane Melissa is becoming clearer. And finally, in Sudan, we assess new evidence of executions.

Plus, an update from Britain: The king will strip Prince Andrew of his royal title and kick him out of his house, according to a dramatic statement from Buckingham Palace. (Read it in full from the BBC.)

Joan Wong

Legal dispute

	By Adam B. Kushner I’m the editor of this newsletter.

There are only three liberal justices on the Supreme Court — and they are not on the same page. They are responding very differently to their lack of influence as conservative justices yield to President Trump and burnish his executive power. And, according to a story published today, their relationship is straining.

In one camp, Justice Elena Kagan believes in building consensus and picking off conservative votes to avoid the most extreme rulings. In another, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s newest member, is more confrontational. Her opinions speak more to the public — and to history — than to her conservative peers, whom she sees as beyond persuasion.

Jodi Kantor has spent months reporting on their relationship. I asked her about her scoop, which published today.

Adam: The tension you describe mimics a dynamic on the left generally. It is disorganized, demoralized, factional. One side favors pragmatism — say, running pro-life Democrats to help the party retake the House. The other says anything short of confrontation will normalize unlawful or corrupt policies. It’s fascinating to know this tension exists even on the Supreme Court.

Jodi: Yes, and the setting intensifies it. This is a world of formality and decorum. Even writing “I dissent” instead of “I respectfully dissent” is considered a bold move. And Jackson has gone far beyond that.

Kagan and Jackson are both Harvard-trained Democratic appointees. Yet they’re very different jurists.

Supreme Court justices have a rule that they’re not supposed to insult their colleagues or the institution. It’s fine to express strong legal disagreement but nothing accusatory about other justices. Judges are supposed to be examples of stability, not figures who thwack each other over their disagreements. But that puts the liberal justices in a predicament: They’re outnumbered, three to six, and they are very worried about the court’s recent decisions. How can they vent their alarm?

Justice Kagan, appointed in 2010 to be a diplomat and strategist, is capable of punching hard, but she shows her frustration only in flashes. When the court rejected President Biden’s student loan cancellations in 2023, she deleted the most heated material from her dissent, I learned in my reporting. Justice Jackson aims directly at the right side of the court, accusing them of being clueless about racism, favoring “moneyed interests” and enabling “our collective demise.”

This has led to tension — between Jackson and the two senior liberals, and between Jackson and the rest of the court.

In which camp does Justice Sonia Sotomayor fall?

She is now the senior liberal, assigning dissents and keeping many of the most important ones for herself. In those, Sotomayor disagrees forcefully, but she also values her long relationships at the court, people close to her say, and mostly keeps her focus on the legal judgments.

The customary move would be for Jackson, the junior justice, to sign on and say no more. But sometimes she adds her own thoughts, going beyond the senior justice. “Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more,” she wrote earlier this spring when the court limited the power of federal judges to curtail Trump’s power.

Sotomayor and Kagan worry that their newer colleague’s candor and propensity to add her own dissents have diluted the group’s impact.

Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Pool photo by Chip Somodevilla

It’s frustrating to be in the minority. But as the baby justice, Jackson endures extra humiliations and limits.

By tradition, the junior justice serves on the cafeteria committee and answers the door to the justices’ private conference room in case of a knock. The chief justice has referred to these as hazing rituals. More important: In those meetings, in which justices speak in order of seniority, she talks last. So unless there’s a tie, it’s tough for her to have any influence. People close to her say this is part of why she aims to speak more directly to the public.

We’re not used to reading stories like this from inside the court.

The Supreme Court is secretive. But in journalism, scrutinizing the powerful is Job No. 1. In the past three years, The Times has worked to understand more about these singular jobs, the people who fill them, how power flows inside the marble walls, and — as in this article — what kinds of dilemmas the justices face. Anyone who has tips can reach me at nytimes.com/tips.

Learn more about how Kagan uses her diplomacy — and why Jackson took a different approach.

HURRICANE MELISSA

In Black River, Jamaica. Abbie Townsend for The New York Times

As the clouds of Hurricane Melissa cleared and power slowly returned, Jamaica got a clearer look at the damage the storm had caused. Floodwaters gouged asphalt roads. Roaring winds sheared the roof off an elementary school and sent beams splintering onto the desks below.

St. Elizabeth, where the hurricane made landfall, appears to be ground zero of the disaster. A courthouse, library, churches and other historic buildings were reduced to rubble. “The area is totally flat,” the local police superintendent said.

Officials have not announced a death toll from the storm because they have not yet confirmed the numbers, said Desmond McKenzie, who is leading the emergency response. But in Haiti, officials said at least 30 people died.

Now Jamaica faces a long, daunting road to recovery. Britain, France and several of Jamaica’s Caribbean neighbors have pledged assistance.

THE LATEST NEWS

National Security

For some, Trump’s unexpected order to resume nuclear testing recalls the worst days of the Cold War, David Sanger and William Broad write. (Read more about how America tests nuclear bombs.)

Some analysts say China won a major victory in its talks with Trump: Getting the U.S. to suspend a national security measure that limited its access to advanced technology.

Food Stamps

A line for a food pantry in New York City. Marco Postigo Storel for The New York Times

Food stamps lose federal funding on Saturday. Some older Americans who can’t line up at food pantries or get second jobs are “just praying.” In court, the Trump administration defended its decision not to fund the SNAP program during the government shutdown. The judge appeared frustrated. Louisiana’s governor, a Republican, said the state would use emergency funds to keep some food assistance flowing.

More on Politics

The Trump administration will admit no more than 7,500 refugees this fiscal year, down from 125,000 during Biden’s last year in office. It will prioritize white South Africans. How much more might you have to pay for Obamacare? See charts to find out. Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and a handful of other officials moved out of civilian homes and now live in military housing.

Sudan

Videos circulating online show horrific scenes of violence, including executions, in El Fasher, a besieged city in the Sudanese region of Darfur, since paramilitary forces captured it last weekend. The images have stoked fears that Darfur is plunging, once again, into a cycle of genocidal violence of the kind that made it a focus of global politics two decades ago.

Other Big Stories

Big tech platforms are again accelerating their A.I. spending, despite concerns about a bubble. After Jeffrey Epstein died, JPMorgan Chase filed a report alerting the U.S. government to tens of millions of dollars of potentially suspicious transactions involving him and prominent Wall Street and business figures. Two men died in basements because of flash flooding in New York City, the police said. See more video of the flooding, which followed sudden, record-setting rains, from CNN. New details reveal that the Louvre thieves were good, but not flawless: They had a surprisingly frazzled exit and left a trove of evidence.

