Members phkrause Posted February 19 Author Members Posted February 19 February 19, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. The specter of war looms over a dream for peace: The U.S. military now has enough forces in the Middle East to take action against Iran. This map shows where troops are. And the British police just arrested the former Prince Andrew over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the BBC reports. He has denied wrongdoing. We have more news below. I’m going to start, though, in Washington, with the Board of Peace. President Trump in Davos last month. Doug Mills/The New York Times The new diplomacy Today, President Trump greets his creation. The Board of Peace will hold its first gathering since more than 20 nations signed the board’s founding charter last month. Delegates will talk about how to rebuild Gaza. But the board, a kind of Trump-aligned alternative to the United Nations, is aiming much higher. It wants to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict,” according to the charter. That’s a lot of places beyond Gaza. It also promises to be a nimble peacekeeping body, presumably unlike the diplomats at the United Nations. It sounds like something off a pitch deck: a start-up meant to disrupt international statecraft. Trump has offered many out-of-the-box ideas, and some of them have succeeded. Will this one? How the board works Member nations must cough up $1 billion to secure a permanent board seat. If they don’t pay, they lose their spot after three years. The recruits are an odd assortment — not all America’s traditional friends. They include Argentina, Hungary, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Seven European nations, including France and Britain, have declined the offer. Trump rescinded Canada’s invitation after the prime minister criticized U.S. foreign policy. Russia said it would pony up if the United States thawed its bank accounts. Trump is the chairman — not just while he’s president, but for life! He can invite new countries to join or expel others. He decides who is on the executive committee. Among them are Jared Kushner, his son-in-law; and Tony Blair, a former British prime minister. Trump is the “final authority” on all matters related to the board and its operations. There are not a lot of checks and balances. He makes the calls. What is the board doing? The original idea was to execute Trump’s blueprint for postwar Gaza, which he outlined in a 20-point peace plan in September. Trump says member nations have already pledged $5 billion toward rebuilding the territory. (The United Nations has estimated the cost at more than $50 billion.) The Trump administration concedes that the challenges in Gaza are enormous. For 60 million tons of rubble to be cleared, the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas must hold. Israel has killed more than 600 Palestinians since the ostensible peace began, and Hamas has yet to agree to disarm, as Trump envisions. American officials hope both sides will agree to the board’s proposal for this, but they caution not to expect any overnight miracles. “There are big chunks of this plan where the rubber just hasn’t hit the road yet,” Aaron Boxerman, who covers Israel and Gaza, told me yesterday afternoon. So, we’ll see. The U.N. Security Council approved Trump’s 20-point plan and blessed the creation of the Board of Peace last November. But now some nations feel buyer’s remorse, Farnaz Fassihi, who covers the U.N., told me. Some, like France and Britain, won’t join it. “Very awkward,” Farnaz said. What’s next? Many experts in international affairs worry about what they see as a worst-case scenario: The Trump administration could weaken the multilateral diplomatic system that the United States helped build after World War II — and replace it with something more rapacious and less stable, led by Trump. Scholars point to a country trying to flex its global power in a new and unilateral way. They cite threats against Iran, the saber rattling with Denmark over Greenland and the U.S. attack on Venezuela earlier this year. Not to mention tariffs that rise and fall on short notice. “Peace in the world requires a broad, international consensus,” an international law professor who specializes in peace negotiations told The Times. “That can hardly be created through a new institution that is entirely dependent on the will of one man.” Now, let’s see what else is happening in the world. THE LATEST NEWS Tahoe Avalanche The trail to Castle Peak near Donner Pass, Calif., yesterday. Max Whittaker for The New York Times Rescuers on Tuesday found the bodies of eight skiers killed near Lake Tahoe, Calif., in the deadliest avalanche in modern California history. One skier remains missing and is presumed dead; six skiers survived the disaster. They contacted rescuers through emergency beacons and the iPhone SOS function. An avalanche starts with a snowflake. But once a chunk of snowpack breaks loose, the powder, ice and rocks can suffocate you in minutes. See how it happens. The Epstein Files The British police arrested the former Prince Andrew after accusations that he shared confidential information with Epstein, the sex offender and financier, while serving as a British trade envoy, according to the BBC. Follow updates here. This month, Buckingham Palace said that if King Charles III or the palace were approached by the police, “we stand ready to support them as you would expect.” Around the World In Gaza this month. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times Gaza: A Palestinian American neurosurgeon started a network of free private schools funded in part by Jewish donors in the U.S. The schools offer children medical care, hot meals and lessons on peace building, despite considerable risks. “Here, it is safe,” a 12-year-old girl said. “No drones or bombs.” South Korea: The former president was found guilty of leading an insurrection when he declared martial law in 2024, and he was sentenced to life in prison. He had faced the death penalty. Cameroon: A reporter for The Associated Press was beaten by the police and detained while reporting on a Trump administration deportation program. Russia: A decorated military officer is on trial after being accused of having troops shoot themselves for battlefield-injury payouts. South Sudan: The government appointed a dead man to a panel meant to prepare for long-delayed elections. Politics Environmental and health groups sued the E.P.A. over its decision to repeal a finding about the harms of greenhouse gases. The case is likely to reach the Supreme Court. Federal inspections of workplace safety plummeted in the months after Trump returned to office last year, new data shows. Trump has long repeated the baseless claim that U.S. elections are tainted by illegal votes from undocumented immigrants. Now, Homeland Security officials are investigating it. Tech Saudi Arabia’s state-backed A.I. company invested $3 billion in xAI, which Elon Musk owns. That means Saudi investors will gain a stake in SpaceX, another Musk company and a U.S. government contractor, after it merges with xAI. The Pentagon said it was reviewing its relationship with Anthropic after the company told defense officials that it did not want its A.I. used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, testified in a landmark case about social media addiction. It’s the first in a flood of lawsuits arguing that the platforms work like cigarettes or slot machines. Uber said it would offer incentives to companies to install electric-vehicle chargers in neighborhoods popular with drivers. 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.) Olympic officials disqualified three athletes from South Korea and Japan. Why? Their outfits were made in factories with child laborers. Their blood contained ostarine, a performance-enhancing drug. Their fingers touched the curling stone beyond the hog line. Their equipment used wax containing PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” OPINIONS Detention, deportation and family separation don’t just cause social and legal harm; they also create profound medical stress, Elizabeth Whidden, Robin Canada and D. Daphne Owen write. In The Conversation, Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens discuss sports and taxes. 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 For sale in Brooklyn. Lila Barth for The New York Times “The scary house”: See inside a once-majestic mansion that has divided its neighbors in Brooklyn. Land of the bots: What do A.I. chatbots say to one another? We sent one into an A.I.-only social network to find out. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a recommendation for the best nonstick pan. TODAY’S NUMBER “Levitated Mass.” Los Angeles County Museum of Art © Michael Heizer, courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mary Shanahan 340 — That is the weight, in tons, of a granite rock the artist Michael Heizer installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for his sculpture “Levitated Mass.” Visitors can walk through a 456-foot-long concrete trench beneath it. See more dramatic photos of Heizer’s work. WINTER OLYMPICS Vincent Alban/The New York Times Men’s hockey: Quinn Hughes scored the game-winning goal in overtime to lift the U.S. to a 2-1 win over Sweden and to the semifinals. The Americans will play Slovakia on Friday. Women’s hockey: The U.S. will play Canada for the gold medal today. In Cleveland Heights, Ohio, they’ll be cheering for Laila Edwards, a barrier-breaking star of the American team. Skiing: The American Mikaela Shiffrin won gold in her final event at these Games, claiming the women’s slalom, her first medal in eight years. The Athletic RECIPE OF THE DAY Christopher Testani for The New York Times Ali Slagle says you could roast these spinach meatballs in the oven before adding them to sauce for pasta. You could. I prefer to follow her original recipe, though, which calls for browning them in a pot, so you can build the sauce above the drippings they release while they crisp. Fish them out when you’re ready to serve, dress your pasta with the sauce, then nestle a few meatballs onto each plate. Shower with grated Parmesan. Enjoy. A REBEL YELLS Billy Idol Ariel Fisher for The New York Times Billy Idol is 70, sober after decades of addiction and on the cusp of releasing a documentary about his life, “Billy Idol Should Be Dead.” Melena Ryzik, a culture reporter, interviewed him at his home in Los Angeles, and we could have saved her perfect opening description for the obituary: He’s “the razor-blond British singer with the everlasting sneer, whose anthemic, power chord hits — ‘Rebel Yell,’ ‘White Wedding,’ ‘Dancing With Myself’ — and swaggering attitude made him the bad boy of ’80s rock.” Idol’s tour last summer was the biggest of his career. “I’m super lucky,” he told Melena. Read more. More on culture Cynthia Erivo, the “Wicked” actress, is playing 23 roles in a one-woman show of “Dracula” on London’s West End. Behold: the 25 best things to eat in Los Angeles right now, according to five of the city’s most committed and expert grazers. (I can vouch for the crispy shrimp tacos at Mariscos Jalisco.) Stephen Colbert reviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s workout with Kid Rock. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Watch the third season of the political thriller “The Night Agent,” which starts streaming on Netflix tonight. In it, Peter Sutherland is on a manhunt to track down a rogue agent who has fled with sensitive information. (The Times recently spoke to Gabriel Basso, who plays the role.) Crisp quickly, with the best air-fryer toaster oven recommended by the countertop culinarians at Wirecutter. Watch live TV free on your phone with these apps. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was cordovan. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted February 20 Author Members Posted February 20 February 20, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. At the first meeting of the Board of Peace yesterday, President Trump announced $7 billion in pledges to rebuild Gaza, but he gave few details about how that might happen. Later, he said he would release government files related to U.F.O.s and aliens. And the actor Eric Dane, known as McSteamy on “Grey’s Anatomy,” died at 53. There’s more news below, but I’m going to start today with the British royal family. It’s kind of unbelievable we were once ruled by these people. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew. Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press Andrew’s arrest Yesterday brought the first arrest of a senior member of the royal family since 1647, when Charles I was charged with treason and eventually beheaded. This time, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, is under suspicion of “misconduct in public office” during his time as Britain’s trade envoy. The accusation follows years of reports about his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The former prince was released from custody by evening, but the investigation continues. If he’s prosecuted, he faces a possible life sentence. We’re a long way from the last criminal episode involving the royals — the time Princess Anne’s bull terrier, Dotty, bit two children near Windsor Castle in 2002. The arrest came after the disclosure of Epstein’s files by the U.S. Justice Department. British prosecutors didn’t say much about their current investigation. But local reporters had previously described emails in which Andrew, as I’ll call him here, appeared to give Epstein confidential trade documents in the early 2010s. In the United States, lawmakers had to pry information about Epstein from the federal government, and the Justice Department has not announced any new prosecutions of Epstein’s associates. Britain, by contrast, has already arrested the onetime Duke of York. The British investigation hasn’t mentioned abuse of women by Andrew, though. He has faced no legal jeopardy for his treatment of Virginia Giuffre, whom he paid to settle a New York lawsuit in which she said he had raped her when she was 17. Instead, British officials are looking at his years in government service. It reminds me of the American authorities’ pursuit of the gangster Al Capone. (They wanted him for murder. They charged him with tax evasion.) Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Who is this Windsor? Andrew turned 66 yesterday. (Can’t have been a fun birthday. “Many Crappy Returns,” a headline in a British tabloid read.) He is the third child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Elizabeth, watchers of the royals say, considered Andrew her favorite son. He was raised in a world of almost unimaginable privilege, taught first by a governess at Buckingham Palace, then by instructors at the same boarding school his father and brother had attended. An appointment to the Royal Navy followed. He trained as a helicopter pilot, enrolled at Britain’s naval college and eventually served his nation with distinction during the Falklands War. People really liked him then, the dashing playboy. Andrew married Sarah Ferguson, whom he’d known since childhood, in 1986. They had two children before divorcing amicably a decade later, around the same time he became close with Epstein. (Fergie’s in the Epstein files, too. The prince emailed her to ask if she’d put out a statement saying that he was “not a pedo.”) The relationship between the two men appeared at least partly transactional. Andrew was working as a trade envoy for the government, and Epstein was ostensibly a titan in finance. The connection offered “seriously beneficial outcomes,” Andrew explained in a disastrous 2019 interview with the BBC. He said he regretted that Epstein conducted himself in a “manner unbecoming,” but viewers found the prince insincere. Soon after, Andrew stepped away from public life. Last fall, his brother, the king, stripped his title as prince. Yesterday, he was arrested. King Charles, then a prince, and Andrew at their father’s funeral in 2021. Leon Neal/Pool, via Associated Press The king’s headache King Charles III was unequivocal in his response. He said investigators “have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation.” He added, “Let me state clearly: The law must take its course.” Should that course result in a prosecution, the king will be a part of it. All criminal cases in Britain are brought in the name of the monarch, who is listed on official documents as “Rex” — meaning it could be big-brother king versus little-brother defendant in court. What an amazing country. The court of public opinion will issue its own ruling on the woes of the House of Windsor. King Charles, for his part, wants to portray a crown that holds itself to account, that exists as a responsible and honest shepherd of the nation. The royal statement — not from Buckingham Palace but from Charles himself — ended by explaining what the clan would do while the investigation unspooled. “My family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all,” he wrote. There is something quintessentially, maybe even cartoonishly, British about the whole approach: stiffening his upper lip, keeping calm, carrying on. Hours after the arrest of his brother, Charles attended a fashion show. Read what we know about Andrew’s arrest and what could happen next. (We’re offering free access to this article.) THE LATEST NEWS The White House Ballroom The site of the demolished East Wing of the White House. Eric Lee for The New York Times A commission approved final plans for Trump’s $400 million ballroom addition to the White House, even as one member revealed that the public’s response to the plan had been widely negative. The final ballroom plan is notably different from earlier versions. See the changes. Trump has been dumping rubble from the project into a public park in Washington — part of his plan to turn it into a luxury golf destination. Politics The Labor Secretary’s husband was barred from the agency’s premises after at least two female staff members said he had sexually assaulted them in the office. Large banners of Trump now hang from multiple federal buildings in Washington, including the Justice Department. Meta will spend $65 million this year to help state politicians who are friendly to the A.I. industry, beginning this week in Texas and Illinois. Immigration Refugees who haven’t applied for green cards could be arrested under a new Trump administration policy. The police in Minnesota are investigating an ICE arrest last month that left a man with a fractured skull and bleeding in his brain. The Economy U.S. imports grew last year, and the trade deficit remained large, despite Trump’s tariffs. Tell us about your taxes: Republicans passed tax cuts last year, and we want to hear from readers who plan to claim the new benefits. Share your experience here. Around the World Lindsay and Craig Foreman in a photograph released by their family. Free Lindsay and Craig Campaign, via Reuters Iran: A British couple arrested last year during an around-the-world motorcycle trip has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for “security crimes.” Sudan: The paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces acted with “genocidal intent” during its 18-month assault on the city of El Fasher, according to a U.N. report. Cuba: A Times analysis shows that the Trump administration has established an effective blockade of the country and is pushing it toward a humanitarian crisis. Russia: A Texas investor with ties to the Trump family said he had signed a deal with a Russian company to develop natural gas in Alaska. The Kremlin has been promoting investment opportunities with Russia since Trump returned to office. Other Big Stories Among those killed in the Lake Tahoe avalanche: a group of six moms who connected through their shared love of the outdoors. (We’re offering free access to this article.) Alan Dershowitz helped create modern press freedom. Now he is asking the Supreme Court to revise or destroy it. (Sign up for The Docket, our new legal newsletter.) OPINIONS The Constitution says people born on American soil are Americans. Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship can’t change this, Akhil Reed Amar writes. John Guida and Nate Silver discussed the Democratic front-runners for president in 2028. Here is a column by Michelle Goldberg on how Trump doesn’t care if the public is with him on Iran. 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 Japan. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters Meet Punch: A baby monkey in Japan had trouble making friends, aside from his stuffed orangutan toy. On the internet, though, he became a celebrity. (We’re offering free access to this article.) Freedom House: A Black paramedic crew in Pittsburgh was a pioneer in emergency care. Now it’s back in the spotlight, thanks partly to “The Pitt.” Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a dilapidated mansion for sale in Brooklyn. TODAY’S NUMBER 1,106 feet — That is the length of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, which is sailing toward the Middle East as part of Trump’s military buildup in the region. About 5,000 sailors and airmen are on board, and five guided-missile destroyers accompany it. WINTER OLYMPICS The U.S. women’s hockey team. Doug Mills/The New York Times Hockey: The U.S. women completed a perfect run in Milan with a thrilling, 2-1 overtime victory over Canada. Figure skating: Alysa Liu of Team U.S.A. captured gold in the women’s singles competition. Liu entered yesterday’s free skate in third place but posted her best score of the season to become the first U.S. gold medalist in the event since 2002. See a video of her performance. Speedskating: Jordan Stolz came in second, behind Ning Zhongyan of China, in the 1,500-meter event, adding a silver medal to the golds he won in the 500-meter and 1,000-meter races. Freestyle skiing: Eileen Gu of China recovered from a fall to qualify for the women’s freestyle skiing halfpipe final. The Athletic RECIPE OF THE DAY Julia Gartland for The New York Times If you have a pint of cooked rice in the freezer, as you should because I remind you to so often, this endlessly adaptable recipe for cumin chicken fried rice makes for a lovely end-of-week meal. (If you don’t, make some rice this evening and freeze it for later use.) I like the recipe as written, with chunked skinless chicken thighs as the protein, but lamb takes up the cumin and stir-fry sauce beautifully, as does tofu. Just make sure to adjust the amount of fat you use for frying. Lamb or a well-marbled fist of beef will need less than you’d use for the chicken, tofu or shrimp. CROWD CONTROL Max Amini Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Meet Max Amini, the most popular standup comic you probably haven’t heard of. Over the weekend, he sold out Madison Square Garden, the first Iranian American comic to do so. Where’d the guy come from? Not Netflix, where the comedy special was once ascendant, but YouTube, where he performs a lot of what’s called crowd work — riffing with the audience. “Amini quietly listens to people talk for long stretches,” writes Jason Zinoman, our comedy critic, who went to the Garden to see him. “His patience leads to dead spaces, but also a sense that things could be going off the rails. At one point, a drunk audience member hijacked the show. At another, a woman told a long story about seeing a medium that almost no one in the arena could hear. Amini got his biggest laughs mocking the audience members, calling back to them, weaving them into a story. What becomes clear is they are not just seeing the show. They are the show.” Read more about Amini’s rise here. More on culture Vincent van Gogh relied on yellow to create some of his most recognizable canvases. A new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam explores how he used the color and how it connected him to other artists. “Lincoln in the Bardo,” a new opera by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek based on the best-selling novel, will have its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in October. The season will open, however, with something old rather than new: Verdi’s “Macbeth,” featuring Lise Davidsen, the Norwegian soprano who has become one of opera’s biggest box office draws. Stephen Colbert had some thoughts on Trump’s Board of Peace. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Elvis Presley in a new documentary. Neon Watch “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” a documentary from Baz Luhrmann that our critic called fun and revealing. It’s in theaters now. Add mushrooms to your diet for more fiber. Build a great bike-patch kit recommended by the shade-tree mechanics at Wirecutter. It’ll come in handy when the inevitable flat arrives at the worst possible time. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were mathematic and thematic. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. — 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted February 23 Author Members Posted February 23 February 21, 2026 Good morning. Does taking care of our future selves have to mean sacrifice in the present? María Jesús Contreras Future perfect By Melissa Kirsch “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” my colleague Steven Kurutz told me this week. He was talking about the phenomenon of people increasingly backing their cars into parking spots, the subject of his recent investigation. “Fifteen or 20 years ago, it seemed that everyone parked the same way,” he said. Now, in any supermarket lot, he said, you’ll find some percentage of people parked so that their car is facing out. In suburban parking lots outside New York City, he encountered the same mind-set repeatedly: Backing in makes it easier to get out. “You’re going to back up coming or going,” Steven wrote. “Backer-inners, it seemed, preferred doing the harder maneuver first.” Doing the harder thing now so that you’ll have an easier time later is a fundamental concept in self-improvement communities. In Reddit communities like r/DecidingToBeBetter and r/GetDisciplined, you’ll find people talking about doing favors for their future selves. They might try to think of their future self as a friend or someone they love, on the premise that it can be easier to do something kind for another person than to do it for oneself. The backer-inners are thinking about their future selves, performing the fussier parking job now so that Future Them can reap the benefits of getting on the road faster. It can feel like a drag to do something uncomfortable now in order to reap the benefits later — see: saving for retirement, going to the gym. In some cases, the future payoff feels worth it; in others, not so much. I watch the way I alternately take care of Future Me and then sabotage her nearly every night. I clean the kitchen and tidy the house before going to bed. No matter how much I’d prefer to leave it for morning, I load the dishwasher, wipe down the counters, arrange the pillows on the couch so that Future Me will wake up to a scene of order. I know Future Me, and she finds starting the day with a mess of dirty dishes a total bummer. Future Me also hates being tired. But that doesn’t stop me, nearly every night, from partaking in “revenge bedtime procrastination,” staying up late reading and watching true crime documentaries after I’ve gotten into bed, reveling in the agency of “me time,” in which I am answerable to no one but myself. “I stay up late at night ‘cause I’m ‘Night Guy,’” goes an old Jerry Seinfeld bit. “Night Guy wants to stay up late. ‘What about getting up after five hours of sleep?’ Oh, that’s Morning Guy’s problem.’” Night Guy is Present Me, staying up to finish the book even though it’s nearly 2 a.m. Morning Guy is Future Me, in for a rough wake-up. “When will the future me arrive?” one user asked Reddit’s r/SelfImprovement community, unsure if present sacrifice was worth some theoretical future gain. “Realize you are future you to past you,” another replied. “Have you thanked yourself for everything you’ve done?” Deciding to back into the space, taking a few minutes to clean up before bed: These are tiny expressions of care for one’s near-future self. We reap the benefits almost immediately after the sacrifice. It can be harder to envision who we’ll be decades from now, to really imagine our future selves and invest in setting them up for success. We engage in temporal discounting, valuing the rewards of the present over those of the future. We spend the bonus instead of putting it in a high-yield savings account. We know that our future self awaits, but sometimes we decide to satisfy the present self instead. Since Steven wrote his parking story, he hasn’t become a backer-inner. But he has become a puller-througher, finding two empty spots end-to-end and pulling through one so he’s facing out. He found a way to get the future reward without the upfront hassle. Is this cheating? It doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone. Where else might this kind of win-win of time and effort be realized? What other, more consequential ways might there be to take care of our future selves without too much discomfort in the present? TRUMP’S TARIFFS Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that President Trump had exceeded his authority by imposing tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner. The long-awaited decision was a major setback for Trump, who excoriated the justices who ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs.” He vowed to restore his signature tariffs using different legal authorities. The federal government has collected more than $200 billion in tariff revenue since the start of last year. The administration had previously said that a loss in the case could force it to unwind trade deals and pay hefty refunds to importers. The opinion: In a 6-3 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court said that Trump could not invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” to justify unilateral duties without congressional approval. Read the full opinion here. Trump reacts: In a hastily called news conference, the president said he was “ashamed of certain members of the court,” and he called the justices who ruled against him “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” Until yesterday, Trump had enjoyed an extraordinarily successful run before the Supreme Court, which provisionally approved many of his second-term initiatives. Not so fast: The ruling eliminated Trump’s primary tool for imposing tariffs, but he is already searching for ways to work around the court. Yesterday, he ordered an across-the-board 10 percent tariff using the Trade Act of 1974. So, refunds? Anticipating yesterday’s ruling, companies have hired lawyers, filed suits and submitted claims in hopes of securing refunds on tariffs they had paid. It remains unclear whether the government will need to pony up. Public opinion: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they disapprove of how Trump is handling tariffs, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll. Ask The Morning: What do you want to know about the ruling and its economic and political impact? Send us your questions, and we’ll answer some in an upcoming newsletter. THE LATEST NEWS Iran Trump told reporters that he was considering a limited military strike on Iran to pressure it into making a deal over its nuclear program. During negotiations this week, the U.S. did not ask Iran to stop enriching uranium, Iran’s foreign minister said, contradicting Washington’s public position. Politics An ICE officer shot and killed an American citizen in Texas last March, but the agency’s involvement in the shooting was not revealed until this week. Federal judges appointed a veteran defense lawyer to be the U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia. Two hours later, the Trump administration fired him. The E.P.A. is allowing coal-burning power plants to release more heavy metals like mercury, a potent neurotoxin. Cuba has been strangled by the U.S. naval blockade. The country is quickly running out of fuel, pushing its government to the brink of collapse, a Times analysis of shipping data and satellite images found. Other Big Stories A promising blood test aimed at detecting cancer failed to reduce late-stage diagnoses in a major clinical trial. The U.S. economy grew more slowly in the final quarter of the year, held back by the prolonged government shutdown. Forecasters say another winter storm is headed toward the Northeast this weekend, though it’s still unclear how much snow will fall. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Dance and Stage Alysa Liu in the free skate competition this week. Vincent Alban/The New York Times Our dance critic, herself a former figure skater, examined the artistry behind Alysa Liu’s gold-medal-winning performance. “She moves like water on a frozen surface,” she writes. After Trump remade the Kennedy Center in his image, eminent composers and Grammy winners canceled their shows. This ice skating group couldn’t afford to do the same. During a performance of “Richard III” in Berlin, a sword slipped out the cursed king’s hand and struck an audience member in the head. Film and TV Baz Luhrmann discovered unseen footage of Elvis Presley in an underground salt mine in Kansas. This is how he turned it into an IMAX documentary of the King. An affectionate slow dance? References to pornography? The legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni will test what constitutes harassment on the set of a movie about a violent sexual relationship. Tyra Banks seemed almost omnipotent on her long-running reality series “America’s Next Top Model.” In a new documentary, she is merely a subject. The BAFTAs, Britain’s answer to the Oscars, are this weekend, and “One Battle After Another” leads all nominees. Ahead of the show, The Times spoke with its host, the comedian Alan Cumming. Music What can musical variations teach us about creativity? A musicologist has answers. With piles of McDonald’s takeout, a diaper and a golden toilet that doubles as a throne, a Grand Guignol-style opera in Germany takes aim at Trump. 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. RECIPE OF THE WEEK Linda Xiao for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Chile Oil Wontons Whether you’re in the midst of celebrating the Lunar New Year, or you just have dumplings on your mind, this weekend is a perfect time to make Sue Li’s spicy, pork-filled chile oil wontons. It does take a bit of time to fold them all, but using store-bought wonton skins streamlines things. And Sue’s there to hold your hand in a helpful accompanying video. Be sure to save any extra chile oil; it’s fantastic on eggs, tofu, chicken and noodles. (And for even more dumplings, check out New York Times Cooking’s Dumpling Week recipes.) REAL ESTATE Julia Kaplan in Berkshire County, Mass. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times The Hunt: A photographer looked for a quiet retreat in the Berkshires with low taxes, but close to family. What did she choose? Play our game. What you get for under $1 million, compound edition: A former spiritual retreat in West Virginia; four cabins in the Ozarks; a converted detention facility in Tennessee. T MAGAZINE Photograph by Anthony Seklaoui. Styled by Imruh Asha. Location: the Presidential Villas at Caesars Palace Click to read the latest issue of T, The New York Times Style Magazine. LIVING Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Land of volcanoes: Visit Guadeloupe and you may find yourself canceling plans so you can explore just one more hidden cove, rainforest or hot spring. The Pour: Not long ago, it seemed as if American wines were gaining a foothold in Europe. After Trump’s tariffs, though, many are gone. Spare ribs and a T-shirt: A New York restaurant’s Lunar New Year merchandise has become a coveted collector’s item. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER How to age well at home Aging in place, or growing old in your own home rather than a nursing home, offers a lot of benefits. You’re in the comfort of familiar surroundings, and you retain independence. But it also involves risks — many of which can be reduced or eliminated by re-evaluating the things in your home and how you use them. For example, installing handrails on both sides of stairs is a relatively simple but highly effective fall deterrent. Experts say it’s best to take a proactive approach, slowly making adaptations as soon as you’re in your “forever home.” This room-by-room tour is a great place to start. WINTER OLYMPICS Men’s freestyle skiing: Alex Ferreira won gold in the halfpipe, completing his Olympic collection — he had won silver in the 2018 Games and bronze in 2022. Men’s hockey: The U.S. easily defeated Slovakia, 6-2, setting up a highly anticipated showdown with Canada in Sunday’s gold medal game. Women’s curling: American hopes of a first gold medal in women’s curling were dashed by a Swiss team that simply did not miss. The U.S. and Canada will compete for bronze today. Figure skating: Alysa Liu broke a 20-year medal drought for U.S. women. We broke down her jumps to see how she pulled ahead of the competition. Alice Fang, Jon Huang and Eden Weingart/The New York Times NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was ladybug. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted February 24 Author Members Posted February 24 February 22, 2026 Good morning. Today, a writer for this newsletter explains how he became a grudging participant in the world of online gambling. In Las Vegas. Bridget Bennett for The New York Times You can bet on it By Evan Gorelick I’m a writer for The Morning. An app on your phone lets you gamble on the timing of U.S. military strikes, on the existence of aliens and on the return of Jesus Christ. (Will he make his second coming before midnight on Jan. 1, 2027? Online speculators think there’s a 4 percent chance.) Gambling is old — even older than Jesus. Scholars believe that thousands of years ago, the Egyptians bet on senet, a religious board game representing the soul’s path to the afterlife. A couple of millennia later, the Romans bet on life-or-death gladiator fights and chariot races. When Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon, he described his move like a steely-eyed crapshooter: Alea iacta est, “The die is cast.” But the bets now consuming the world, transacted instantaneously via online prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, are different from those weightier wagers of the past. These sites empower hobbyist prognosticators to bet on virtually anything. No bet is too trivial. The world is a gamblers’ playground, and we’re all part of the game. I recently became a grudging participant. I didn’t even get the chance to try my luck or lose any money. I simply existed, and thus became a vehicle for someone else’s speculation. Becoming a bet It began when I posted on X earlier this month. I wanted to share an article I’d written, about the official behind a stream of Labor Department social media posts that parroted messages used by white nationalists. I’m not a huge social media guy, so I let myself get a little excited when my post picked up steam. 50,000 views. Now 100,000. Is this thing going viral? Then, I saw this image in the comments section: Was this guy … betting on my tweet? Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. As you read this sentence, real people are betting on whether President Trump will utter the words “six seven” this week. Others are gambling on whether the price of a Bitcoin will rise in the next five minutes. All of which is to say: Why wouldn’t someone also bet on my post? Sure. Fine. But why did he? That’s a harder question. So I asked him. His real name is Franklin Caldwell II, and he’s an aerospace engineer. During Covid, he started down a yearslong rabbit hole of NFTs and cryptocurrencies. He became a multimillionaire in a hurry — then, in a single transaction, lost $3 million in the form of cartoon crypto tokens. His latest obsession is Tweem, the platform that let him gamble on my post. “If I’m going to spend time viewing a tweet, I want to leave with something,” said Caldwell, 35, who added that he had “a passion for predictions.” Since creating his account around seven months ago, Caldwell has placed more than 25,000 bets — over 100 bets per day, on average. What gives? Online gambling now feels unstoppable, and it’s crossing over into places that once seemed unthinkable. Polymarket this year became “the exclusive prediction market partner” of the Golden Globes, which flashed “probabilities” (read: betting odds) on the screen before revealing award winners. A side effect: Gambling is getting more abstracted, and more gamified. When betting feels effortless — when it doesn’t feel like betting — it’s easier to get addicted. Since 2018, internet searches seeking help for gambling addiction have increased more than 20 percent. The stakes of a given wager now feel “more like a concept than a reality,” Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers, told me. “From the time you’re 5 years old, you’re being primed to gamble,” Nower said. “It’s part of our culture now.” Caldwell didn’t bet real money — for now, Tweem deals only in digital “points” — but he hopes that once the platform hits it big, it will shower him with crypto coins for having been an early adopter. In essence, he’s taking another gamble. As for my post? Caldwell bet that it would reach nearly 378,000 views. It ran out of juice at 274,000. Better luck next time. THE LATEST NEWS Politics At the Port of Los Angeles. Mark Abramson for The New York Times President Trump said he would raise his new global tariff to 15 percent after the Supreme Court struck down many of his previous tariffs. Trump pulled his endorsement of a Republican representative from Colorado who voted with Democrats to cancel his tariffs on Canada. JPMorgan Chase admitted that it closed more than 50 of Trump’s accounts shortly after his first term ended. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, kicked off his book tour in Nashville, in what some see as a step toward a 2028 presidential run. Around the World Jordan: Dozens of American planes are parked in the country at a base that has become a key hub for U.S. military planning for possible strikes on Iran. Iran: A top national security official responsible for crushing recent antigovernment protests is in charge of preparing the country for a potential U.S. attack. Venezuela: Since the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro, the country has released hundreds of political prisoners. In the video below, Simon Romero, an international correspondent, describes what’s happening. Click to play. The New York Times Other Big Stories Parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions are bracing for a powerful winter storm, including heavy snowfall and strong winds. See how much snow your area could get. The Department of Homeland Security said it was suspending the T.S.A. PreCheck and Global Entry programs after the department’s funding lapsed. NASA’s moon mission could be delayed until at least April after data showed a problem with helium flow to the rocket. A ninth victim of last week’s avalanche in California was found, and the bodies of all the victims have been recovered, officials said. THE SUNDAY DEBATE The head of the baseball players’ union resigned last week after an internal investigation found that he had an “inappropriate relationship” with his sister-in-law, who was also an employee. At first, it wasn’t clear whether the affair was with his wife’s sister or his brother’s wife, and social media — as well as our little newsletter team — broke into an intense debate over which was worse. To help parse this moral minefield, we consulted Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor who for more than a decade has written the Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine. If you sleep with your sibling’s spouse, Anthony pointed out, you’ve not only set off a bomb in your marriage, but also in what he called “your natal family, the people you’re connected to by blood.” Other siblings, parents, nieces and nephews could be collateral damage. You’ve betrayed the two people you’re supposed to be most loyal to. “It’s not just adultery,” he noted, “it’s violating the family relationship you’ve had since birth.” If you cheat with your spouse’s sibling, it might be easier on your family. But you’re doing all that extra harm to her and her family. As Anthony put it, “You’re denying her the person it would be most natural for her to go to to seek solace.” And if it’s worse for your betrayed spouse, he said, it’s worse overall. “In thinking about morality, we often make a sharp distinction between harming yourself and harming other people,” he continued. “Since you shouldn’t be doing it at all, what you should be focused on is the harm you’re doing to the other person.” Sign up to get The Ethicist newsletter delivered to your inbox. FROM OPINION As the war in Ukraine reaches its fourth anniversary, it has reoriented values and social relations that will define future generations of Ukrainians, M. Gessen writes. These Winter Olympics have shown us the difference between patriotism and nationalism, David Litt writes. Here is a column by Nicholas Kristof on what survivors of sex trafficking think about Jeffrey Epstein and his friends. 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 At the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Christopher Gregory-Rivera for The New York Times Now you see it: For three generations, Bruno Goppion’s family has crafted display cases and exhibits for the world’s leading museums. Modern Love: When her husband collapsed in their bedroom, it was the nightmare she had long feared coming true. Master of the unthinkable: Toni Morrison’s greatness lay in her belief that stories could contain what our minds couldn’t confront. Anatomy of a Scene: Watch the director Kleber Mendonça Filho break down a sequence from “The Secret Agent,” his Oscar-nominated film. A bandleader: Willie Colón, a trombonist, singer and composer from the Bronx, helped shape the sound of the music the world now knows as salsa. He died at 75. WINTER OLYMPICS Connor Curran Dylan Martinez/Reuters Aerial skiing: The Americans Connor Curran, Kaila Kuhn and Christopher Lillis won gold in the mixed team aerials. Cross-country skiing: With his victory in the 50-kilometer race, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo of Norway won his sixth gold medal in these Games. Men’s curling: The Canadian squad beat Britain in a tense, strategic match to win the gold. BOOK OF THE WEEK Penguin Random House By Elisabeth Egan “A Hymn to Life,” by Gisèle Pelicot; translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver: In 2024, Pelicot sat in a courtroom in Avignon, France, while her husband and dozens of strangers were tried and convicted of raping her while she was drugged into oblivion over a period of nine years. (The lorazepam cocktail came courtesy of the man she loved for five decades, who slipped it into her food and drink.) In her memoir, which our critic described as a “rousing feminist manifesto,” Pelicot charts her progression from unwitting victim to global icon. “I don’t know where I am anymore,” she told the police when she learned of her husband’s crimes. It’s clear from her account that she has her bearings now. For more: Read our interview with Pelicot, or watch the video. THE INTERVIEW Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is the wellness influencer Jay Shetty, who went from being a monk to being a wildly successful self-help celebrity with a goal to “make wisdom go viral.” One of the things that’s unusual about your arc is that it looks like an inversion of a typical monk’s journey. In the typical version, somebody decides to embrace monastic life and then renounces material things. It seems as if you decided to pursue monastic life, and now you’re doing pretty well for yourself financially. You hang out with glamorous people. You’re a successful entrepreneur. Are there any ways in which the spiritual tradition you trained in is in tension with the life you’re living? There’s a beautiful statement in the Bhagavad Gita that says attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. Often in our Western understanding, we see detachment as better than attachment. However, the spiritual understanding is far more refined. Detachment doesn’t mean aversion. Detachment means you can be close to anything in the world and use it for a higher purpose. Now, I’m not saying I’m doing that. I’m saying I’m trying my best. Every day I’m living in the quote-unquote real world, I’m reminded of my flaws. And I would argue that I feel closer to growth in my current life than I ever did in the ashram, because in the ashram I could almost forget or think maybe I’d already found it. Is there any part of you that thinks that’s an elaborate self-justification? I have questioned that many times. I think the spiritual philosophy of 5,000 years is pretty clear, so I take that as my authority. However, the other side of it, to be quite frank and honest, is I think it’s also a graduation. I’m married, I have businesses, we have teams, we have companies. I’m not a monk anymore. It’s partly why I wrote a book called “Think Like a Monk,” not “Live Like a Monk.” Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Make these pan-fried fritters. They’re a Korean favorite for a reason. Safeguard your hard-earned savings from scammers. Here are some tips to protect yourself. Watch the BAFTAs. Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars takes place tonight. U.S. viewers can see the show on E! MEAL PLAN Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. It’s tax season. Summer child-care costs are looming. Are you keeping a closer eye on food spending? In the spirit of thriftiness, Margaux Laskey and the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter pulled together delicious dinner options, like chickpea vegetable soup, that are budget-friendly and keep well in the fridge or freezer, but that don’t feel like a sacrifice in terms of fun or flavor. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were amniotic, anatomic, contaminant, contamination, manicotti and monatomic. Can you put eight historical events — including reviews of the Gettysburg Address, the beginning of the Aztec empire and the release of Dungeons & Dragons — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted February 25 Author Members Posted February 25 February 23, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. The Olympics are over. Jack Hughes, the U.S. hockey player, became a household name yesterday when he scored the winning goal in overtime for a gold medal against Canada. He did so with a bloody face, after losing some teeth. And a powerful winter storm continues to pound the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic this morning. There’s a lot of snow. (You can track the storm here.) There’s more news below. I’m going to start today, though, with Iran. In Tehran yesterday. Vahid Salemi/Associated Press The next conflict Is the United States about to wage war on Iran? American forces have taken positions across the Middle East, with two aircraft carrier groups and dozens of fighter jets, bombers and other planes poised within striking distance of the country. President Trump said Friday he might use them in a limited strike to pressure Iran to end its nuclear program. Trump badly wants that deal, which his predecessors chased — and never realized. He blew up nuclear enrichment sites in Iran last year. In talks last week, he pushed Iran for an agreement, but so far it has not assented. “Bad things will happen” if Tehran doesn’t sign a deal, Trump said last week. “You’re going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.” Now he has arrayed a force in the region to support a major conflict — one that could potentially last longer, and be deadlier, than last year’s 12-day war on Iran or the commando attack that removed Venezuela’s president in January. Trump has told advisers that if an initial strike fails to move Iran to end its nuclear program, he may mount a bigger attack to drive its leaders from power. Note: Some U.S. ship locations are approximate. Source: New York Times reporting and analysis of satellite imagery, ship- and flight-tracking data. The New York Times For its part, Iran says that if the nation is attacked, “all bases, facilities and assets of the hostile force in the region would constitute legitimate targets,” and that the “United States would bear full and direct responsibility for any unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences.” This story describes some of Iran’s possible targets. What justification does the White House give for a possible attack? Trump aides have mentioned a desire to protect protesters there, after the government killed thousands of them last month, and a wish to knock over the regime by removing the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That would certainly bolster what still seems to be the main motivation: atomic weapons. Last year, Trump said his attacks had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Intelligence reports, however, cast the strikes more as setbacks. There have been signs recently that Iran is hardening its bunkers and getting ready to enrich more uranium. Despite these drumbeats of war, Trump hasn’t sought approval from Congress, nor has he directly addressed the American people. Tomorrow is the annual State of the Union address, and perhaps we’ll learn more when he delivers it. How Iran feels In Tehran this month. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In the meantime, though, I wondered how Iranians are feeling about all of this. So I reached out to Erika Solomon, The Times’s bureau chief for Iran and Iraq, to ask. Erika told me there’s a sense of overwhelming grief in the country right now and a belief that the die has already been cast. An attack, many Iranians feel, is a near certainty. As she put it: There are three major themes to the mood right now in Iran: Mourning and division. Many Iranians are still wrestling with the shock and pain of seeing thousands killed in the crackdown on nationwide protests early this year. They are weary. The opposition is also fractured about what the future should look like. Others still support the government to varying degrees — or are simply wary of the alternatives. Many Iranians we speak to say they’ve never seen Iran as polarized as it is now. As the country shot off fireworks to celebrate the anniversary of the revolution earlier this month, we saw videos and recordings where government supporters chanted “God is great” while other people on nearby rooftops yelled “Death to Khamenei,” the supreme leader. Defiance and exasperation. This has surprised even some Iran experts: Many people keep voicing their anger despite a fearsome and ongoing crackdown. Even though dissidents are still going to jail — and losing their businesses and property — we see people signing letters of protest, organizing sit-ins, refusing to take university exams and more. University students opened the new semester this weekend with demonstrations. The economic crisis that first drove people to the streets in December has not ended. It’s only getting worse. We talk to middle-class families who have long since stopped buying meat for their meals. Now they’re choosing between paying rent or buying food. Iranians are bracing for the possibility of U.S. strikes at a moment when they are emotionally and materially devastated. Anticipation and fatalism. The biggest question looming over every Iranian right now is: Will America strike? Many Iranians we speak to are extremely worried for their safety and don’t think American bombs can solve their problems. And yet a few tell us they welcome a strike because they’ve lost hope that there is any other way to get rid of the government and are willing to take a chance on foreign intervention — despite having seen how it went for their neighbors in Iraq and Afghanistan. No matter how they feel, there is a growing sense that strikes are inevitable, and the only option for them now is to prepare. Those who can afford it are stocking up on canned goods and batteries. One blogger posted tips for how to organize two weeks’ worth of supplies. In the replies, Iranians asked how they were supposed to gather food for an extended war when they couldn’t feed themselves today. Related: Iran’s government sees capitulating to the U.S. on uranium enrichment and ballistic missiles as riskier to its survival than going to war, analysts say. TARIFF CHAOS Scott Bessent Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times It was a frenzied weekend for trade. The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs on Friday, and he promised to revive them quickly through a different law. First, he said he would impose a new, global tariff of 10 percent. On Saturday, he raised the figure to 15 percent. Trump is limited in what he can do. Under the law he has now invoked, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, tariffs may last only 150 days unless Congress extends them. And they’re capped at 15 percent, so the president can’t lift them again. Now that the old tariffs have been deemed illegal, do the businesses that paid them get their money back? The Trump administration is expected to argue in court that companies lack standing to claim a refund if they passed the tariff costs to consumers by charging more. So if a company didn’t charge consumers more, would the government get to keep the now-invalidated tax? It’s an open question, and thousands of companies have filed lawsuits arguing they deserve refunds. This could take years to litigate. Read more about what has happened since the ruling. For more The U.S. trade representative said there would be no change in the Trump administration’s tariff policy after the ruling. Have Trump’s tariffs been working? In the video below, our chief economics correspondent, Ben Casselman, breaks it down. Click to play. The New York Times THE LATEST NEWS Winter Storm In Brooklyn, N.Y., yesterday. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times More than 200,000 customers in the Mid-Atlantic region are without power. Forecasters warn that the storm’s high winds may bring down power lines. New York’s public schools are closed today because of snow, and there won’t be remote learning. The city’s last official snow day was in 2019. Shooting at Mar-a-Lago Officers, including Secret Service agents, fatally shot an armed man at Mar-a-Lago yesterday morning. The man was 21 and from North Carolina, and he had a company that specialized in handmade drawings of golf courses. Economy Trump claims that the U.S. has undergone an economic turnaround since he returned to office. But data show that trends on jobs and inflation haven’t changed much. Although inflation has slowed in the U.S., many families are still struggling to afford basics like housing and health care. Around the World Mexico: The government said it had killed the nation’s most wanted cartel boss, known as El Mencho. Armed groups set fire to cars and buildings across the country after his death. (We’re offering free access to this article.) Denmark: The country rejected Trump’s plan to send a “great hospital boat” to Greenland, saying there was no need for it. The prime minister posted on Instagram that she was “happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to health care for everyone.” Middle East: Arab leaders condemned comments by Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, that implied Israel could control territory from Iraq to Egypt. He said his comments were taken out of context. OPINIONS Under Trump, America has entered an era where science is a political weapon rather than a tool for the collective good, Jeneen Interlandi writes. When it comes to exercise, consistency is more important than optimization, Emily Oster argues. 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 Assisi, Italy. Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press Holy remains: Bones believed to be those of St. Francis of Assisi will be on public display for a month to commemorate the 800th anniversary of his death. Hundreds of thousands have already registered to see them. Read more here. (We’re offering free access to this article.) Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about the status of T.S.A. PreCheck lanes at airports. Metropolitan Diary: Respect the pizza. TODAY’S NUMBER 11 million — That was the decrease in foreign visitors to the United States last year compared with the year before. The U.S. was the world’s only major travel destination with a decline in international tourists. OLYMPIC HOCKEY After the golden goal. Doug Mills/The New York Times Men’s hockey: An overtime goal by Jack Hughes gave the U.S. a dramatic 2-1 win over rival Canada in the gold-medal game. It was the American men’s first gold since the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980. Something missing: Hughes lost at least three teeth to the high stick of a Canadian player, Sam Bennett. Hughes scored the winning goal with a bloody face, making him an internet sensation. In memoriam: Team U.S.A. honored Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, the prominent hockey brothers who died after being struck by an alleged drunken driver in 2024, by bringing Johnny’s two kids onto the ice for a team picture. Sell-off: After the American victory, a Canadian hockey fan listed a rare autographed Jack Hughes rookie card on eBay for 1 million Canadian dollars (about $730,000) with the caption, “I hate you, Jack Hughes. You ruined my day.” More on the Olympics Skiing: Eileen Gu of China defended her freeski halfpipe title, earning her third medal of these Games and her sixth overall. Medals: Which country won the Winter Olympics? We (over)analyzed the medal count. RECIPE OF THE DAY Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Spencer Richards. I’ve been making these cold sesame noodles for close to 20 years, after nailing down the recipe with help from the Chinese food impresario Ed Schoenfeld, who died in 2022. The noodles should be soft and luxurious, bathed in an emulsified mixture of sesame paste and peanut butter, rendered vivid and fiery by chile oil and sweetened by sugar, with a rice-vinegar tang. Whisk the sauce and taste it before combining with the noodles. “The art is in the balance,” Eddie told me, “between the salt and sweet, the sweet and the fire, and the fire and the acidity.” THE BRITISH OSCARS The cast and director of “One Battle After Another.” Alastair Grant/Invision, via Associated Press “One Battle After Another” won best film at this year’s British Academy Film Awards, better known as the BAFTAs. The movie took six awards, including best director and best supporting actor. Jessie Buckley took the leading-actress award for her role in “Hamnet,” following up on her Golden Globe win. In the night’s only surprise, the leading-actor prize went to Robert Aramayo, the star of “I Swear,” a movie about an activist with Tourette’s syndrome. Paddington Bear, presenting an award, had a hard time opening the envelope. “It’s not easy with paws,” he said. And the Prince and Princess of Wales walked the red carpet in coordinated outfits. See all the looks here. (We’re offering free access to this article.) More on culture The music artist with the largest audience on YouTube these days isn’t Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift. It’s Slxughter, a producer of what’s called phonk music — the soundtrack to countless YouTube Shorts, TikToks and Instagram Reels. He and other phonk-makers around the world are getting rich. Caroline Goldfarb, a comedy writer and film producer who started a tinned-fish company during the pandemic, recently married Michael Gropper, a well-known shofar player who once blew his (literal) horn at a Los Angeles Rams game. Click. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Improve your balance and strength with these seven exercises. (We’re offering free access to this article.) Crisp your grilled cheese — and your bacon and chicken thighs, too — with this stainless-steel cooking weight recommended by the diner employees at Wirecutter. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was lurking. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted February 27 Author Members Posted February 27 February 25, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. President Trump’s State of the Union speech last night ran for an hour and 47 minutes. It was the longest address since people began keeping records of such things, in 1964. Here’s what you need to know. In Washington last night. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Trump’s spectacle The United States is in its “golden age,” President Trump said during his State of the Union address last night. In a speech that sought to reverse sliding approval ratings and discontent with his approach to the economy and immigration, he did not introduce much in the way of new policy. Instead, he told a story of a country that has turned around under his leadership, with an excellent economy, immense military strength and a plummeting crime rate. “We’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” he said. The evidence for that was sometimes dubious. Trump praised his own foreign policies, called for legislation that would address his frequent claims — frequently debunked — of widespread election fraud and introduced his audience to a cast of heroes. Here came, among others, wizened veterans, a rescue swimmer, Erika Kirk, members of the National Guard, a pilot wounded during the raid on Venezuela and a political dissident recently freed from a Caracas prison. And he goaded Democrats with deft stagecraft. At one point he asked representatives to stand if they agreed with the statement: “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Republicans rose, while many Democrats did not, creating an image the administration will surely use against them. “You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up,” Trump pronounced. The president’s tactic shifted the energy in the Capitol. “At that point, what had been a mostly dutiful State of the Union address morphed into full-blown political theater. It was part game show, part cage match — which is just how Mr. Trump likes it,” my colleague Shawn McCreesh wrote. There was plenty of spectacle, including standing ovations and chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — particularly when Trump introduced the gold medal-winning United States men’s hockey team and promised to confer the Presidential Medal of Freedom on its goaltender, Connor Hellebuyck. But it was not altogether a rapturous crowd. Congress, like the country, is badly divided. What else Trump said The Supreme Court justices during the speech. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times Tariffs: Trump said he believed that tariffs would eventually “substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax.” Justices from the Supreme Court, which recently invalidated his tariff system, did not react to his comments. Iran: Trump said he would not let Iran develop a nuclear weapon. “My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy,” he said, though he added: “No nation should ever doubt America’s resolve. We have the most powerful military on Earth.” Affordability: The president mocked Democrats’ focus on affordability while claiming that the prices of groceries and gas were dropping and that his tax cuts were helping workers. Still, recent polls show that most Americans are not pleased with the economy. Voting: Trump pressed Congress to advance stalled legislation related to his unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. “They want to cheat,” he said of Democrats, adding, “And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.” In the room The U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, with the goalie Connor Hellebuyck in front. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Trump summoned the gold medal-winning Olympic men’s hockey team into the chamber to a standing ovation from lawmakers of both parties. Another bipartisan moment: Nearly everyone stood to applaud as Trump presented Eric Slover, an Army pilot injured in the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, with the Medal of Honor. Trump invited the victims of violent crimes perpetrated by immigrants to the chamber. He also introduced a young woman named Sage who is at the center of a lawsuit over how her school handled her gender identity. “Surely we can all agree, no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said. “We must ban it.” Rep. Al Green of Texas, a Democrat, was escorted from the House chamber after holding up a sign reading, “Black people aren’t apes!” — a retort to a racist video of the Obamas that Trump posted on social media. More from last night In his speech, Trump made clear that his political strategy is to paint Democrats as unpatriotic and “crazy,” Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent, writes. Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia delivered Democrats’ rebuttal and focused much of her speech on affordability. “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family?” she asked. “We all know the answer is no.” Read a fact check of the speech here. Times reporters flagged false statements on election fraud, Trump’s tax cuts and his economic turnaround, among other topics. From “The Daily”: Listen to our podcast about the “very long, very partisan” speech. From Opinion: Writers on the left and the right broke down the best and worst moments of the night. From late night: The hosts reacted to the address. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Trump’s new tariffs on global imports went into effect yesterday at 10 percent, despite his pledge to impose a 15 percent rate. A judge ruled that a court, not the Justice Department, would search devices seized last month from a Washington Post reporter who covers the federal government. The House rejected an aviation safety bill that regulators said could have prevented midair collisions like the one last year near Washington that killed 67 people. Fifteen states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over changes in federal vaccine recommendations saying the changes were not based on science. The Epstein Files Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and professor, resigned from a neuroscience institute at Columbia University because of his friendship with Jeffery Epstein. For decades, Epstein cultivated ties to executives at Microsoft, giving him access to succession planning and other business decisions. Around the World In Mexico City on Monday. Cristopher Rogel Blanquet for The New York Times Mexico: Criminal groups may try to take advantage of the death of the cartel leader known as “El Mencho,” posing new challenges for President Claudia Sheinbaum. Russia: The Kremlin is moving closer to banning Telegram, an app millions in the country use to communicate. It’s a crackdown on what remains of free Russian internet. Iran: As Trump swings between war and peace, some Iranians are packing emergency bags, buying backup generators and making plans to flee the country. France: The Louvre’s president has resigned, less than five months after burglars stole jewels worth more than $100 million from the museum. Tech If China invades Taiwan and cuts off its chip exports to American companies, the tech industry and the U.S. economy would be crippled, a Times investigation shows. The I.R.S. is in a legal battle with Meta for $15 billion. Our investigative reporter Jesse Drucker explains what Meta did to get into the agency’s cross hairs. Click to play. Guthrie Abduction Savannah Guthrie offered $1 million for information that leads to finding her mother, Nancy, who has been missing more than three weeks. (This article is in front of the paywall.) Amateur sleuths have upended the life of a man accused online of being Guthrie’s abductor. OPINIONS Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour surveyed 40 doctors and nurses across Iran about their experiences treating wounded protesters. Despite great risk, they shared their stories. Here is a column by Jamelle Bouie on what the U.S. looks like a year into the second Trump administration. 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 A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in 2022. Edgar Su/Reuters Chicken dance: New findings suggest that Tyrannosaurus rex chased prey by running on its tiptoes “like an eight-ton chicken,” one paleontologist said. Chatbot takeover: More than half of teens now use A.I. to help with schoolwork, a new study found. (We’ve made this article free. Parents, enjoy!) Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about American Girl dolls getting skinnier. A writer: Edward Hoagland used his essays to explore the natural world and the terrain of his own life, including his journey into blindness. He died at 93. TODAY’S NUMBER 10,000 — That is the number of antennas on a new radar system that will begin operating in Norway this summer. It will be used to study the aurora borealis and space weather. SPORTS Skiing: The American freeskier Hunter Hess said the last two weeks were probably the hardest of his life after being criticized by Trump. N.B.A.: The league fined the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for tanking after the team sidelined Aaron Nesmith in a game against the Utah Jazz. The Pacers coach called the fine “ridiculous.” RECIPE OF THE DAY David Malosh for The New York Times Is shepherd’s pie an appropriate recipe for a weeknight preparation? It is in February in snow-locked Brooklyn. Those in warmer climes may wish to cook along with me in solidarity. It’s a steady meal, comforting, and the process of making it will bring joy to Sydney or Los Angeles as surely as it does to New York. Samantha Seneviratne’s recipe calls for a mixture of ground beef and lamb for the filling, heavier on the beef. I reverse the ratio because I like the flavor of lamb. Cook’s choice! BRONTË COUNTRY In northern England. Andrew Testa for New York Times The windswept moors of northern England where Emily Brontë wrote “Wuthering Heights” draw literature fans from around the world. Haworth, the charming village where Emily and her siblings grew up, has a thriving local economy. But the area beyond it — and in particular the town of Bradford, where Emily’s father, Patrick, visited often in his role as an Anglican priest — is a different matter, a place that illustrates the contradictions and economic hardship of modern Britain. Michael Shear, our chief U.K. correspondent, tells a tale of two towns, alongside vivid photography from Andrew Testa. Explore their work. (It’s in front of the paywall.) More on culture “Scrubs” is back tonight on ABC after a 16-year hiatus. It’s been a terrible year for skiing in the American West: no snow. Also, the price of lift tickets is soaring. Increasingly, powder hounds in search of the deep, soft stuff are turning to the Japanese island of Hokkaido, which gets up to 50 feet of snow a year. (See the images for free; we’ve unlocked this link.) THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Miami XO Listen to Miami XO’s latest release, “Bazooka.” It’s our critic Jon Caramanica’s song of the week. Pop open a tin of the best sardines harvested by the avid fishermen at Wirecutter. Avoid these fitness trends that experts hate. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were conflict and infliction. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 1 Author Members Posted March 1 February 26, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Negotiators from the U.S. and Iran are meeting in Geneva today, scrambling to stop a looming war in Iran. And we’re trying to figure out why 10 Cubans in a 45-year-old, 24-foot-long motorboat registered in Florida engaged in a deadly gun battle with Cuban border troops yesterday. Four of them are dead. There’s more news below. I’m going to start, though, with the economy. A shopper in Seattle. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Affordability bites President Trump says the economy is going gangbusters. “Inflation is plummeting,” he said during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. “Incomes are rising fast.” If that language sounds familiar, it’s because Joe Biden used it, too. “Wages keep going up,” he said in his final State of the Union address. “Inflation keeps coming down.” In both cases, there are risks to trying to tell voters that the economy is better than they think it is, write Shane Goldmacher and Reid Epstein, who cover politics for The Times. Biden spent months during his cut-short re-election campaign trying to sell the idea that “Bidenomics” had made American lives better. He had the data to show it, and he showed it often. But still, they write, “voters felt squeezed.” The phenomenon is bipartisan. This week, Trump argued that by many markers — the price of gas, the stock market, the fall in mortgage rates, the extent of job growth — the economy is “roaring.” But polls show that a majority of Americans think that his policies have made life less affordable. Karl Russell/The New York Times Where does this disconnect come from? A former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Biden told The Times that both presidents had plenty of strong data to show the American people. Productivity growth has picked up, he said. But economic metrics don’t accompany you to the supermarket: “People don’t eat productivity or pay their rent with G.D.P.” Lived experience One of the numbers Trump trotted out during the State of the Union address had to do with the falling price of gas. He’d seen it in Iowa recently, he said, at $1.85 a gallon. That’s cheap! But I thought about the price of skirt steak at my local supermarket: $26.99 a pound. Not cheap. (I went with flap steak at $14.99 a pound.) I kept looking at prices. Gas at my Brooklyn filling station yesterday: $2.95 a gallon. Skirt steak at the Hy-Vee market in suburban Des Moines: $13.99 a pound. How you experience our economy depends entirely on where you’re living, what you’re doing, what you want and how badly you need it. Ryan Murphy/Getty Images, Mario Tama/Getty Images, Micah Green for The New York Times, Eric Thayer/Getty Images Look at prescription drugs. This week, Trump pledged to bring the cost of them down, as Biden had before him. “Americans pay more for prescription drugs than anywhere in the world,” Biden said in 2024. “It’s wrong, and I’m ending it.” Trump on Tuesday: “Americans who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world.” It’s the same pitch. But whoever you vote for, folks need their Lipitor. And if the cost of it bites into their bottom line, they’ll feel that the economy is hurting, even if the new family down the street landed a sweet mortgage. It’s easy to get freaked. In the United States, for a long time now, a key economic indicator has been anxiety. At the polls To understand how that reality could play out in the coming midterm elections, and perhaps in the general election that will follow in 2028, I turned to Michael Cooper, who runs our politics coverage. “It’s a bit of a dilemma for incumbents,” he told me. “Can you express empathy for people’s economic anxieties without seeming to concede that all is not rosy on your watch?” It’s one of the biggest stories we’ll see as we head into the midterms. “Majorities of voters said they did not feel confident in their ability to pay for retirement and health care, and more than half said housing and education had become unaffordable,” Michael said. “A middle-class lifestyle was seen as increasingly out of reach for most people.” The questions to answer: Can Democrats capitalize on those anxieties, as they have in several smaller races recently — or will Trump’s tax cuts and other policies help Republicans stave off a blue wave in November? Watch: Biden and Trump delivered very similar messages — two years apart. AN A.I. STALEMATE Pete Hegseth and Dario Amodei. Eric Lee for The New York Times, Denis Balibouse/Reuters How should artificial intelligence guide the military? Commanders use Anthropic’s model, Claude, to analyze classified information. But now the Pentagon and the A.I. company are in a standoff, and the government says it may end Anthropic’s contracts. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, says his company won’t help the United States surveil unwitting civilians or deploy killer drones. He worries about what will happen when artificial intelligence becomes too powerful — and says the decision to kill people must remain a human one. Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, says contractors don’t get to tell the government how to do its job; they just need to comply with the law, which he says his department already follows. If Anthropic doesn’t unlock its model for the Pentagon, Hegseth says, he could label it a risk. “Hard Fork,” our tech podcast, covered the impasse here. THE LATEST NEWS Senate Hearing At her Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer whom Trump has tapped to be surgeon general, dodged questions about vaccines. Means is a divisive figure within the medical community. In the video below, Dani Blum, a health reporter for Well, explains why she is an unconventional pick for surgeon general. Click to play. The Epstein Files The Justice Department’s release of millions of files from its Jeffrey Epstein investigation was missing key records about a woman who accused Epstein and Donald Trump of sexual assault. Hillary Clinton will give a deposition today in the House’s investigation into Epstein. She had no dealings with Epstein herself, but is again under pressure to answer for the actions of her husband, Bill Clinton. Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary and one of the nation’s best-known economists, will resign from teaching at Harvard as the university reviews his ties to Epstein. Around the World The Villa Clara Province in Cuba, where an exchange of gunfire happened yesterday, according to the Cuban government. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Cuba: The 10 men on the speedboat were Cuban citizens living in the United States, some of whom appeared to have “terrorist” goals, according to a Cuban state media report. Read what we know. West Bank: The U.S. will offer embassy services in an Israeli settlement for the first time, lending legitimacy to an effort that most of the world considers illegal. The Vatican: Pope Leo will make a 10-day trip to Africa in April. Roman Catholicism is growing faster there than anywhere else in the world. North Korea: In a major speech, Kim Jong-un said he could improve ties with the U.S. if Washington recognized his country as a nuclear weapons state and eased sanctions. The E.U.: Ukraine wants to join the bloc, but creating a phased-in process to accommodate it could permanently change what it means to be a member. Britain: The BBC ordered an internal investigation of its Sunday broadcast of the BAFTAs after it aired a racist slur uttered involuntarily by a man with Tourette’s syndrome. Australia: A far-right, anti-immigrant party is rising in the polls after the mass shooting at Bondi Beach. Politics A sketch of a Trump one-dollar coin proposed by the administration. U.S. Treasury The Trump administration wants to put the president on a one-dollar gold coin. An obscure government body is pushing back. A federal judge ruled that the administration’s policy of deporting immigrants to countries other than their nation of origin was unlawful. The Trump administration announced that it would withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds to Minnesota over allegations of fraud. Gov. Tim Walz said the decision was part of a “campaign of retribution.” Other Big Stories F.B.I. agents raided the Los Angeles school district headquarters and the home of the superintendent. The investigation appears to be related to a lucrative contract the district had with a tech start-up. The chip giant Nvidia reported a profit of $120 billion over the last 12 months as it continued to grow at an astonishing rate. (For context, just three years ago, Nvidia’s profit was about $4.5 billion.) OPINIONS The New York Times Texas will hold its Republican Senate primary on Tuesday. Times Opinion assembled a panel of experts to help guide voters through the complex issues in this election. We need to be better at math to have healthier politics, Aubrey Clayton 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 Tomas Munita for The New York Times Winners: In Afghanistan, a victory in indoor soccer has turned members of the marginalized Hazara minority into national heroes. (The photos are beautiful; we’ve removed the paywall for readers of The Morning.) Super-agers: Some people’s brains remain almost perfectly intact into their 80s. A study suggests their longevity may come from an ability to grow new neurons. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about fitness trends experts hate. An “author’s publisher”: Ann Godoff cultivated the careers of dozens of novelists and nonfiction authors as the head of Random House and then of Penguin Press. She died at 76. TODAY’S NUMBER 25 — That is how many people are in the line of succession for the British throne. William, the Prince of Wales, is first. His uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, is eighth. The British government is considering taking Mountbatten-Windsor off the list, given his ties to Epstein. SPORTS Olympic hockey: Members of the U.S. women’s team said they wanted to focus on their gold-medal win, not on laughs by the men’s team at Trump’s “distasteful” comments about them. Skiing: Lindsey Vonn has a long road ahead to recover from the injuries she suffered in a crash during the Olympics, medical experts say. RECIPE OF THE DAY A sheet-pan charred meat pita. Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Split a pita, spread it with a warmly spiced mixture of ground beef, parsley and onion, then broil for five to 10 minutes, until the meat’s cooked through and charred in spots. Serve with something creamy like labneh or hummus or toum, with chopped tomatoes, onion and cucumber. You can find versions of the recipe all over the Levant — arayes, the dish is called in Arabic — but Zaynab Issa’s version leans Palestinian, thin and herby. Drizzle some pomegranate molasses over the top for an extra dazzle. EMOTIONAL TRUTH Marcus Maddox for The New York Times Delroy Lindo received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor last month for his role as the self-medicating blues musician Delta Slim in “Sinners,” which was nominated for 16 awards. Lindo sat down recently with The Times to talk about his long career of standout performances (and occasional turkeys), saying he was always stuck by a single north star: “I want to be respected for my work.” Read more. More on culture Women set the tone in Tayari Jones’s new novel, “Kin,” Radhika Jones writes — “colorful, pragmatic and above all honest.” (The Joneses are not related, honest.) The story’s about two girls, “cradle friends,” almost sisters, who grow up together in rural Louisiana, though they’re bound for different paths. “I wanted nothing more than to keep reading it,” Radhika writes. Here’s why. (This article is free for Morning readers.) The country singer Luke Combs reached the stratosphere with his 2023 cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” then took a step back to have children. Now one of the dominant hitmakers in the genre wants to head back to the top, he told “Popcast,” The Times’s culture show. Combs’s sixth album, “The Way I Am,” is out next month. “I’ve been gone for a little too long,” he growls on one of the singles. Read, listen to or watch the interview here. Late night hosts covered Trump’s State of the Union speech for a second night. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Listen to Phil Collins today. (Maybe “Sussudio”?) He was nominated to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame yesterday, alongside other artists including Wu-Tang Clan, Shakira, Lauryn Hill and Jeff Buckley. Abandon that low-carb diet. Many doctors don’t like them. (We’ve made this link free for you as well.) Mind your elders. Five mature adults shared with the youngsters at Wirecutter how they plan to age at home. A key insight? Find your tribe. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were daywork, workaday, workday and yardwork. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Correction: A photo caption in yesterday’s newsletter misidentified the person pictured. It was SahBabii, not Miami XO. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 1 Author Members Posted March 1 February 27, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Pakistan struck Afghanistan in what it described as “open war” against the Taliban. And as the U.S. considers a strike on Iran, the American ambassador in Jerusalem told embassy workers that they could leave the country — immediately. We have more news below. I’m going to start, though, with America’s plunging birthrate. Saje Fedrick, Rose Paz, Kailey Clay Lindsay D'Addato, Rachel Woolf and Hannah Yoon for The New York Times Baby talk Here’s a startling statistic. The nation’s birthrate — that is, the number of live births per 1,000 people in a given year — is down by more than 25 percent since 2007, when the decline began. A falling birthrate looks scary. As our population ages, we’ll need workers (and the taxes they pay) to replace and support retirees. Immigrants fill some of the gaps, but the Trump administration is not letting many into the country. That puts pressure on American women. Some conservatives say the steep decline in our birthrate is the triumph of their selfishness over their sacrifice, my colleague Sabrina Tavernise reports. It’s an easy caricature: Privileged, highly educated women have chosen cats over children and are straining the fabric of American society. A paper last month from the Heritage Foundation argued that “when a nation fails to preserve the family, the state soon fails to preserve itself.” But there’s another way of looking at the decline: as a success story. A large part of the decrease in births, scholars told Sabrina, comes from teenagers and women in their early 20s, people who are the least likely to want children, or to be able to provide for them. Those numbers are startling, too: The teenage birthrate is down by 70 percent since 2007. And the unmarried birthrate is down by 30 percent. Remember “16 and Pregnant” on MTV, the whole “Teen Mom” franchise that followed it? That’s no longer the story of America. Source: Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Karl Russell/The New York Times I asked Sabrina about that yesterday. “It used to be that the only people who put off having kids were college girls from more privileged backgrounds,” she told me. “But now it’s everybody, with teenagers and less-educated women leading the charge. The stereotype is a Berkeley Ph.D. poetry student. But the reality is a community-college student, the daughter of Mexican immigrants whose mother had her as a teenager.” A demographer she spoke to put it differently. “We spent decades shaming women for having kids under the wrong circumstances, for not having their ducks in a row,” she said. “Now they are holding up their end of the bargain.” Children, eventually Researchers point to a number of possible explanations for the decline, including the spread of reliable contraception, such as implants and I.U.D.s. (Sabrina talked to one economist who pointed to the rise of the smartphone: For some couples, screen time can be as a substitute for sex.) Also, women she spoke to said they wanted to establish themselves — to secure a degree or a stable job — before having a child. Hope Bechaver Rachel Woolf for The New York Times Hope Bechaver, 30, is one of them. When she was 13, she told Sabrina, she had to care for her younger brothers, 2 and 4, while her father worked. “Sometimes I picture having a kid, and I think of that overload — two kids, both in diapers,” she said. Now married, she said she has no desire to have a child. Hope is happy, at peace and absolutely not alone. Almost half of the country’s 30-year-old women are childless. In 1976, it was just 18 percent. Still, the overwhelming majority of American women want children eventually, according to surveys — ideally two children. And they’re getting them. Another economist Sabrina spoke to worked up a study of two sets of women at the end of their childbearing years: the oldest millennials and the youngest Boomers. She found something surprising. The number of children born to women by the time they turn 44 hasn’t dropped at all. Women in their early 30s now have the highest birthrate of any group. And a woman in her early 40s is more likely to give birth than a teenager. It’s too early to say whether those pregnancies will be enough to help the U.S. reverse the ill effects of a falling birthrate. Demography moves slowly. But Sabrina’s a member of Generation X (as I am) and grew up during a moral panic about teen pregnancy. So the data caught her by surprise. “That a woman in her early 40s is more likely to give birth than a teenager,” she said, “that is so different from the era I grew up in.” Meet the women Sabrina spoke to here. Now, let’s see what else is happening in the world. PRIMAL INSTINCTS An artist’s rendering of a human skull, left, and a Neanderthal skull. Winters860/Alamy Your great, great, great, great … grandmother might have had “a type,” too: Neanderthals. Tens of thousands of years ago, modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, according to one of the biggest recent discoveries about human evolution. As a result, most people alive today carry a little bit of Neanderthal DNA. The data show that around 46,000 years ago, men with a lot of Neanderthal ancestry and women with a lot of modern human ancestry had a strong preference to mate with one another. Maybe the women found something especially attractive about those men, or vice versa. Read more about what they were attracted to. THE LATEST NEWS Around the World Iran: The U.S. and Iran concluded a round of high-stakes talks aiming to avert a war and reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations will continue next week. Pakistan and Afghanistan: The fighting between the countries stems from Pakistan’s accusations that Afghanistan’s Taliban government has harbored a militant group. Read what we know. Britain: In a blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the Green Party won a special election for a seat in Parliament. Nigeria: Africa’s richest man is focused on industrializing the country. Clinton Testimony Hillary Clinton in Chappaqua, N.Y. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Hillary Clinton, testifying in the House’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, said she did not recall ever meeting Epstein and dismissed the event as political theater. Republicans had insisted that her testimony be private. But the hearing was halted after a Republican, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, leaked a photograph from inside the room. Clinton was irate. Bill Clinton is set to testify today. More on Politics In the Oval Office. Zohran Mamdani, via X Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor, made an unannounced trip to the White House to talk with President Trump about building more housing in the city. He later posted a photo of himself and Trump, grinning broadly and holding a fake newspaper. Activists are encouraging Trump to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting, The Washington Post reports. Immigration Border Patrol agents released a visually impaired refugee from Myanmar at a coffee shop in Buffalo. He was found dead days later. Immigration agents arrested a Columbia University student after misrepresenting themselves to enter a building, the school said. Mamdani said he spoke to Trump about the student, who later said she had been released. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to end protections for thousands of Syrian migrants who have been living in the U.S. Business Netflix said it had backed away from its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance, which is run by Trump allies, is now poised to take control — and run CNN and HBO. U.S. mortgage rates fell below 6 percent for the first time in over three years, offering some hope for a frozen housing market. Tech A plaintiff in a trial about social media addiction testified that her near-constant use of platforms like YouTube and Instagram, starting at age 6, affected her sense of self-worth and development. The YouTube algorithm is targeting children with bizarre, often nonsensical A.I.-generated videos. Below, Arijeta Lajka explains how these videos can affect children’s development, and what parents can do about it. Click to play. The New York Times Other Big Stories The U.S. bird population is declining, and the decline has sped up, according to new research. The drop was sharpest in warm and warming areas, suggesting climate change is a factor. A wind-fueled fire swept through a central Ohio farm, killing about 6,000 hogs that were trapped in the barn complex. ASK THE MORNING After the Supreme Court overturned Trump’s tariff regime, we asked readers for their questions about tariffs. Adam Liptak, The Times’s chief legal affairs correspondent and host of The Docket newsletter, answers this one: Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he dissented partly because unwinding the tariffs would be a “mess.” Is it normal to consider the consequences of unwinding an illegal act in determining the legality of that act? | Caron Lawhorn, Tulsa, Okla. Adam writes: Justice Kavanaugh’s remark was an observation, quoting from another justice’s questions at the argument, not a justification for his dissent. He immediately went on to say that “the only issue before the court today is one of law.” Nonetheless, his explicit discussion of the potential consequences of the majority’s ruling was quite unusual. The court ordinarily takes pains to assert that the practical upshot of its decisions plays no role in its legal analysis. OPINIONS Dr. Elisabeth Marnik, an immunologist, spent years angry at her mother for not having her vaccinated as a child. But she learned that empathy, not anger, is the best way to convince the vaccine skeptics. Here is a column by Carlos Lozada on Trump’s vulnerability. 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 Dessert fad: A South Korean bakery sold thousands of these “Dubai chewy cookies” last month. Now, they languish in a display case. Manifest Destiny? A Bitcoin baron wants to build a libertarian paradise on the island of Nevis. Democracy is getting in the way. (The photos are beautiful; we’ve removed the paywall for readers of The Morning.) “Censorship-industrial complex”: They helped women fight online abuse. Then the Trump administration barred them from the U.S. Your pick: The most-clicked article in The Morning yesterday was about the nominee for surgeon general. TODAY’S NUMBER 9 — That is the number of Democrats running to replace Gavin Newsom as governor of California. Under California’s nonpartisan primary system, they’ll all be on a single ballot with two Republicans in June. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will face off in the general election in November. Splitting the Democratic vote among so many candidates could hand a win to Republicans. SPORTS U.S. hockey: Some men’s players responded to criticism of their laughing along with Trump when he said he would be impeached if he didn’t invite the women’s hockey team to the White House. Goalie Jeremy Swayman said the team “should have reacted differently.” Basketball: The U.S. men’s basketball team lost to the Dominican Republic in a World Cup qualifying game, its first loss to the nation since 1989. RECIPE OF THE DAY Kelly Marshall for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. Samantha Seneviratne’s recipe for brownie brittle is a treat for anyone who likes the crisp edges in a pan of brownies — there’s deep, chocolaty flavor in every bite, introduced by a satisfying crunch. She tops the brittle with chocolate chips, but you might consider going in a different direction, with almonds or shattered peppermints, say, or freeze-dried raspberries. Maybe crushed pretzels? It’s a canvas. Add the colors you like. LIVE THROUGH THIS The New York Times Who’s still the coolest? Melissa Auf Der Maur, who shot to fame as the bassist for Hole, then played for the Smashing Pumpkins. For the past 18 years, Auf Der Maur has been living the quiet life in Hudson, N.Y., the upstate industrial-turned-bohemian town where she and her husband run an arts center. She has hardly picked up her bass since 2011. With her memoir, “Even the Good Girls Will Cry,” out next month, Auf Der Maur sat down with The Times to talk grunge, romance and the peaks and traumas of life on the rock ’n’ roll road. “I don’t think I realized how hard it was for me then, even though I was the luckiest girl in the world,” she said. Read more. More on culture You know what’s a good bad movie? “Grease 2.” The Times makes the case. (Hey, it brought us Michelle Pfeiffer!) Wesley Morris, a culture critic, resisted “Heated Rivalry” at first. After a lifetime of settling for gay stories of shame, secrecy and death onscreen, he had his doubts about all the swooning around a hockey romance series. Then it seduced him, too, and made him question what he deserved as a gay man. “The show constitutes a revelation that I forgot I needed,” he writes, “a revelation that maybe I had assumed I was too good or maybe too cool for: a work of utter ardor.” (We’ve made this link free for you as well.) THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Cultivate inside jokes. It’s one way to keep marriage fun. (There are others.) Read “The Eighty-Yard Run,” a short story by Irwin Shaw. It ran in Esquire on Jan. 1, 1941. Its darkness holds up nicely. Shine a light on your SAD-saddened face, with help from the lamplighters at Wirecutter. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was intimacy. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. I’m taking a few days off next week to chase fish in the Florida Keys. See you on Thursday. — Sam Correction: A photo caption and line in yesterday’s newsletter said the Trump administration had proposed a one-dollar gold coin. It has proposed two coins: a one-dollar coin and a gold coin. 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 2 Author Members Posted March 2 February 28, 2026 Good morning. The U.S. and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran, and the country is retaliating now. President Trump, in a video posted this morning. Donald J. Trump, via Truth Social Strikes on Iran by Lauren Jackson and Lara McCoy We are editors for The Morning. President Trump is trying to overthrow Iran’s government. This morning, American and Israeli bombs fell on Tehran, the country’s capital. Trump announced the strikes in a video and vowed to destroy the country’s military, dismantle its nuclear program and force regime change. He said the attack would extend for several days, if not weeks. “You must lay down your weapons,” Trump said to Iranian troops in the video, adding, “Or, in the alternative, face certain death.” It’s not yet clear what was hit, but the strikes targeted an area of the city that houses the presidential palace, videos verified by The Times show. Satellite images also show a black plume of smoke at the compound of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in Tehran, though it’s not clear where he is. The city is in chaos. The internet is limited, and Iranians are trying to find loved ones and flee. “I rushed to school to get my daughter from middle school. The girls were hiding under the stairs and crying,” Ali Zeinalipoor, a Tehran resident, told our colleague. The attack is ushering in a crisis across the Middle East: Iran’s government vowed “crushing retaliation” against Israel and the United States, and it fired waves of missiles at Israel this morning. Iran is also targeting American military bases in countries across the region. Its military power — and network of proxy forces — could draw the United States into a prolonged conflict. What is happening In Tehran today. Associated Press The U.S. is targeting Iran’s military. But didn’t this happen before? Yes. Last June, the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities during a short war between Israel and Iran. While Trump initially said the Iranian nuclear program had been “obliterated” by those American strikes, it later emerged that the program hadn’t been fully destroyed. So what is different now? This attack is much bigger. Trump said he was going beyond the nuclear program and trying to instead “annihilate their navy” and “raze their missile industry.” And Israel is joining him. The country announced a state of emergency and closed schools, workplaces and the airspace. The military also said it would be calling up about 70,000 reserve soldiers. Now, bombs are falling across the Middle East. The U.A.E. said it had intercepted several Iranian missiles and that a person in Abu Dhabi had died from falling debris. In Iraq, four U.S. strikes hit an area near Baghdad linked to Kata’ib Hezbollah, a powerful militia affiliated with Iran. A leader of the group told The Times it would attack U.S. bases in response. Jordan said its military intercepted two missiles in its airspace. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, which house American bases, also reported attacks. And in Iran, dozens of people were killed in a strike on a girls’ school in the city of Minab, according to state news agencies. Our reporters are rushing to figure out what is happening. (Follow the latest news here.) The context Tensions have been high in Iran for months. At the end of last year, Iranians, angry at the government and a deepening economic crisis, began to protest. The demonstrations spread nationwide, and the country convulsed in its largest uprising in almost half a century. Khamenei, the supreme leader, ordered security forces to crush protests — and to show no mercy. The forces opened fire, and the death toll surged to at least 5,200 people, a rights group said. Trump encouraged the demonstrators and threatened military intervention. And in the time since, he has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran unless the country’s leadership agreed to U.S. demands. American and Iranian officials held a last-ditch round of mediated talks on Thursday over Tehran’s nuclear program. The talks ended without a breakthrough, apparently paving the way for the attack. Today, Trump called on Iranians to overthrow their government when the U.S. military assault came to an end. “It will be yours to take,” he said. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.” He also said he knew U.S. troops would likely die in the conflict. “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost,” he said. “That often happens in war.” Reactions E.U. leaders called for a de-escalation of tensions, and Norway said the strikes were “not in line with international law.” In France, Emmanuel Macron said the outbreak of war between United States, Israel and Iran had “grave consequences for international peace and security.” In Britain, the government said it did not participate in the strikes and did not want a wider regional conflict. Germany said Israel gave advance notice of the strikes and that it was monitoring the situation. In the United States, Republicans are voicing support: “This is a pivotal and necessary operation to protect Americans and American interests,” said Roger Wicker, a Mississippi senator and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In Iran, the workweek had just started when the strikes began. People reported panic: “You can hear women screaming. Some of my neighbors are running to their cars,” a woman in Tehran said. This video shows a road out of the city choked with traffic. Our colleagues will be covering this all day. You can follow along here. THE LATEST NEWS A.I. Kenny Holston/The New York Times President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using A.I. technology made by Anthropic. The order could significantly complicate intelligence and defense work. The dispute concerns Anthropic’s demand that its technology not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. Many in Silicon Valley have spoken up in support of the company. Late last night, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said it had reached an agreement with the Pentagon to provide its artificial intelligence technologies for classified systems. Clinton Testimony Over nearly six hours of closed-door questioning, Bill Clinton told the House Oversight Committee that he “saw nothing” and did nothing wrong when he associated with Jeffrey Epstein decades ago. Clinton’s deposition made him the first president in history to be forced to testify before Congress against his will. Democrats are demanding that Trump testify before the committee, given the new precedent that has been set. More Politics A Pentagon laser inadvertently shot down a U.S. government drone, prompting the F.A.A. to again close airspace near the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal prosecutors say they plan to drop two charges against the Alexander brothers, prominent real estate brokers who were charged with sex trafficking. Kamala Harris endorsed Jasmine Crockett in the closely contested Democratic primary for a Senate seat in Texas. Other Big Stories Neil Sedaka in 2025. Philip Cheung for The New York Times Neil Sedaka, who went from classical music prodigy to pop music fixture with hits such “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” died at 86. Two transgender Kansans sued the state over a law that abruptly invalidated the driver’s licenses of residents who had changed their gender designations. The Los Angeles school district placed its superintendent on leave after the F.B.I. raided his home and his office. The investigation appears to concern a tech start-up that was contracted to create an A.I. chatbot for the schools. HOLLYWOOD TAKEOVER Paramount Skydance is set to add CNN, Warner Bros. and HBO to its sprawling Hollywood empire that already includes CBS News and Paramount Pictures. The company has emerged triumphant after a monthslong bidding war against Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s a U-turn from just a few months ago, when Netflix had apparently reached an $83 billion deal to acquire most of Warner Bros. But that was before Paramount lobbed a larger offer, $111 billion, which Warner called “superior.” Netflix decided on Thursday to back out of the fight. It’s not a done deal yet. Paramount still needs regulatory permission to buy Warner Bros. The Ellisons, who control Paramount, are friends of Trump’s, which may bode well for their regulatory prospects. But if for any reason the deal doesn’t go through, Netflix could revive its interest. Who are the Ellisons? David Ellison is the chief executive of Paramount. His father, the billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founded the tech company Oracle and promised to bankroll the Warner acquisition. If the deal closes, they will oversee a vast swath of news, entertainment and tech. What it could mean for CNN. Reporters and producers worry that their newsroom’s independence could be compromised. After David Ellison acquired Paramount last year, he pushed CBS News rightward, appointing conservatives with little experience as newsroom leaders. The new grid on the block. Introducing the Midi Crossword. Build your skills with approachable clues on a midsize grid. Play now CULTURE CALENDAR 🎬 “The Bride!” (Friday): In 2025, our film critic Alissa Wilkinson called this movie, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, her most anticipated of the year. In the title role — that is, Frankenstein’s bride — is Jesse Buckley, who became known to audiences last year for playing Agnes Shakespeare in “Hamnet.” Christian Bale also stars as Frankenstein’s monster. The movie got bumped to 2026, though, so Alissa made it her most-anticipated of this year, too. “The delayed opening only adds intrigue,” she notes, “given that Buckley seems likely to win her first Oscar just a week after this film’s opening.” RECIPE OF THE WEEK Rachel Vanni for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Slow Cooker Hoisin Garlic Chicken Although February is coming to an end, that doesn’t mean spring has sprung. In much of the country, freezing nights still beg for warming stews — preferably something you can simmer all afternoon, scenting the house with garlicky, rich aromas. Sarah DiGregorio’s hoisin garlic chicken is made in a slow cooker, so you can leave it be while it gently bubbles away. The meat emerges fork tender, with a rich, caramelized sauce spiked with plenty of crushed red pepper. Serve it over the weekend for a satisfying, savory meal, then spoon the leftovers over rice or noodles all week long. REAL ESTATE Bibek and Malati Rai in Queens. Mimi d’Autremont for The New York Times The Hunt: Newlyweds looked for a place in Queens to put down roots, with room to start a family. Which did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $680,000 in Wales: A seven-bedroom farmhouse near Wales’s oldest village; a four-bedroom stone lodge on King Charles’s former estate; and a three-bedroom traditional coastal cottage. For sale, one nudist colony: Hidden in a swampy, wooded patch of scrub oak and palmettos, the Florida Naturist Park attracted scandal and, periodically, the authorities. Now it’s on the market. LIVING The New York Times Lunar New Year: A Vietnamese Mardi Gras krewe in New Orleans. A Mongolian family party in Los Angeles. See how Asian communities in the U.S. blend old and new customs. Run-walk-run: The distance running icon Jeff Galloway was a relentless advocate for back-of-the-packers. Our writer’s final run with him made her into a marathoner. Epstein onlookers: Philosophers have long wrestled with how to handle the people around the people who have done terrible things. St. Marks Place: A benevolent landlord has spent 60 years building the East Village into an emblem of New York City’s counterculture. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER The key to spring-cleaning season As we look ahead to spring-cleaning season, a word of advice: Rather than turning your whole house upside down, focus on smaller stuff. Take, for example, my journey to (finally) tackling my grimy shower grout. For months, I loathed scrubbing it, until my colleague turned me onto this $2 tool — perfectly designed to lift grime and good-looking enough to leave out. Because it works so well (and is so pretty to look at), it was easy to develop a more robust habit. The grout brush totally changed the chore, which in turn totally changed my behavior. Sometimes the right tool or simplest hack is all it takes. — Brittney Ho Sign up for Wirecutter’s four-day spring-cleaning challenge. Starting March 9, we’ll send a daily cleaning hack — along with more perfect (and good-looking) cleaning tools. GAME OF THE WEEK Peyton Hemp of the Ottawa Charge, left, and Shay Maloney of the Boston Fleet. Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press Boston Fleet vs. Ottawa Charge, P.W.H.L.: This week, in an effort to fill the Olympics-shaped hole in my heart, I set out to watch some hockey. The New York Sirens were hosting the Montreal Victoire in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, an upstart league that features many stars of the gold medal-winning U.S. women’s team. The vibes inside the arena were great, and the action on the ice was thrilling, especially from my very affordable seats just eight rows up from the glass. The P.W.H.L. is in only its third season, so it’s a fine time to hop on the bandwagon. The games all stream on the league’s YouTube channel. This Boston-Ottawa matchup is a good one to start with: Megan Keller, who scored the game-winning overtime goal that sealed the gold for the U.S., plays for the Fleet. — Tom Wright-Piersanti Today at 2 p.m. Eastern on YouTube NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were clippable and applicable. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 3 Author Members Posted March 3 March 1, 2026 Good morning. Iran’s supreme leader is dead, and the country has vowed to avenge him. (Read his obituary.) Today, Iran, Israel and the United States are continuing to exchange strikes. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Toppled by Adam B. Kushner and Tom Wright-Piersanti We are editors of The Morning. Nations are usually wary about killing the leaders of other countries. In addition to moral and legal concerns, there can be unintended consequences. How will the enemy retaliate? What if the successor is worse? What precedent is set? This weekend, Israel and the United States took that gamble. Their military campaign killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several of the country’s other top leaders. The bombing would continue this week, President Trump said, until there is “peace throughout the Middle East.” The Islamic revolution that took control of the country in 1979 has been helmed by two supreme leaders. Khamenei, whom Trump described in a post online yesterday as “one of the most evil people in History,” was the second. He steered the country through nearly four decades of conflict with the West. Now he is gone. It’s not clear if that leadership structure will last, or what comes next. The operation The U.S. and Israeli governments had been planning to begin their assault at night. But the C.I.A., which tracked Khamenei for months, learned that he would be in the same compound as other top Iranian officials on Saturday morning. So the two countries changed their plans. Israeli warplanes took off just after 6 a.m. local time; less than three hours later, the explosions began, killing Khamenei and other officials. That was the start of a bombardment by Israeli and U.S. forces that lasted from morning until night on Saturday, and has continued today. The countries targeted sites where other top Iranian officials were gathering, as well as military bases and air defenses across the country. This is where forces struck: Sources: Iranian state news agency, verified satellite images and video. By The New York Times One strike hit a girls’ elementary school near a naval base in southern Iran and killed more than 60 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent and state news outlets. Videos from the scene showed piles of bloodied, dusty backpacks. U.S. officials said they were investigating. Iran, as its leaders promised, retaliated broadly. It fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, forcing people to crowd into bomb shelters. Iran also targeted Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, all of which host U.S. military bases, as well as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Here’s where the Islamic Republic struck: Sources: Iranian state news agency, verified satellite images and video. By The New York Times Both sides continued to exchange fire today. American and Israeli strikes are falling in Iran, and smoke is blackening the sky above Tehran. Iran also fired waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, killing a woman in Tel Aviv — the first fatality in Israel from the conflict — and injuring several others in the U.A.E. What comes next? Khamenei’s death may push Iran further into political turmoil, only weeks after state forces killed thousands of anti-government protesters. Trump invited police and military forces to “peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves.” A Times reporter described Trump’s messages as “rife with ambiguity.” As U.S. intelligence officials modeled possible outcomes leading up to the strike, one scenario suggested that a complete change in government was unlikely. Instead, it said, members of the Revolutionary Guard would try to assert more control but might be willing to curb the country’s nuclear program or take a more conciliatory stance toward the U.S. Here are some of the central members of the regime: Samuel Granados/The New York Times And if the government’s current structure holds, people briefed on the intelligence told The Times, Khamenei’s theocratic replacement may have similarly hard-line views. He was 86 years old, and the body of clerics who select a new supreme leader has had time to consider his successor. Until a successor is named, a three-person council comprising Iran’s president, the head of the judiciary and a jurist will be in charge, according to Iran’s state news agency. Times reporters explain why it will be hard to know what comes next. In Iran In Tehran last night. The New York Times Crowds have been filling Iran’s streets. People crying, waving Iranian flags and holding photos of Khamenei have gathered in city squares, Iran’s state news agency reported. The state television broadcast melancholic verses from the Quran, and the country announced 40 days of official mourning and a seven-day national holiday to commemorate Khamenei’s death. But others have celebrated. In Tehran, people danced and honked car horns. Fireworks lit up the sky, and loud Persian dance music filled the streets. In cities across the country, residents cheered from their windows and balconies. Some chanted, “Freedom, freedom.” Many Iranians, though, are trying to flee to find safety. In Washington President Trump on Friday. Eric Lee for The New York Times As with his earlier military interventions in Iran and Venezuela, Trump sent U.S. forces into this weekend’s battle without seeking approval from Congress. (Though, lawmakers noted, he did at least inform some of them beforehand this time.) The campaign reopened the debate about who rightfully wields war powers in American democracy, writes Charlie Savage, who covers national security law. Congress will likely weigh the question this week under the War Powers Resolution, which limits what the president can do without the approval of lawmakers. This year has meant a major turnabout for the president. Trump ran for office as an opponent of military adventurism. He said “regime change is a proven, absolute failure” and promised to “stop racing to topple foreign regimes,” writes Peter Baker, our chief White House correspondent. Now the self-declared “president of peace” has attacked Iran with the explicit goal of toppling its government. It is the eighth time he has ordered the military into action in his second term. Justifications and legality The Trump administration has given several rationales for its campaign to topple Iran’s government. The president said that: Negotiations weren’t working. The United States and Iran were in talks for Tehran to give up its nuclear program voluntarily, but that hadn’t happened. Iran sponsors terrorism. Trump said the regime’s proxy militias in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Gaza had “soaked the earth with blood and guts.” (Israel has already decimated some of those forces.) Iran slaughtered protesters. Demonstrators in January flooded Iranian streets. Government forces killed thousands of them. The Trump administration also made false or unproven claims to justify the campaign. It has said, for instance, that: Iran restarted its nuclear program. The country has begun to dig out the enrichment facilities that Israel and the United States bombed last year, but Trump said at the time that they were “obliterated.” Intelligence agencies say there’s no evidence that the nation has resumed enriching uranium or building a bomb. It had nuclear material to build an atomic bomb within days. But most of its stockpiles are still buried. It was building missiles that could soon reach the United States. Intelligence experts believe the country is years away from this ability. For those reasons, writes David Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent, the operation this weekend was “the ultimate war of choice.” Ask The Morning: Send us your questions about the Iran campaign here. For more Shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz plummeted yesterday. It’s a narrow waterway on Iran’s southern border where much of the world’s oil passes through. In the U.A.E., explosions damaged hotels, apartment buildings and a major international airport, threatening the country’s reputation as a safe haven. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Trump’s rebranding of the Kennedy Center continues. This year’s event honoring cultural figures will be called the “Trump Kennedy Center Honors.” A student mistakenly deported to Honduras when she tried to fly home for Thanksgiving decided not to return to the U.S. on a government-arranged flight because she believed she would be arrested and deported again, her lawyers said. Scouting America, the group formerly known as the Boy Scouts, will end programs that promote diversity in order to maintain support from the Pentagon. Girls will still be allowed to join. Other Big Stories A gunman opened fire at a popular bar in Austin, Texas, early this morning, killing two people and injuring 14 others. Jeffrey Epstein maintained a small stable of elite doctors to treat, and manipulate, young women from overseas who were having sex with him. Instagram will begin notifying parents when their children search for terms related to self-harm. The family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cells were taken without her consent and used to develop vaccines and other medical treatment, reached a settlement with the pharmaceutical giant Novartis. The police in Arizona are reducing the number of officers searching for Nancy Guthrie. In researching Elon Musk’s wealth, The Times found that he was behind more than 90 companies in Texas. In this video, Kirsten Grind, an investigations reporter, explains. Click to play. The New York Times FROM OPINION With his attack on Iran, Trump has risked American lives without justifying why it was necessary to do so, the editorial board argues. Here is a column by David French on the Constitutional way to go to war. The new grid on the block. Introducing the Midi Crossword. Build your skills with approachable clues on a midsize grid. Play now MORNING READS Ibogaine: It’s an obscure psychedelic used to treat trauma. One writer wondered if it could help him, too. Front row, fashion show: Mark Zuckerberg attended a Prada fashion show in Milan. It seemed to project his company’s ambitions. Believing: Meet Michael Sandel, the Harvard philosopher described as a prophet for predicting this political moment. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Kin” by Tayari Jones: Jones’s last novel, “An American Marriage” (2018), spent almost six months on the best-seller list, sold over a million copies and landed on the Book Review’s list of the best books of the 21st century. In her much-anticipated follow-up — another Oprah pick — Jones tells the story of two motherless friends who leave their small Louisiana town in the 1950s to seek fortune and family. What they find is a long-distance sisterhood. “When the two women reunite,” our reviewer wrote, “the novel makes good on the promise of its title, testing the bonds and boundaries of the kin we choose.” THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Maggie Gyllenhaal, who wrote and directed “The Bride!” an imaginative (and violent) retelling of the “Bride of Frankenstein” story. We talked about what it’s like to be a female director behind a big studio film. So we’ve been talking about being a female director, and on the one hand, we’ve had all these interesting films come out: Chloé Zhao with “Hamnet,” Lynne Ramsay with “Die My Love,” Kristen Stewart with “The Chronology of Water.” On the other hand, only 8 percent of films [last year] were made by women, and that’s a seven-year low. What do you think that says? I’m thinking about whether to say this. Say it. It’s fine when we make little movies. “Cute,” you know, “go make your little movie.” It starts to get dangerous when women have their hands on a lot of money. It still doesn’t entirely answer your question about how few women are given the space to express ourselves. And look what you’re saying! You’re saying it’s a tiny percentage, but look at how many of those movies made an impact. If you’ve had your mouth shut for so long, almost like a geyser, when it bursts, it’s going to come out really powerfully and with a lot of energy. And I wonder if what’s happening culturally is going to bring an unstoppable response, especially from women. I don’t know if I’ve said this out loud before. Again, maybe I’ll get in trouble, but I actually think that when I really became a director was the morning that Trump was first elected. I was like, I have a lot more to say than I’ve been saying. Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. MEAL PLAN Kelly Marshall for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne. Here in New York, it’s simmer-on-the-stove weather, heat-the-oven-and-melt-the-cheese weather, how-many-weeks-till-spring weather. Emily Weinstein’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter brings you some recipes this week that’ll help fight those late-winter blahs, like Alexa Weibel’s creamy, spicy tomato beans and greens that inspired a fan megathread on Reddit. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was likelihood. Can you put eight historical events — including the publication of “The Little Prince,” the madness of King George III and the creation of James Bond — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 4 Author Members Posted March 4 March 2, 2026 Good morning; Sam’s away. The Middle East is now at war on multiple fronts. Israel is striking Lebanon to target the militant group Hezbollah. We have all the latest news below. In a Beirut suburb this morning. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The war expands By Evan Gorelick I’m a writer for The Morning. The war against Iran is getting bigger and deadlier. American and Israeli strikes have pummeled Iran on land and at sea. Iran’s retaliatory drones and missiles flew toward targets across the Middle East. And Israel is now striking Lebanon. In an interview last night, President Trump told The Times that the assault could last “four to five weeks.” Today’s newsletter is a guide to what we know about the war, which has already killed the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Still shooting The U.S. and Israel bombed more than 2,000 targets in Iran, which launched hundreds of missiles and drones against Israel and Persian Gulf countries. By air. The Israeli military said it had taken charge of the skies over Iran’s capital — and demolished Iranian air defense systems, missile launchers, command centers and government headquarters. American stealth bombers, armed with 2,000-pound bombs, struck Iran’s “hardened” ballistic missile facilities, the U.S. military said. Iran launched waves of missiles at Israel, forcing much of the country into fortified shelters. Nine people were killed in a city near Jerusalem. Iran also unleashed cheap kamikaze drones — the same ones deployed to deadly effect on battlefields in Ukraine — across the Gulf. Videos verified by The Times show them slamming into apartments, hotels and military bases. A drone also struck the American embassy compound in Kuwait. The attacks have cracked the image of oil-rich Gulf countries as safe havens in a volatile region. Here’s one strike in Bahrain; watch from the left: At sea. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed it had attacked three American or British oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Videos verified by The Times showed a tanker ablaze off the coast of Oman, although that vessel had no ties to the U.S. or Britain. Trump said the U.S. sank nine Iranian warships and would destroy the rest of the country’s navy. Casualties. American and Israeli strikes across Iran have killed 555 people, the Iranian Red Crescent said. And Iran killed three American soldiers at a base in Kuwait, the first Americans to die so far in the war. Iranian strikes also killed five people in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, which all host U.S. military bases, and four people were killed in Syria, according to official reports. A strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran killed at least 175 people, most of them likely children, state media said. It was not immediately clear why the school was hit, or which country’s forces had fired at it. More to come. Trump predicted there would be more casualties and said operations would continue “until all of our objectives are achieved.” He did not specify what the objectives were. In Trump’s interview with The Times, he suggested a potential outcome similar to the one he engineered in Venezuela, in which the United States removed the top leader but the remaining government worked pragmatically with Washington. Inside Iran Israel said some 40 senior Iranian officials were killed in the initial strikes, including seven military commanders. Who’s in charge? Iran’s top national security official announced that an interim committee would run the country until clerics chose a successor to Khamenei. Negotiations. Trump told The Atlantic magazine that Iran’s new leadership had reached out. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said. “They should have done it sooner.” But early this morning, a top Iranian official said that Iran would not negotiate with the United States. The context. The government’s power at home and in the region has rarely been weaker since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, writes Steven Erlanger: Even if the government hangs on, “this massive attack is likely to have strategic consequences in the Middle East comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union.” A reckoning among Iranians. A sense of disbelief fell over Iran’s capital, Tehran, yesterday as the country came to grips with Khamenei’s death, Christina Goldbaum reports. Reactions diverged: Between waves of bombs, some in Tehran cheered the possible end of the regime, and crowds gathered in some places to celebrate Khamenei’s demise. Hours later, tearful mourners emerged to grieve him. Click on the video below to see how the strikes are affecting Iranians. Click to watch the video. The New York Times Across the region The war is growing even more volatile, pulling in Iran’s proxy forces and supporters across the region. In Lebanon. Early this morning, Hezbollah said it launched rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for the death of Khamenei. Israel responded with attacks on Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon and around Beirut. Lebanon’s state media reported that at least 31 civilians had been killed. In Pakistan. At least 22 people were killed in protests across the country against the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran. In Saudi Arabia. Parts of an oil refinery were closed after an attack by Iranian drones. Oil prices have spiked, and countries including Saudi Arabia and Iraq said they would increase oil production to offset the rising prices. The war is already rippling across the global economy. Some shipping companies are avoiding the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea, and many airlines have suspended flights in Dubai and Qatar, whose airports connect Europe, Asia and Australia. See photos of the war across the Middle East. And follow the latest news here. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Campaign signs in Texas. Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times Tomorrow’s Texas Senate primary offers an early look at how the parties may approach the midterms. The Pentagon and Anthropic were close to an agreement on the use of A.I., but when Anthropic needed more time, the Defense Department made a deal with OpenAI instead. The Epstein Files A ranch previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein. Paul Ratje for The New York Times New Mexico officials are trying to restart an investigation into possible crimes at Epstein’s ranch south of Santa Fe. After years of investigations and tips about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, why have so few people been charged? Blame missed chances and narrowly focused prosecutors. Other Big Stories In Afghanistan, officials said that Pakistan had tried to strike Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan’s most prized military asset. Older Americans are losing billions of dollars annually to financial exploitation. Banks and investment firms are training employees to spot red flags. OPINIONS Vahid Salemi/Associated Press Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should not be mourned, the editorial board writes, but his death has created long-term risks. Here are columns by Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens on Trump’s war with Iran. The new grid on the block. Introducing the Midi Crossword. Build your skills with approachable clues on a midsize grid. Play now MORNING READS In western Ukraine. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times “Simple believers”: A group of Christians in Ukraine sees electricity, cars, higher education and much else as distractions from what really matters. iPod: The device is finding new fans among people who may not even have been alive when it was first released. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was the obituary of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Metropolitan Diary: Broadway was my stop. A psychologist: Edward Deci’s self-determination theory changed how psychologists understand human motivation and what people require to flourish. He died at 83. TODAY’S NUMBER In China. Zheng Wenqi $375 — In China, that’s about how much it costs to buy a device, worn on the mouth, that translates Chinese speech into English. Parents are using it to help their kids learn new languages. SPORTS Motorsports: Tyler Reddick became the first driver in NASCAR history to win the first three races of a season with his victory yesterday at Circuit of the Americas in Texas. Track and field: Jess McClain was on her way to winning the U.S. Half Marathon Championships until she followed a lead vehicle that veered off course with under two miles left. She made it back but finished ninth. RECIPE OF THE DAY Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. This one-skillet Japanese curry combines ground beef, potatoes, carrots and peas for a meal that tastes complex but comes together with little effort. Serve over rice, udon or lo mein, or alongside a breaded pork cutlet. THE ACTOR AWARDS Michael B. Jordan Mario Anzuoni/Reuters “Sinners” won the top prize at the SAG Actor Awards last night, with Michael B. Jordan taking best actor. Jessie Buckley continued her sweep of best-actress awards, with another win for “Hamnet.” In the television categories, the cast of “The Pitt” won best ensemble in a drama series. And Catherine O’Hara, who died in January, was named best actress in a comedy series for her turn as a deposed executive in “The Studio.” See all the winners here, and check out the looks from the red carpet. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Practicing Tai Chi walking. Dustin Chambers for The New York Times Walk mindfully. Research shows it can it can improve balance and reduce stress. Drink your veggies with the help of one of these new juicers recommended by Wirecutter. Travel in style with your kids at a family resort that is actually cool. Slide into these extravagant socks — and check out seven more gifts for the dregs of winter. Teach your kids to use the stove, says Michaeleen Doucleff, a parenting expert. Put marmalade on salmon or stir it into tea. Our food writer calls the bittersweet jam “sunshine in a jar.” Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were affirming, farming and framing. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay 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. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 4 Author Members Posted March 4 March 3, 2026 Good morning. Sam’s away. Iran is escalating its strikes, and President Trump said the United States was ready for a protracted fight. The midterms are also starting today. We’re covering both stories below. A longer fight In Tehran yesterday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Iran is retaliating on American targets. The State Department closed its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after drone attacks and urged Americans to immediately leave 14 countries in the Middle East. Iran also struck Amazon data centers and sent warplanes, not just missiles, toward its Gulf neighbors. Qatar said it had shot down two planes. Israeli and American bombs continue to fall in Iran. And Israel invaded and seized parts of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, the militant group there, threatened all-out war. President Trump, who campaigned on ending American wars, is now extending the time frame for his war in Iran. He said the United States had a “virtually unlimited” supply of certain powerful weapons. “The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. The U.S. military is sending more troops and fighter jets, and Trump declined to rule out putting boots on the ground. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, though, insisted that the conflict would not drag out. “This is not Iraq,” he said. “This is not endless.” Click the video to compare Trump’s statements. The New York Times And here is the latest from the region: Death toll: Two more American service members have died in the war, U.S. military officials said, bringing the total to six. The Iranian Red Crescent said more than 550 people in the country had been killed. Southern Iran: Thousands of people attended a funeral procession for victims of a strike on an elementary school. The school was in session when an airstrike hit it, killing 175 people, Iranian officials and rights groups said. Tehran: Iran’s capital is under siege, and people are living in fear. Many are fleeing, while others are trying to survive the bombardment. See photos from the city. Kuwait shot down three American jets in what U.S. officials called a “friendly fire incident.” All six crew members on the jets safely ejected. Dubai has faced attacks against its international airport, hotels and other civilian and economic infrastructure. Strait of Hormuz: A senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps official vowed that “not a single drop of oil” would go through the strait, which about one-fifth of the world’s supply passes through. Markets have fallen as oil prices surge. Source: FactSet. Data as of 12 a.m March 3, Eastern. The New York Times More on the war We have the behind-the-scenes story of how Trump made the call to go to war — and how military officials, the C.I.A. and Israel’s prime minister helped influence his decision. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei apparently ignored the evidence that the C.I.A. was tracking him and his top leaders even though Trump exposed the operation in a social media post eight months ago. As the war expands, Melania Trump delivered a speech advocating “peace through education” at the United Nations Security Council yesterday. Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times Picking a winner By Katie Glueck I cover politics. Today brings the first midterm primary elections, in Texas, Arkansas and North Carolina. One thing I’m watching: What do Democrats think it takes to win tough races in the second Trump era? Will they prefer a moderate-sounding candidate who leans into his faith and appeals to independents and even some Republicans? Or do they crave someone who wears Trump’s taunts as a badge of honor, embraces the “fighter” mantle and tries to energize infrequent liberal voters to get off the sidelines? The Senate primary in Texas offers an early test of that question. State Representative James Talarico is a seminarian who preaches a politics of unity, even as he flays what he calls a “corrupt” political system. He faces Representative Jasmine Crockett, a firebrand who made a national name for herself fighting Trump and other Republicans on their own vituperative terms. Either way, Democrats typically struggle in statewide Texas races. But if Republicans nominate a scandal-scarred MAGA acolyte today, Democrats hope for a shot. They are favored to retake the House majority, but the Senate will be harder to flip, and races like the one in Texas could count. Two poles It can be hard to predict who might appeal in general elections. Take the 2022 Senate race in Pennsylvania. Then-Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, a military veteran who had won in a tough district, was the more polished, moderate primary candidate. Party veterans suspected that the liberal lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, was a risky choice in a closely divided state. But Fetterman romped in the primary and won a tough and expensive general election. Debates over electability can be fraught. Crockett, a Black woman, has said efforts to question her ability to win amount to a “dog whistle.” Other Democrats say that, beyond legitimate concerns about her style, latent racism and sexism among voters could hurt her in a conservative state come November. Ken Paxton and John Cornyn Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times, Brandon Bell/Getty Images On the Republican side, general-election voters sometimes regard far-right primary victors as too extreme. In 2022, many of them across the country lost their November races. In Texas today, the MAGA faithful love the state’s combative attorney general, Ken Paxton, who spread false claims about elections. The incumbent, Senator John Cornyn, argues that Paxton could lose in November and jeopardize Republicans up and down the ballot in Texas. The national dichotomy Whatever happens today, the fight over the direction of the Democratic Party is just beginning: A Maine Senate primary race in June features the mild 78-year-old Gov. Janet Mills against challengers including a millennial oysterman, Graham Platner, who channels his rage into politics. In a Minnesota Senate primary in August, the liberal lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, will face Representative Angie Craig, who represents a more competitive district that she flipped from Republican control in 2018. An unpredictable Michigan Senate primary in August has it all: ideological divisions, insider-versus-outsider dynamics and a political class obsessing over which Democrat is best positioned to win in November among Representative Haley Stevens, State Senator Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official. These races — and the subsequent general elections — will also shape Democratic views on the next contest: the 2028 presidential election. Sign up for The Times’s “On Politics” newsletter. Related: The American attack on Iran will also likely shape these races. We asked Texas voters for their views on the war. THE LATEST NEWS Austin Shooting Investigators are looking into whether a man who killed three people and injured a dozen more outside a bar in Austin, Texas, was motivated by the war in Iran. The gunman was wearing a sweatshirt that said “Property of Allah” and a T-shirt with the colors of the Iranian flag, officials said. He was killed by police officers after the attack. The shooting has put Islam at the center of today’s Texas primary. Around the World Emmanuel Macron Pool Photo by Agence France-Presse — Getty Images France: President Emmanuel Macron said the country would expand its nuclear arsenal as Russia grows more aggressive. Pakistan: The military struck a prized Taliban air base in Afghanistan, according to satellite images reviewed by The Times. Cuba: The Trump administration’s oil blockade is deepening a humanitarian crisis. Rwanda: The U.S. imposed sanctions against the country’s military, saying it had sabotaged a peace deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Politics President Trump, Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump had what appeared to be a red skin rash near his shirt collar, a condition that his physician said could last “a few weeks.” The House released full videos of the depositions it took of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. See video clips. Trump said he would attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this year for the first time as president, declaring on social media that it would be “the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!” OpenAI amended its deal with the Pentagon to add more protections that its technology wouldn’t be used for the mass surveillance of Americans. A deal between the Pentagon and Anthropic broke down last week in part over the same issue. Other Big Stories The Supreme Court sided with religious parents in California who said that state policies required schools to hide students’ transgender status from their parents. Tens of thousands of people are losing access to H.I.V. treatment after about 20 states tightened requirements for patients in drug assistance programs. Nearly half of all new colorectal cancer cases now occur in adults under 65, according to new data published yesterday. The moon just turned blood red in a total lunar eclipse. See photos. OPINIONS The decision to invade Iran shows that Trump’s foreign policy is imperialism, Peter Beinart writes. “History will judge whether this moment reflected impulsiveness — or resolve.” Times readers respond to the war in Iran. 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 Anton Auzans and Jim Hamilton. Lauren Segal and Max Whittaker for The New York Times ‘We have to get out of here now’: The Times spoke with two survivors of the deadliest avalanche in modern California history. Read how they escaped the disaster. A crisis in the Alps: Airbnb, Americans and climate change are threatening the survival of small resort towns. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a video about life for Iranians during strikes. TODAY’S NUMBER $111 billion — That’s how much Paramount is offering to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, if government regulators approve the deal. Paramount beat out Netflix to buy the parent company of CNN and CBS. RECIPE OF THE DAY Joseph De Leo for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. At the California restaurant RVR (pronounced “river”), the chefs toss this silken tofu-miso dressing with winter chicories from the local farmers’ market. But any crisp leaves from the supermarket, including lettuces and other chicories like radicchio, endive and escarole, would work well. Creamy but with an organza lightness, it combines the umami of miso with nutty sesame paste for a deep richness, then sharpens the grounded savoriness with rice vinegar and garlic, Genevieve Ko writes. CAROLYN BESSETTE KENNEDY John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy with Bill Clinton in 1998. The White House, via Getty Images People have become obsessed with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s style. She was a Calvin Klein publicist and the wife of John F. Kennedy Jr. who died in a plane crash with him in 1999. But a new Ryan Murphy show, “Love Story,” and many viral social media posts have reintroduced the world to her classic, minimalist closet. Now, some of her clothes are up for auction. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Changua, a Colombian breakfast soup. Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Eat soup for breakfast. Social media influencers have picked up on the age-old tradition of having soup in the morning. Get a head start on spring cleaning with these tips from Wirecutter. Wash your sweaters with snow. The internet (and textile experts) say it’s a great way to get wool clean. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was continuity. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 5 Author Members Posted March 5 March 4, 2026 Good morning. Sam’s away. Iranian officials are deliberating over who should replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the slain supreme leader. His son has emerged as a front-runner. (Read about him here.) Israel is striking Iranian security sites, markets are down in Asia and oil prices have surged. We have more news from Iran — as well as primary results from the U.S. — below. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Goal setting by Evan Gorelick and Tom Wright-Piersanti The beheading of Iran’s regime last weekend was just the beginning. The conflict is spiraling outward: Today, Iran targeted its neighbors, Saudi Arabia intercepted cruise missiles and Israel flattened buildings in Lebanon. The United States is launching “24/7 strikes into Iran,” American officials said. The U.S., Israel and the Gulf states are ostensibly on the same side, but they do not always have the same goals. And Iran, playing defense, wants the least-worst outcome. In today’s newsletter, we explore what each side hopes to achieve. Iran’s government wants to survive. The plan for Iran is to make the war painful enough that the United States will declare victory and go home, writes Steven Erlanger, who covers diplomacy and security. To inflict that pain, Iran is trying to drive up the cost of the war. It has attacked oil and gas infrastructure in neighboring countries and shut down the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting the economies of the Persian Gulf and driving up global energy prices and inflation. In Tehran on Monday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times The Islamic republic also wants to expand the battlefield. It has launched thousands of drones and missiles at Israel, U.S. bases and Gulf states. The intent there isn’t only to kill, but also to deplete their enemies’ supplies of expensive missile interceptors. The strategy, Steven writes, is known as “asymmetric endurance” — accepting some damage now in order to fight back when the enemies’ defenses are stretched thin. Maybe then “Trump, facing midterm elections and a skeptical MAGA movement, will choose to curtail the war before American casualties, and inflation, go much higher,” Steven writes. Israel wants to break the Iranian regime. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed against Iran’s nuclear program but avoided direct confrontation, fearing retaliation from Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy army in Lebanon. But now, Iran’s supreme leader is dead, Hezbollah is weakened, and Israel is seizing its chance to remake the Middle East. With American support, it hopes to batter Iran, wreck its nuclear and missile programs and push its government to the breaking point. For weeks, Israel met with Trump to plan the military campaign. The Americans vacillated but ultimately thought a unilateral Israeli attack would drag the U.S. into war anyway. So they decided to coordinate. This logic sat poorly with some Democrats, who thought the Trump administration was letting Netanyahu dictate American policy. Some Republicans, too: Tucker Carlson visited the White House three times in the past month, arguing that Trump should not be dragooned by Israel. Gulf countries want to keep things stable. Persian Gulf countries have cultivated close ties with Washington, hosting American military bases and spending billions on American weapons to protect themselves from Iran and its regional proxies. Now, Vivian Nereim writes, the assault they feared has become reality. Iran has fired more than a thousand missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. The targets include not only U.S. bases and embassies, but also energy installations, airports and resorts. The U.S. wants … A lot of different things. The Trump administration has outlined many reasons for its military campaign against Iran, including stopping Iran’s nuclear program, decimating its fleet of missiles, hobbling its anti-Western proxies, pre-empting an attack and forcing regime change (the administration later said this was not a goal). Yesterday, speaking to the press in the Oval Office, Trump boiled down his rationale for attacking Iran: “It’s an evil ideology.” Asked whom he would like to take over Iran, Trump acknowledged that he wasn’t sure. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. “Now we have another group — they may be dead also, based on reports.” The worst outcome, he said, would be that whoever takes over Iran could be “as bad” as their predecessors. And in a letter to congress, Trump said his goal was to advance American national interests and eliminate Iran as a global threat. For Trump, the campaign is high-reward, but also high-risk. His approval rating has flagged, and Republicans may lose control of Congress, writes Tyler Pager, who covers the White House. Six American service members have been killed, and U.S. military jets were shot out of the sky. Investors are bracing for a disruption to oil supplies. But Trump, who often uses the economy as a barometer of success, said he wasn’t worried that the war would send oil prices soaring. The campaign against Iran could extend for weeks, he said. More on the war The four Army Reserve soldiers killed in a drone attack in Kuwait were from Florida, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska. Read more about them. Western governments are scrambling to evacuate hundreds of thousands of their citizens from the region. U.S. and Israeli attacks have focused on destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, satellite photographs show. Trump threatened to cut off all trade with Spain after the country refused to allow American aircraft involved in the attack on Iran to use its military bases. Oil and gas tankers have been staying away from the Strait of Hormuz to avoid being attacked. Trump said the U.S. Navy might begin escorting tankers through the strait in response. Who is in charge of Iran’s government after the death of the supreme leader and some top officials? In the video below, Erika Solomon, our bureau chief for Iran and Iraq, describes what we know. Click to play. The New York Times THE LATEST NEWS Midterm Elections Clockwise from top left, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett. Desiree Rios; Ilana Panich-Linsman; Tamir Kalifa; Emil Lippe for The New York Times In the Senate primaries in Texas … In the Democratic primary, James Talarico, a state representative who has made his Christian faith central to his campaign, beat Representative Jasmine Crockett. In the Republican primary, Senator John Cornyn is headed to a runoff against Ken Paxton, the hard-right, scandal-tarnished state attorney general. Some voters in Dallas County — the base of Crockett’s support — were confused about where to cast their ballots, and the state’s Supreme Court had to weigh in. “I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised,” Crockett told her supporters. In the House primaries in Texas … Representative Tony Gonzales, who is under scrutiny over an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide, was forced into a runoff against Brandon Herrera, a hard-line conservative and YouTuber known as the AK Guy. Representative Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who has sometimes broken with his fellow Republicans, lost his primary against an ultraconservative Texas state representative, Steve Toth. In North Carolina… Roy Cooper, a former Democratic governor, won the Democratic primary for a Senate seat. Michael Whatley, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, won the Republican primary. Read more about the race. A primary race for a State Senate seat between Phil Berger, widely considered the most powerful Republican politician in the state, and Sam Page, a challenger backed by Trump, remained too close to call. Page declared victory anyway. More on Politics The Trump administration indicated that it planned to renew its efforts against law firms, an abrupt reversal from a day earlier. Minnesota sued the Trump administration over a decision to withhold more than $200 million in Medicaid funds from the state. At a Senate hearing yesterday, Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, repeatedly declined to apologize for suggesting that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were domestic terrorists. Homeland Security is investigating a report that Gregory Bovino, who oversaw ICE operations in Minnesota, made disparaging remarks about the state’s U.S. attorney, an Orthodox Jew. Around the World Canada: Gunfire damaged a Toronto synagogue on Monday night, the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Purim, but no one was hurt. Ecuador: The country conducted joint military operations with the U.S. against “designated terrorist organizations,” the Pentagon said. Nepal: Voters go to the polls tomorrow in the first election since a Gen Z-led revolution in September. One top candidate is a millennial rapper. Other Big Stories In Texas. Firefighters climbed 900 feet into the air to rescue two hot-air ballooners who had struck a communications tower in Texas. A jury found the father of a Georgia school shooter guilty of murder for giving his struggling son the gun that he used in an attack. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, agreed to an interview with the House Oversight Committee about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. OPINIONS If we accept that Russia will eventually win in Ukraine, we’ll never get a durable peace agreement, Lawrence Freedman writes. Here is a column by Thomas Edsall on JD Vance’s intellectual and political journey. 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 House of Trump: Never before has a president displayed so much of his own image on the White House walls. We documented how Trump has filled the building with paintings, posters and memes of himself. Happy Holi: The South Asian festival that marks the coming of spring starts today. Get ready for clouds of colorful powder. Late night: Jimmy Kimmel asked if he could host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about the blood moon. TODAY’S NUMBER 21 — That’s the percentage of students vaccinated against measles at Global Academy, one of two schools in Spartanburg County, S.C., where measles had been detected. The county is ground zero for the largest measles outbreak since 2000. SPORTS Soccer: Trump said he didn’t care if Iran participated in the FIFA World Cup, which will be held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Iran qualified for the tournament but may withdraw because of the U.S. and Israeli attacks. M.L.B.: The Atlanta Braves outfielder Jurickson Profar has been suspended without pay for the upcoming season after he tested positive for drugs for the second time in a year. He is appealing the suspension. RECIPE OF THE DAY Andrew Bui for The New York Times This tomato and orzo soup is easy to whip up when tomatoes are out of season and you have only tomato paste to work with. Using bone broth in the base gives this soup some added nutrition; feel free to also put in cooked chicken, canned chickpeas or lentils for protein, adjusting the amount of broth as preferred. SMUT RENAISSANCE The New York Times Are we in a “smut renaissance”? On TV and in novels, steamy sex scenes are everywhere. “Heated Rivalry” has become a sensation for by depicting the intense longing of two professional hockey players. Emerald Fennell’s take on “Wuthering Heights” is functionally erotic Brontë fan fiction. And Sabrina Carpenter simulates sex acts onstage each night to packed audiences. Yet people are said to be having less sex than ever. Why is that? THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Tony Luong for The New York Times Get a dog? Studies show that owning a pet can improve your health. Avoid buying counterfeit beauty products with this advice from Wirecutter. Eat more sustainable seafood by looking for the “best choice” label on menus. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were blockable, cookable and lockable. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter said incorrectly that Paramount’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery would mean buying the parent company of CNN and CBS. Paramount already owns CBS. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 6 Author Members Posted March 6 March 5, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. The war is spreading. Two Iranian drones just fell into Azerbaijan, and more Iranian strikes were reported in Israel and Iraq. And Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, said American and Israeli warplanes would soon gain total control of Iranian airspace, allowing them to deliver “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” We have more below. But let’s start by answering some of your questions about what’s happening in the war. In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Your Iran questions After the Iran war began, we invited you to submit your questions about the crisis in the Middle East. The response was robust. A selection of reader questions follows here, along with answers from Times reporters. Keep them coming — we welcome questions about what’s happening and how we’re covering it. The campaign What explains President Trump’s turnabout on foreign wars and nation building? | Eloise Gore | Tucson, Ariz. Peter Baker, who covers the White House, writes: There are a number of theories, but three factors I think are particularly important: One is that after five years in office, Trump is more comfortable with the use of power, both at home and abroad. The second is that he is now surrounded by advisers who either encourage his most aggressive instincts or see their role as facilitating his desires. And finally, as he approaches his 80th birthday, he seems increasingly focused on his place in history, looking to make sweeping changes here and overseas, toppling foreign leaders, taking over other countries or territories, literally redrawing the map of the planet. How did the United States get such specific information about where Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his advisers would be, and when? | Dorene Watkins | New York City David Sanger, who covers the White House and national security, writes: As you can imagine, American intelligence agencies are not eager to explain. But the United States can access billions of sensors in the world and track people close to leaders who may be sloppy about the digital dust they leave. That lets spies track the movement of motorcades, the opening of electronic locks and the location of web-connected devices like cellphones and watches. Read my story about these capabilities. Do Israel and the United States have the same objectives in attacking Iran? | Giovanni Cavarzere | Verona, Italy Michael Crowley, who covers diplomacy, writes: Both the United States and Israel intend to devastate Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. But Israel is more committed to a campaign lasting weeks to bring down Iran’s theocratic regime, while Trump’s priorities have repeatedly shifted. He has said he might be open to cutting a deal with the current government that would stop the war sooner. Iran’s choices Last weekend, we saw people mourning Khamenei’s death in vast numbers — as well as people celebrating under cover of the night. Do we know what share of Iranians support the government and what share want it gone? | Agnès Billa | Montreal Farnaz Fassihi, who covers Iran, writes: Over the years, we’ve seen Iranians take to the streets in nationwide protests to demand the end of the Islamic republic, most recently in early January. The protesters come from all over, all age groups, all classes. I say very roughly that about 20 percent of voters form a loyal, ideological base that backs the Islamic theocracy. We can draw these numbers from patterns in the latest presidential and parliamentary elections. Turnout was very low, and a majority of eligible voters boycotted the election as an act of protest. Many Iranians say they are simply fed up with the policies of their rulers and have lost hope that they will ever reform or change. What are the options for regime change in Iran? Would the army side with the people to overthrow the Revolutionary Guards? Can the people of Iran act on their own to create democracy? | Lola Ams | Nice, France Erika Solomon, who covers Iran, writes: The military and security forces don’t seem to be cracking, but the war is only a few days old. Some military experts say that if strikes continue, they could encourage defections that fracture the system. But it’s hard for people to rise up under heavy bombardment. Later, they might be more worried about how to survive amid the country’s economic crisis. And any organizing will have to cover a lot of new ground. The government has long stifled dissent and criticism of the government. People praying in Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Is there another political party that could come into power that the United States and its allies would support? | Jennifer Close | Greenfield, Mass. Erika also writes: It’s probably better to think of this as political forces versus parties. If the government survives, it could go two ways: Reformist figures from within push the country to take a more moderate line, maybe talking to Washington and ending the nuclear program. But the war — particularly if it becomes more chaotic and deadly — could also radicalize people in a hard-line direction. If the system collapses, a lot of political figures could want to come in. But the opposition in Iran is bitterly divided — which will make it hard for its members to unify under the banner of a clear alternative. Has the United States ever carried out a forcible regime change that was successful, lasting and (eventually) sovereign? | Abby Peters | Cedar Falls, Iowa Anton Troianovski, who covers foreign policy, writes: Do you count Germany and the postwar Marshall Plan that brought it back to life? Some might point to Panama: A U.S. invasion in 1989 deposed the dictator Manuel Noriega. His successor, Guillermo Endara, was sworn in on a U.S. military base and helped lead the country to democracy. But that war involved thousands of American ground troops and left Panama’s economy in such ruins that Endara went on a hunger strike to seek emergency U.S. aid. Panama’s population back then was about two million. Iran’s is 90 million. The list of efforts that ended in chaos or defeat — Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond — underlines the huge risks. Will Iran attack us? How will this campaign affect Americans? Is there anything we need to do? | Eden Jensen | Madison, Wis. Adam Goldman, who covers global security, writes: That’s possible as Iran retaliates. So far it has tried to hurt U.S. interests in the region. But Iran has mounted plots on American soil in the past, including a suspected effort to assassinate Trump that the F.B.I. foiled in 2024. (The Pentagon said yesterday that it had killed the organizer in this week’s bombardment.) Typically, the U.S. intelligence community increases measures to protect the American public when the country goes to war, relying on electronic surveillance and informants to suss out any possible attack. The latest on the war Clockwise from top left, Declan J. Coady, Nicole M. Amor, Noah L. Tietjens and Cody A. Khork. The Pentagon identified six American soldiers that Iran killed. (It notifies their families before releasing names.) They include a father who dreamed of opening a martial arts studio and a college sophomore. Read more about them here. Iran denied Turkey’s claim that it had fired a missile toward Turkey, a NATO member. (NATO shot down a missile yesterday, Turkey said.) A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship with a torpedo in the Indian Ocean — the first American torpedo fired in combat since World War II. Israel has continued to strike Hezbollah in Lebanon. Follow updates here. Britain and France are sending ships and planes to defend their citizens and interests in the Middle East. A majority of Americans (59 percent) opposes the military action in Iran, new polls show. Senate Republicans voted against limiting Trump’s war powers. The House is expected to do the same today. The war is disrupting the flow of oil and natural gas in the region. See the movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz below. The New York Times MORE NEWS Midterms James Talarico Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times James Talarico, the state lawmaker and seminarian who won the Democratic Senate primary in Texas, took aim at billionaires in his victory speech. Latinos helped Talarico win. Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, said he would not seek re-election this year. The surprise announcement could help Democrats. In Arkansas, a man charged with murder appears to have won a primary for county sheriff. (He’s charged with killing a man accused of sexually assaulting his daughter.) Politics A House committee voted to make Pam Bondi, the attorney general, testify before Congress about the Justice Department’s handling of the case against Jeffrey Epstein. The U.S. plans to increase tariffs on global imports to 15 percent, from 10 percent, this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. The Justice Department failed to build a case out of Joe Biden’s use of an autopen to sign presidential documents, despite pressure from Trump. Around the World Xi Jinping at the annual meeting of the national legislature in Beijing today. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images China announced a 7 percent increase in military spending and a five-year plan to try to reduce its reliance on Western technology. Ethiopia and Eritrea could soon be at war again. Both sides have moved troops toward their shared border. Ecuador is working with the United States to fight violent drug gangs. Other Big Stories Most scientists are underestimating the how high sea levels already are, research found. Catholic priests in Rhode Island abused hundreds of children over many decades, according to a blistering report by the state’s attorney general. OPINIONS Your job may already be in jeopardy from A.I., Michael Steinberger writes. Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni discuss Iran and the midterms. 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 Andrew White for The New York Times Famous wood: Antonio Stradivari made some of the world’s best violins. Tree rings on the instruments reveal what forests they came from. Sad desk lunch: Office workers in Paris, renowned for taking luxuriously long midday meals, have developed an appetite for the on-the-go slop bowl. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about a potential successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. TODAY’S NUMBER $110 — That’s about how much Richard Hell, the punk-rock icon and writer, paid in monthly rent for his one-bedroom East Village apartment in 1974. Take a tour. (You’ll see a beautiful Nan Goldin photograph above the living room table.) SPORTS N.F.L.: The Kansas City Chiefs traded All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie to the Los Angeles Rams for a draft haul that includes a 2026 first-round pick Track and field: Jess McClain lost the U.S. Half Marathon Championships in Atlanta because a lead vehicle led her off course, but she was awarded the race’s $20,000 winning prize. RECIPE OF THE DAY Ali Slagle’s ceviche. Christopher Testani for The New York Times Here’s an endlessly adaptable recipe for ceviche that you ought to make the next time you run into some really fresh fish. For me, this week, that was at Fishbusterz on Stock Island in the Florida Keys, where yellowtail snapper glistened over ice. I diced the fillets; paired them with chopped tomatoes, red onion, mangoes and jalapeño peppers; drenched everything with lime juice; and then let the mixture sit for a while to cure. Top your version with a snowfall of cilantro leaves and a few handfuls of plantain chips. Close to perfect. A LEADING MAN Jonathan Groff Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times There haven’t been many male matinee idols on Broadway in recent years, writes Ben Brantley, who was The Times’s theater critic for more than two decades. But Jonathan Groff, who plays Bobby Darin in “Just in Time,” is one of them. That’s good for ticket sales.“Star power is pretty much one of the only things that can guarantee viability for a musical,” one of Groff’s directors said. Next up? This fall, Groff will play the leading lady Rosalind in an all-male “As You Like It” at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. Read more about Groff’s rise. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Protect your hearing with the help of this expert advice. Read Rebecca Makkai’s 2023 novel, “I Have Some Questions for You,” about a podcaster who returns to her prep school to teach — and pursue justice. I found it at the library in Key West and blew through it in a day. Avoid overcooking your steaks and roasts and birds and chops (again) with the best meat thermometers tested by the chefs de partie at Wirecutter. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were effecting and infecting. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misidentified which candidate in a primary for North Carolina’s State Senate had been endorsed by President Trump. It was Phil Berger, not Sam Page. 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 8 Author Members Posted March 8 March 6, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Missiles are flying across the Middle East. Israel is pounding both Beirut and Tehran with strikes, and Iran is targeting Tel Aviv. Thousands of people are fleeing. We have all the latest updates here. And President Trump fired Kristi Noem, his homeland security secretary. She’s been in the spotlight for months — wearing a Rolex watch and self-promoting as she oversaw Trump’s immigration crackdown. But after she drew even Republican frustration this week for comments before Congress, Trump announced he would replace her. Read about her rise and fall. There’s more news below. I’m going to start today, though, with the economy. Spencer Platt/Getty Images The dark economy News doesn’t generally frustrate me. It can be good or bad, thrilling, expected or disturbing, but for the most part it doesn’t leave me on the cusp of annoyance. The jobs reports that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases every month are an exception. They can be exasperating! Last July, for instance, the report said the U.S. had added 147,000 jobs in June. That was good news. But in August that number was revised to less than a tenth of that. Not such good news? And then last month, the June data changed again, offering bad news. Employment actually declined by 20,000 jobs in June. Job growth over the past two years had been overstated by nearly one million positions. Note: Data is based on net revisions from the first to the latest estimate and includes the annual benchmark revisions when available. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Karl Russell/The New York Times We’ll see the February jobs report in a couple of hours. But does it matter what it says if the government’s just going to revise the number later? That’s a question Ben Casselman, the chief economics correspondent for The Times, gets a lot. And he answered it this morning in a story about the jobs numbers that you could distill into an axiom: Context matters. As one economist told him, “Any one number can shift your understanding.” But there’s always underlying detail to examine as well, along with other data that helps paint a clearer picture of what’s actually happening in the economy — consumer spending, say, or economic anxiety, inflation, even the stock market. The monthly jobs data last year, Ben wrote, mostly showed the labor market stuck in “low-hire, low-fire” equilibrium: Employers added few jobs but didn’t lay off many employees. And the revisions didn’t really change that story. Bias-free numbers If I’ve found the jobs reports frustrating, Trump has found them infuriating. After the revisions last summer, he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her without evidence of cooking the books to make his administration look bad. Economists overwhelmingly dismissed the charge. After all, there were downward revisions during the Biden presidency, too. But Democrats worry that Trump will now pressure the bureau into producing data that he likes. There is no evidence that’s happening, Ben wrote: Current and former staffers say that the agency is using the same procedures as under past administrations, and that it would be impossible for the White House to interfere in its operations without detection. Reasons for worry Whether the data is reliable, though, remains a complicated question to answer. Last month’s report said employers added just 181,000 jobs in 2025. That was 69 percent fewer than its initial estimate of 584,000. There was a downward revision a year earlier that was nearly as large. Ben explained why that happened: Economists are optimistic that the big revisions are at least partly the result of temporary factors and that the data will become more reliable going forward. The Covid-19 pandemic led to waves of business openings and closures, which are difficult for the government to track in real time, and upended the seasonal patterns that statisticians try to account for in their estimates. The surge in immigration in the early years of the Biden administration, and the sharp decline later in his term and under Mr. Trump, have broken models that were built for much more gradual demographic shifts. They’re optimistic but guarded, Ben reports. Budgets are shrinking, as is the size of the agency. Response rates to the surveys that make up the bulk of the data are declining. And government shutdowns don’t help, either. “There’s good reason to be concerned that the quality of our statistics is going to deteriorate,” another economist said. “Even before this administration, there was reason to be concerned. The agencies have been fighting an uphill battle for years.” Still, Ben explains here why it’s important not to dismiss the numbers. He’s convincing. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the new ones later this morning. ‘WAR’ IN IRAN? After a strike in Tehran yesterday. Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Trump has had no qualms with using the word “war” to describe the fighting between the U.S., Israel and Iran. “We’re doing very well on the war front,” he told reporters this week. Not so for many others in his party. Republicans on Capitol Hill have contorted themselves to avoid the word, Annie Karni writes, calling it a “major combat operation,” a “mission” and “hostilities.” Why? “We haven’t declared war,” said Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma and Trump’s new selection to lead homeland security. If Trump is waging war without congressional say-so, he might be acting outside constitutional boundaries. When a reporter reminded Mullin that he had used the word himself, he replied, “That was a misspoke.” More on Trump’s power Trump said that he should have a role in choosing Iran’s new leader and that Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain ayatollah who has emerged as a front-runner, would be an “unacceptable” choice. The House, like the Senate, voted down an effort to halt the war against Iran and force Trump to go to Congress for authorization. Presidents have long sidestepped Congress to launch limited military strikes. But Trump’s unilateral decision to start a war against Iran sets a new precedent for presidential power, Charlie Savage writes. How is Trump’s base responding to his administration’s conflicting messages on the war? In the video below, Zolan Kanno-Youngs explains. Click to play. The New York Times More on strikes The strike that hit an elementary school in the first hours of the war killed at least 175 people, many of them children, Iranian officials say. An investigation by The Times found evidence that the U.S. was likely responsible. Two more schools in Iran appeared to have been damaged during the bombing campaign from the United States and Israel. Intentional attacks on schools, hospitals and other civilian structures are considered war crimes. Iranian Kurdish militants based in Iraq are preparing for a possible attack on Iran. (Read about the Kurds, an ethnic group spread across the Middle East.) THE LATEST NEWS Kristi Noem Kristi Noem this week. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times Trump said he would replace Noem with Senator Markwayne Mullin, who is a staunch defender of the administration’s mass deportation campaign. Noem is the first cabinet member to be fired in Trump’s second term. The catalyst for Noem’s firing appeared to be congressional hearings this week, in which lawmakers grilled her about a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that featured her heavily. She testified that Trump had approved it, but he told Reuters that was not true. Politics The New York Times Trump’s ballroom will change the appearance of the White House considerably. The Times modeled the new structure. Click here to see it from different angles. The Defense Department has officially labeled Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, a “supply chain risk,” which could prevent it from doing business with the U.S. government. Courts keep ordering the Trump administration to pay for congressional priorities, yet the administration continues to withhold the money. Here’s how. The U.S. State Department announced the re-establishment of diplomatic and consular relations with Venezuela. Around the World Mexico is cracking down on cartels in response to American pressure. Our correspondents explain why that will be hard. Venezuela: A U.S. traveler set out to visit every country in South America. In Venezuela, he said, he was detained, starved and beaten. South Africa: President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke with The Times about Trump and racism. “I just thought that he is so uninformed, truly uninformed,” Ramaphosa said of Trump’s view of South Africa. Other Big Stories Three women were found dead in Utah, two on a hiking trail and one at a home. The police arrested a suspect who they said drove a victim’s vehicle out of the state during the killing spree. A study found that prescriptions for acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol — for pregnant women in emergency rooms dropped for weeks after Trump claimed the painkiller could cause autism. OPINIONS Anna Malina Zemlianski The TV series “Love Story,” about the relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, depicts the actress Daryl Hannah (Kennedy’s ex-girlfriend) as a whiny, self-absorbed, cocaine-fueled villain. “These are not creative embellishments of personality,” Hannah writes. “They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.” America cannot withstand the economic shock that is coming from A.I., Gina Raimondo, a former commerce secretary, argues. 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 Nature’s hippies: Researchers learned the hard way that if you give a chimp a crystal — quartz, calcite — you might not get it back. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was a look inside an East Village apartment that once cost $110 per month to rent. Lives Lived: António Lobo Antunes, a prolific Portuguese novelist and one of Europe’s most revered writers, is dead at 83. TODAY’S NUMBER $14,199 — That’s roughly how much money, per household, American millennial homeowners spent on renovations last year. It is more than any other generation, even though millennials don’t own a majority of homes. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Chicago Bears are trading wide receiver DJ Moore to the Buffalo Bills, according to league sources, in one of the biggest early offseason moves. N.B.A.: LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for most made field goals in league history. His 15,838th made basket was against the Denver Nuggets. M.L.S.: Trump welcomed Inter Miami to the White House to celebrate the team’s 2025 M.L.S. Cup title. RECIPE OF THE DAY Christopher Testani for The New York Times Masarepa is a precooked, finely ground corn flour that is the key ingredient in any recipe for arepas, the round, flat and fluffy corn cakes from Venezuela and Colombia. You can find it in most big supermarkets and always online. For this version, Rick A. Martínez griddles the cakes, then splits them open and fills them with a salad of mayo-and-lime-moistened shredded rotisserie chicken and avocado. I like them with butter and queso blanco, too. ICE QUEEN Jeremy White/The New York Times Alysa Liu, the gold medal figure skater, recently spoke with Gia Kourlas, our dance critic, about artistry and the musical choices that put her in her Olympian flow state. “The music allows me to get there, which is why it’s so important I skate to music I like,” Liu said. “I know every beat, I know every lyric. My body feels it.” Read the whole interview. More on culture I’m not sure when I’ll see Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new Frankenstein movie, “The Bride!” But I sure enjoyed reading Manohla Dargis’s review. “It doesn’t always make sense tonally and intellectually,” she writes, “but the whole thing is energetic, handsome and stocked with enough expert, appealing performers to hold your interest through the rougher, less coherent passages.” Does the world need a new take on Sherlock Holmes? The creators of “Young Sherlock” think so. The streaming series tells the story of the famous detective’s youth with the trademark swagger of the producer Guy Ritchie. The actor is a Gen Z heartthrob. Late night hosts covered Noem’s ouster. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Druski Jason Nocito for The New York Times Watch the comedian Druski’s interview with our “Popcast” team. He can’t believe he’s everywhere, either. Hoover up dust and pet hair with the best robot vacuum cleaners recommended by the obsessive neatniks at Wirecutter. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was jocular. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 9 Author Members Posted March 9 March 7, 2026 Good morning. If decreasing dependence on our phones feels impossible, we might benefit from considering what we’d want to fill the space that they occupy. María Jesús Contreras Hanging up By Melissa Kirsch In 1996, my colleague Pam Belluck wrote about a 17-year-old so addicted to the internet that he spent “more than six hours a day online and more than an hour reading his email.” More than an hour on email! It seems quaint now. Pam documented the phenomenon of “netaholism” and the support groups that were emerging to help people resist the whine of their dial-up modems. Here in 2026, our efforts at remediation of our own screen dependence are meeting with mixed results. Most states now have laws to keep phones out of classrooms, but students are destroying the lockable pouches where their devices are stowed. A Wirecutter writer tried to downgrade to a BlackBerry, only to find that life without maps and banking apps was unrealistic. But! There’s hope! Even if that hope comes via methods that seem extreme. “What used to be innocent enough — checking social media to see what our friends were up to — has escalated into a battle of wills in which there can emerge only one victor: man or phone,” my colleague Madison Malone Kircher wrote recently. She reported on Brick, a device that locks down your phone and requires you to tap it against a plastic square in order to reinstate access to certain apps. Desperate times, desperate measures. People are repairing to the woods, building full-scale replicas of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond — no plumbing, no electricity, definitely no Wi-Fi. One modern transcendentalist’s dwelling has just a kerosene lamp, a desk and research materials to keep him from using Google. “It naturally makes me not want to check email impulsively,” he told The Times. Sometimes it feels as if our phones are our captors, and we’re in perpetual search for a device or a detox that will release us. We’re constantly negotiating: I’ll keep my devices out of the bedroom. I’ll wait 15 minutes after waking before checking social media. No matter how reasonable our efforts to decrease dependency, however, there’s frequently an element of deprivation involved. More effective, perhaps, are solutions that fill the empty space. I have a friend who reads in the morning before checking her phone, another who meditates. Replacing checking your phone with something else seems like a step in the right direction. You can’t have your phone for this period of time, but you can have this other very satisfying activity. It sounds like the way you’d bargain with a child, but for many of us, our relationship with our phones is not so different from a child’s with a blankie. My colleague Callie Holtermann reported recently on a group of students at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M., who undertook a six-day tech fast. This led them to insights that seem elementary to anyone who remembers life before phones, but profound when you consider how commonplace it has become to be present but not really there. “When I’m in a situation where I have nothing to do, I cannot find someone to hang out with other than the people who are around me,” one student reported. “In not being able to communicate over distance, I have to be more invested in communicating where I am.” It seems simple: communicating where we are. But how often are we truly invested in that? How often can we say we’re not at least partly invested in communicating elsewhere, only half-aware of what’s happening before us? The organizer of the tech fast told Callie about a previous project to establish a tech-free dorm at St. John’s. Over time, the project’s focus shifted from being “anti-tech” to “pro-community.” Yes! That feels like an important distinction as we try to unshackle ourselves from constant phone checking. Rather than frame our plight as what we’re against, rather than focusing on what we are cutting out, we might frame it around what we’re seeking: community, connection, presence. It’s easy to list all the ways in which screen dependence detracts from our lives, but we don’t often articulate what becomes possible on the other side. I’ve taken to picturing moments and events without phones. What would this scene look like if we couldn’t beat a digital retreat as soon as the conversation lagged? What would this car ride, this bar, this meeting, this lying-around-on-a-Saturday-afternoon look like if no one were checking their device? First, it feels a little weird — all that empty space. But then you get to imagine what would fill it. It’s an interesting thought exercise. What do we want our lives to look like? How do we bring the benefits of the cabin in the woods to our everyday routines? As a scholar of American Transcendentalism put it to The Times, “The whole point for Thoreau was a deliberate experiment in simplifying our wants — what we think we want — and trying to get to the heart of what it means to live a full life.” THE LATEST NEWS War in Iran Iranians mourning the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times President Trump declared that he would settle for nothing short of “unconditional surrender” by Iran. That could portend a much longer conflict. The Israeli military said it had launched another broad wave of strikes on Iranian government infrastructure. Soon after, the Iranian state media said Israeli strikes had hit a major domestic airport in Tehran. U.S. officials believe Russia has provided Iran with wartime intelligence, including satellite imagery showing the locations of ships and military personnel. Wars often become less popular over time. But Trump is the first modern U.S. president to take the country to war without public support to begin with, Peter Baker writes. In the video below, Malachy Browne of our Visual Investigations team explains what we’ve learned about the airstrike on an elementary school in Iran, which officials say killed at least 175 people. The New York Times Politics Jeffrey Clark, an architect of many of the Trump administration’s most consequential climate rollbacks, has left his position as the White House regulatory czar. A Democratic senator said he would press for a perjury investigation into Kristi Noem, the fired homeland security secretary, saying Democrats had evidence she lied under oath. The executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra is stepping down, dealing another blow to the Kennedy Center. A Democratic lawmaker asked a court to block Trump’s plan to close the center for two years. Dr. Vinay Prasad, who oversaw vaccines at the F.D.A. and limited access to Covid shots, is resigning from the agency. Other Big Stories Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times Local and national leaders, including three former presidents, attended the memorial service for the Rev. Jesse Jackson on the South Side of Chicago. “He paved the road for so many others to follow,” Barack Obama said. At least six people were killed after tornadoes struck Michigan, part of a severe storm system that battered a swath of the U.S. from Texas to the Great Lakes. Hiring fizzled in February, a sign of unexpected weakness in the labor market. Employers slashed jobs across nearly all major sectors, and unemployment ticked up. (Stocks fell to the lowest level this year.) TRAVEL IN A WAR ZONE Dubai International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Altaf Qadri/Associated Press Travel in the Middle East has been largely paralyzed since the war began. More than 29,000 flights to or from the region have been canceled, and some airspace is still closed. Iran’s retaliatory attacks have hit hotels in Dubai and the airport in Abu Dhabi, causing anxiety among those trying to leave. Flights are slowly becoming more available, but thousands of travelers remain stranded. Since Middle Eastern airports are a linchpin of international travel, the disruptions have also rippled to more distant places, such as Australia, India and Indonesia, that rely on connections. We’ve heard from more than 100 readers affected by the disruptions, many of whom have improvised expensive, often complex itineraries to escape the conflict zone. Jay Miller, a 45-year-old doctor from New Orleans who got stuck in Qatar, described his planning as “a surreal calculus,” weighing the risks of missiles against his evaporating flight options. He eventually hired a car to drive to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he boarded a flight to Ethiopia. If all goes well, he will be back home today. European countries, including Italy, France and Britain, arranged flights beginning early this week to evacuate their citizens. The U.S. government had been urging travelers to call a hotline, which mainly provided basic information about security conditions and commercial flights. Yesterday, though, the State Department began offering charter flights — including one in a New England Patriots plane. — Christine Chung, travel reporter 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. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 🎬 ❤️ “Reminders of Him” (Friday): For all the ladies who love to cry into their popcorn — and the gentleman beside them, protecting the Raisinets — a new movie adapted from a novel by Colleen Hoover, the reigning queen of anguished romance, has arrived. Following “It Ends With Us” and “Regretting You,” this film stars Maika Monroe as Kenna, a formerly incarcerated woman hoping to reunite with the child she surrendered, and Tyriq Withers as Ledger, the broad-shouldered bar owner who may help her. (Hoover has a way with names.) Vanessa Caswill directs from a script by Hoover and her producing partner Lauren Levine. Hoover’s novels are feelings-forward, high-drama affairs. With any luck the drama this time will confine itself to the screen. REAL ESTATE Ted Land Ruth Fremson/The New York Times The Hunt: After a decade of renting apartments, a first-time buyer in Seattle looked for something with a bit more space. Which option did he choose? Play our game. What you get for $1 million in Croatia: A six-bedroom stone villa with a pool in a former quarry; a three-bedroom stone villa in the hills; two stone villas on a pool courtyard. Movin’ out: Billy Joel’s estate on Long Island finally sold, nearly three years after he first listed the property. Take a look inside. Fixer-upper: Americans are on track to spend a record amount on home renovations this year. The reasons are both practical and emotional. T MAGAZINE Photograph by Robin Galiegue. Styled by Jacob K. Read this weekend’s issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. LIVING Getty Images “Sexual market value”: The idea of putting a dollar figure on attractiveness has bubbled up from obscure corners of the internet. In hot water: Influencers claim that drinking warm water in the morning improves digestion. Does it really work? We asked experts to help us boil it down. Old-school Pizza Hut: The chain painstakingly engineered a handful of restaurants to take fans back to a simpler time. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER How to avoid counterfeit beauty products Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter and Dana Davis/NYT Wirecutter I recently spent months immersed in the confusing and shockingly pervasive world of counterfeit beauty products, which entailed sending a dozen suspicious products to a lab for testing. Every single one had a problem. How can you avoid fakes? First, and most important, buy from brands’ own websites or authorized retailers. If you’re considering a third-party purchase, be wary of too-good-to-be-true prices (especially anything discounted by more than a third), and check the seller’s one-star reviews for customer complaints of counterfeiting. — Rose Maura Lorre GAME OF THE WEEK Shohei Ohtani, the star of Japan’s team. Eugene Hoshiko/Associated Press World Baseball Classic: Normally, at this time of the year, only the most die-hard baseball fans are tuning in to watch spring training. But every few years, the World Baseball Classic returns, and with it the possibility of playoff-level thrills before the daffodils have bloomed. This is the sixth Classic. Japan has won the tournament three times, and the U.S. and the Dominican Republic once each. This year’s U.S. and Dominican rosters, in particular, will be familiar to M.L.B. fans. The American team has added two of the best pitchers in the league — Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes — to a lineup that includes Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and Bryce Harper. And the Dominican hitters are, quite possibly, even better, including Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Pool play runs through the week, and the knockout stage begins Friday. Games to check out this weekend: Britain vs. the U.S., tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox; and the Netherlands vs. the Dominican Republic, tomorrow at noon on Fox. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was upfield. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 10 Author Members Posted March 10 March 8, 2026 Good morning. The Israeli military struck several Iranian fuel sites late last night, and videos from Tehran showed columns of flames and smoke climbing into the sky. We have more on the war below. And you can follow updates here. But first, on this International Women’s Day, we’re writing about a project to unearth stories of remarkable women from The Times’s archives. The New York Times History makers By Amisha Padnani I’m an editor on The Times’s Obituaries desk. What happens when you read about the lives of notable women across time? You start to see what history noticed — and what it didn’t. For Women’s History Month, my colleagues and I pored over hundreds of obituaries in The New York Times archives. Our new project, which we published this weekend, revisits the stories of more than 100 women and reveals how they were seen in their own time. You can read it here. Some stories were familiar. Many were not. Often, even when I was reading about a notable figure, I would learn some new detail that made me ask: How had I not known this about her? Take Hedy Lamarr. I had heard her name, sure — it blazed across marquees and movie posters in the 1930s and ’40s. Her obituary, from 2000, had no shortage of adjectives about her striking appearance. What I hadn’t realized was that she was a prolific inventor whose ideas helped lay the groundwork for modern wireless communication, GPS and Bluetooth. Only two paragraphs mentioned her scientific contributions, almost as a reluctant aside. That pattern appeared throughout the archives. Achievements minimized. Talents framed as curiosities. Women memorialized first for how they looked, or whom they married, before their own accomplishments. And yet, the vibrant lives of these women shone through. The journalist Martha Gellhorn, who covered wars around the world, once wrote about traveling with her husband, Ernest Hemingway — whom she referred to only as Unwilling Companion. After divorcing him and two other husbands, she concluded that marriage was boring. Moments like that stayed with me. Oriana Fallaci was a glamorous and incisive journalist known for her aggressive style of interviewing prominent people. Sylvia Rivera was a lively transgender activist who, amid the Stonewall riots, shouted to her lover, “I’m not missing a minute of this — it’s the revolution!” A portrait shows Indira Gandhi — India’s first and only female prime minister — seated gracefully in a deep red sari, with her hands folded, beside a small arrangement of yellow flowers. The image is elegant and composed, the kind of photograph meant to project calm authority. These women didn’t wait for the world to expand possibilities for them. They expanded those possibilities themselves. Reading these stories also made me think about the women who shape us in quieter ways. When I was young, I didn’t spend much time imagining what kind of woman I would become. The person who shaped me most wasn’t a celebrity or a historical figure. It was my aunt, who moved to the United States from India when I was 6, shortly after my parents divorced. She was funny and generous and cared deeply about doing the right thing. It’s a lesson that has stayed with me: You live according to your values. Recognition, if it comes, is beside the point. That idea kept coming back to me as I read the obituaries. Most of the women in these pages did not set out to become famous. They followed their convictions and pushed into spaces that had not been built for them. Often they paid a price for it. Reading about their lives has been an energizing exercise, and yet a frustrating one. Again and again, the larger fight — to be seen clearly, to be taken seriously — felt familiar. Their stories don’t feel like artifacts from the past. They feel like part of a conversation that is still unfolding. THE LATEST NEWS The Iran War Tehran this morning. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times The first week of attacks by the U.S. and Israel pummeled Iran and killed top leaders. But it also showed that President Trump has no clear idea for how the war should end. A U.S. intelligence report predating the war concluded that even a large-scale military assault would be unlikely to topple Iran’s theocratic government. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, apologized for the missile strikes that have hit Gulf states — even as the strikes continued. The remains of the first U.S. service members killed in the conflict arrived at Dover Air Force Base yesterday. Iran or another group could retrieve Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium even though U.S. strikes buried it last year, according to classified intelligence reports. Gas prices in the U.S. have risen 14 percent in a week because the war has cut off a large portion of the world’s crude oil supply. Politics Trump announced a coalition to “eradicate” drug cartels at a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders yesterday in Florida. ICE agents in Nashville detained a local journalist who covers immigration. Police officers in Manhattan arrested six people after a clash between anti-Islamic protesters and counterprotesters turned violent outside the home of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. A federal judge ruled that Kari Lake’s appointment as head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media was invalid, voiding the mass layoffs she had carried out at Voice of America. Around the World Balendra Shah, right, during his campaign. Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times Nepal: Balendra Shah, a former rapper, is on track to become the next prime minister. Partial results from Thursday’s election show his party winning a landslide victory. Colombia: Voters head to the polls today to cast their ballots in congressional elections. Candidates have experienced kidnappings and death threats. Canada: Gunfire struck two synagogues in the Toronto area late Friday and early Saturday. Another local synagogue was damaged by gunfire on Monday. Other Big Stories Dozens of former employees of Noma, one of the world’s top restaurants, say its founding chef, René Redzepi, inflicted physical and psychological violence on the staff for years. Daylight saving time has begun. Why do we still change our clocks twice a year? Runners competing in today’s Los Angeles Marathon can get a finisher’s medal after completing only 18 miles because high temperatures are expected. Fallout from the Epstein files continues. In the video below, David Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter, describes how Jeffrey Epstein used a small circle of doctors to control the medical care of the young women from overseas who were having sex with him. Click to play. The New York Times THE SUNDAY DEBATE Can the war on Iran prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Yes. Previous attempts to rein in Iran’s nuclear program have only delayed the threat. Trump’s war on Iran was the “right decision for this, and future generations of Americans,” Van Hipp writes for Fox News. “And China and Russia are taking note that this president is different.” No. The war is a stark break from the diplomacy and stringent restrictions that went into the now-defunct nuclear deal with Iran. “What conclusion may countries draw from this episode?” Damian Murphy and Andrew Miller ask in DC Journal. “Perhaps, developing nuclear weapons is essential for maintaining power.” FROM OPINION When Rebecca Norris Webb needs solace, she heads to the Great Plains. After losing her father, she returned there — and encountered an owl bearing an unmistakable resemblance. At least one Palestinian citizen of Israel is killed each day, on average, largely by Arab organized crime and gun violence. To ease this crime wave, Israel should work to reduce its segregation and inequality, Mairav Zonszein writes. Here is a column by Maureen Dowd on MAGA’s version of “Wuthering Heights.” 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 Munich in 2024. Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times Hang zehn: Despite sitting 200 miles from the sea, Munich had a hopping surf community. But its most beloved spot, a human-made wave in a creek, has been ruined. Cute overload: Social media is flooded with A.I. videos of animals doing things beyond the bounds of belief. Those clips risk making us numb to nature’s real wonders. A wartime Ramadan: Missiles are falling across the Middle East as millions of people there fast and meditate on restraint. In Believing, Lauren Jackson explores the incongruity. (Sign up to get Believing here.) A sculptor: Thaddeus Mosley spent nearly 70 years creating bold wooden sculptures before finally gaining international attention in his early 90s. He died at 99. SPORTS N.C.A.A.: Top-ranked Duke defeated its rival North Carolina 76-61 last night, avenging its loss earlier this season. U.F.C.: The fight card for an event at the White House on June 14 will feature Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje competing for the UFC lightweight title. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Brawler,” by Lauren Groff: If the nine stories in this best-selling collection have a theme, our critic writes, it’s “how the bedrock of family crumbles, and its members are forced to shift into new formations, occasionally tectonic.” Groff is best known for novels like “The Vaster Wilds” (2023) and “Fates and Furies” (2015), but in this trove of prickly, moving tales, she proves that it’s possible to contain entire worlds in a literary space the length of a sitcom (minus the com, in most cases). Brace for the gut punch at the end of the first one. Read our review. THE INTERVIEW Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times By David Marchese This week’s subject for The Interview is the best-selling writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, whose new book, “The Beginning Comes After the End,” asks if there’s a different and more hopeful story to tell about our seemingly chaotic world. When people are reading the news and feel as if they’re barreling into a grim dystopian future, what would show them that there are deeper currents of positive change happening? Even the right tells us something encouraging. They tell us: You are very powerful. You’ve changed the world profoundly. There is a backlash, and it is significant. But it is not comprehensive. I was on a book tour last year in Europe, and the Europeans astounded me by being like: Oh, Roe v. Wade was overturned — doesn’t that mean feminism has failed? The United States is 4 percent of the population. Meanwhile, all these Catholic countries — Argentina, Mexico, Ireland, Spain — have greatly expanded reproductive rights. So it’s really how you tell the story. One of the defining counternarratives of the last few years could fall under the umbrella of “the resistance.” I would like to hear your perspective on whether any of the strategies against President Trump have been counterproductive. That is, if calling him or the movement fascist, sexist, racist pushed people into their respective corners? I get so tired of the idea that progressives have gone too far in asserting that every human being deserves human rights when people are being shot in the streets of Minneapolis. We are facing such horrific brutality. Politeness is not really the problem. You do not get authoritarians to behave better by being meek and gentle and polite. You get it by being strong. It seems as if the public is hungry for an individual to be a counterweight to Trump. But for whatever reason, that person has yet to be identified. Why? The world mostly gets changed through collective effort. We don’t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an Übermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Style your hair like a pro using these accessories, from ceramic curling irons to texturizing shears. Get a thrill from one of these nerve-shredding new novels, recommended by our columnist. Eat something other than a “slop bowl.” Customers are growing tired of them and their sky-high prices. MEAL PLAN Linda Xiao for The New York Times Maybe you’ve had your share of soup for the season and want something totally different. Emily Weinstein, the editor of New York Times Cooking, has some dishes off the beaten path, to bring some excitement to your table. Like: crispy halloumi with tomatoes and white beans, and Turkish eggs with yogurt. You’ll be glad you tried them. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were borrowing and browning. Can you put eight historical events — including the breaking of the sound barrier, Attila the Hun’s defeat and the arrival of humans in Australia — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 10 Author Members Posted March 10 March 9, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei as its new supreme leader. Here’s what to know about him. And strikes continue across the Middle East. We’re in our second week of conflict with no offramp in sight. Today I want to start there — at war. In India. Amit Dave/Reuters In the web of war What’s happening in the Middle East can seem very far away — at least until you stop for gas. Prices at the pump have jumped since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the conflict, creating a gap in the energy supply chain that spans the world. It’s a reminder that war has profound effects on all those who are connected to it. And we are all connected to it, somehow. Take agriculture. “The longer the conflict in the Middle East continues,” writes my colleague Peter Goodman, who covers global economics, “the greater the likelihood that people around the globe will pay more for food. And those in the most vulnerable countries could face hunger.” Why is that? Because the Persian Gulf is a dominant source of the world’s fertilizers, especially those that deliver nitrogen to soils — a source of nourishment for crops that amount to half the world’s food. Fertilizer is produced in the region and shipped … everywhere. If the Strait of Hormuz remains strangled, prices for fertilizer will rise. And as a result, farmers may use less on their crops, if they can get any at all. The world will get less food, and it will cost more. We saw this happen at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, when, as Peter writes, the world received “a wrenching lesson in the geography of agriculture.” Both countries provided the world with substantial quantities of wheat and other grains. Without them, bread shortages soon developed in West Africa and South Asia, among other places. What’s happening in the Middle East won’t affect the harvesting of grain. But the effects of a fertilizer shortage, or more expensive fertilizer, may be even more intense. “The volumes are greater this time around, potentially, than in the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” one commodities expert told Peter. “You’ve got multiple producing countries.” Five of them — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — supply more than a third of the world’s urea, an important nitrogen fertilizer, and nearly a quarter of another one, ammonia. And they all use the Strait of Hormuz to export their products. Which is terrible timing for farmers in the Northern Hemisphere, who will soon need fertilizer to boost their spring crops. Where might they get it? China’s the most obvious alternative, Peter writes. But last year the Chinese government imposed restrictions on the export of fertilizer, in part to shield its farmers from just the sort of geopolitical chaos this war brought on. Prices are already climbing. Over the past week, the price of urea sold in Egypt, a market that economists track closely, climbed more than 35 percent. If the trend continues, governments across the Global South could need to subsidize the cost of growing crops. And that could add to their debt burdens. Missiles fly over Iran: People get poorer in Africa. The cost of groceries in Dallas mounts. “The long-term solution is not to be dependent on fertilizer that has to be trafficked through Strait of Hormuz,” a political economist told Peter. “We have become rather hooked on these imports.” Those hooks are everywhere, once you start looking for them. War is hell on us all. Read more about how the conflict in the Middle East could disrupt the global production of food. War and oil Oil prices surged this morning to their highest level in four years. Oil is now about 50 percent more expensive than it was before the U.S. and Israel began attacking Iran. U.S. gasoline prices are now up about 17 percent since the conflict started. Asian stocks fell again today partially in response to the increase in energy prices. The war has shown how much the world still depends on reliable oil and gas supplies. In the video below, our business reporter Peter Eavis explains how Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz is affecting the price of oil. Click to play. The New York Times Iran’s new leader Mojtaba Khamenei Vahid Salemi/Associated Press Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as Iran’s head, is a mysterious figure, even within the country. As supreme leader, Khamenei is a spiritual and political authority. Khamenei’s selection sends a message that hard-liners remain in charge. More on the war A seventh U.S. service member has died in the conflict, the Pentagon announced. A newly released video verified by The Times adds to evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed. Ukraine, which has become an expert in drone warfare, sent interceptor drones and a team of experts to protect U.S. military bases in Jordan. Desalination plants in Iran and Bahrain reported damage from attacks. The region’s water supply depends heavily on desalination facilities. Chinese investors have poured money into infrastructure projects across the Middle East. Those developments are now in the line of fire. THE LATEST NEWS Politics The U.S. carried out another boat strike in the eastern Pacific, killing six people. The White House fired a Republican member of the National Transportation Safety Board who was involved in the investigation of last year’s fatal midair collision near Washington. Around the World Norway: The local police are investigating an explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo early yesterday morning. The building was damaged, but no one was hurt. West Bank: Israeli settlers killed three Palestinians during a raid on a village in the region yesterday. Attacks by settlers on Palestinian civilians there have increased since the start of the war with Iran. Turkey: The corruption trial of a former Istanbul mayor begins today. His supporters say the trial is a way for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to get rid of a political rival. Other Big Stories Travelers waited in security lines for hours yesterday at airports in Houston and New Orleans because of T.S.A. staffing shortages. A Georgia teacher died after a good-natured prank by his students resulted in a fatal car accident. A woman fired several rounds yesterday at a mansion belonging to Rihanna. No injuries were reported. OPINIONS Photo Illustration by Tanya Marcuse for The New York Times Some people are gripped by a delusion that insects are in their skin. Doctors don’t know why, Alexandra Sifferlin writes. The U.S. should release its petroleum reserve to protect the economy during the war on Iran, Rosemary Kelanic writes. Here are columns by Ezra Klein on the collapse of Anthropic’s deal with the government and David French on the religious beliefs of the Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. 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 Amir Hamja for The New York Times Shield No. 13558: Michael Wilson, who covers New York City, tells the tale of this single badge, which has been worn by seven city police officers over the last 100 years: “a cool, metallic constant amid the sea changes to the city, the department and the job itself.” I don’t usually say this, but read it right now. Frozen out: East Coast oyster farmers are assessing their losses and trying to rebuild after a brutal winter brought thick ice to bays and harbors, destroying their gear. “Two-thirds of our farm was gone,” one said. “We don’t know where it is.” Making a difference: With political activism in Russia off-limits, residents of St. Petersburg are finding purpose and community in repairing local architectural treasures. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about surfers in Munich who lost their wave. Metropolitan Diary: The treachery of February. A comics artist: Tatjana Wood escaped the Nazis and sewed costumes for the Rockettes before joining DC Comics. She was part of the critically acclaimed creative teams behind the comic book series Swamp Thing, Camelot 3000 and Animal Man. She died at 99. TODAY’S NUMBER Andrew Digby/Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, via Associated Press 236 — That is the number of adult members of a reclusive, flightless and endangered parrot species that can be found only in New Zealand. Three decades ago, there were 51. The average life span of the parrots is about 60 years. SPORTS N.F.L.: Travis Kelce, now a free agent, is expected to return for his 14th season in the league, but it isn’t guaranteed that he will play for the Kansas City Chiefs. Track and field: Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda broke the half-marathon world record with a 57:20 run at a race in Lisbon yesterday. RECIPE OF THE DAY David Malosh for The New York Times Melissa Clark’s ace recipe for Parmesan cabbage soup embraces the Lenten shoulder season we find ourselves in on the East Coast right now — finally (crossed fingers) free of snow and ice but not yet awash in the tulips and daffodils of Actual Spring. The cheese-heightened broth gains body with rice, while tender strands of cabbage mingle with oniony leeks. Add more cheese at the end, some red pepper flakes, a big squeeze of lemon. I’ll paraphrase an Easter psalm: “This is the recipe Melissa has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” OPERA SERIA Illustration by Studio Ski The Metropolitan Opera in New York is the largest performing arts organization in the country. It’s also facing a financial crisis that threatens its very existence, with plummeting ticket sales and its endowment reduced by a third. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, has looked to Saudi Arabia for money, courted big donors like Elon Musk and proposed selling the valuable Chagall murals that hang in its lobby, so long as the buyer agrees to leave them on the walls. He seeks a sponsor to affix its name to the opera house itself — the Barclays Center, but for music. And inside, he wants to add corporate boxes of the sort you see at basketball arenas. Will that work? Read more about the Met’s woes, and how Gelb is facing them, here. More on culture Chris Fleming’s new special, “Live at the Palace,” is “the funniest and most fully realized comedy hour so far this year,” writes Jason Zinoman, our comedy critic. He praises the comic’s “prickly, word-drunk sentences.” Fleming delivered a special a few years ago that was firmly set in the world of alt-comedy. Now, he says in the set, “I’m trying to grow my fan base beyond women who brought a knife to prom.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Mitski Lexie Alley Listen to Mitski’s new single, “If I Leave.” “It’s a stubbornly slow waltz, sung in a sustained croon that suggests she’s barely holding herself together — until it breaks,” Jon Pareles writes. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. Hear what they’re saying on TV more clearly. Try one of these voice-enhancing soundbars tested by the perceptive audiologists at Wirecutter. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were intoxicant and intoxication. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 12 Author Members Posted March 12 March 10, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Yesterday, President Trump said the war in Iran was “very complete” — before walking that back a few hours later and warning of even more aggressive action if Iranian leaders tried to cut off the world’s energy supply. “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” he told a group of Republican lawmakers in Florida. More than a week into the conflict, its reverberations are beginning to crash onto the shores of the world economy. That’s where I’m going to start today. In Oman yesterday. Benoit Tessier/Reuters The energy crisis The war on Iran may directly involve only a few combatant nations, but it is becoming a severe economic headache for the world. Oil. The war has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway next to Iran that serves as a superhighway for a fifth of the world’s oil. Tanker traffic there has come to a virtual standstill. The price of oil rose briefly yesterday to almost $120 per barrel. Several refineries in the area have shut down or slowed production — meaning they’re processing less oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Gasoline. Trump says the war will be a short one — he called it “a little excursion” yesterday — and has discounted the disruptions to global shipping. Rising gas prices at home, he said, are “a very small price to pay” for national security. “Only fools would think differently,” he wrote on social media. That may include Americans fueling up at the Marathon station down the street. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. reached nearly $3.54 yesterday, a 19 percent increase since the war began. Markets. Still, oil prices fell and stocks rebounded in the U.S. on Monday afternoon, and in Asia and Europe overnight, after Trump told CBS News that the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran “is very complete, pretty much.” Inflation. A protracted war could cause global prices to rise about two percentage points faster than it would have otherwise, one economist told The Times. That would mean U.S. inflation could pass 4 percent this year and, potentially, lead to a recession. Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, did not appear worried. “There’s some disruption right now,” he said on CNBC last week, “but at the White House we’ve got our eyes on the horizon.” Asia’s quandary “We’re doing this for other parts of the world, like China,” Trump said yesterday. The country has a lot to lose in the conflict, my colleagues Alexandra Stevenson and Murphy Zhao write: In Iran, China found a cheap source of oil in recent years. Across the region, it found governments keen for its know-how in renewable energy and technology. China grew reliant, like much of the rest of the world, on the Middle East’s supply of both oil and gas. The region’s importance to China became even more pronounced this past year, as the country’s trade rivalry with the United States escalated and it was unable to sell many goods to the U.S. market, once China’s biggest market. The United Arab Emirates became the fastest-growing market for Chinese cars. Demand from Saudi Arabia and its neighbors for Chinese steel doubled. China’s exports to the Middle East grew nearly twice as fast as its exports to the rest of the world in 2025. China has invested billions of dollars in the Middle East. Now munitions are falling on ports and ships there, on pipelines and desalination plants. The Strait of Hormuz — where around 90 percent of the exported crude was sailing to Asian markets — isn’t just closed to tanker traffic. Container ships laden with Chinese goods are at anchor, too. Beyond China, leaders around the world are deciding whether to tap into the reserves of oil they set aside for hard times. Leaders of the G7 countries said yesterday that they were prepared to release oil from their strategic reserves — but not just yet. Taiwan is stockpiling new oil to weather the storm. “There will absolutely not be any gas shortages or power shortages,” its minister of economic affairs said yesterday. And South Korean officials have imposed a cap on gas prices for the first time since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, though they did not say how they would compensate suppliers for their losses. Bangladesh has called for fuel rationing and closed universities to conserve electricity. And some local governments in the Philippines have shifted to four-day workweeks, responding to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s order to reduce the use of electricity. Nearly 90 percent of the Philippines’ oil comes from the Middle East. “We are victims of a war that is not of our choosing,” Marcos said. Here’s what else is happening in that war: Iran’s new leader The New York Times A crowd gathered in Tehran yesterday to celebrate the announcement of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the recently killed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as his father’s successor. It was both a message of continuity and a show of open defiance toward Iran’s attackers. The younger Khamenei is known as a hard-liner, though he seldom appears in public. He is not only Iran’s new religious and political authority but also the commander in chief of its armed forces. After his appointment, Iran’s state television quickly switched from somber coverage of war and religious mourning to upbeat revolutionary anthems. Trump said yesterday that he was not happy with the choice of Khamenei, “because we think it’s going to lead to more of the same problem for the country.” But he declined to say whether the U.S. and Israel were planning to target him. More on the fighting Iran’s state broadcaster published photos of fragments of an American missile, which it said were recovered from a strike that hit an elementary school near an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base, reportedly killing at least 175 people. Trump continued to suggest, without evidence, that Iran bombed the school, though that does not appear to be true. Iran “also has some Tomahawks,” Trump said of the missile reportedly used in the strike. A security camera video captured an apparent strike near a boys’ school west of Tehran. American forces have attacked more than 5,000 targets in the war, U.S. Central Command said, nearly double the total of the previous update on Friday. NATO shot down a ballistic missile launched from Iran that entered Turkish airspace, the second such incident in a week. Since the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran began, at least 12 civilians have been killed in Persian Gulf countries. All but one were foreign nationals. Health experts warn of long-term respiratory and neurological risks as smoke from burning oil spreads across the region. Read about how The Times reports on the war in Iran and other conflicts. THE LATEST NEWS Politics In Phoenix in 2020. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times The F.B.I. subpoenaed voting records in Arizona in Trump’s latest effort to bolster his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The A.I. company Anthropic sued the Pentagon, saying it was being punished for prohibiting the military from using its products for mass surveillance or autonomous killings. Republicans worry that higher gas prices could hurt them in the midterms. Around the World In Liège, Belgium, yesterday. John Thys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Belgium: A synagogue in Liège was damaged by an explosion. The country’s interior minister called it “an antisemitic act.” Australia: The country offered asylum status to five members of Iran’s women’s soccer team. The team members were labeled “traitors” by Iran’s state media for not singing the national anthem at a game during the Asian Cup tournament. Germany: A meteorite crashed through a roof of a house in Koblenz after treating skygazers in much of northern Europe to a fiery light show. In New York Two men charged with attempting to detonate explosive devices outside Gracie Mansion, the New York City mayoral residence, told the police that they were motivated by ISIS. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been cautious in his response to the incident. The Alexander brothers, who became famous as real estate brokers, were convicted on all counts in their sex-trafficking trial. Other Big Stories On the heels of a tornado outbreak that killed at least six people, forecasters expect more severe storms across the U.S. this week, with a risk of hail, damaging winds and more tornadoes. Investigators in New Mexico searched a ranch that belonged to Jeffrey Epstein as part of a renewed effort by state leaders to examine his crimes in the state. Casey Wasserman’s sports and marketing agency has dropped his name and is seeking a buyer after Wasserman’s appearance in the Epstein files. Some Americans who paid tariffs on items they bought from overseas want a refund after the Supreme Court declared Trump’s tariffs illegal. THAT’S NO MOON A California start-up has a plan to light up the night with 50,000 big mirrors orbiting the Earth. The mirrors would bounce sunlight to the dark side of the planet to do things like power solar farms and illuminate city streets. It may seem like an idea out of a sci-fi movie, but the first prototype satellite, about the size of a dorm fridge, could launch this summer. That test satellite would unfurl a square mirror nearly 60 feet wide, which would illuminate a circular patch about three miles wide on the Earth’s surface. Someone looking up would see a dot in the sky about as bright as a full moon. The project has plenty of opponents: A neurobiologist worries that it could disrupt circadian rhythms, and some astronomers are concerned about light pollution. OPINIONS Fans care about the actors snubbed at the Oscars. They get to feel a sense of righteousness in their defense of their preferred performer, Sloane Crosley writes. Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on ending the war in Iran and Thomas B. Edsall on Trump’s smash-and-grab approach to governing. 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 Culinary tourism: A Toronto suburb has become a destination for global cuisine, attracting thousands of diners each week. Not everyone is happy about it. Pampered pooches: Pet care is no longer just about grooming. Owners shell out to keep their furry friends healthy, and the pet wellness industry is booming. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a teacher’s accidental death during a prank. TODAY’S NUMBER 19 — That is the percentage of contributions in 2024 federal election campaigns that came from billionaires and their immediate family members. The total amounted to more than $3 billion. In 2008, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending on federal elections was 0.3 percent. SPORTS N.F.L.: Travis Kelce is expected to return to the Kansas City Chiefs after exploring other options as a free agent. Paralympics: The skier Varvara Voronchikhina won Russia’s first winter Paralympic gold medal in 12 years. M.L.S.: The league banned the players Derrick Jones and Yaw Yeboah for life for betting on matches, including their own. RECIPE OF THE DAY Julia Gartland for The New York Times Here’s an easy way to bring sophistication into your breakfast operations: Cook Zaynab Issa’s recipe for sticky date and brown butter oatmeal. The torn medjool dates almost dissolve into the oats, leaving them with a caramelized sweetness that perfectly offsets the nuttiness of the butter. Cut some bananas on top, drizzle with cream and eat in the sunroom, in your best dressing gown, while reading a printed newspaper. BAD CASTING Tom Cruise in the 1994 film “Interview With the Vampire.” There’s a new Oscar category this year for best casting. But what about worst? The Times put together a collection of memorable pairings of actor and role in recent decades — and you can vote on which was the most miscast. (Everyone in “House of Gucci”?) More on culture There’s plenty of gleam in Harry Styles’s new album, “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,” writes Lindsay Zoladz, one of our pop music critics. The lyrics, she says, “sometimes resemble the seemingly life-altering epiphanies one has during a psychedelic trip, only to be revealed as airy truisms in the cold, sober light of day.” But it’s Harry Styles. We’re not here for substance. “Tranche” is having a moment, according to lexicographers, statistics and our reporting. The medieval word, from the 16th-century French for “slice,” has gained new prominence as newspeople look for ways to describe the three million pages released by Justice Department in relation to Jeffery Epstein. Late night hosts scolded Trump over gasoline prices. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Read “Gunk,” a new novel by Saba Sams. Dwight Garner, our book critic, calls it “stark and disaffected” and says, “Sams is alive at her typewriter.” There’s some Graham Greene to it, some Bikini Kill. No spoilers, but there are bars, babies and a lot of smells. Here’s Dwight’s review. Sleep safely while far from home with this portable carbon monoxide detector, tested by our alarming friends at Wirecutter. Hit your protein goals with the Well desk’s guide and calculator. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was audibly. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 14 Author Members Posted March 14 March 11, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured early in the war, three Iranian officials told The Times, which could partly explain why he hasn’t been seen since his appointment was announced three days ago. The war has also damaged some of Iran’s most cherished cultural treasures: a mosque and palaces that have stood for centuries. And Iran’s capital faced intense shelling yesterday. “It seems they are striking everywhere: homes, schools, mosques, hospitals,” one Iranian told The Times. “If they keep hitting Tehran like this for another 10 days,” he added, “nothing will remain.” Each party in this conflict has a slightly different strategy. For the United States and Israel, it’s about overwhelming military force. Iran’s strategy is to saturate the enemy with low-cost drones and missiles and exhaust its resources. Israel and countries of the Persian Gulf are trying to defend against those salvos. How are nations waging this war? I asked John Ismay, who served for years in the U.S. Navy as a bomb disposal technician and gunnery officer, to explain. In Tehran on Saturday. Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Weapons of war By John Ismay I cover the military. The war on Iran is being fought not on the ground but in the sky. Here is a guide to the primary weapons each nation is using to achieve its objectives. The United States and Israel They opened this war by moving two Navy aircraft carriers — along with dozens of Air Force fighters, bombers and refueling planes — into the region. Three destroyers escort each carrier, armed with a variety of offensive and defensive missiles. When the war commenced, the first wave of the bombardment used weapons, like the AGM-154 glide bomb, that could be launched far beyond the reach of Iran’s defenses. Source: U.S. Navy and Development of the Joint Standoff Weapon, a 2006 research paper by K.T. Turco. The New York Times What it does: When a glide bomb is dropped from a plane like an F/A-18 Super Hornet, the munition’s wings swing out, providing lift for a long, quiet flight to its target. Rotating tail fins use GPS to steer the bomb. Some models can hit moving targets. How far it goes: More than 80 miles. How it’s used: One variant is a cluster weapon that blankets enemy air-defense sites with bomblets. Another version contains a warhead with the equivalent of about 200 pounds of TNT. Who makes it: Raytheon. How much it costs: $578,000 to $836,000. How many the U.S. has: The Navy bought 3,000 of them nearly two decades ago. Now the Defense Department says the military has destroyed Iran’s air defense and will switch to using far less expensive “general purpose” bombs that are dropped much closer to their targets. They come in three sizes: 500, 1,000 and 2,000 pounds. Source: U.S. Air Force and Beyond Precision, report by Tyler Hacker, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The New York Times What it does: It falls down and blows things up. It is guided by GPS signals and can be programmed to explode just above its target or on impact. How far it goes: Depending on the altitude of the aircraft that drops it, this weapon can travel up to 15 miles. How it’s used: Of the three sizes of warheads available, the 500-pound version is most commonly used. Designed to work in all kinds of weather and cost about half the price of laser-guided bombs, the Joint Direct Attack Munition became the Pentagon’s go-to tool for airstrikes during the post-Sept. 11 wars. These bombs land within about 30 feet of their targets with roughly 200 pounds of explosives. Who makes it: Paligen Technologies and Boeing. How much it costs: The warhead costs about $1,000, and the guidance kit runs about $38,000. How many the U.S. has: Likely hundreds of thousands. Iran Commanders there are fighting back with missiles and drones across the region. They don’t have much in the way of air defenses or an air force anymore. Their main offensive weapons are medium-range ballistic missiles like the Shahab-3. Source: Open Source Munitions Portal. The New York Times What it does: It launches from the ground and flies up to 250 miles above the Earth’s surface, where there’s less aerodynamic drag. Then it arcs down and falls toward its target. How far it goes: More than 1,200 miles. How it’s used: These missiles have aimed at cities in Israel and infrastructure across the Gulf — refineries, air-defense radars and military buildings. The Shahab-3 is believed to be accurate to roughly 150 feet and carries a 1,500-pound warhead. Who makes it: Iran’s Aviation Industries Organization. It’s based on North Korea’s Nodong missile. How much it costs: Unknown. How many Iran has: Unknown, but U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran’s arsenal of medium-range ballistic missiles is “substantial.” To avoid the countermeasures that intercept and destroy their missiles, Iranians also use drones. The main one is the Shahed-136. Source: Open Source Munitions Portal. The New York Times What it does: It’s essentially a crudely made, propeller-driven cruise missile. How far it goes: Up to 1,500 miles. How it’s used: The Shahed-136 is slow (about 115 miles per hour), but it flies at a low altitude, making it difficult to spot by radar. The drone uses GPS to find its target, and the 90-pound warhead explodes on impact. Who makes it: Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Company. How much it costs: $35,000, analysts think. How many Iran has: Likely thousands. After a Tomahawk missile destroyed a girls’ school in southern Iran and killed dozens of students, President Trump said the weapon may have been Iran’s. But only a few nations possess the Tomahawk, and the Islamic Republic is not known to be one of them. Persian Gulf nations and Israel These countries are on the receiving end of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, so they’ve been working to shoot down drones — the tech for this is evolving rapidly — and missiles. Their most reliable tool is the Patriot system. Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Library of Congress. The New York Times What it does and how it works: A Patriot battery consists of a control van and one or more missile launchers and radars. When the radar spots an incoming threat, soldiers make the decision to shoot or not, based on where it’s heading. What it defends against: The Patriot can shoot down planes, helicopters and missiles up to an altitude of 80,000 feet. There are three different Patriot missiles for different kinds of targets. (You don’t use the same weapon to strike a slow-flying aircraft and a ballistic missile moving at five times the speed of sound.) How it’s used: Patriots create a bubble of protection — up to 100 miles in any direction — around high-value locations such as government buildings, military sites and power plants. Who makes it: Raytheon. How much it costs: $2 million to $4 million per missile. Who has them: In the Middle East region, Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. To account for attacks from Hamas and Iran, Israel developed the most robust air-defense network in the Middle East — much of it designed and made domestically. The Pentagon even purchased one Israeli system, called Iron Dome, for its own use. More on the war The Iranian military is adjusting its tactics to target American air-defense and radar systems as well as hotels frequented by American troops. See where U.S. sites have been hit. The U.S. said it had attacked 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz amid concerns that Iran could use mines to block the world’s access to oil. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but presidents have increasingly claimed that power for themselves. In the video below, Charlie Savage, a national security reporter, explains how they find their legal justifications. Click to play. The New York Times THE LATEST NEWS Elections Mississippi: Representative Bennie Thompson, 78, fended off a primary challenge from Evan Turnage, a 34-year-old lawyer who made Thompson’s age an issue in the race. Georgia: A special election to fill the seat of former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to a runoff. Shawn Harris, a Democrat and retired Army officer, will face Clayton Fuller, a Republican endorsed by Trump. Politics The Trump administration said it needed a list of Jews at the University of Pennsylvania to investigate antisemitism. A judge is considering whether the demand went too far. Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved into military housing because of threats. Others in the administration, including Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio, have done the same. Senate aides are now allowed to use three A.I. chatbots for official work. Around the World South Korea: A concrete runway barrier, built to save costs, may have contributed to the deaths of 179 people when a plane made an emergency landing in 2024. Australia: One member of the Iranian soccer team who requested asylum in the country after a silent protest during a match changed her mind and asked to return home. China: For years, the military flew jets near Taiwan almost daily. Now the flights have stopped, and some analysts are asking why. HUMAN OR MACHINE? Artificial intelligence is already writing romance novels, academic papers and software applications. And while some people doubt that A.I. can take on creative work, several recent studies suggest that, in blind tests, many prefer A.I.-generated writing to human-authored works. A new quiz by Kevin Roose and Stuart A. Thompson puts that to the test. They asked A.I. to find examples of strong human writing, in a range of styles and genres, and then to craft its own version using its own voice. In the quiz, you’ll choose which you prefer, and then learn whether a person or a machine wrote it. Start with the example below: Which do you prefer? Passage A Passage B OPINIONS If Trump wants to ensure Americans have cheap energy, even during times of war in the Middle East, he should embrace renewable sources, Natasha Sarin writes. Here is a column by Bret Stephens on four ways the war in Iran could end. 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 The New York Times Endangered species: Social media is driving an illegal trade in infant gorillas. Here’s the story of how one was saved. Avatar influencers: Companies are increasingly using A.I. to create realistic figures to market their products to specific audiences. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about bad film casting. TODAY’S NUMBER 170,543 — That was the average number of exits from Bay Area Rapid Transit stations in January 2026. In January 2020, it was 388,910. “The very future of the familiar white and blue trains, which have zipped around the Bay Area since 1972, is in doubt,” The Times reports. SPORTS N.B.A.: Bam Adebayo scored 83 points during the Miami Heat’s 150-129 win over the Washington Wizards yesterday. Only Wilt Chamberlain has scored more points in a single N.B.A. game. N.F.L.: Maxx Crosby is staying with the Las Vegas Raiders. An agreement to trade him to the Baltimore Ravens fell apart after he failed his physical, league sources said. RECIPE OF THE DAY David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. Add a bag of tteok — Korean frozen rice cakes — to your freezer and you’ll be able to knock out countless easy weeknight recipes, including this delightful number from Eleanore Park for miso rice cakes with spinach and peas. The cakes absorb the miso sauce beautifully and provide heft against the sweet pop of the peas and mineral softness of the spinach. The recipe’s vegan, but if you’re not, stir in a half-pound of shrimp toward the end. Regardless, I’d shower the whole situation with herbs, cilantro and mint in particular, and serve with a bowl of chile crisp for heat. THE REINVENTOR Amy Harrity for The New York Times Michelle Pfeiffer, 67, was a movie queen who stepped away from Hollywood to raise her family. Now she’s reinvented herself as a small-screen star, with two new streaming shows coming this month, “The Madison” and “Margo’s Got Money Troubles.” Over lunch in Santa Monica, Calif., Alexis Soloski, who covers the arts, talked with her about them. “If you’re going to survive, you’re going have to figure out a way to do this and enjoy your life and not disappear,” Pfeiffer said. Read the interview here. More on culture At the Metropolitan Opera this week, the soprano Lise Davidsen sang the role of Isolde in Yuval Sharon’s new staging of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” Our critic Joshua Barone gave it a rave. The production, he wrote, “ushered in a new era at the Met, showing how a fresh and promising generation might stake its claim to the core repertoire and shape the years to come.” “In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man” is about Tom Junod’s relationship with his swaggering, traveling handbag-salesman father. Jennifer Szalai, a book critic, has a riveting review. Junod, for his part, told The Times he had been writing the story for decades, trying to get it right. “You heard him, you smelled him, you loved him, you hated him, you feared him,” he said about his dad. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Engage yourself — and then send your friends this list of wedding registry must-haves from the ordained officiants at Wirecutter. (Or don’t, and buy yourself a salt pig or cast-iron pan.) Exercise your whole body quickly with combination exercises. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were cormorant and monocrat. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 15 Author Members Posted March 15 March 12, 2026 SUPPORTED BY APPLE By Sam Sifton Good morning. The price of oil is up again this morning, in part because of uncertainty about the goals of the war with Iran and when it will end. Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has been fairly clear on those subjects, though. I’ll start with him. Pete Hegseth Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times Retribution and rage Pete Hegseth wasn’t always like this. In 2005, a moral calling led him to volunteer for the Iraq war. He had read about a suicide bomber who killed 18 Iraqi children and wanted to ensure that ideology would not win. He sought justice, reports my colleague Greg Jaffe, who covers the Pentagon. He wanted democracy and freedom for the people of Iraq. He was moved to join Operation Iraqi Freedom by a kind of altruism. Hegseth describes the war in Iran very differently. At a news conference last week, he said it would have “no stupid rules of engagement.” In another, he said that the U.S. military would shower “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” He no longer talks about moral purpose or democratic ideals. “His bellicose, at times vengeful, rhetoric,” Greg writes, “reflects his belief that the United States’ lofty goals in Iraq and Afghanistan caused the military to lose focus on its main task, killing the enemy, and led to costly defeats in both wars.” He won’t let President Trump make that mistake. Today’s campaign isn’t about enduring freedom. It’s called Operation Epic Fury. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” Hegseth said earlier this year. “Violent effect, not politically correct.” Anything that distracts from that mission is weakness. “This is not 2003. This is not endless nation-building,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s not even close. Our generation of soldiers will not let that happen again.” Of course, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were disasters for the United States. Greg spoke about that with Phil Klay, a writer who is a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq campaign. “There’s always someone who thinks that if only we were crueler, if only we’d killed another million Vietnamese, then we would have won this war,” Klay told him. “If you reduce war to the satisfied feeling you get when you kill the enemy, it makes it a lot simpler.” By any memes necessary A social media video released by the Trump administration mixed pop culture clips with bombing footage. A video released by the White House You can see Hegseth’s antagonistic rhetoric playing out in the meme videos that the White House has released on social media since the start of the war, writes James Poniewozik, our television critic. The clips show explosions accompanied by SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “You want to see me do it again?” Or Hegseth at a briefing, with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as the soundtrack. Bombs explode to the tune of Nelly’s “Here Comes the Boom.” There’s Maximus from “Gladiator.” Here’s the antagonist-protagonist warrior Kylo Ren from “Star Wars.” “The aim is a kind of brazen, joking-not-joking anti-meaning,” Jim writes, “a vibe of dominance unbounded by narrative, reason or moral argument.” It’s a largely male vibe, at that. Christopher Reeve’s Superman pledges to fight for “truth, justice and the American way.” A menacing Walter White of “Breaking Bad” says, “I am the danger.” There is no good and evil in these clips, Jim writes, “only strength and weakness, winning and losing.” That’s what drives Hegseth now. More on the war In Washington Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that the estimated cost of the war exceeded $11.3 billion in its first week. Some Trump administration officials are growing pessimistic about the lack of a strategy to finish the war. But they haven’t said this directly to Trump. The Pentagon has barred news photographers from Iran war briefings. In the Middle East The remains of a school in Iran at the start of the war. IRIB TV, via Agence France-Presse The U.S. was responsible for a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school, according to preliminary findings in a military investigation. Outdated targeting information may be to blame. Iran’s counterattacks have slowed down. Either its arsenal is depleted or it is holding weapons in reserve, experts say. At least seven people died in Israeli strikes on Beirut this morning. Lebanese officials say Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah has killed more than 600 people and driven 800,000 from their homes. Oil tankers continue to be targeted across the Persian Gulf region. Iraq suspended all oil terminal operations this morning after two tankers were attacked off its coast. Iran has fired indiscriminate cluster-munition warheads at Israel several times during this war. More than 100 countries have signed a pact to ban the weapons — though Iran, Israel and the U.S. are not among them. The U.S. plans to release 172 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserves, the Energy Department said, to help with rising costs. Dozens of other countries also plan to release oil. The war has rerouted flights around the Middle East. Click the graphic below to see more. Note: Flight paths represent the position of flights every 30 minutes. Source: Flightradar24. Zach Levitt and Jacqueline Gu/The New York Times A MESSAGE FROM APPLE The all-new MacBook Neo Amazing Mac. Surprising price. Learn More THE LATEST NEWS Politics In Kentucky yesterday. Doug Mills/The New York Times Trump set out on a multistate tour designed to show voters that he is focused on the economy and their pocketbooks — and that he still has control over the Republican Party. Trump has yet to endorse either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate contest. He’s using that as leverage for a bill that would impose strict voter ID requirements. MAGA has embraced animal rights and pushed researchers to reduce their experiments on dogs, cats and primates. The administration is starting an effort to allow Veterans Affairs to put some homeless veterans into legal guardianship. Tariffs The Trump administration said more than 4.4 million hours might be needed to manually process refunds requested by companies after the Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs last month. The government also announced an investigation into unfair trading practices by 16 of America’s largest trading partners as it works to resurrect tariffs. Around the World Britain: Prime Minister Keir Starmer was warned about Peter Mandelson’s close ties to Jeffrey Epstein before appointing Mandelson ambassador to the U.S. Ukraine: Defense companies figured out how to build drones without any Chinese components. Canada: Two patients died after donating plasma at clinics in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Health officials are investigating their deaths from the procedure, which is generally considered extremely safe. China: The government approved an expansive new law to promote “ethnic unity.” Other Big Stories A former police officer in Missouri who took nude images from women’s phones during traffic stops was sentenced to two years in prison. A former government lawyer who had an outburst in court over the crush of litigation caused by the ICE crackdown in Minnesota is running for Congress against Representative Ilhan Omar. The chef René Redzepi stepped down from Noma, the restaurant he led to international acclaim, after recent reports in The Times about his abuse of employees. Lawmakers in Washington State agreed to create what supporters describe as a “millionaires’ tax.” One of the wealthiest, Howard Schultz, is leaving for Florida. CAT CURIOSITY The New York Times Cats, we know, always land on their feet. But how? To find out, scientists in Japan scrutinized the spines in feline cadavers and dropped a pair of live cats from about three feet up. (“To prevent injury,” the study’s author noted, “we placed a thick, soft cushion at the landing site.”) They learned that the upper part of a cat’s spine can twist an astounding 360 degrees, which allows a cat to orient its front legs and head toward the ground in an instant. And they made another interesting finding: Cats, like many other animals, appear to favor their right-paw side. Read more about how cats do this. OPINIONS How might the war in Iran end? Stephen Stromberg, an editor in Opinion, brought together the columnists Nicholas Kristof and Bret Stephens and the contributing writer Megan K. Stack to discuss. Here is a column by Michelle Goldberg on a 31-year-old Floridian’s appeal for conservative young men. 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 London. Joshua Atkins for The New York Times Priced out of Broadway: It has become so expensive to stage theater in New York that producers are testing new shows in London. Paying their share: Raise taxes on the rich? These New York millionaires are all for it. Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was an A.I. writing quiz. TODAY’S NUMBER $170 million — That is how much Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan spent on an unfinished waterfront compound on an island north of Miami that locals call the “Billionaires’ Bunker.” It is the most expensive sale in the history of Miami-Dade County. SPORTS N.F.L.: Steve Tisch plans to transfer his stake in the New York Giants to his children after emails released by the Justice Department showed that Jeffrey Epstein connected him with multiple women. Soccer: Iran will skip the World Cup when the U.S. hosts the event this summer, despite Trump’s assurances that its team would be welcome. Baseball: The U.S. advanced to the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic. RECIPE OF THE DAY David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Here’s a recipe that rewards repetition: chicken schnitzel with cucumber salad. You’ll dial in your technique over time, figuring out the flouring and egging and crumbing, the temperature of the oil, the right way to shake the pan to make the schnitzel puff and the proper amount of salt at the end. Make the recipe four times in the next few months and the last outing will be significantly better than the first, though the first will still be plenty delicious. And then you’ll have it for life. You’ll be a schnitzel maven. And that’s a good thing to be. THE OSCARS Clockwise from top left, scenes from “Sinners,” “Hamnet,” “One Battle After Another” and “Sentimental Value.” Neon; Warner Bros.; Focus Features Which film will receive the best picture award at the Oscar ceremony on Sunday night? Which actors will be crowned best? Which director, which screenplay, which documentary, which score? A new category: Who provided the best casting? Kyle Buchanan, who covers Hollywood, has been handicapping the races all season — and reveals his predictions here. For more on the Oscars: In the video below, Marc Tracy explains the way that voters pick the best picture winner. Click to play. The New York Times More on culture Field Music is a British cult indie band with a rabid fan base and more than a dozen acclaimed albums. Prince was a fan. That doesn’t pay the bills, though. So the band formed a Doors tribute group. Playing just one show a month as the Doors fills a void in their finances. “The margins for us were so, so tight,” the band’s frontman told The Times. A man in Virginia needed more space for his family. So he secured permits to build an addition to his house: three stories and 60 feet long, right up to the property line of his neighbor’s one-story home. Anyone have a problem with that? Look at the photographs. Jimmy Kimmel was skeptical about the F.B.I.’s warning of a possible Iranian drone strike on California. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Heed the actor Bobby Cannavale’s advice and read Mark Kriegel’s sports biographies — he recommends the one on Joe Namath. (I’ll add “Pistol,” about the basketball legend Pete Maravich.) Cannavale also stands tall for bearded dragons. There, your mileage may vary. Declutter your life to feel more organized. But don’t go big. Start with a small project (your sock drawer?) and you may actually succeed. Hang some window drapes without putting your security deposit in peril by using these curtain rod brackets tested by the jalousie fanatics at Wirecutter. They leave (almost) no trace. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was letdown. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 17 Author Members Posted March 17 March 13, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. Israel is striking Beirut’s city center, targeting Hezbollah in neighborhoods once considered safe. And an American refueling plane crashed in Iraq, killing four crew members. The crash was not because of hostile or friendly fire, the U.S. said. Yesterday proved that a short and surgical war with Iran could be a fantasy. For one thing, there was the charged language that Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, used in his first address to the nation: Iran would avenge “the blood of your martyrs,” he said in remarks that were read on state television. For another, look at how effectively Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz into a battlefield. That battlefield has become President Trump’s biggest problem. An oil tanker anchored in Muscat, Oman. Benoit Tessier/Reuters A dangerous bottleneck The Strait of Hormuz is an excellent theater for Iran’s strategy of asymmetric warfare, my colleagues write. The waterway serves as the main artery for exports from the Persian Gulf, including a fifth of the world’s oil. And it’s just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point along Iran’s southern border. Staggering U.S. firepower may have shut Iran out of its own airspace. But local forces can still block and hobble commercial ships in the strait. They can fire at them from land, or place mines in their path. They can hit them with small boats full of explosives. Meanwhile, they are letting their own tankers through, full of crude. Read more about the closure. And look at where ships have been struck in the strait: Sources: Kpler, Kuwait National Petroleum Company, Saudi Arabian Ministry of Energy, Planet Labs, Pole Star Global, QatarEnergy, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations and Vanguard Tech. The New York Times It makes sense for Iran to strangle global shipping and detonate the oil markets. That way, Trump could face pressure to stop the war. Khamenei has already vowed to keep blocking the strait. And you won’t currently find American military superiority there. Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, told CNBC yesterday that it would be some time before the Navy would be in a position to escort oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. “We’re simply not ready,” he said. “All of our military assets right now are focused on destroying Iran’s offensive capabilities.” It won’t be a cakewalk for the United States if and when those gunboats arrive. A weekslong mine-clearing operation in the strait may be necessary, military officials told my colleagues — an expensive and dangerous enterprise that puts the lives of American sailors at risk. “The Strait of Hormuz is a difficult, almost impossible problem to solve through military means alone,” said a retired Air Force lieutenant general who served as a strategist in the Middle East during the 2000s. All of which appears to have caught the Trump administration flat-footed. What has likely surprised the administration, a research fellow at the Cato Institute told The Times, is “Iran’s ability to take pain and to keep going, and second, their ability to inflict costs and inflict pain on the United States.” Global shock A gas station in Vietnam. Nhac Nguyen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images It’s not just the United States, though. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is already affecting the whole world’s economy, writes Patricia Cohen, who covers global economics. The effects are crashing down on both businesses and households. Cargo bound for world markets has been stranded, while the cost of shipping has risen and insurance premiums are going through the roof. We’re paying more for gas, of course — last night, Trump even lifted sanctions on Russian oil to help contain prices at the pump. But the cost of food, medicine, airplane tickets, electricity and semiconductors is soaring too. For some American farmers, the price of a common fertilizer has risen nearly 25 percent. Here’s Patti: In Kansas, home buyers saw 30-year mortgage rates edge above 6 percent this week. In Western India, families mourning the death of a loved one discovered that gas-fired crematories had been temporarily closed. In Hanoi, Vietnam, gas station owners posted “sold out” signs. In Kenya, tea growers and traders worried their exports to Iran would rot on the dock. And across the United States, Canada, Europe, Britain and Mexico, farmers blanched at the surge in fertilizer costs. “This really is the big one,” a former U.S. diplomat and Energy Department official told her. A disaster scenario is unfolding. The New York Times More on the war In Lebanon Israeli airstrikes hit an area of central Beirut near the government’s headquarters that is known for its bars, restaurants and schools. Israeli officials said the strikes were targeting Hezbollah infrastructure. Another strike hit the campus of Lebanese University, killing two academics. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Lebanon to join Israel’s fight against Hezbollah, an Iran proxy that has fired rockets into Israel. The fighting has killed nearly 100 children in Lebanon, officials there said, and displaced a tenth of all children in the country. In Iran Military exchanges between Iran, Israel and the United States showed no signs of slowing. Read the latest updates. More than 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, Iran’s representative to the United Nations told the Security Council. See how Iran’s mines in the Strait of Hormuz work. THE LATEST NEWS Violence in the U.S. A suspect was killed after driving a truck into a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., and exchanging fire with security guards. Officials called the synagogue attack “a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” and identified the suspect as a 41-year-old naturalized citizen who was born in Lebanon. At Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., a man stormed a classroom and opened fire, killing an Army officer. The gunman was subdued and killed by students. Officials identified the Old Dominion shooter as a man who had been sentenced to prison in 2016 for trying to assist the Islamic State. Politics The Senate passed a bipartisan bill to increase the supply of new houses and restrict purchases by private investors. But it faces hurdles from the House and the Trump administration. The Trump administration has a new strategy of suing Republican states and reaching quick settlements to fast-track policy changes without legislation. One opponent called it “an end run around the democratic process.” The administration sued California over its strict limits on tailpipe emissions, arguing that the rules would force an unlawful transition to electric vehicles. The Trump administration appointed an ophthalmologist to an air pollution advisory board. He does not have a background in air pollution science. At a rally in Kentucky, Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to Jake Paul, a boxer and social media influencer who is not currently running for office. Around the World In Moscow. Tatyana Makeyeva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Russia: A Moscow court sentenced 15 men to life in prison for a 2024 terror attack on a concert hall that killed at least 149 people. Israel: A key Israeli judicial office said that it would be inappropriate to consider a pardon for Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, unless he admits guilt. Chile: The inauguration of José Antonio Kast, the country’s right-wing president, has become a celebration of a growing conservative movement across Latin America. Health A Planned Parenthood affiliate in California and Nevada will offer cosmetic procedures, like Botox and IV hydration drips, in an effort to remain open amid federal funding cuts. Microsoft is introducing a tool for users to share health records with its chatbot, Copilot, echoing similar moves by Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic. It’s raising privacy concerns. OPINIONS Mussolini would have loved Trump’s new ballroom, writes Paul Goldberger, a former Times architecture critic. The law requires Justice Department lawyers to be truthful. A proposed rule by the Trump administration could change that, Deborah Pearlstein writes. There are young people who want to farm. We need to help them take over family farms, instead of letting major corporations consolidate the industry, Brooks Lamb 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 Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Superbloom: Wildflowers have burst from the desert floor in Death Valley. It’s the California park’s most abundant bloom in a decade. Master of modesty: The Chilean architect Smiljan Radic won this year’s Pritzker Prize, the highest award in architecture. The jury said his buildings embraced vulnerability. See some of them here. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about NIMBY-ism and one very large addition to a house. TODAY’S NUMBER 82 million — That is the estimated number of Americans, a third of all adults in the country, who say they are making sacrifices, including skipping meals or driving less, to pay for health care. SPORTS N.B.A.: The Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored at least 20 points for the 127th straight regular-season game, breaking a record Wilt Chamberlain had held since 1963. N.F.L.: The quarterback Kyler Murray, a former No. 1 pick in the draft who was released by the Arizona Cardinals, signed a one-year deal with the Minnesota Vikings. World Cup: After Trump warned the Iranian men’s soccer team that participating in this summer’s World Cup could be a risk for “their own life and safety,” the team responded in a statement, saying “no one can exclude” Iran from the event. RECIPE OF THE DAY Craig Lee for The New York Times For years, Mark Bittman wrote a cooking column for The Times called The Minimalist: not too many ingredients; not too many steps. This recipe, for roasted cod and potatoes, came out of one of them, and it’s a treasure, a kind of hack on potatoes Anna with sweet, luscious cod on top that makes it a meal. I sprinkle capers over the whole thing at the end because I’m a maximalist. MISSIONARY JACK Lucia Bell-EpsteinThe New York Times On “Popcast” this week: Jack Harlow’s pivot from chart-topping rap to live-band rhythm and blues. “As I’m getting older, I’m having more trouble reconciling being braggadocious on record,” he told The Times. “And it’s a pillar of rap. Part of the reason I love rap music is the braggadocio of it. But I spent some time thinking, How can I lean away from that?” More on culture Daniel Radcliffe opened in “Every Brilliant Thing” on Broadway last night. Helen Shaw, our theater critic, loved it. “He is himself a brilliant thing,” she writes. Here’s Tejal Rao, one of our restaurant critics, on René Redzepi’s announcement that he is stepping down from Noma after recent reports in The Times about his violent abuse of employees. The restaurant “profoundly changed the aesthetics of fine dining,” she writes. “But it failed to change anything below the surface.” Late night hosts discussed the threat of an Iranian drone strike on California. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Nina Kiri in “Undertone.” Dustin Rabin/A24 Watch “Undertone” is a new horror film that our critic Alissa Wilkinson calls “a properly scary movie, the kind that merits watching in a theater with a good sound system (or with headphones in a dark room, at home).” Upgrade your Easter baskets this year (if you basket at Easter, that is), with some fine ideas from the bunny rabbits at Wirecutter. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was penciled. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 18 Author Members Posted March 18 March 14, 2026 Good morning. I’m delighted to tell you about my new project: The Good List, a weekly newsletter designed to bring joy and meaning to your days. I explain what it’s all about below, and you can sign up here to get it sent to your inbox on Wednesday afternoons. (Fret not! I’ll still be here on Saturday mornings.) — Melissa María Jesús Contreras What’s good? By Melissa Kirsch I want to be a person who’s keeping good records, who’s not letting the events of my life pass without memorializing them. But regular journaling often feels like busy work. Which is why I prefer a list. A list is lighter, more accessible — dare I say more fun? A simple record of things I want to remember: clothes I wore, people I saw, what was on my mind. Lists are a tool to make sense of the world. We’re all (too) familiar with the to-do list, the grocery list, the bucket list: stuff meant to be crossed off and dispensed with. I also like keeping lists as archives (say, a compilation of Movies I Watched This Month), as celebrations (Favorite Breakfasts This Year), as reflections (Things I Worried About That Never Came to Pass). When I’m overwhelmed, I make a list of everything that’s bothering me. I’ve made lists of funny things people said last night at dinner, the books that shaped me, the sweetest dogs I’ve met. Once you have a list, you can often see order in what seemed like chaos when it was running around off-leash in your brain. We’re surrounded by “best” lists, and they have their place (thank you, best books and films of the 21st century). But I prefer a “good” list. In a world of bests, good is a relief. Best invites an argument; good is just a suggestion: Here is this thing. I think you’ll probably like it. Good is generous: This is one good thing; others welcome. You want to spend time with good. It says, Look, I am not making any claims to being the one and only. I’m not promising forever. Let’s hang out and see where this goes. I keep a good list because I know how much easier it is to complain or despair over what’s bad, what’s missing, what we wish were different. And let’s be clear: There’s plenty to be sad or cross or dissatisfied about. We shouldn’t stop wrestling with those things or trying to change them when we can. But there’s got to be more. A similar principle animates “Every Brilliant Thing,” an interactive play now starring Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway — our critic Helen Shaw described it as “an openhearted show about naming and noticing the good.” I used to think it was silly or sappy to write down the things that I love. But once you start doing it, once you start deliberately taking time out of your day to write down things that are good, you start noticing them everywhere. This week: The surprisingly refreshing Arnold Palmer in a can that I had with lunch. Jim Broadbent’s restrained, big-hearted performance in the 2010 Mike Leigh film “Another Year,” which I just watched. The way my green sweater looked with the black and white striped shirt. The song “Something’s Going On,” by Lambchop. Tiny things, but they each brought a little bit of joy into my life. Once you start tracking what’s good, you notice you feel good. Not all the time. Not so much that you lose your edge. But enough that you start to feel a little more balanced. If we want to be happy — a state that’s become so overhyped and overanalyzed as to become almost meaningless, but stay with me — we need to orient ourselves toward the good. I’ve been doing a bit of this here in The Morning on Saturdays for the past four years. And now we’ve decided to expand the franchise. Starting Wednesday, I’ll be making my good lists public in a new weekly newsletter. The Good List will provide exactly what it says on the tin: a list of good things. It won’t be a Pollyanna’s bright-siding of a bad situation — regular readers know me better than that — but, rather, a cleareyed accounting of the very serious business of cataloging some reasons we’re lucky to be alive right now. The first edition contains a poet’s intentions for March, a delightful typewriter experiment and a secret flower of spring. It’s not a ranking, just a tidy way of organizing disparate elements that share one important quality: They are, broadly speaking, good. The Good List is, finally, an invitation, extended with both confidence and humility: What things have you found that are validating, life-affirming, mind-opening, satisfying? This is a project of addition rather than elimination. It’s a conversation: The thing I love and the thing you love can sit side by side, and so from time to time, we’ll include your submissions in the List. Looking for the good is an eternal pursuit — and that’s exactly the point. Sign up here to get The Good List sent to your inbox — and, if you please, share this with those who could use a little good in their lives. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve. Caroline Gutman for The New York Times A federal judge in Washington quashed the Justice Department’s subpoenas of the Federal Reserve, placing a major roadblock in its investigation of Jerome Powell, the Fed chair. “The government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the president,” the judge in the Fed case, James Boasberg, wrote. Richard Grenell, a close ally of President Trump, is stepping down as president of the Kennedy Center after a tumultuous year that included an exodus of artists and audiences. A federal judge ordered the administration to restore a union contract with more than 300,000 Veterans Affairs workers. The V.A. secretary moved to nullify the agreement last summer. War in Iran The U.S. bombed Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island. Trump said the U.S. had “totally obliterated” military forces on the island, but not its oil infrastructure. The U.S. is sending about 2,500 Marines and additional warships to the Middle East. More than 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, according to Iran’s representative to the U.N. Israel and Hezbollah continued to trade strikes. Lebanon’s health ministry said the strikes had killed 14 medical workers. The man who attacked a Michigan synagogue this week lost four relatives in a recent airstrike in Lebanon, two officials said. In the video below, our Beirut bureau chief, Christina Goldbaum, shows how Israeli airstrikes have affected Lebanon and its capital. Click to play. The New York Times Other Big Stories Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said his government had been holding talks with the Trump administration. The country has struggled with a lack of fuel since the U.S. invasion of Venezuela. Prosecutors have dropped all charges against the five teenagers involved in a prank that inadvertently led to a teacher's death in Georgia. John Burns, a Times foreign correspondent who reported from trouble spots around the world, eloquently conveying the chaos of war, has died at 81. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Stage Gordon Welters for The New York Times On a busy night, the coat check at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin deals out 1,865 coats in just 15 minutes. Here’s a look inside the finely tuned machine. Maya Rudolph, the “Saturday Night Live” alumna with a long résumé of film and TV work, is making her Broadway debut as the title character in “Oh, Mary!” These workshops hope to demystify esoteric dance. Turns out, it’s child’s play. Music A half-century ago, George Clinton debuted a $500,000 spaceship that turned his live concerts into intergalactic journeys. Read the secret history of the P-Funk Mothership. It’s called “sync music,” and you hear it everywhere — YouTube videos, TikTok tutorials, even Super Bowl commercials. The Times Magazine met the people who make it. More Culture Bill Kurtis, the veteran journalist known for his rich voice, is retiring from NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” after years as the show’s judge and scorekeeper. The Uncensored Library is a repository of writings from nations struggling with press freedom, housed within the video game Minecraft. It’s adding a section for the U.S. 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. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 📺 “The Madison” (Saturday): It is hard to swing a lariat these days without snaring a new Taylor Sheridan show. This year has already brought one “Yellowstone” spinoff, “Marshals,” with another (“The Dutton Ranch”) likely to premiere in the fall. In the meantime, there is “The Madison,” a stand-alone Paramount+ series most notable for enticing Michelle Pfeiffer into a rare television role. She stars as a Manhattan socialite who trades the Big Apple for Big Sky country after a personal tragedy. In her silk separates, she finds solace in open spaces — and handles a wasp-infested outhouse. Beau Garrett and Elle Chapman co-star as her citified adult daughters. RECIPE OF THE WEEK David Malosh for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Spicy Tomato Coconut Bisque Yewande Komolafe’s spicy tomato coconut bisque, filled with plump pink shrimp and earthy mushrooms, is a fragrant, deeply flavored meal for a chilly, almost-spring weekend. Spiked with lime zest and grated fresh ginger for vibrancy and heat, the creamy coconut broth is sweetened with roasted red peppers and tomatoes, which condense as everything simmers. Serve it with white or brown rice or crusty bread to tame its delightfully forthright heat. REAL ESTATE Nathan Smith and Megan Jones-Smith with their two sons. Taylor Glascock for The New York Times The Hunt: A family moving to Chicago from Texas wanted to close a deal on a new home before the school year started. What did they find? Play our game. What you get for $650,000 in Belize: A three-bedroom villa in a gated community; a two-bedroom cottage with a loft and a private pool; and a new beachfront condo. Redecorating: TMZ announced that Donna Kelce, the mother of Jason and Travis, decided to remodel her Florida home. The internet had thoughts. LIVING 36 Hours: Grand Junction, Colo., has access to mountain and desert trails, water sports and wondrous red-rock formations. (How do you feel about traveling right now? The Times wants to hear your thoughts.) On the runways: The audacious trend at this year’s fall fashion shows? Clothes that regular people might actually wear. Inspiration: Interior design magazines are reinventing themselves for a new generation of décor enthusiasts. Ozempic immunity: GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are quickly changing Americans’ health. For about 1 in 10 people, though, they have little to no effect. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER The best spring gifts The winters of my childhood in Maine did not play. From Thanksgiving until Easter, the flurries were flurrying, the snowbanks were towering and the no-school days were aplenty. This winter felt like another one of those, which means that when spring comes (Friday, baby!) we’ve earned it. No matter what the season looks like this year — colorless and cold, drizzly and vibey, twinkling and bright — my vow is to embrace every minute. One of my favorite ways to do that is by rekindling relationships that may have been on ice after a winter of hibernation, and marking the reunion with small, just-because tokens. Here are a few particularly delightful, spring-inspired gifts I’ve been eyeing lately. — Hannah Morrill GAME OF THE WEEK Andy Lyons/Getty Images March Madness. Clear your schedule, cancel your plans, call out sick. The N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments are back. Tomorrow is Selection Sunday, when the men’s and women’s brackets will be revealed. The play-in rounds start Tuesday for the men, Wednesday for the women, and after that the madness begins, with games running from noon until night. We’ll have brackets and expert guides on Monday. Until then, here’s one thing to know about each tournament. The men’s field: Duke and Michigan have sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the sport. Even for such storied programs, these teams look special. Michigan, according to The Athletic’s Austin Meek, is the best squad in Big 10 history. But Duke got the better of the Wolverines when they played in February, thanks to the best player in the country, the freshman Cameron Boozer. The women’s field: Surprise, surprise — UConn is great again. The Huskies were undefeated, with an average margin of victory of nearly 40 points. Get familiar with Sarah Strong, who is already in the pantheon of UConn greats. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were chariot, haricot and thoracic. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 18 Author Members Posted March 18 March 15, 2026 SUPPORTED BY APPLE Good morning. President Trump called on other countries to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz as fighting in the Middle East rattles the global economy. We have more news below. But first, a guide to the Academy Awards, which are tonight. In Los Angeles. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times And the Oscar goes to … By Tom Wright-Piersanti I’m an editor for The Morning. Every year I tell myself I’m going to see all of the best picture nominees, and every year I come up short. There are 10! Unless you’re a professional critic, or the most dedicated film nerd in your county, you’re probably something like me. This newsletter is a guide to tonight’s Oscars ceremony for us, the silent majority — the ones who loved “Sinners,” who watched “F1” because it was there, who considered going to an art house theater but never got past the Google phase of the plan. Give me the basics If you’re coming to these Academy Awards cold, here’s one thing you should know: Two movies, “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” have dominated this awards season. “Sinners,” directed by Ryan Coogler, set an Oscars record with 16 nominations. It’s as good as advertised — a tale of twin gangsters in Jim Crow-era Mississippi returning home to open a juke joint. Oh, and it’s a rollicking vampire flick. “One Battle After Another,” a darkly comic thriller directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, about radical activists, received 13 nominations. Both movies are artistic blockbusters, films with big ideas and directorial vision that nevertheless brought in hundreds of millions of dollars. And there’s a new category this year: best casting. To mark the award’s debut, The Times made a game that lets you vote on the worst casting choices in recent cinema history. Who should win? I’ll tag in Manohla Dargis, The Times’s chief film critic, who spoke about the performances and the movies she thought were most deserving on a recent episode of The Daily. Some of her picks: Renate Reinsve in “Sentimental Value” for best actress: “You see her curiosity, her wonder, her difficulty. And because the filmmaker is not telling us what to think and how to feel, we come to that ourselves.” Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon” for best actor: “Hawke is a much greater and much more interesting actor than he was when he was cute and didn’t have as many lines on his face.” “Sinners” or “One Battle After Another” for best picture: Both movies, she says, “are speaking to the American experience in a way that American cinema doesn’t necessarily do, particularly from the big studios — these movies feel urgent to us.” The New York Times OK, but who will win? Do you really want to know? Kyle Buchanan, a reporter who covers the awards season beat for The Times, makes predictions every year, and he’s really good at it. Last year, he nailed seven of the eight big awards. His picks for this year are here; given his track record, consider it a possible spoiler alert. Kyle thinks that there’s a clear favorite in the best picture category, and that the same film will probably win for best director. (I won’t say which.) He says the race for best actress isn’t even close. But he’s unsure about the best actor race. The academy has a bias against handsome younger A-listers, and that could hinder the chances of two front-runners — Michael B. Jordan (“Sinners”) and Timothée Chalamet (“Marty Supreme”). Can I make some money on those picks? You can certainly try. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket let people bet on the outcomes of sports, elections, even wars. My colleague Matt Stevens reports that people have already wagered more than $120 million on Oscars-related bets. The Golden Globes broadcast this year showed the Polymarket odds for each award onscreen. One Hollywood journalist described it to Matt as a “continuous gambling ad.” But Polymarket users correctly picked 26 of the 28 Globe winners. How can I see these movies? The awards show is in just a few hours, but these are works that their creators hope will stand the test of time. You can stream most of the nominated films. (Here’s a guide from TV Guide.) A few from the best picture list: HBO Max has “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” Netflix has “Frankenstein” and “Train Dreams.” Peacock has “Bugonia” and “Hamnet.” I also recommend our Anatomy of a Scene video series (each video is minutes, not hours, long). In every installment, a director offers commentary over a scene, explaining how it was made and why it’s important to the film. We have scenes from eight of the 10 best picture contenders. Think of it as an Oscars tasting menu. Your Oscars reading list Michael B. Jordan has starred in all five of Ryan Coogler’s feature films. The two men broke down their shared filmography, movie by movie. “Marty Supreme” is one of the great Jewish movies, Esther Zuckerman argues — “an unapologetic depiction of the Jewish American experience in all of its complications.” A school employee in Russia filmed students following the country’s wartime curriculum. His videos are the basis of a nominated documentary, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” Jessie Buckley, who earned acclaim for her starring role in “Hamnet,” went deep with T Magazine about acting, pregnancy and dreams. The Oscars have a unique method for choosing best picture, something like a ranked-choice ballot. Our reporter explains how it works in this video. A MESSAGE FROM APPLE The all-new MacBook Neo Amazing Mac. Surprising price. Learn More THE LATEST NEWS In Israel near the border with Lebanon. Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Middle East Israel’s foreign minister denied reports that Israel and Lebanon were set to hold direct negotiations to end the fighting with Hezbollah. The U.S. urged Americans to leave Iraq after a second attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The Pentagon identified the six service members who died when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq on Thursday. The F.C.C. chair threatened to revoke broadcast licenses over coverage of the war. Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Gulf countries. In the video below, Vivian Nereim and Katrin Bennhold talk about how those strikes have affected migrant workers. Click to play. The New York Times Politics Jared Kushner is trying to raise billions from Middle Eastern governments for his private equity firm, while also serving as a Trump administration envoy to the region. Trump is proposing another major addition at the White House: a security screening facility for visitors. Around the World Gaza: A sandstorm battered the territory yesterday, slamming tents and other makeshift shelters with strong gusts. Much of the population remains without proper housing because of the war between Hamas and Israel. The Netherlands: An explosion yesterday at a Jewish school in Amsterdam was the second antisemitic attack in the country in two days, officials said. Other Big Stories Some office workers are using heart rate data from their smartwatches to try to optimize their job performance. Lawmakers in Oregon approved money to buy a waterfall listed on the real estate site Redfin. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, recently joined a growing list of nations barring children under 16 from social media. Do these bans work? Yes. They teach children boredom — how to be curious and understand the world. They’ll “experience what millennials long for: boredom, languid days without plans, the sweet simplicity of a logged-off life,” Jodi Wilson writes for The Guardian. No. They’re not effective, and they require identity verification that could lead to mass surveillance. “This system not only allows big tech companies to harvest even more deeply personal data on children, but it creates massive cybersecurity risks,” Taylor Lorenz writes for The Guardian. FROM OPINION The apparent U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school, and the Trump administration’s messaging, show America’s disregard for the rules that safeguard civilization, Nicholas Kristof writes. Much of Lebanon wants Hezbollah disarmed, but an Israeli assault on Lebanese territory is not the solution, Nada Bakri writes. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on how “Love Story” is helping to revive the Kennedy myth and Thomas Friedman on civic activism in Minnesota. 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. A MESSAGE FROM APPLE The all-new MacBook Neo Amazing Mac. Surprising price. Learn More MORNING READS The sky over the Southern Ocean on Feb. 13. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Stars align: A Times photographer took an eight-week voyage to Antarctica. He didn’t expect the reporting trip to connect him with his late father. Trailgating: Fans of the Iditarod race line the streets of Anchorage and other stops, cheering on mushers and their dog teams in a seemingly unending party. A philosopher: For over a half-century, Jürgen Habermas offered a staunch defense of Enlightenment ideals and promoted the notion of the “public sphere.” He died at 96. SPORTS Tennis: Daniil Medvedev beat Carlos Alcaraz to advance to the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. He will play Jannik Sinner today. N.C.A.A.: In men’s basketball, Arizona held off Houston to win the Big 12 tournament, St. John’s routed UConn to repeat as Big East champions and Duke outlasted Virginia to capture the A.C.C. title. THE INTERVIEW Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By Lulu Garcia-Navarro This week’s subject for The Interview is Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, who has become a national figure in the Democratic Party and one of Trump’s main antagonists. We spoke about where he sees his party, and the country, going, and how his family history has shaped him. You suffered a lot of tragedy very young. Your father, Donald, died at the age of 39 of a heart attack, when you were 7 years old. What impact did that have on you? Do you remember that age and what happened? That’s obviously young, and you have limited memories, but of course I remember. My mother and father were actually out of town in Hawaii, and so my mother called her friends and said: “I need you to go to our house and make sure that our kids aren’t watching TV. I don’t want them to find out anywhere except from me.” I remember her coming back and taking us into their bedroom and sitting us down and telling us what happened. I think back on it now as an adult with children, and I think how hard that must have been for her. I know how hard it was for me to hear it, but how hard must that have been to tell your children that they’ve lost their father? People do it every day, unfortunately. She just lost the love of her life. And all of a sudden, she’s alone with three young children. After that, my mother, who was an alcoholic — all the challenges you can imagine for someone who’s now become a widow with three young children, and then add on to that a disease that is so hard to overcome. … You had to take care of her with your siblings. She went to Alcoholics Anonymous. She checked herself into a place that could help her. She tried really hard. It wasn’t like she was drunk all the time. She was sober a lot. She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I don’t think that’s just the view of a 7-year-old. I remember one day when I was 8 or 9, she sat us down and said, “I want you to know that sometimes it probably feels to you like I don’t love you because I’m not being the mother to you I want to be, but I want you to understand that this is a disease. I have a disease and I’m trying very hard to overcome it, and I’m going to overcome it.” But unfortunately she was never able to overcome it. It overcame her and took her life. Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Take a wellness vacation — think seaweed soaks, robotic massages and sound baths — without breaking the bank. Read one of these dark-and-stormy thrillers recommended by the best-selling author Lisa Unger. Get a dog, then write a book. Some award-winning authors told us how their canines helped spark creativity. MEAL PLAN Julia Gartland for The New York Times We’ve all been there — you don’t mind being in the kitchen, but you’re out of ideas for what to actually cook. Emily Weinstein, the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking, has some culinary antidotes for this week, including chicken fajitas, cod with caper-orange sauce and pasta with tomato-poached eggs. Get the recipes here. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was bullfrog. Can you put eight historical events — including Garry Kasparov’s loss to Deep Blue, the construction of the Chrysler Building and the creation of “The Simpsons” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
Members phkrause Posted March 19 Author Members Posted March 19 March 16, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. President Trump is pressuring NATO allies to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz. If they don’t, he said yesterday, “I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.” “One Battle After Another” took home the award for best picture at the Oscars last night. Jessie Buckley completed her sweep of awards season, winning best actress for “Hamnet,” and Michael B. Jordan won best actor for “Sinners.” See the best looks from the red carpet. There’s more news below. In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Your Iran questions We asked you for your questions about the war — and our coverage. Let’s start by answering some of them. The United States According to a preliminary investigation, outdated data is at fault in the U.S. bombing of the elementary school in southern Iran. Why was it outdated? Don’t analysts double-check that information? | Tiffany Dale | San Antonio, Texas Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence and national security, writes: Absolutely. There is supposed to be a double-check and a triple-check. The strikes on the adjacent Iranian naval base were in the opening moves of the war, so they were precisely the kinds of targets that should have been reviewed. The military officers preparing the strike should have noticed they were potentially working off decade-old data from the Defense Intelligence Agency, and then checked with satellite imagery from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. In the heat of the battle, that is not always done. The stakes of those errors in wartime can be tragically high — in this case, about 175 lives, Iran says. How badly have U.S. bases in the Middle East been hit? | Kerstin Keough | Castle Rock, Colorado Helene Cooper, who covers the Pentagon, writes: U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of operations in that region, has been stingy with information about strikes on bases that house American troops — there are 13 in the area. Many of those troops had already been dispersed to other locations throughout the region. We know that communications infrastructure was damaged at Al Udeid base in Qatar. We also know that Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia sustained damage. Multiple bases in Kuwait have been struck, with the most damage at Shuaiba Port, where six service members were killed. From what we know, parts of those bases are still standing. But whether they can still function as they used to — and, in particular, house troops — is an open question. At Dover Air Force Base. Doug Mills/The New York Times Do you have a running tally of how much the war costs and how it’s being paid for? | Jane Jerry | Highlands, North Carolina Catie Edmondson, who covers Capitol Hill, writes: We have only a limited sense of the price tag. The Pentagon told lawmakers that the war had cost more than $11.3 billion in the first six days alone, and lawmakers expect that number to rise. That estimate doesn’t include several of the costs associated with the operation, such as massing military hardware and personnel in the region ahead of the first strikes. Much of this information has been presented to lawmakers in a classified setting, so more specific details have been difficult to pin down. Iran In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Are most of Iran’s soldiers involuntary conscripts? Is there a chance they’ll desert the regime? | Jennica Peterson | Louisville, Colorado Yeganeh Torbati, who covers Iran, writes: A large portion of Iran’s military is indeed made up of conscripts. Military service is mandatory for adult men. That includes the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the most important component of Iran’s military and the force specifically founded to defend the country’s system of clerical rule. As for the possibility of desertion: We haven’t yet seen evidence of that happening in any significant way. Draftees tend to fill low-level, manual jobs and are not typically given sensitive responsibilities, like making battlefield decisions or carrying out important operations. Why do the U.S. soldiers who signed up for wartime action seem to get significantly more coverage than the hundreds of Iranian civilians killed by the bombing? | Mikhalina Solakhava | Berkeley, California Marc Lacey, a managing editor who has reported from numerous war zones, writes: Capturing the lives lost in war is an essential part of conflict reporting. Showing the effects on both sides of the front lines is challenging, though, when reporters do not have free access, which is the case in Iran. Believe me, if we were able to traverse Iran right now, we would have interviewed the families of those who lost their lives in the American missile strike on an elementary school in the opening days of the war. Our lack of access means we have to work the phones (here’s a great example) and use other means to capture the significant death toll inside the country. As for focusing on the death toll of American service members, we’ve received criticism from the Trump administration for that but believe the sacrifices of those sent into war are essential to document. Are Times journalists on the ground in all of the countries involved? In particular, how do you report on what’s happening in Iran? | Lynn Wirtz | Brooklyn, New York Adrienne Carter, an editor who is leading the war coverage from London, wrote: Iran is one of the hardest places to report on. It’s incredibly restrictive for journalists, especially during sensitive times like now. The communications are largely shut down. So unlike Ukraine and Russia, Gaza, Lebanon and Israel, we can’t be there. We can’t easily reach people. We have a dedicated team of reporters, many of whom have lived in the country, who have extensive contacts and sources. And we rely heavily on verified visual material, user-generated content, social media posts and satellite imagery. More on the war Oil prices continue to rise. The U.S. energy secretary told ABC News that there was “no guarantee” that they would fall in the coming weeks. Dubai International Airport briefly suspended all flights today after a nearby fuel tank caught fire. See the latest updates. The Israeli military said that the brother of the man who attacked a synagogue in Michigan was a Hezbollah commander. The war is making electricity scarce — 2,000 miles away in Bangladesh. In Canada, the police charged two people with murder in the death of an activist who spoke out against the Iranian regime. THE OSCARS The cast, director and producers of “One Battle After Another.” Philip Cheung for The New York Times “One Battle After Another” won six Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards last night, including best picture and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson. He had 28 years of Oscar nominations without winning. “Sinners” received four Oscars, including for Ryan Coogler’s original screenplay and Jordan’s best-actor award. The “Sinners” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to receive the honor in academy history. And Jessie Buckley, who won best actress for “Hamnet,” dedicated her award to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.” See all the winners here, along with best and worst moments from the show. THE LATEST NEWS Around the World Afghanistan and Pakistan: Pakistani airstrikes have killed at least 75 civilians in Afghanistan as the countries clash. Cuba: A peaceful protest in the central city of Morón ended in arson at the local headquarters of the Communist Party. West Bank: Israeli soldiers killed four members of a Palestinian family. Violence in the region has increased since the war with Iran began. Politics The State Department has reduced the cost of renouncing U.S. citizenship to $450. It had been $2,350. Trump’s pick for Homeland Security secretary, Senator Markwayne Mullin, has gotten much wealthier while in Congress. His investments are now under scrutiny. Thousands of people believe that they were harmed by Covid vaccines. A federal group wants to change how those injuries are tracked, according to a confidential report obtained by The Times. Professors across the country are changing how they teach and research in response to pressure from the Trump administration. Weather Forecasters in the Southwest are warning people to prepare for extreme heat. See how bad it will get. A winter storm in the Midwest cut off power and closed airports. A record-breaking snow drought in Colorado has residents worried about wildfire season. OPINIONS Richard Bookstaber predicted the 2008 financial crisis. What’s coming next, he writes, may be worse. Kash Patel’s handling of the F.B.I. has been chaotic, writes Jacqueline Maguire, a former executive at the bureau. Our Opinion writers discussed the Oscar winners. 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 Lily Collins’s stolen engagement ring. Joe Hakimian Lily Collins: A Chicago jeweler posted a “super stunning and cool” diamond ring for sale on his website. Then he got a surprising message. Thankful for trauma? After antisemitic attacks — and after her daughter experienced a mass shooting — Jodi Rudoren reflects on an ancient prayer of gratitude in the Believing newsletter. Whose money? When the chief executive of Zappos died, his parents stood to inherit his $500 million fortune, until a surprise will appeared. Metropolitan Diary: A coffee, a doughnut and a smoke. An activist: Paula Doress-Worters wrote about postpartum depression when it was taboo. As an author of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” she used her own experience to help other women. She died at 87. TODAY’S NUMBER 4 — That is the number of players in the National Hockey League who do not wear visors on their helmets to protect their eyes. The N.H.L.’s visorless population is 0.46 percent of current skaters. It was 32 percent during the 2011-12 season. Who will be the last? SPORTS The N.C.A.A. released its tournament brackets for men’s and women’s basketball yesterday. The rundown: In the men’s tournament Duke, Michigan, Arizona and Florida earned No. 1 seeds. Miami (Ohio), which went undefeated in the regular season, got the final at-large spot in the bracket — though it is not high on this list of likely upsets. Here’s a guide to all 68 teams in the field. In the women’s tournament UConn is the No. 1 overall seed for the 15th time. U.C.L.A., Texas and South Carolina are also top seeds. UConn and U.C.L.A. have been the best teams all season, Chantel Jennings writes. She expects they’ll meet in the final. See a statistical projection for each matchup. RECIPE OF THE DAY Sang An for The New York Times I’ve been making versions of this Irish soda bread since I was little, to take to school for St. Patrick’s Day. It’s plain, not studded with dried fruit, and calls out for high-fat butter and a strong cup of tea. Or juice, if you’re little. Sláinte. GOING APE OK McCausland for The New York Times Damon Albarn never thought Gorillaz, the band of cartoon characters he founded with the illustrator Jamie Hewlett in the late 1990s, was going to last. “It was meant to be a really cool idea,” he told The Times. “Not a career.” Now the band’s ninth album, “The Mountain,” is out — a manifesto about death that celebrates life. Read all about it. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Trade your smartphone for one of these ’80s-style digital watches. (I’m disappointed the Casio G-Shock didn’t make the list — I wore one for years.) Visit Trinciti Roti Shop in Queens, part of our “Sandwich City” video series. It’s one of my favorite restaurants on the planet. Split your own campfire wood with the best axes tested by the Bunyanesque lumberjacks at Wirecutter. Start preparing for allergy season now to get ahead of symptoms. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were acridly and radically. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam 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, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Quote phkrause When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
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