BOO!

OK McCausland for The New York Times

Are Halloween decorations getting scarier? For some, simple witches and ghouls don’t cut it anymore. Now you can find front-lawn displays featuring dismembered bodies, decapitated heads and the most creeptastic clowns. Skeletons are taller — and shriek when you pass by. Zombies gesticulate and drool flesh.

It’s driving a Halloween spending spree. Americans are expected to drop $4.2 billion on decorations this year, up from $1.6 billion in 2019.

But some say the jump-scares are getting out of hand — peeking out from stoops, looming in doorways, hanging from rafters, covering the lawn with blood. Just look at some of these unnerving specimens. Neighbors have lodged complaints. Little ones are crying. It makes you wonder what kinds of twisted impulses lurk in the American psyche. Happy Halloween! ?

Related: Trump passed out candy for Halloween. (He didn’t wear a costume.)

OPINIONS

Damon Winter/The New York Times

The Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion. The U.S. has regressed on all of them.

Why did Lynda Barry’s grandmother laugh at the scary parts of horror movies? Because after surviving World War II, she knew monsters were real.

Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg on a Senate campaign that won’t die and John McWhorter on mispronouncing Zohran Mamdani.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

The Obituary was born in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Cedric Angeles for The New York Times

Back from the dead: The Obituary, a New Orleans cocktail, is beloved for its absinthe — and its name. Now, like martinis, it’s having a resurgence.

Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a disastrous book tour.

Trending: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?” Billie Eilish asked a room of rich people, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Give your money away, shorties.”

A life bewitched: Patricia Crowther, who has died at 97, was a high priestess of Wicca and among the most prominent of England’s 20th-century witches, defending them against accusations that they turned men into toads and flew around on broomsticks.

SPORTS

Colleges: L.S.U. parted ways with its athletic director, Scott Woodward.

M.L.B.: With the World Series moving north to Toronto, so have ticket prices. The average ticket resale price for Game 6 is close to $1,900.

W.N.B.A.: The league and its players’ union agreed to a 30-day extension to negotiations over athlete pay and other issues.

TRICKY TREATS

In Detroit.  Todd Heisler/The New York Times

After the Halloween festivities are finished, make sure to inspect your kids’ candy. Not for razor blades — that’s a myth — but to see if their haul includes any actual chocolate.

Climate change is eating away at our sweets. Prolonged droughts, extreme heat and irregular rainfall patterns have suppressed cocoa yields in West Africa, driving up prices. Many candy-makers have developed cheaper recipes that no longer officially qualify as milk chocolate. Rolos, for example, are now wrapped in “rich chocolate candy.”

More on culture

Wole Soyinka at home in 2021. Yagazie Emezi for The New York Times

Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author, said the U.S. revoked his visa. He has been a vocal critic of Trump. The Studio Museum in Harlem has a new home. The building took seven years to complete, but our architecture critic says the result was worth the wait: It redefines 125th Street. Even Helen DeWitt can’t decide if her bewildering co-written novel, “Your Name Here,” is a work of genius or a total mess. On late night, Jimmy Kimmel said he agreed with Marjorie Taylor Greene about health care.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne.

Fill your kids’ stomachs with these 10-minute quesadillas before they get candy tonight.

Find unexpectedly good makeup at your local drugstore.

Listen to the actor Nick Offerman extolling the virtues of building things with your hands, on “The Wirecutter Show.”

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

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

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, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

[phkrause]

November 1, 2025

Good morning. Daylight saving time ends tomorrow. The decrease in daylight can be destabilizing — and clarifying.

María Jesús Contreras

Quality time

	By Melissa Kirsch

The hour between dog and wolf, or “l’heure entre chien et loup,” if you prefer, is, I think you’ll agree, the dreamiest way to refer to twilight. (I will entertain arguments for “the gloaming” and “the violet hour,” but I don’t suspect litigants will get very far.) It’s that time just after sunset when the atmosphere is still partly illuminated by the sun, when the light is ambiguous and the sky can’t choose between blue and black. Night hasn’t yet fully fallen and we are in the borderland between day and dark. One might be forgiven, in this threshold moment, for mistaking a dog for a wolf, for mistaking safety for danger, for feeling slightly off.

Daylight saving time ends tomorrow. That first Sunday in November is a full day suspended between dog and wolf. We’re still grasping at the corn-silk tendrils of summer just as winter gets more insistent. An undertide of confusion persists: Evening car accidents increase, circadian rhythms reset, the moon’s out before dinner. That space in between is strange and destabilizing until we get used to it.

Each year I assume there’s a wolf hiding in the earlier sunsets, that there’s a certain sorrow implicit when daylight decreases. The dog days are literally and metaphorically over. In the northeast U.S., spring and summer are seasons you can pet. Fall and winter have fangs.

Not everyone feels this. I always consult my friend Leigh at this time of year to try to catch some of her glee. “License to hunker!” she nearly bellowed at me when I reminded her we change the clocks tomorrow. “Sorry, it’s 4:30, I can’t do anything more today. Time to have a drink and watch your shows!” I love her delirium, and I want to borrow some of it to wear like a shawl until spring.

The ancient Greeks experienced time in two ways. Chronos was the clock time that governs our lives, bedtime and estimated departure time, the hour gained or lost. Kairos referred to a more figurative measure of time — the right time, the moment of opportunity, the sacred window for action. In order to recognize kairos, we have to be aware, awake, present. Madeleine L’Engle wrote: “The child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos.”

When I think about the mystical possibilities of kairos, it seems mundane, boring, uncreative to be blue about a lost chronological hour. In any season, there is kairos. These moments of possibility, of serendipity, arrive in all seasons, but we have to be awake to seize them. The stillness of the colder, darker months — that license to hunker — is a time to slow down and observe. What windows of luck and chance and coincidence emerge when we’re a little quieter, a little more observant? I’ll be observing the sun setting an hour earlier tomorrow, wondering about kairos, those moments of opportunity in the offing that the clock and the calendar can’t touch.

THE LATEST NEWS

Government Shutdown

A grocery store in Manhattan. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

A judge ordered the Trump administration to continue paying for food stamps during the shutdown. The program had been set to run out of funds today. Insufficient staffing at air traffic control facilities set off a second day of widespread delays at airports, including those serving New York City. Trump has urged Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster so they can end the shutdown, though some worry that doing so could backfire.

More on Politics

Ohio became the latest state to redraw its congressional map. The changes could help Republicans pick up two more seats in next year’s midterm elections. Vice President JD Vance said that he hopes his wife, Usha Vance, who was raised in a Hindu family, will eventually convert to Catholicism. He faced quick backlash on social media. There’s a growing divide among Republicans over trade: Some in the party oppose Trump’s plan to import beef from Argentina, and senators voted three times this week to end the president’s power to enforce sweeping tariffs.

Other Big Stories

Jamaica raised its death toll from Hurricane Melissa to 19 people, and officials expect that number climb as the worst-hit areas are searched. OpenAI has used complex and circular deals to fuel its multibillion-dollar rise. These charts show how. A.I. is making death threats more realistic, enabling online harassers to generate images showing their victims in imagined violent situations.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Fine Arts

Maurizio Cattelan’s “America.” Sotheby’s, via Associated Press

An 18-karat gold toilet can be yours for $10 million — or whatever the flushable sculpture happens to be worth a few hours before the auction begins next month. Thieves stole more than 1,000 objects from a museum in Oakland, Calif., the city’s police department said. Vacation couldn’t stop Claude Monet, the father of French impressionism, from spending 10-hour workdays at the easel. A lush blockbuster show in Brooklyn helps explain why. Most museum workers have considered quitting in the past five years, a new survey finds. The industry is vexed by low pay, burnout and “new culture wars.”

Film

“Hedda” stars Tessa Thompson as a stifled newlywed who stirs up mayhem. Our critic calls it “a film for adults that, like its protagonist, doesn’t skimp on brainpower.” “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain,” an animated film about a young girl in Japan discovering the world, is sweetly humanist with philosophical heft.

Theater

New York City Center usually favors heavy-hitting drama for its annual gala. This time around, though, it’s serving up a feast of cartoonish gore and questionable sex with “Bat Boy: The Musical.” Daniel Radcliffe is returning to Broadway to star in a solo play called “Every Brilliant Thing.” Samuel Beckett, who has been dead for 35 years, is having something of a revival right now. That includes “Endgame,” a bleak tragicomedy staged by the Druid theater company.

More Culture

The New York Times

Twenty-five years after Tim Meadows left “Saturday Night Live,” he’s still regularly popping up on TV screens and delighting new audiences. Several video game revivals this year — in franchises like Double Dragon and Ninja Gaiden — are a throwback to an era when games were much, much harder.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

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LISTEN TO THIS

Lily Allen Ellie Smith for The New York Times

	By Lauren Jackson

The British singer Lily Allen has released a bombshell divorce album, one that manages to both comprehensively eviscerate an unnamed partner (believed to be her ex-husband, the actor David Harbour) and also actually be good. Our critic called it “irresistible.”

I started listening to the album, “West End Girl,” in a bath the other night, and I didn’t stop until the water got cold. The details were salacious, shocking, unbelievable — it was a royal tour of the wreckage of a marriage, each track a new plot point in a story of sex, lies and discovered texts, some of which she reads aloud.

Allen seems to be suggesting that writing so explicitly, and with such salacious detail, about her own life is “a way of reclaiming her power in her broken relationship,” our critic writes. On the song “Let You W/In,” she sings, “I can walk out with my dignity if I lay my truth on the table.” That she did.

Related: Allen and Harbour listed their nearly $8 million Brooklyn brownstone recently. That has added to the lore.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Mark Weinberg for The New York Times

By Melissa Clark

Monster Cookies

If you’ve got extra Halloween candy on hand, use it to Nigella Lawson’s sweet and chewy monster cookies. You can fold whatever needs using up into the oat-speckled cookie dough. Chocolate varieties like peppermint patties and peanut butter cups work especially well, getting just a little melty in the oven’s heat. Or use M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces, which add a delightful sugar crunch.

REAL ESTATE

Teresa and Marty Strelecky Jovelle Tamayo for The New York Times

The Hunt: A senior couple, craving a downtown area with shops and restaurants, set their sights on Portland and Seattle with a $725,000 budget. Which home did they choose? Play our game.

Do it yourself: Painting furniture is trickier than you might think. Here’s a guide.

LIVING

A sushi rice cup from Silver Rice. Heather Willensky for The New York Times

Where to eat: Visitors to New York deserve a little treat. Times journalists picked the city’s best snacks.

Travel 101: If you slept in and missed your flight, don’t panic. Here’s how get your trip back on track.

DocGPT: It’s becoming more common to ask A.I. chatbots for medical advice. Experts shared advice for how to do so safely.

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Marki Williams/The New York Times

Sometimes store-bought is fine

Life doesn’t always afford time for slow cooking. For busy parents juggling school drop-offs, college students with a mountain of homework or even experienced home cooks in a rush, a jar of marinara can be a lifeline. And store-bought sauces have come a long way. Nowadays, grocery shelves are replete with a staggering number of promising options, some of which taste convincingly homemade. We taste-tested 41 jars of marinara sauce and found several standouts for your busiest moments — including a thick and tangy sauce for dunking mozzarella sticks and a rustic take that tasted delicious on its own. — Maki Yazawa

GAME OF THE WEEK

The Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Cole Burston/Getty Images

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Toronto Blue Jays, World Series Game 7: Last weekend, this newsletter previewed the World Series as a battle between the Dodgers’ pitching staff, so good at strikeouts, and the Blue Jays’ bats, so good at making contact.

Toronto has certainly been hitting the ball. In the games they’ve won, the Jays have scored 11, 6 and 6 runs. And they scored 5 in a loss, the 18-inning classic that was Game 3. Los Angeles’s pitching hasn’t been quite so impressive, but it’s had its moments. The Dodgers’ sometimes-shaky bullpen blanked Toronto for 11 straight innings in Game 3, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been a star, throwing a complete game in Game 2 and six sharp innings in last night’s 3-1 win.

Game 7 is tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were twitching and witching.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. (Be sure to study up; we hear it’s a tough one.)

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

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

Correction: In Thursday’s newsletter, we misidentified which gift from South Korea Trump joked about wanting to wear. It was a medal, not a crown.

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, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

[phkrause]

November 2, 2025

	By Sam Sifton

Good morning. I’m Sam Sifton, your new host of The Morning. Before we get to the news today, I’d like to tell you a little about myself. You ought to know who’s writing to you.

The New York Times

Meet your news friend

I’m a child of New York City. I grew up reading The Times in Brooklyn, where I paged through the print newspaper every morning, starting with the weather page and its agate-type listings of temperatures in cities around the world, then moving on to news, to arts coverage, to obituaries and sports. (I flipped through tabloid newspapers on the subway to school. No phones then to distract!)

It made me into a news omnivore, someone who delights in finding bits of deliciousness and surprise in the journalism I inhale. (I suspect that may describe you as well.) It made me a lifelong news evangelist, too, someone who loves sharing what he’s found — first with my family and classmates, later with friends and colleagues, later still with readers.

So when the chance arose to do that with a large and passionate audience (that’s you again), I pounced. It’s why I’m here — that same little kid, now working at scale.

Here’s the program. On weekdays, I’ll write you a letter about the news, telling you what’s going on in the world. I’ll try to guide you through it. The idea is to let you know what’s happening — to give you the confidence each morning that by the time you’re finished, you’ll know enough to navigate the day, to fit your life into the broader currents shaping the world and the culture.

We hope this means you’ll never be caught off guard by conversations happening in the coffee shop or outside in the hall before the meeting gets started. By opening The Morning each day, I hope you’ll end up with something smart, even pithy, to add to those conversations.

Newsletters aren’t new to me. For more than a decade, I wrote The Times’s “What to Cook” newsletter, for Cooking, bridging the divide between our recipes and the world in which we cook them.

Sam Sifton cooking in his home in 2018. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times

I wrote about chicken shawarma, yes, but also about the reality that attends making chicken shawarma in times of deep national and international conflict — during the pandemic, during storms, against the backdrop of terrible events. I wrote about art and novels and music, too, because those are things we talk about when we eat — and because we are human, even as we await election results and endure heat waves and worry endlessly about what’s happening in the world.

News isn’t new to me, either. I’ve been at The Times since 2002. I’ve worked, as they say, all over the room. I’ve been the Culture editor, responsible for our arts coverage. I was the restaurant critic (what a gig — foie gras again?). I was the National editor during the Boston Marathon bombing and the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. In 2020, I started overseeing all our culture and lifestyle news and criticism.

(My editor grilled me about my life, habits and interests here, so you can get to know me a little better.)

Along the way I fell in love with the eccentricities and energy of The Times, with the boundless curiosity of its people. And I’ll write about that, too. I’ll introduce you to the work of my colleagues — to their breaking news reports, their months-in-the-making investigations and their probing criticism. I’ll ask them questions, yours and mine. I’ll show you how their stories illuminate the way humans relate to one another, and how they bring the people and places they’re writing about to life.

I’ll write about the studies they’re interested in, about the games they build, about the new forms of journalism they’re developing. I’ll tell you about the things they’ve found out that powerful people don’t want you to know.

And, look, honestly? There’ll probably be some fishing stuff as well, some stories about the snowy owl I saw in a field, a few asides about broken things fixed with wrenches and luck.

News, after all, happens against the backdrop of the living world, of the reality of a wheezing refrigerator that needs a new part. That’s as true for journalists as it is for the people who learn from their work. So I’ll tell you about that, too. We’re all in this together.

I hope you’ll let me know how it goes. I’m at themorning@nytimes.com. I’ll read every letter sent.

Now, let’s get you caught up.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Administration

President Trump’s Justice Department said that he could lawfully continue his lethal military strikes on people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea. Accusing Nigeria of failing to protect Christians, Trump threatened potential military action and said he might cut off aid from the West African country. Trump is keeping some of his ballroom donors anonymous. Here are some of the backers who have not been disclosed by the White House. Trump’s latest White House makeover: the Lincoln bathroom in marble and gold.

International

Many communities in Jamaica are still cut off after Hurricane Melissa ravaged the island. The death toll rose to 28. At least 10 people were injured in a stabbing on a train in England, the authorities said. The police said they had arrested two men. The Ukrainian military has a point-scoring system for drone operators who hit enemy targets. Click on the video below to see how drone warfare has transformed the war.

The New York Times

New York City Marathon

About 55,000 athletes are running the world’s largest road race today. (And the weather is ideal.) Follow updates. In 1983, a dramatic late-race twist left one runner triumphant, and another on his back. Here’s what they remember. Can you match celebrity runners with their times?

Other Big Stories

The Dodgers Kevin Sousa/Imagn Images, via Reuters

The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series, becoming back-to-back champions. New rules allow insurance companies to raise rates on California homeowners — and still avoid areas at high risk for wildfires. Chinese American families are split on Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic front-runner for New York City mayor. Many older parents aren’t as enthusiastic as their children.

ANOTHER?

MaryBeth Lewis loves kids. She gave birth to her 13th at age 62. And no medical mishaps, miscarriages or raised eyebrows were going to stop her from having one more.

Two, actually. But to bring this last set of twins into the world, Lewis had to defy the law. She could push her own body only so far, and her husband wouldn’t co-sign on a surrogate pregnancy. So she lined up donor sperm, donor eggs and a surrogate mother — by repeatedly forging her husband’s signature.

Those double dealings (and a few more) left Lewis, now 68, potentially facing a yearslong prison sentence on 30 criminal counts. She lost her job and is barred from her children’s school. She dropped nearly 70 pounds from stress and spent more than $500,000 fighting for her freedom and for custody of the twins, who she maintains are her 14th and 15th children.

“I felt bad, definitely,” she admitted. But all those criminal charges? They were “bullcrap,” she said. Her determination to expand her family ultimately led to a court battle for the ages. Read about it in this week’s Times Magazine.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

A progressive Senate candidate in Maine, Graham Platner, said he unknowingly got an obscure Nazi tattoo. Should that be disqualifying?

Yes. Platner’s tattoo, as well as some of his past statements, indicate a history of faulty judgment. “We can do better, and we should,” Brian Kresge writes for Bangor Daily News.

No. It’s to be expected that rookie candidates will have baggage. “He is the antithesis of the kind of spit-shined, hothouse Democrat favored by the establishment. And voters like that,” Bloomberg’s Nia-Malika Henderson writes.

FROM OPINION

The Supreme Court gave Trump the immunity to leverage the Justice Department against his political opponents. It should take it away, Mary McCord and Andrew Weissmann write.

Women don’t necessarily need remote work or flexible work schedules. They need boundaries that prevent their jobs from asking for their time outside work hours, Corinne Low argues.

Here are columns by Ross Douthat on the Democratic Party and Maureen Dowd on male friendship.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

Heidi Klum Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

Heidi Klum’s Halloween: The supermodel dressed up as Medusa. Step inside her party.

“Please look after this bear”: Paddington is coming to London’s West End.

Rare bird: Passionate birders flocked to New York to glimpse a common cuckoo making a very uncommon appearance in the U.S.

A crisis of care: Many developed countries have a lot of immigrant caregivers for their older adults. In Italy, some of those workers are struggling with serious mental health problems.

Hip-hop: Marcyliena Morgan’s idea to open an archive of hip-hop music and culture at Harvard University helped establish rap as a course of serious study on a par with classical music. She died at 75.

SPORTS

M.L.B.: The Dodgers’ 11th-inning victory over the Blue Jays makes them the first repeat World Series winners in 25 years. The Japanese pitching phenom Yoshinobu Yamamoto won World Series M.V.P.

College football: The No. 18 Oklahoma beat the No. 14 Tennessee 33-27 in what was essentially a College Football Playoff elimination game. The Sooners defense and kicker came up big to put the Volunteers away.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

	By Elisabeth Egan

“Book of Lives,” by Margaret Atwood: The subtitle of Atwood’s latest book says it all: “A Memoir of Sorts.” This is not a traditional autobiography. Yes, Atwood follows a chronological path: girlhood to university years to early publications and so on. “I wrote a book, I wrote a second book, I wrote another book, I wrote another book,” she writes. “Dead boring.” But she peppers the narrative with so many details, digressions, photos, snippets of poetry and score settlings that her memoir reads like a decadent bacchanal. No velvet ropes here; Atwood flings open the doors of her life, connecting memories to the books they inspired. “Wrong turnings, crinolines, abandoned plots, nylons with seams, canoes, lost loves,” she writes. “It’s all material.”

More on books

Read more about how “Book of Lives” came together. This month, the Book Review Book Club will read “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell. Join in here.

THE INTERVIEW

Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

	By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

This week’s subject for The Interview is the actress Jennifer Lawrence, whose new film, “Die My Love,” will be released on Nov. 7.

Your persona in the world has sometimes been viewed as too loud, too much. Looking back, what do you think about how you were perceived as you were coming up?

Now that I’m in my 30s and a mom, I can see how young I was. When I meet a 23-year-old now, they’re children. As horrified as I am at some things — like an old interview or something, so cringe — I get it. I was young and nervous and defensive and awkward. I remember when I was nominated for “Silver Linings Playbook,” somebody was like: “Everybody loves you! What does that feel like?” I was like, It feels precarious. It’s going to come down. That’s just the nature of things. And then I fell getting my Oscar, and the next year I was waving to fans and I tripped on a cone and I remember being like: “[Expletive], that’s it. Nobody’s gonna believe that I fell two years in a row.”

Because after you tripped at the Oscars, people said that you faked it.

Yeah. I didn’t. But everybody thought that meant everything that I did was fake and it was all a shtick. This is how it felt to me. That I got found out as this fraud.

You said that you felt as if other people had gotten sick of you, and that you had gotten sick of yourself. You had gotten sick of yourself: What did that mean?

I just was sick of doing this. Doing interviews is really scary. I’m very blessed, I’m very lucky, I’m very grateful. But it’s terrifying. You finish an interview or you’re gearing up to release a film and you’re putting yourself out there to be picked apart. I was just so tired of being quoted and people talking about the quotes, so tired of seeing myself in that way. I needed a break from it. People needed a break from it. It was a mutual breakup.

Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Illustration by Fromm Studio.

Read this week’s magazine.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Stream action movies about convicted swordsmen and crooked cops.

Learn how to get decent medical advice from ChatGPT. (Be careful: It can’t replace your physician.)

Give good gifts that cost less than a sandwich.

MEAL PLAN

Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

If you’re coming down from the excitement of a Halloween weekend, Emily Weinstein’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter suggests this new turkey chili recipe by Genevieve Ko, which is packed with protein and fiber and comes together in under a half-hour.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were manhandle and manhandled.

Can you put eight historical events — including “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “The Last Judgment” and the Great Fire of London — 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 morning with me and The Times. See you tomorrow. — Sam

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

Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

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November 3, 2025

	By Sam Sifton

Good morning and a happy Monday to all who celebrate.

Since I last wrote, President Trump said the U.S. was not planning to go to war with Venezuela. The British police arrested a man after a stabbing rampage on a train injured 11 people. And last night, a strong earthquake shook northern Afghanistan.

In New York City’s race for mayor, about 750,000 people — including many young voters — have already cast their ballots. Tomorrow is an off-year Election Day across the United States. I’d like to focus on that before we get to the rest of the news.

Early voting in Brooklyn, New York, yesterday. Dave Sanders for The New York Times

An election guide

Off-year elections aren’t as consequential as presidential or midterm elections. But governors’ races and ballot measures still matter plenty.

“They allow us to get a sense of where voter attitudes and energy are moving,” said Carolyn Ryan, a managing editor of The Times who used to run our Politics desk.

We were talking in her office in the center of the newsroom, with editors and reporters lined up outside to get her counsel. “They’ll deliver the best view yet of how voters are feeling and reacting to the first year of the second Trump administration,” she told me.

There are two possibilities for that view, and they could both end up being true.

Republicans want to see whether the gains Trump picked up among both young and nonwhite voters have cemented. That is particularly true of the contests in California, New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Democrats hope the results show that they are not still reeling from their loss of the White House in 2024, and that they can point to a path forward for 2028.

Here’s what to watch for tomorrow.

California

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

For 15 years, California has used a nonpartisan commission to draw the map of congressional districts. That meant neither side got an advantage, even if it controlled the State House. It proved popular, and a number of states created similar commissions. But Trump has pushed red states to make new districts that favor Republicans so they can hold onto the majority in Congress.

In response, California’s leaders are asking voters to set aside the existing maps and replace them with ones drawn by Democratic lawmakers. The result could flip as many as five seats in next year’s midterm elections.

Republicans call it a power grab. Democrats call it part of a national effort to establish a check on the power of the Trump administration.

Carolyn and Jess Bidgood, who hosts the On Politics newsletter (sign up!), call it a test measuring the desire of voters in states run by Democrats to take on the president. “In this hyperpartisan moment,” Jess said, “the real question is, Are voters willing to be hyperpartisan?”

See what the gerrymandered districts could look like.

New York City

A debate in the New York City mayoral race. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

It’s the new against the familiar in the mayoral race here, with Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani well ahead in the polls against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the activist, radio personality and former subway guardian Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani has promised to make the city affordable — and drawn fire from his rivals, as well as some Democrats, for left-wing views and criticism of Israel. Watch for a changing of the guard or a repudiation of an upstart. Trump has vowed to punish the city if Mamdani wins.

Here are the latest polls on the race. See the candidates’ stances on the issues. And these are the five key voting groups that could decide the election, including faith voters and young voters.

New Jersey

Mikie Sherrill, left, and Jack Ciattarelli Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

The governor’s race between Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who has served in the House since 2019, and Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican businessman and former state legislator, is the one both Jess and Carolyn are watching most closely. It’s a nail-biter, with recent polls showing Sherrill’s lead slipping amid a lot of negative advertising. (Ciattarelli has accused Sherrill of misconduct during her time at the Naval Academy. Sherrill has accused Ciattarelli of spreading misinformation about opioids.) “The race has been a lot closer than many experts would have expected,” Carolyn said.

The state’s majority-Hispanic townships all swung for Trump. Tomorrow’s vote will test the durability of that rightward shift, our reporters write.

Virginia

Abigail Spanberger Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

The people of Virginia typically vote for governors who are members of the party that’s not in the White House. No wonder the Democrat in this year’s race, Abigail Spanberger, a moderate former House representative, holds a significant polling lead over her Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.

Spanberger has built her campaign not on national issues, but on how much it costs to live and thrive in Virginia, which she argues has been disproportionately hurt by the government shutdown. But she’s also known to compromise. Earle-Sears, for her part, has secured only a lukewarm endorsement from Trump, who usually keeps his distance from Republicans he thinks will lose. “I haven’t been too much involved in Virginia,” Trump said.

So why watch this one? Two reasons. Whoever wins will be a barrier breaker: No woman has ever served as governor of Virginia. Second, as Jess pointed out, if Spanberger wins, some Democrats will say her campaign could provide a road map for Democrats in the midterms — and beyond.

Here are the latest polls on the race.

Pennsylvania

From left, Justices Kevin Dougherty, Christine Donohue and David Wecht Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

Justices are elected to 10-year terms on the State Supreme Court here, and Democrats hold a five-seat majority. But three Democrats are up for “retention” elections, meaning voters can send them home. The election to replace them would take place in 2027.

That doesn’t sound very exciting. (“True,” Jess told me.) But the outcome of the election could determine whether the seven-member court has a liberal majority during the 2028 presidential election. Jess said this matters because the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court is the highest court in the most important swing state in the country.

Read more on why this election matters.

Maine

I’ve got family in Maine and will be watching the results there closely. A proposal the state’s voters will take up tomorrow would eliminate two days of early absentee voting, require photo identification in order to vote, ban prepaid return envelopes for absentee ballots and limit drop boxes.

“It’s pretty hard to convince voters to make the cumbersome process of voting harder,” Jess said. “So I think the vote will be a test of Trump’s rhetoric about rigging elections, about voter fraud, and how deeply that message has resonated with the electorate.”

You can follow all the election updates tomorrow on our website. Now, let’s get you caught up on the latest news.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Administration

Trump said war with Venezuela would be unlikely but suggested that it was time for the nation’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, to leave office. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot send in National Guard soldiers to Portland, Ore., for another few days, until she makes her final decision. The nuclear testing ordered by Trump will not involve nuclear explosions, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.

Europe

British officials said that a stabbing attack this weekend that injured 11 people was not terrorism related, but offered no other potential motive.

France used its trove of DNA profiles to find some of the Louvre suspects, showing the power of DNA databases for solving crimes.

More International News

The earthquake in northern Afghanistan killed at least 15 people. The quake struck near Mazar-i-Sharif, a city known for its magnificent Blue Mosque. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, gave two cellphones to South Korea’s president, who asked how secure they were. His answer: “You can check if there’s a backdoor.” A massacre is unfolding in Sudan, and the world is largely looking away, my colleague Declan Walsh writes in The World.

Other Big Stories

Two Kenyans won the men’s and women’s races in the New York City Marathon: Benson Kipruto — by three hundredths of a second — and Hellen Obiri. There was an explosion at Harvard Medical School, but officials said it only damaged a small section of a hallway.

OPINIONS

Regardless what polling on single issues might suggest, Americans are moderate. They’re primed to vote no on almost any change, German Lopez writes.

Here’s a columns by M. Gessen on Israeli dissidents.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

In Tokyo. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Never retire? Some people over 100 in Japan say work keeps them thriving.

Painting furniture: See soothing, close-up videos of how to do it.

Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about Trump choosing to keep some ballroom donors incognito.

Metropolitan Diary: Don’t let the city eat you.

Personal assistant: In her 1993 biography, Maria Riva revealed the price she paid for the fame of her mother, the movie star Marlene Dietrich. Riva died at 100.

SPORTS

India’s national women’s cricket team Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters

Personal victory: After facing seemingly insurmountable odds, India’s national women’s cricket team won its first World Cup.

N.F.L.: The Los Angeles Chargers rallied around Daiyan Henley, who helped his team beat the Tennessee Titans. See what happened in Week 9.

N.B.A.: The Oklahoma City Thunder are the N.B.A.’s last undefeated team standing as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led his team to a win over the New Orleans Pelicans.

WHAT MARTHA DID

Martha Stewart Michael Skott

It’s been 43 years since Martha Stewart published her first cookbook, “Entertaining,” and exploded the idea of the modest dinner party. Out was a roast chicken and green salad. Here came “A Light Summer Dinner for Eight to Ten” or “A Hawaiian Luau for Twenty,” all accompanied by beautiful antiques, copious candles, miles of jacquard.

The book was equal measure camp and goal-setting, as my old pal Julia Moskin writes today: “an odd hybrid of a professional catering manual, an aspirational but practical cookbook and celebrity lifestyle porn.”

It remains so today, as Martha’s publisher issues a reprint this week. Julia uses the new edition to take measure of what’s changed for Martha, for our cooking, for our kitchens and cookbooks and dining rooms. For more than four decades, Martha has been a hero — and, to some, a cartoon villain. She has always argued, Julia writes, “that domestic goddess is a role worth striving for — a creative and professional project akin to directing a movie or building an app.”

“I wanted to be a homemaker,” Martha told her in an interview. “I wasn’t a housewife or a housekeeper. I wanted to make a home.”

More on culture

The novelist Peter Orner has a lovely review of John Irving’s latest, “Queen Esther,” a novel that returns readers to the world and the characters of “The Cider House Rules,” from 1985. That’s welcome news to Orner. “I needed this dose of old-school New England decency,” he writes. “Few skewer sanctimony quite like Irving at his best. More important: I fell in love, once again, with his people.” I’m in! “There’s an inherent theatricality to church,” writes the critic Alissa Wilkinson, “and a furtive spirituality to theater. In form, they’re similar: Everybody crowds into a room, usually sits facing the same direction, and focuses on a central action — at least for a while.” Alissa uses those parallels to explore a number of recent shows that dance between art and religion. It’s smart.

RECIPE OF THE DAY

Kelly Marshall for The New York Times

Here’s a new recipe that you may well bake on repeat from now through the end of the year. It’s for salted butterscotch chocolate chunk cookies — essentially chocolate chip cookies that have been discovered by Hollywood and cast in the next season of “The White Lotus,” cookies that might date a financier or a basketball star. Crisp edges, chewy centers and intense butterscotch flavor pair beautifully with crunchy toffee and soft chocolate chunks under a scattering of flaky sea salt. Glamorous!

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Chef Andrew Zimmern Ben Brewer for The New York Times

Visit the chef Andrew Zimmern’s home in the Twin Cities, and (if you’re me) imagine his outdoor kitchen as your own.

Watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Arizona Cardinals, on, well — here’s how to watch.

Take our news quiz.

GAMES

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

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

Thanks for spending part of your morning with me and The Times. See you tomorrow. — Sam

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

Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Karl Russel News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

[phkrause]

November 4, 2025

	By Sam Sifton

Good morning. Dick Cheney, widely regarded as the most powerful vice president in American history, is dead at 84. You can read his obituary here.

And across America, it’s Election Day — the first big test at the ballot for the second Trump administration. We’re following major races in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia. As the day unfolds and results roll in, here’s what you should pay attention to.

Since I last wrote, we’ve reached a town in Jamaica destroyed by Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful storm ever to hit the island. President Trump and his energy secretary sent different messages about something important — nuclear weapons tests. And after 34 days, the government shutdown is about to tie for the longest in history.

We’ll get to all of it, and more, below. But first, I’d like to draw your attention to a remarkable investigation that reveals a danger for many Americans who shoot guns.

At a shooting range.  Jeremy White/The New York Times

Under the gun

There are more guns in the United States than there are people. More than 30 percent of adults own one. (I’m one of them.)

Every day, thousands of people travel to indoor ranges across the country — to learn to shoot, to hone their shooting skills, to compete against other shooters, to have a good time.

Safety measures abound at ranges. Shooters wear eye and ear protection. They generally stand in a booth, separated from others by bulletproof walls.

But they still face an overlooked hazard: the concussive blast waves set off by the firing of weapons indoors, which can damage the brain.

A revelation

Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a domestic correspondent for The Times, has experienced those blast waves. He’s a former Marine infantryman whose beat is guns, gun policy and gun culture. Going to the range is part of his job. Among other things, it’s a way to meet sources while keeping his skills up. You can learn a lot at a gun range.

Some months ago, T.M., as we call him, drove to his local range to fire his AR-15 rifle. When he was done, he told me, he felt “distinctly weird.” It took him a long time to pack up his gear. “I’d had lunch,” he said. “I wasn’t dehydrated. I didn’t have a headache. But it took me forever just to raise my wrist to look at my watch.”

He wondered: Can you get a brain injury at the gun range?

T.M. teamed up with Dave Philipps and Jeremy White to find out. Dave, who covers the military and veterans, has written extensively about how firing some weapons can damage brain cells, and how exposure to concussive waves of energy may cause permanent injuries. Jeremy’s a graphics editor who has covered gun culture in the United States on and off for years.

They were eager to find out what happens when people fire civilian weapons indoors. “Guns are just such a big part of our culture,” Jeremy told me yesterday.

An experiment

Jeremy White/The New York Times

The team members did their own testing and gathered their own data. They measured the blast waves of several popular civilian guns at an indoor range, using the same sensors the military uses to study larger weapons.

The data showed that smaller-caliber guns can pose a danger pretty quickly, and that large-caliber civilian rifles delivered a blast wave that exceeds what the military says is safe for the brain. Indoor ranges, designed to make shooting safe, can worsen blast exposure, they discovered.

Jeremy and his colleagues brought the data to life. Using a high-speed camera, they captured what happens when a person fires guns at an indoor range. Jeremy illustrated what happens when those waves reflect off the hard surfaces of a shooter’s booth.

And to show what happens when you fire a large-caliber rifle, he hung a sheet of silk chiffon fabric alongside the prone body of the shooter. (“I spent way too much time in fabric shops in the garment district looking for that,” he said.) Seen in real time, nothing really happens. When he slowed the film, though, the illustration tells a whole story: A powerful wave runs through the fabric when the firing pin hits the cartridge, all but enveloping the shooter’s skull in 7.6 pounds per square inch of concussive pressure.

Here’s what that looks like:

Jeremy White/The New York Times

How harmful are those concussive waves on the body? Scientists have yet to answer that clearly, though the military considers some of them unsafe. A recently retired Army blast safety researcher told Dave that repeated blast exposures, however small, may cause damage. “Stretch a rubber band a hundred times and it bounces back, but there are microtears forming,” he said. “The 101st time, it breaks.”

See how the blasts can affect your brain in their investigation. I’m looking into archery, myself.

Now, let’s get you caught up.

THE LATEST NEWS

Election Day

This week is a major test of Trump’s power and influence. He’s facing an Election Day that will offer a sense of voters’ moods, as well as a tariffs case at the Supreme Court and pressure from the grinding shutdown. The president endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race. “Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” Trump wrote. Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate, mocked Cuomo for it. Trump is imploring Republicans to redraw their congressional maps. Democrats have responded in kind. It’s a nationwide scramble for control of the House before the midterms. Mamdani isn’t shy about talking about faith — his own or others’. In Believing, some experts say the Democratic Party should pay attention. The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about the polls for New York City’s mayoral race. They still show Mamdani ahead.

Food Stamps

The Trump administration, ordered by a judge to fund the federal food stamp program during the government shutdown, says it will offer partial payments.

Another food aid program, for low-income women and children, received more temporary funding.

More on Politics

Observers watched an atomic nuclear blast in 1955. Associated Press

Trump has doubled down on the idea of resuming explosive nuclear testing — which the U.S. has refrained from for 33 years. His energy secretary is sending a different signal. “I don’t know who he is,” Trump said of Changpeng Zhao, the cryptocurrency billionaire he pardoned last month. Tucker Carlson received backlash after his sympathetic interview with a prominent white supremacist. Some Republicans are now seeking to distance themselves from Carlson.

International

The remains of St. Theresa’s church in Black River, Jamaica. Erin Schaff/The New York Times

In Jamaica, Hurricane Melissa destroyed 90 percent of homes in one town, as well as the courthouse, the library, schools and the downtown shopping district. The Russian authorities canceled a two-day Halloween festival in St. Petersburg and moved to deport one of its organizers, in resistance to Western culture. The U.S. is importing less from China under Trump. But the rest of the world is making up the difference. Fewer international students have been coming to the U.S. Click the video below to see the data.

The New York Times

Other Big Stories

The consumer products giant that owns Kleenex and Huggies will acquire the maker of Tylenol for about $40 billion. Diane Ladd, who died at 89, was a three-time Oscar contender who shape-shifted into strikingly different characters over a career of more than six decades.

ESCAPE FROM HELL

An aid camp for displaced people in Sudan. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The city of El Fasher fell last week to a rebel paramilitary in Sudan’s civil war. Videos online showed fighters casually executing civilians. Some of the survivors walked 40 miles out, on roads littered with bodies, to reach the nearest aid zone. There, aid workers collected their accounts on behalf of The Times.

“There were bodies of men and women everywhere — some people were run over by vehicles,” Saeeda, a 28-year-old woman, said. “While we were on the road, they took girls from our group — choosing them and dragging them away.”

Hundreds are arriving with bullet wounds and many bear the signs of torture, according to local medics. Children — presumably orphaned in El Fasher or along the way — are often being deposited not by their parents, but by other escaping strangers. “I’m here alone,” said one young boy with a broken foot. “At night I find places where people gather and sleep on the ground near them,” he added. “I hope someone helps me.”

The civil war in Sudan has displaced 12 million people and may have killed about 400,000. It is, as Declan Walsh, our chief Africa correspondent, called it, “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Experts call it a genocide. Read more about the escapees from El Fasher.

OPINIONS

If data centers limited their electricity use just slightly, households wouldn’t have to pay so much for energy, Tyler Norris argues.

We usually associate healthy eating with cooking at home. But food can be convenient and healthy at the same time, Julia Belluz writes.

Watch today’s stories, free in the app.

The new Watch tab brings you closer to the story with videos across news and culture. Watch free in the app.

MORNING READS

An orca and a young great white shark with a visible wound near Mexico. Marco Villegas

Baby Shark (danger remix): In news from the world of apex predation, a pod of killer whales in the Gulf of California hunts juvenile great white sharks, flipping them onto their backs to stun them and then eating their nutrient-rich livers — and only their livers. “It’s sort of like they’re going for the cheeseburger surrounded by a bunch of celery,” a marine biologist told The Times.

Search query: Dating apps have run into a hurdle the industry calls “the cycle of despair.” That’s when people download a dating app, burn out on swiping and getting ghosted, and then delete it, only to redownload it months later. Can A.I. matchmakers break the cycle and set you up with the right people? They’re trying.

Fare thee well: Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, a singer who helped shape the sound of the Grateful Dead in the 1970s, died at 78. She and her husband Keith Godchaux, a piano player, joined the band after she approached Jerry Garcia at a club and petitioned him for a tryout.

TODAY’S NUMBER

$360 billion

— That’s about how much Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have spent on capital expenditures in the last 12 months, mainly to meet consumer demand for artificial intelligence.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The league’s trade deadline is this afternoon. What happens when players gets traded? Players explain what goes down.

N.B.A.: A former Atlanta Hawks finance executive was charged with embezzling nearly $4 million from the franchise to buy a Porsche, among other things.

RECIPE OF THE DAY

Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

I came up with this recipe for slow-cooker pork tacos with hoisin and ginger years ago, riffing on a classic recipe from the cookbook author Corinne Trang. The braising liquid is a mixture of hoisin and fish sauces that breaks down the pork into a shredded tangle, best accompanied by a bright, crunchy cabbage slaw. Warm flour tortillas nod to the softness of Chinese bao. Set everything up before work in a slow cooker so it can burble away all day on low heat. Or hurry things along with a pressure cooker — about an hour on high. Leftovers make for fantastic banh mi.

10-MINUTE CHALLENGE

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Dutch artist Margareta Haverman painted “A Vase of Flowers” (above) in 1716. Today we’re asking you to spend 10 uninterrupted minutes looking at it to discover what you see and think along the way.

Questions you might ask yourself while you stare: Are they flowers you recognize? How does the artist use color to guide you through the bouquet? After spending some time with the painting, do you feel differently from the way you did before?

If you click here, you’ll be able to explore the painting — making it bigger, for instance, and exploring its contours. Challenge accepted? I hope so!

More on culture

Tejal Rao was in Miami recently to review Sunny’s, a relaxed and relaxing steakhouse in the Little River neighborhood. “It isn’t a dark, gilded man cave,” she writes. “There’s a softness here, an effervescence and even an abundance of natural light, if you arrive before the sun goes down.” Razor clams, rib-eye, creamed spinach? Yes, please. After a troop of macaques escaped an American facility, some activists are demanding that all lab animals be set free, Ava Kofman writes in The New Yorker. Do you know how to pronounce Godot, the character who never shows up in Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot,” currently on Broadway? GOD-oh? Guh-DOH? Opinions vary, as this terrific story about the question shows. Is Godot God or godlike or neither? Beckett, for his part, is tired of answering. “If I knew,” he told a director once, “I would have said so in the play.”

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Kim Kardashian, left, and Naomi Watts in “All’s Fair.” Ser Baffo/Disney

Watch the prolific television writer and producer Ryan Murphy’s new streamer, “All’s Fair,” on Hulu. The show’s about the world of divorce lawyers and stars Sarah Paulson and Niecy Nash, with plenty of Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts and Glenn Close to keep things interesting.

Clean your bathroom grout, using a TikTok hack tested by the smarties at Wirecutter.

Listen to (or watch!) Wesley Morris talk about Dwayne Johnson and vulnerability on “Cannonball,” his culture podcast. Vulnerability! That’s a new look for the Rock.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were expound and expounded.

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

Thanks for spending part of your morning with me and The Times. See you tomorrow. — Sam

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Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Karl Russell News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren