The New York Times

VOL. CLXXV .... No. 60,991

© 2026 The New York Times Company

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2026

Today, mostly sunny, less humid, high 80. Tonight, clear, calm winds, dry, low 65. Tomorrow, partly cloudy, more humid, light wind, dry, high 83. Weather map appears on Page B10.

Prices in Canada may be higher

\$4.00

Judge Rejects Key Evidence In 9/11 Case

Rules Torture Tainted Crucial Confession

By CAROL ROSENBERG

In a major blow to the U.S. case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, a military judge ruled on Friday that the prisoner's confessions to F.B.I. agents were not voluntary and cannot be used against him at trial.

Prosecutors have described Mr. Mohammed's interrogations in 2007 at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as the government's most crucial evidence in the long-running death-penalty case.

But his confessions have always been challenged because the government used torture to question him in secret C.I.A. prisons years before he was charged.

The ruling, just before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, could further delay the start of a trial if prosecutors decide to appeal to reinstate it. Aging survivors and families of victims have said they worry they may never see a final resolution to the case.

Just this week, the judge set a trial date of June 5, 2028.

Mr. Mohammed is accused of being the mastermind of the hijacking attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.

He was brutally interrogated by the C.I.A. in the overseas prisons after his capture in 2003 and held incommunicado until his transfer to Guantánamo in 2006. Prosecutors excluded statements from those interrogations, which in-

Continued on Page A15

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

Robert Mapplethorpe's photo- graph of Roy Cohn, from 1981.

Fear of Trump Chills Nonprofit On Cohn Book

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

It is an arresting, menacing image: the scarred face of Roy M. Cohn, the notorious New York City lawyer, fixer and master of the political dark arts, floating bodiless in a pool of black, his hooded eyes staring directly back at the viewer.

The photograph, taken by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1981, is an unforgettable depiction of its subject, and the celebrated author Kai Bird thought it would make the perfect cover art for his biography of Mr. Cohn, "American Scoundrel," which will be released by Scribner next week.

That the picture never ended up on the book's cover is a matter of regret to Mr. Bird — and a small but telling illustration of the anxiety that has taken root in the nonprofit world because of Mr. Cohn's most famed protégé, an ambitious real estate developer now serving his second term as president.

President Trump loomed large in the decision by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, which ad-

Continued on Page A13

Clockwise from top: U.S.-Israeli airstrikes hit Tehran in March; a banner of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the start of the war, and his son and now successor, who was wounded; and a fruit stand. Iran's economy remains fragile.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARASH KHAMOOSHI/POLARIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Bitter Debate on E.U. Pursuit Divides Usually Genial Iceland

By AMELIA NIERENBERG and EGILL BJARNASON

TALKNAFJORDUR, Iceland — Gudlaug Bjornsdottir had warned her family. If the talk over the dinner table turned to Iceland's coming referendum on opening talks to join the European Union, she would get up and leave.

Polls show a starkly divided country heading into the vote on Saturday. Many people have strong opinions about whether Iceland should maintain its hard-won independence or seek the stability and protections that would come with E.U. membership.

So perhaps inevitably, despite Ms. Bjornsdottir's admonitions,

Funding Delays Imperil Rollout Of Mamdani's Child Care Plan

Wrestling With Security and Independence

the dinner conversation in the tiny town of Talknafjordur one recent Friday eventually landed on the referendum. "I am leaving, like it or not," Ms. Bjornsdottir stood and said, a wine glass still in her hand.

Her family promised not to mention it again, and she returned to her seat.

This exchange, in Iceland's remote northwest, encapsulated an unusually heated debate in this proudly agreeable nation over

Continued on Page A8

By MATTHEW HAAG

Funding issues and late payments are threatening the rollout of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's free child care system for 2-year-olds, two weeks before the program is scheduled to begin, day care providers said.

Many early childhood centers have yet to receive funding to buy classroom furniture and basic supplies like pencils and paper, or to pay newly hired teachers and assistants. Without the money, several providers have warned parents that the centers will not open when school starts on Sept. 10.

Because of the delays, city offi-

Many Providers Being Asked to Front Costs

cials had encouraged providers to apply for interest-free bridge loans from the city — not just for 2-K programs but also for 3-K and pre-K programs. But many of those who have applied for the loans say that money has not arrived either, forcing them to take out high-interest personal loans, borrow from relatives and drain their personal savings.

"Yes, they have a 2-K program, but they didn't set up the infra-

Continued on Page A15

NEWS ANALYSIS

Iran Defying Might of U.S. 6 Months In

Trump Goals Distant as Strategy Shifts

By STEVEN ERLANGER BERLIN — It was supposed to be quick.

Still, six months after the United States and Israel launched powerful airstrikes on Iran, the conflict drags on. The Trump administration has replaced its military war with an economic one, but the result is likely to be no different, analysts said, with a lack of American clarity about goals, a decline in American credibility and a strategic defeat.

One thing remains constant, however. The ordinary people of Iran are bearing the brunt of the war, victims of both the United States and their own leaders.

On the first day of the war, Feb. 28, President Trump promised Iranians that “the hour of your freedom is at hand.” Six months later, his administration is trying to impoverish them further, hoping against hope that they will revolt and overthrow a repressive, militarized regime.

CASSIDY ARAIZA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Iranian leadership, increasingly dominated by military men, sees its own survival as the nation's, and it considers the sacrifices of ordinary Iranians as a necessary act of patriotism and even martyrdom. It has been ever more ruthless in stamping out the slightest signs of dissent.

It is hard to dress up what has clearly been an American failure to bend Iran to its will, despite the might of the combined American and Israeli militaries. Not only has the Islamic republic survived, but it effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz. It has strengthened its influence in the region, with even the countries it was bombing a few months ago trying to reinvigorate ties with Iran.

"The war has failed to deliver U.S. objectives," said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.

Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and head of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, judged the war a failure. “We did a lot of damage to Iran, but they have come out stronger than before,” she said. Iran’s neighbors have decided they must find a modus vivendi with an Islamic republic that is not going away.

Continued on Page A6

CONFLICT'S IMPACT A look at how the markets have moved, six months into the war. PAGE B1

In Scottsdale, Ariz., a fan group dresses in green and white, but is politically split on red and blue.

In House Race, 2 With Jets Ties Give Fans Certain Win at Last

By THOMAS FULLER

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — “All right, I’ve had enough!”

Tracy Patterson's old-school Brooklyn accent rang out in the bar in Arizona where a New York Jets fan club had gathered to witness its team losing — again. It was the first preseason game, and the offense had already given up back-to-back interceptions.

Same old Jets.

"Here we go again," Ms. Patterson said as she glared at the TV screens in disgust, paid her bar tab and walked out into the reddish-brown desert landscape of Maricopa County.

The fan club meets for every Jets game at the same bar, a masochistic ritual of perennial disappointment. But this season, the heavy burden of being a fan of the

Green and White comes with a twist that is proving to be a welcome distraction from the team's consistent ranking near the bottom of the league.

It has to do with a different type of Jets contest that was set last month. Two people associated with the team — a retired kicker, Jay Feely, and a former Jets sideline doctor, Amish Shah — won their respective primaries and lined up against each other for a U.S. House seat representing the Scottsdale area, on the edge of Phoenix. Mr. Feely is a Republican, and Dr. Shah is a Democrat.

Some are calling it the doc versus the jock. But the political contest also spawned the type of dark humor that Jets fans rely on as a

Continued on Page A10

NATIONAL A9-16

Working to Anoint Successor Representative Nancy Pelosi is rolling up her sleeves to help a little-known candidate take over her seat. PAGE A10

Apathy over a figure topping \$40 trillion shows how much the politics of deficit spending has changed. PAGE A13

INTERNATIONAL A4-8

Turmoil Dogs Cuban Dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is unpacking 4,000 paintings he brought to Miami from Cuba and dodging criticism from exiles who once welcomed him. PAGE A4

Despite war and looming elections, President Trump's priority seems to be a lake. White House Memo. PAGE A8

OBITUARIES A17, 20

King of Norway for 35 Years Harald V opened an ancient monarchy to marriages with commoners and scandals. He was 89. PAGE A20

BUSINESS B1-5

Fed Chief Addresses Inflation In a high-profile speech, Kevin M. Warsh said that if price increases did not return quickly to the central bank's target, "we have work to do." PAGE B1

Trump's Promises Falling Short In 2024, the president promised an economic course correction. His agenda has made that fight hard. PAGE B1

TRAVEL C8-10

A Footpath Fit for a King Paul Theroux traced the British coastline in 1982 for a book. Now he is walking a part of it again. PAGE C8

ARTS C1-6

On Tap: Grand Theft Auto VI The game, out in November, is the series' first release in 13 years, arriving with grander ambitions. PAGE C1

Lights, Camera, Authenticity As a movie star, Dolly Parton was always in control of her persona, playing women who knew their value. PAGE C1

SPORTS B6-10

Belichick on Campus, Year 2 The hope that accompanied the hiring of an N.F.L. great as North Carolina coach is hard to find. PAGE B6

There are no clear-cut favorites in men's or women's singles at the year's final major tennis tournament. PAGE B9

OPINION A18-19

Gail Collins

PAGE A18

Inside The Times

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AUDIO

Corrections A15
Crossword C3
Obituaries A17, 20

VIDEO

T LIST

Opinion A18-19 Weather B10 Classified Ads B4

Under Taliban rule, girls in Afghanistan are officially barred from receiving an education beyond the sixth grade. But across the country, clandestine classrooms have emerged to defy the ban. Watch Elian Peltier's report on one of the schools at nytimes.com/video.

See what caught the attention of the T magazine team this week, including stylish umbrellas and a Copenhagen hotel overlooking one of the city's largest gardens. tmagazine.com

On “Cannonball,” the host Wesley Morris and Sam Anderson, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, revisit two flicks from the summer movie glory days of 1986. Listen to the episode at nytimes.com/cannonball.

The News Quiz

1. Dolly Parton died this week at 80. In addition to her storied show business career, she also built a business empire, including an amusement park in Tennessee called what?

a. Dolly Gardens

b. Dollymania

c. Dollywood

d. Dollyworld

e. Six Flags Dolly Mountain

2. An emergency Supreme Court opinion permitted President Trump to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting. His executive order directs what government agency to help decide which voters should receive mail ballots?

a. Bureau of Engraving and Printing

b. Federal Election Commission

c. U.S. Census Bureau

d. U.S. Geological Survey

e. U.S. Postal Service

3. Two unvaccinated people died from measles in Lancaster County, Pa., the first deaths from the illness this year in the United States. In what year did the United States declare that measles had been eliminated?

a. 1850

b. 1930

c. 1960

d. 1980

e. 2000

4. Meta reached a landmark settlement with dozens of states over claims that its products had endangered children. The company agreed to pay up to how much in penalties?

a. \$1.7 million

b. \$170 million

c. \$17.1 billion

d. \$171 billion

e. \$1.7 trillion

Do you follow the headlines? Take our quiz to find out.

5. A Russian drone attack in Ukraine last month presaged a dystopian future for warfare, experts said. What was notable about the drone?

a. Its payload was a miniature nuclear warhead.

b. It was 3-D printed.

c. It chose its own target using A.I.

d. It deployed a swarm of smaller drones midflight.

e. It tracked its targets through Bluetooth signals.

ATUL LOKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

6. Devastating flash flooding tore through Himalayan mountain valleys near the border between Tibet and which country?

a. Afghanistan

b. Bhutan

c. India

d. Nepal

e. Pakistan

7. At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing last weekend, a robot athlete beat the record of which world-record holder?

a. Usain Bolt, men's 100-meter sprint

b. Armand "Mondo" Duplantis, men's pole vault

c. Femke Kok, women's 500-meter speed skate

d. Yang Jiayu, women's 20-kilometer race walk

e. Mike Powell, long jump

8. As Canada and the United States engage in a trade war, which Great Lake did Mr. Trump declare he had renamed "Lake America"?

a. Lake Erie

b. Lake Huron

c. Lake Michigan

d. Lake Ontario

e. Lake Superior

9. Which British actor, who played Ron Weasley in the "Harry Potter" films, announced that he will soon reprise his role on Broadway?

a. Daniel Radcliffe

b. Tom Felton

c. Domhnall Gleeson

DANIEL MOSKOW, a member of a New York Jets fan club in Arizona's First Congressional District, where two candidates with ties to the long-suffering N.F.L. franchise will square off in November. Page A1.

d. Rupert Grint

e. Matthew Lewis

Quote of the Day

10. The Defense Department fired the publisher and editor in chief of what government-funded news outlet after it reported on hardships aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln?

a. ARMY magazine

b. Foreign Affairs

c. Foreign Policy

d. Military Times

e. Stars and Stripes

11. The Athletic reported this week that the National Football League is eliminating its all-star game, known as what?

a. Gridiron Classic

b. Iron Bowl

c. Hall of Fame Game

d. Pro Bowl

e. Super Bowl

The News Quiz is published on Fridays in the Morning newsletter. To sign up, visit nytimes.com/themorning.

Solutions: 1. C; 2. E; 3. E; 4. C; 5. C; 6. D; 7. A; 8. D; 9. D; 10. E; 11. D.

Top Trending Headlines Online

Harald V, Norway's King as Tradition and Modernity Collided, Dies at 89 Thousands of Norwegians gathered outside the Royal Palace in Oslo on Friday to mourn the death of King Harald V of Norway. His 35-year reign opened an ancient monarchy to a contentious cast of family connections, including Jeffrey Epstein. Crown Prince Haakon, 53, has succeeded his father to become King Haakon VIII.

C.I.A. Chief Delivered Bleak Assessment of Russia's War in Secretive Moscow Visit John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, traveled to Moscow, where he urged the Russians to end their war against Ukraine before their military and economic situation gets worse. C.I.A. analysts have long questioned whether President Vladimir V. Putin's advisers have given him honest assessments of the war's trajectory and toll. Mr. Ratcliffe's visit was the latest effort by the Trump administration to breathe new life into stalled peace negotiations.

I Need to Go to the Hospital,' Delta Pilot Tells Air Traffic Control A Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to Boston safely diverted to Detroit on Tuesday after its captain became ill. Instances of commercial airline pilots experiencing a medical episode and declaring an emergency are rare, a retired United Airlines captain told The Times. When it happens, safeguards are in place: the other pilot and autopilot.

Heard Of Dana G. Smith wrote about intrinsic capacity, a holistic measure of what someone's body and mind are capable of. Research has shown that the metric — which takes into account cognition; strength and mobility; vision and hearing; psychological well-being; and vitality — correlates with older adults' risk of disability and mortality.

A Headline From History

TWO FIANCEES VANISH ON EVE OF WEDDING

August 29, 1922. Two young men in Clifton, N.J., called off their double wedding after both brides-to-be disappeared, engagement rings and all, The Times reported. The grooms had been courting the women for several months, with dates that included automobile rides and outings to motion picture shows. A City Hall official who had issued marriage licenses ahead of the ceremony suggested going to the police, but one groom, Anthony Kerelak, said that would make “too much talk.” But he was in love, he told Osmond A. Sparr, the assistant city clerk: “What shall I do?” “My advice,” Sparr said, “would be to get another girl.” Last week, The Times reported another instance of missing brides: In India, a purported matchmaker and his accomplices face fraud charges after dozens of grooms were left at the altar at a mass wedding. It was an unusually large case in the country’s scam-prone marriage industry.

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Meredith Kopit Levien, President and Chief Executive Officer
R. Anthony Benten, Treasurer
Diane Brayton, Secretary

Facts of Interest

England is home to the longest organized coastal footpath in the world: The new King Charles III England Coast Path consists of 2,689 miles of continuous hiking trails along the country's seashore. A Path Fit for a King, Open to All C8

Despite an ever-growing armory of pills, injections and lifestyle interventions to lower the risk of heart disease, it remains the No. 1 killer of Americans. Gene-Editing Just Once Decreases Cholesterol A14

Thea Frodin, a 17-year-old American who played a young Venus Williams in the 2021 movie "King Richard," is playing in the U.S. Open. Defending Champions Will Have To Overcome Tricky Draws B9

Since 2012, politicians have been barred from speaking at the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Trump Plans to Mark 9/11 At the Pentagon A16

The overall map of Grand Theft Auto VI, the new installment in the popular video game series, is three times as large as the playable area of Red Dead Redemption 2, the previous title from Rockstar Games. Grand Theft Auto VI's Grander Ambitions C1

A Covid wave appears to be underway in the United States. Wastewater shows rising levels of coronavirus in most of the country. F.D.A. Approves New Covid Vaccines, To Be Available Soon A14

Since the start of the war in Iran, the price of diesel has risen even faster than gasoline. At \$5.61 a gallon, prices are up nearly 50 percent from prewar levels. How 6 Months of War in Iran Jolted Oil, Gas, Stocks and More B1

The Mini Crossword

BY JOEL FAGLIANO
8/29/2026

ACROSS

1 “____, oh, ____!”

4 Wordle and Scrabble, for two

6 "Heading over now!"

8 Totally awesome

9 So-called "frankenfood," for short

9 So-called "frankenfood," for short
10 The University of Michigan has the largest one in the U.S., seating over 107,000 people

13 "Don't worry, _ pass"

DOWN

1 First Muslim mayor of N.Y.C.
2 Coney Barrett of the Supreme Court
3 Fox sitcom set in a Los Angeles loft
4 Tiny summer pests
5 _ Adams, Founding Father for whom a beer is named
6 Surgery sites, for short
7 Kippur
11 Bit of Braille

11 Bit of Braille

Four Weekend Recommendations From Around the Newsroom

Might We Suggest...

Making One Last Getaway

putting on its menu in August. There's still time to squeeze in one more summer vacation: glamping in the New Hampshire mountains, a boutique hotel in Cape Cod, an adults-only retreat in Turkey. You can even bring a pumpkin drink. We won't judge. nytimes.com/travel

2 Exploring the Books of Brooklyn Last month, the Book Review walked us through where to shop for books in Midtown Manhattan.

This month's crawl brings us into Prospect Heights and Park Slope, where you'll find a fantasy fanatic's paradise at Love & Legends and every romance trope imaginable at the Ripped Bodice. Start your stroll at nytimes.com/books.

OK MCCAUSLAND FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

BLT-ifying . . . Well, Everything Before the season of fresh tomatoes gives way to more autumnal produce, take advantage of Melissa

Clark's next-level BLT hack: dipping the toasted bread for your sandwich into the drippings from the bacon pan. Or maybe you've transcended the confines of a sandwich altogether: Instead try recipes for BLT tacos, BLT pasta and a tomato, bacon and corn salad. Make sure to measure the bacon with your heart. nytimes.com/food

Giving Back to a Good Cause

Dolly Parton's legacy extends far beyond her music: Her decades of philanthropic efforts included

supporting families affected by floods and wildfires, offering graduates a \$500 gift to help reduce school dropout rates, opening an aviary for rehabilitated bald eagles, sending some 305 million books to children, donating to Covid-19 vaccine research and much more. This week, you may have already been listening to her many hits or rewatching “9 to 5.” Perhaps you can also consider finding a cause in your own community that could use some extra support. Read more about some of the issues that Ms. Parton championed at nytimes.com/business.

A Dangerous Game

JUN CEN
We've long known about the physical risks of playing football, a game ingrained in American culture. But a new study has put that toll into startling perspective: Among nearly 900 former N.F.L. players who died over a recent six-year period, at least one in four had the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. — and the real prevalence could be far higher. If you applied those numbers to rosters today, you would get around 400 football players with the disease. On the field, in the stands, on the couch, will this new data be enough to change our love for the game?

Five Titles to Stream Before They Leave Netflix in September

Here to Help

'The Four Seasons' (Sept. 1)

Netflix's high-profile series "The Four Seasons" — which stars Tina Fey (also its co-creator) and Steve Carell — was based on this well-liked 1981 Alan Alda movie. The film showcases the considerable talents of Alda and Carol Burnett as the long-married couple at the center of a group of friends who take seasonal vacations together. It's a modest but engaging piece of work, with lovely, lived-in turns by its marquee leads.

'Orphan Black': Seasons 1-4 (Sept. 1)

Few acting feats in TV history have quite matched that of Tatiana Maslany, who starred in this BBC America science-fiction drama. Maslany plays the petty criminal Sarah and several of her clones through the sheer force of her distinctive characterizations and deft vocal distinctions. There are so many Sarahs because of a mysterious conspiracy that she and her clones spend the bulk of the series attempting to unravel.

'Poor Things' (Sept. 7)

Emma Stone, above right, won her second Oscar for her eccentric turn as Bella, the Victorian woman at the center of this riff on the “Frankenstein” story. Willem Dafoe co-stars as Dr. Godwin Baxter, who reanimated the dead Bella with the brain of a fetus, rendering her current form childlike and often inappropriate. The director Yorgos Lanthimos fills the frame with eye-popping colors and peculiar performances.

SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

'Funny People' (Sept. 16)

In this Judd Apatow film, Adam Sandler stars as a somewhat exaggerated version of himself, living the life of an absurdly wealthy movie star without really enjoying it. That all changes when he takes on a young comic (Seth Rogen) as an assistant

— and when he gets a terminal diagnosis and begins to re-examine his priorities.

'Nashville': Seasons 1-6 (Sept. 16)

The death last week of Hayden Panettiere rendered her work on this prime-time drama (created by the Oscar-winning "Thelma & Louise" screenwriter Callie Khouri) all the more poignant; many of the plotlines given to her character, an up-and-coming music star, now seem either eerily prescient of or inspired by her own life. The series also showcased some of her finest acting, JASON T. BAILEY

For more picks, visit nytimes.com/watching.

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International

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THE GLOBAL PROFILE LUIS MANUEL OTERO ALCÁNTARA

A Cuban Dissident Artist Lands in a Miami Maelstrom

By FRANCES ROBLES and DAVID C. ADAMS

It has been a busy summer for the Cuban artist and former political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.

Upon finishing a five-year prison sentence in Cuba, he was moved to a beachfront government safe house, where he said he drank beer and Chinese whiskey with state security agents. Then came a surprisingly hard part: exile in Miami, where within days his hero's welcome turned into a social media maelstrom.

The reproaches came soon after he arrived last month, particularly from online influencers.

He looked too healthy to have spent five years in prison, critics said. Since when does the Cuban government let prisoners paint in their cells — or take thousands of paintings into exile, they wondered. And he stunned audiences when, in an interview with an 87-year-old former political prisoner, he talked crudely about sex.

"I'm really not trying to be provocative," Mr. Otero Alcántara, 38, said later in a voice mail message. "I am provocative."

Overnight, Mr. Otero Alcántara became a living testament to the tangled realities of the Cuban diaspora: generations of exiles and their families, many of whom have never set foot on the island, as well as recent arrivals who grew up under Communist rule. Unlike many diaspora members who are wealthy and white, Mr. Otero is Black and has working-class roots, the son of a welder and an office worker from El Cerro, a gritty Havana neighborhood.

So on one side, Mr. Otero Alcán-tara had a rapturous reception, from figures as varied as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a member of the hip-hop group Orishas and hundreds who came to see his work unveiled at the Freedom Tower in Miami.

But he also faced a flurry of negative reactions, so fast and so harsh that some experts wondered whether Cuban state security was surreptitiously running a propaganda campaign to tarnish a rising star of the dissident movement.

Experts said that the artist probably was afforded special treatment as a prisoner because officials knew that he would, like other dissidents, receive significant attention after he was released. Letting him leave the country looking healthy and with paintings could help discredit other political prisoners who reported abuses, and perhaps improve Cuba's image around the world, they said.

Last week, Mr. Otero Alcántara acknowledged that some people had gone as far as suggesting he worked for Cuba's intelligence directorate, known as the G2.

"In Cuba, the dictatorship accuses me of being a C.I.A. agent. In Miami, some accuse me of being a G2 agent," he posted on social media. "Someone has serious identity issues."

The Cuban government did not respond to requests for comment about his release, but in the past it has accused him and his movement of being “trained and supported” by the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

His profile as an irreverent artist and dissident grew after 2018, when Cuba banned cultural activity not authorized by the state. That ignited the most organized uprising from the arts community in Cuba's history, said Coco Fusco, a friend of the artist and a professor at Cooper Union, a renowned arts college in New York.

Mr. Otero Alcántara used performance art to connect directly with working-class frustrations.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara with one of his sculptures last month in Miami. He spent five years in a Cuban prison.

On one occasion, he wore a hard hat and stood under dilapidated balconies, highlighting the risk to children after three were killed from falling masonry. Another time, he stood outside a new, \$500-a-night luxury hotel, selling raffle tickets for a night's stay.

His political activism expanded through the San Isidro Movement, a loose collective of artists and activists that emerged as one of Cuba's most visible dissident groups.

Cuban state security agents accused him of doing the work of the island's "imperialist" enemies. His appeal to many downtrodden Afro-Cubans posed an unusual threat to the government, Ms. Fusco said.

"They fear his kind of charismatic power over that sector of the population," she said.

Dozens of detentions and interrogations followed, as well as constant surveillance outside his house.

In 2021, following major antigovernment protests in which over 1,500 people were arrested, he was charged with public disorder, accused of defaming the Cuban flag.

He served five years. After his release last month, while his sup-

MARTINA TUATY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

MARTINA TUATY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
MARTINA TUATY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Artwork that Mr. Otero Alcántara made during his time in prison, above left and right. Skeptics, including online influencers, wondered why Cuban officials had allowed him to take so many pieces with him, and why he looked so healthy.

Mr. Otero Alcántara was greeted warmly in Miami. "Refusing to give in to hate is crucial," he said about his captors.
GIORGIO VIERA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

'We weren't in a private conversation.'

ÁNGEL DE FANA, a former political prisoner, on an interview criticized for the artist's comments about sex.

porters in Miami publicly declared him missing, he spent time at the safe house awaiting a U.S. visa.

In an interview Mr. Otero Alcántara gave to TV Martí, a journalist posited that he was in all likelihood surveilled there, and asked what those videos might show.

Mr. Otero Alcántara acknowledged in the interview that he had been accompanied by his son and girlfriend, and that he had drunk with state agents.

It went downhill from there.

He then did a live social media interview with Ángel de Fana, the former political prisoner, who told him that in his day, no self-respecting political prisoner would have accepted treats. The conversation devolved when Mr. Otero Alcántara spoke about women and sex.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. de Fana called Mr. Otero Alcántara “brave.” But he added that some of the criticisms against him, particularly of how crudely he spoke about sex, were self-inflicted.

"We weren't in a private conversation; he was transmitting live," Mr. de Fana said. "It's not correct. He doesn't respect the women he was with."

Mr. Otero Alcántara said that many exiles had anticipated he would emerge malnourished and telling horror stories.

"People expect something else, expect me to say that the dictatorship took me, broke my bones and gouged my eyes out," he said. "Here I am with my eyes and my bones fine. It doesn't mean that what happened to me wasn't dramatically traumatic. The problem is that people understand violence only as when you get hit with a stick, when you get hurt — when that's just a symbol."

Mr. Otero Alcántara does not fit neatly into what many Cuban exiles have long expected of a high-profile activist, experts said. He came up as an untrained artist, rather than as a political activist as such.

The “friendly fire” he has experienced underscores an intransigence among many Cubans both on the island and in South Florida, said Ted Henken, a Baruch College scholar who wrote letters to the U.S. government in support of the artist’s humanitarian parole application.

"There's almost like a script you are expected to follow," he said, "genuflecting at the temple of exile and engaging in a kind of performance of martyrdom."

Mr. Otero Alcántara said many people received him warmly, which was a welcome respite after prison. He added that he would keep speaking his mind, even if others didn't want to hear.

He plans to spend the next two months as a resident artist at El Espacio 23, a studio in the Wynwood arts district of Miami. He may also take his works, which provide a rare glimpse of life inside a Cuban prison, on tour as testimony of Cubans' suffering and resistance.

Exposed to humid prison conditions, some pieces will need touching up and others may be beyond salvation, he said. Many were composed on scraps of paper, like the insides of unfolded cigarette packs or sketchbooks sent by family and friends.

He recently invited a small group to observe the unpacking of his "prison archive," the works carefully wrapped in acid-free conservation paper.

He held up dozens of paintings, showing images like a distorted prison cell, prisoners in an illusory swimming pool, and labyrinthine walls. He explained how he felt it was his duty as an artist to keep painting while incarcerated, both as an act of protest and to provide a glimpse into the suffering, isolation and boredom of fellow prisoners.

"These are all prints of my state of mind," he said.

The dark and visceral depictions of prison life, ranging from the erotic to the scatological, also unnerved the guards and helped stop their harassment of him, he said.

He unrolled a large pastel work on creased brown paper showing a naked man pouring water over his head while clouds of mosquitoes swarmed.

Mr. Otero Alcántara seemed to leave prison with remarkably little bitterness.

“Refusing to give in to hate is crucial,” he said, “because that’s exactly what the regime — the dictatorship — wants: for anxiety to take you over, for hate to consume you and for you to turn into a toxic person.”

Mightiest of Them All? Charts Size Up El Niño.

By MIRA ROJANASAKUL and CHICO HARLAN

This year's El Niño is already intense, and it's not done growing. Scientists expect that by December, when El Niño events typically reach their peak, this one will wind up as the strongest in at least 80 years of precise record keeping. And perhaps as the most powerful in centuries.

The event will alter weather patterns across the planet and could drive an additional 49 million people into hunger, according to a projection by the United Nations' World Food Program. It will also temporarily elevate global temperatures that were already rising because of climate change.

Here are three charts that show the power of this El Niño.

Forecasts predict an El Niño stronger than all others. Sea surface temperature anomaly in El Niño region

Pacific sea surface temperatures are setting records. Average sea surface temperature in El Niño region

Note: The chart shows sea surface temperature anomaly compared with the 1991-2020 average. Source: Observed NOAA data and multi-model median forecast via The Climate Brink.
THE NEW YORK TIMES

El Niños are essentially anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Their magnitude is measured by how far temperatures there rise beyond the norm. Temperatures must jump 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above average to qualify as a Super El Niño. But this year's event is expected to go even further, well exceeding the prior strong El Niños that began in 1997, 2015 and 2023.

run is just a coincidence, or whether climate change might be making El Niño events more frequent and intense.

It's unusual to have three strong El Niños in 11 years. And scientists are divided about whether that

Note: Data from Aug. 8 to Aug. 22, 2026, is preliminary. Source: Climate Reanalyzer.
THE NEW YORK TIMES

August.

An El Niño's magnitude is measured in a vast rectangular zone of the Pacific that runs along the Equator. Most years, temperatures in that zone hit a peak of around 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) in May and then gently decline through the Northern Hemisphere summer. But during an El Niño year, temperatures break from that pattern, and this year they are spiking like never before. In no other year on record have temperatures held above 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) in July and

This warming is happening in an ocean that has been heating up for decades as it absorbs heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. The effects are not constrained to the Pacific. Last Saturday, the daily global average sea surface temperature reached 21.1 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service, breaking the previous record set in March 2024.

El Niño is pushing up global air temperatures, too.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The heat that builds up near the surface of the tropical Pacific eventually makes the entire planet warmer. The trend takes awhile to materialize, but recent El Niños have led to annual global heat records in the year after they form. To that end, scientists broadly expect 2027 to be the hottest year humans have ever experienced. But the heat is altering the trajectory of 2026 as well. The first half of this year, while broadly hotter than in previous decades, generally did not approach the heat records set in 2024. But recent days in August have been warmer than comparable dates in any prior year.

Second Flood Could Hit Nepal, Experts Warn

By MACK LIEDERMAN and REBECCA L. DAVIS

Above, residents checked a list of rescued people on Friday in Bagmati Province, Nepal. Below, houses perched over still-flowing mud in Devghat, Tanahu District. The overflow of a new lake formed during Wednesday's deadly flooding has already slowed down rescue efforts in Tibet.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ATUL LOKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

As emergency workers searched Himalayan valleys for survivors of a colossal flood that killed hundreds of people, the Nepali and Chinese authorities warned that a second flood might be coming — with rescuers most at risk, according to an expert.

The landslide that set off Wednesday's flood clogged the river system and created a barrier lake close to the border between Nepal and the Tibet region of China, the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources said Thursday evening. It said that rain forecast to fall over the next three days could more than double the lake's water volume to over 176 million cubic feet, the equivalent of about 2,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

The risk that the new lake could breach its rocky barrier and wreak havoc downstream was "high," the ministry said, potentially causing areas such as the Gyirong border crossing, which had already been decimated by floodwaters, to be "struck by disaster again."

The lake had already started to overflow on Thursday, forcing rescue efforts in Tibet to stop and sending water into the same river that flooded a day earlier, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday morning.

Nepal's disaster management agency on Thursday urged people to move away from riverbanks because of the risk of a second flood.

Another deluge would track the same path as the first, posing the

A new deluge would further pummel areas wrecked this week.

most risk to people on search-and-rescue missions, said Austin Lord, an anthropologist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, who has studied natural disasters in Nepal.

A second flood would be another challenge for rescue and assistance efforts already forced to navigate destroyed infrastructure and damaged communication lines. “Warnings of potential renewed floods are complicating an already challenging operation,” said David Fisher, head of delegation for International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Nepal.

While the flood would most likely be smaller and significantly less deadly, Mr. Lord said, the volume of water in the new lake is

Lily Kuo and Mujib Mashal contributed reporting.

“not insignificant.” He compared its potential impact to that of a flood that hit the same area last year, killing at least eight people, destroying a key border bridge and disrupting trade between Nepal and China.

"We have no way of knowing how the dynamics would play out," Mr. Lord said. "The area is so freshly volatile."

But governments, residents and rescuers would have a crucial advantage this time: a heads-up.

"They're running models of potential floods and visually monitoring the growth," said Alton C. Byers, a senior research associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "They can warn people."

The Himalayas are dotted with thousands of glacial lakes, posing a constant flood risk if large, falling debris crashes into them. The region is known for being prone to natural disasters.

Scientists have said the deadly flood on Wednesday was probably caused by a massive rock landslide colliding with a glacier falling from the high mountains.

Mr. Lord said scientists were also monitoring what seems to be yet another new body of water forming at the initial impact point below the north face of Langtang Lirung, a mountain in Nepal near the border with China.

"It seems to have created a glacial lake that's growing in size," Mr. Lord said. "It may overtop or breach at some point in the coming days."

Glacier's Collapse Was Difficult to Predict, or Detect

By LAURA CHUNG

Devghat, Nepal, remained wrapped in debris on Friday. Residents had little time to evacuate.
RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES

It was a wall of water and mud traveling at such speed that it engulfed buildings in seconds. In the wake of the Nepal flood disaster, questions were being asked about whether the deadly torrent could have been predicted or detected quicker to give communities downstream more time to evacuate.

Geologists say they believe the flash floods in Nepal and Tibet were set off by a dual high-altitude landslide and glacial avalanche that unleashed huge volumes of water. Disaster experts say such events are difficult to forecast.

Most monitoring and early-warning systems for glacial hazards focus on a specific area of risk. For example, water levels in flood-prone glacial lakes — which form when a glacier retreats and meltwater fills the hole left behind — can be monitored for unexpected rises.

Eran Hood, professor of environmental science at the University of Alaska, has spent years studying glacial lake outburst floods from the Mendenhall Glacier and their impact on the city of Juneau, where flooding occurs annually.

He said that scientists relied on real-time video monitoring, laser measurements of water levels and frequent field observations to try to predict when the area might flood and what the risks might be to communities downstream.

But experts in disaster response said the Nepal flooding would have been harder to predict because the collapse was sudden. Forecasting such an event would have required intensive and resource-heavy monitoring across vast areas, they say.

One way to improve monitoring could be to measure seismic activity and use remote sensing technology to build a 3-D image of the area, Professor Hood said. Over time, scientists might be able to look at deformations in the area and assess them for risk of collapse, he added.

"But the Himalayas are very remote. It's not easy to get in there with drones or helicopters," he noted.

There are 2,070 glacial lakes in Nepal, 21 of which are classified as high risk, according to a 2020 report by an intergovernmental body for mountain monitoring. There are many more glacial lakes in the surrounding Himalayan areas of China and India.

Although Nepal has a flood warning system, the country relies on a conventional network of river and lake gauges that is not equipped to issue alerts about the sudden collapse of part of a mountain, according to scientists and disaster response researchers.

The river gauges are designed to detect slower-rising water levels that typically precede floods from monsoons or glacial lakes, not the sort of fast-moving torrents that crashed through on Wednesday, experts said.

Shushil Kumar Shrestha, senior divisional engineer at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority of Nepal, said the country does have a warning system in the region, but “the flood developed so rapidly that people simply did not have enough time to get to safety, even though the system was functioning.”

China has not said what kind of monitoring it undertakes.

To alert towns faster, scientists would have needed better data on seismic activity.

Alton Byers, a glacier hazards expert at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that the authorities needed to look at other measures, such as avoiding building on floodplains and ensuring that evacuation paths were developed and clearly marked.

He pointed to Japan's tsunami warning system as an example. There, signs and broadcasts in different languages tell people what to do if a risk is detected. When a disaster strikes, he added, that information is crucial to increase survival chances.

Mr. Byers visited Nepal after an earthquake in 2015 to help assess the risk posed by three glacial lakes there.

He said that the Nepali government had installed a warning system but that residents reported not knowing what it sounded like or what to do if it went off.

Ensuring greater understanding about warning systems, as well as avoiding building in areas of risk such as flood plains, could improve safety, he said.

"It is no longer a question of if these floods are going to happen, but when the next flood will happen," he added.

NEWS ANALYSIS

6 Months In, Iran's Regime Stands as U.S. Struggles to Meet Its Goals

A state-run rally in Tehran in April backing Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader, who's seen as less risk-averse than his father.
ARASH KHAMOOSHI/POLARIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

From Page AI

American credibility among allies has suffered along with Mr. Trump's own reputation for avoiding costly, interminable wars in the Middle East and promoting "affordability" at home. And it has made his promise to liberate ordinary Iranians look hollow.

"This war has really overtaken the Trump presidency," Ms. Maloney said.

The Regime Survives

"Operation Epic Fury" began with a joint American-Israeli surprise attack on Iran, which killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many of his officials, while badly wounding his son and now successor, Mojtaba.

Weeks of intense bombing destroyed much of Iran's air force and navy and badly damaged its missile program. But the population did not rise up and the leadership did not fracture.

Iran's military restored many of its missile launchers and attacked key American allies in the region as well as American bases, which were inadequately defended. It effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz and caused global economic disruption.

Several thousand Iranians, including children, have died — the numbers are hard to verify as have 18 American service members.

The original “Operation Epic Fury” has been replaced with what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday announced as “Operation Economic Outcast,” designed to isolate Iran further and crash its badly damaged economy.

"This is a sustained campaign to collapse every last option for Iran," Mr. Bessent said. "The campaign we begin today will gather force with every day that follows, and it will not end until this regime stands alone."

Despite rhetorical flourishes about D-Day and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Bessent did not indicate how long this economic war would last, what instruments it would use or what it was aiming to achieve.

Is the American goal once again the collapse of the regime? Or to force the opening of the Strait of Hormuz? Or to bring a more desperate Iran back to the negotiating table to reach a sustainable settlement of both the strait and Iran's nuclear program?

"There is no clear articulation of America's goals," said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a research organization based in London. "But if you don't define behavior change, sanctions as coercion fail."

Iran, already the target of thousands of sanctions, is considered unlikely to surrender be-

cause of a few more. More likely, analysts said, is that the country will respond in time by escalating its attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf and on American allies, which could produce another round of American bombing.

Washington is betting it can achieve through tighter economic strangulation what six months of war could not, said Sina Toossi of the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank.

Washington is trying to do that by demanding international compliance even as its relations with much of the world grow more coercive and transactional, with more countries choosing to ignore Mr. Trump's dictates.

"The capacity to hurt Iran is clear," Mr. Toossi said. "The path from pain to capitulation or collapse is not."

A Risky Stalemate

With American objectives unclear, the confusion is real in Tehran, too, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. They will wonder, he said, "Does the U.S. want to achieve collapse, capitulation or compromise?"

Given that Iran's leaders see the effort to strangle them as another form of warfare, Mr. Vaez said, the new U.S. strategy has two risks. If it fails, the only option left is to return to military escalation. If it works, it may lead Iran to escalate to break the U.S. naval blockade.

"In either case, it won't produce what the administration seems to want, which is to use sanctions as an alternative to war," he said. "It's more likely to be a prelude to another round of military warfare."

Iran's public-facing leadership, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, has been blunt about the economic imperatives to ending the war. They have warned of the consequences of hungry people and economic collapse.

They nonetheless take a consistent line on negotiating with Washington, insisting on a return at minimum to the June Memorandum of Understanding, which Mr. Trump signed but now says is “over.” They also continue to negotiate with Oman about managing the strait in a way Washington is unlikely to accept.

But no matter how much Iran concedes, there is a broad mistrust that Mr. Trump will deliver on economic benefits and sanction relief. Despite the dire economy, the leaders appear united on retaining control of the strait.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is seen as closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and less risk-averse than his father.

Some wonder if Mojtaba is even alive; he has not been seen in public, and the last communiqué from his office was on Aug. 9.

For the moment, the situation is relatively static, a sort of phony war, with neither side firing at each other and relatively loose blockades of the strait in both directions, allowing some oil to escape.

The new strategy of enhanced economic strangulation has the benefit of being gradual and hard to monitor, lowering the temperature on the conflict, which may help Mr. Trump and the Republicans in the run-up to November's midterm elections, while promising that victory, really, is just around the corner.

But the stalemate is also risky, said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations. “There is an increasing view in the White House that you can’t deal with this Islamic republic,” she said. “It’s a dangerous moment, with both Tehran and D.C. concluding that no deal is possible with the other.”

Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, remains puzzled as to why Mr. Trump has not taken any of the available offramps to ending an enormously unpopular war at home. By pushing even more economic sanctions, he said, Trump officials “are pretending they’re still fighting instead of pretending that they’ve won” — or admitting that they’ve lost.

As ever, Iran's leadership won't pay the cost, Mr. Shapiro said: It will be its people who do.

Stalemate Prompts Iranians to Relinquish Most Hopes

By LEILY NIKOUNAZAR and YEGANEH TORBATI

ARASH KHAMOOSHI/POLARIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Grand Bazaar in Tehran last month. The rial, Iran's currency, has plunged in value this year.

When the United States and Israel rained down missiles and bombs on Iran to start their war six months ago, there were some Iranians who, within a swirl of conflicting emotions, saw in the destruction something unexpected: hope.

"The one thing I'm certain about is that I wasn't sad," said Negar, a 35-year-old lawyer, describing feelings that were echoed by other Iranians interviewed via voice memos and text messages. "There was anxiety. There was worry. But there was no grief when the war began."

Six months later, the hope that Negar and other Iranians had that the war might presage a better future is largely gone, replaced with gnawing worries about the future, cynicism about the intentions of the United States and growing desperation from living in a failing economy.

The New York Times has regularly spoken with Iranians throughout the war, and not everyone was as hopeful as Negar and other critics of the government. Many Iranians support the system and have stood behind it, or opposed both the government and the idea that it could be swept away through military force.

But whether they initially welcomed the U.S.-Israeli military campaign or not, many Iranians say they no longer think that the government is set to crumble and are more focused on surviving an enduring economic crisis that the conflict has made much worse.

"I can't even begin to describe the level of anxiety we have about the future and what's going to happen," said Negar, who, like everyone else interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of retribution from the government.

Fahimeh, 43, a former model living in Tehran, said hopelessness had taken over. "I'm not waiting for anything anymore," she said. "I've stopped trying to move forward and have switched to simply trying to survive."

For some Iranians, President Trump's erratic policymaking has been an inflection point. After the United States failed to achieve its stated goals, including preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, changing the government and obliterating its missile program, Mr. Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization, strike the country's infrastructure and send the country "back to the Stone Ages." U.S. and Israeli strikes also hit or damaged places

Shirin Hakim and Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.

that are important to civilians, including steel plants, petrochemical centers, bridges and cultural sites.

Several Iranians said they now view the United States as fundamentally self-interested, but also incompetent and inconsistent.

"I didn't think they would put on such a show of contradictory and childish positions," said Mostafa, 38, a technology worker in Iran's northern Gilan Province, of Mr. Trump and his administration.

The United States is now betting that increased economic pressure will force the Iranian government to succumb by curbing its nuclear program or fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for Middle Eastern oil that it has effectively blockaded since the start of the war.

American and Israeli pressure on Iran, including killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, at the start of the war, has failed to force the country's leaders to back down. Instead, the government has been more resilient than its critics expected and become more authoritarian.

Many Iranians celebrated when Ayatollah Khamenei was killed, but he was replaced as supreme leader by his son, Mojtaba. The authorities have shown even less tolerance for dissent than before, executing dozens of political prisoners and going after critics.

"The Islamic Republic is convinced that it has defeated the world and that everyone is afraid of it," said Behzad, 44, a public relations executive in Tehran.

Ali, 42, an engineer in the northern Mazandaran Province, echoed this view. "At this point, I have much less hope that the Islamic Republic will fall," he said.

The most immediate preoccupation for most Iranians, however, is figuring out how to survive in an economy that was in free fall even before the United States unveiled new restrictions this week.

The rate of inflation has soared to 84 percent, the central bank said this week. Food prices are rising weekly, and even eggs are out of reach for a lot of middle- and working-class Iranians. Anxiety that the price of gasoline, which is heavily subsidized in Iran, may soon increase has led to long lines at gas stations.

The Iranian currency, the rial, has plunged in value and hit a record low of roughly two million to the dollar in recent days, causing prices of imported goods to surge.

"Everyone is scrambling to buy and stock up on food, especially Pakistani rice," said Marzieh, 44, a teacher in Bandar Abbas, a southern Iranian port city. The south of the country has been far more affected by the war than other areas, as the United States launched airstrikes this summer to try to dislodge Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Even staples, like chickpeas and beans, have become more expensive, Marzieh said, and she had given up on going to cafes and hosting people at home.

"What's frightening is that our salaries are already running out before the new month even begins," she said.

On Friday, Iranian state outlets published a statement from Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei that acknowledged Iran's economic struggles and called on the administration of President Masoud Pezeshkian to pay attention to "economic and livelihood challenges, including inflation, unemployment, the management of prices and the markets for goods and services." The statement said that increasing domestic production was the "main key to resolving all these issues."

Given all the pressure, several Iranians said they expected a new round of protests to begin soon, despite the authorities' use of lethal force to crush nationwide demonstrations in January. Those protests began in late December after the value of the rial plunged, and the currency has sunk in value even further. Still, Iranian officials have tried to assure the public that they can manage the situation.

If the government reduced access to heavily subsidized fuel, that would put further stress on many Iranians. A 2019 increase in gasoline prices instigated huge demonstrations.

"You cannot stop an economic uprising with anything," said Esmaeil, 37, an artist in Tehran. "War won't stop it, and violence won't stop it."

For now, many are just trying to get through the increasingly difficult days.

Iranians, Esmaeil said, had fallen into a "black hole."

"People are hungry, confused and unable to find a way out," he said. "We are alone in a catastrophic situation of chaos and abandonment."

U.S. Appeals Court Overturns Landmark Iraq War Verdict

By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ

A three-judge appeals panel on Friday overturned a landmark jury verdict that found a Virginia contractor liable for the abuse of three Iraqis detained in 2003 and 2004.

The same panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had previously upheld the verdict. But that was before the Supreme Court in June set new limits on the federal courts' jurisdiction over violations of international law.

The Supreme Court's opinion involved a different matter. But in an unsigned ruling, the appeals court panel wrote that the new precedent "effectively overruled" their previous finding that U.S. courts had jurisdiction over the plaintiffs' claims through the Alien Tort Statute.

Friday's decision suggests that one of the longest-running cases on the federal docket could be headed toward a conclusion. During two trials, both held in 2024, jurors heard testimony from the plaintiffs, Salah Hasan Al-Ejaili, a journalist, Suhail Al Shimari, a middle-school principal, and Asa'ad Al-Zuba'e, a fruit vendor.

The three men were arrested after the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003 and took over Abu Ghraib, a prison outside Baghdad used by Saddam Hussein's government. They were held on a special tier for detainees believed to possess valuable intelligence. According to military officers cited in a Red Cross report, "70 to 90 percent" of Iraqis who were detained by U.S. and allied forces "had been arrested by mistake."

At the prison, the men said they were subjected to harsh and degrading treatment at the hands of their captors, including threats against family members and being chained to pipes overnight.

The trials marked the first time that civilian jurors had heard accounts of America's post-9/11 torture program directly from detainees.

The plaintiffs could now file a new lawsuit, appeal to the Supreme Court, or ask the case to be heard again by a larger appellate panel.

The first jury that heard the case was unable to reach a verdict. A second jury awarded each of the men \$3 million in compensation and another \$11 million in punitive damages.

The money was to be paid by CACI International, a Virginia-based military contractor that supplied interrogators to the U.S. Army at the prison. The jury found that CACI conspired with

SHURAN HUANG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Salah Hasan Al-Ejaili in 2024. He sued a Virginia contractor with two other men over their treatment at Abu Ghraib.

U.S. soldiers to "inflict torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" on the three detainees.

"They believed us and sided with us," said Mr. Al-Ejaili in a statement on Friday. "History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice."

Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, declined to say whether his clients would pursue further recourse. He called the ruling “a high-level jurisdictional decision,” and added, “it does nothing to wipe away the jury’s conclusion that CACI was responsible for the torture and abuse of men in Abu Ghraib, including our clients.”

A spokesman for CACI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The panel that handed down Friday's ruling consisted of Judges Henry F. Floyd and Stephanie Thacker, both Obama appointees, and Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr., a Trump appointee. They instructed the district court judge who oversaw the two trials, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, to dismiss the case.

The Alien Tort Statute is a 1789 law that gives non-U.S. citizens the right to sue in federal court for some violations of international law. The recent Supreme Court ruling limited its scope to cases where there were violations of the rights of passport holders, “infringement of the rights of ambassadors, and piracy.” In that case, the court ruled that members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement could not sue a U.S. company that they claimed helped facilitate the Chinese government’s efforts to target and torture them.

Dunguaire Castle in County Galway. Technically a tower house, it was built around 1510 as a defensive lookout and residence. It needs about \$6 million in repairs.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUCY GARRETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ireland Loves to Throw Doors Open. Just Not At This One Castle.

By DAN BARRY

KINVARA, Ireland — The tourists come by the busload, disgorging from motorized behemoths that seem improbable for many Irish roads. With cellphones at the ready, they head for the photogenic Dunguaire Castle, a majestic 16th-century bastion rising beside a swan-favored corner of Galway Bay.

Overlooking the sea-scented village of Kinvara, Dunguaire (pronounced doon-GWEER-ah) could well be Ireland's most photographed castle, its image in countless brochures and promotions. But a sign on the entrance gate suggests that Ireland, known as the land of 100,000 welcomes, might have to reduce that number by at least one: "CASTLE & GROUNDS CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC."

There to say hello instead one recent morning was Fran O'Reilly, a retired researcher wearing a broad-brimmed hat as protection from the day's Irish rarity of sustained sunshine. In her hand was a document featuring a QR code that, when scanned, opened to a prewritten email of disappointment, already addressed to various government officials, to which visitors could add their own words of dismay.

With the zeal of a seasoned campaigner, Ms. O'Reilly approached clutches of puzzled tourists to explain that not long ago, the castle was open for tours and banquets — until, she said, government officials got in their own way.

“About three years ago, they had a fight about money, and instead of sorting it out, they closed the gate,” she told a family from France. “So people like you, thousands of people every week, come from around the world to see this castle, and can’t.”

One of the French tourists scanned the QR code to join an effort that, at last count, had convinced 2,400 people from more than 50 countries to send missives of disenchantment to the powers that be. A quick perusal showed notes from a tour operator in Denmark, a study-abroad program director in the United States and many, many disgruntled Irish people.

"This place is one of the reasons that tourists come here, and what do they find: Ireland is closed," one wrote.

When asked about the status of Dunguaire, the Shannon Airport Group, the government entity that owns the castle and closed the site in 2023, forwarded a brief statement that said, in part: “Relevant parties are actively exploring options for the future ownership and stewardship of the site with a view to securing its long-term protection and conservation. As these discussions remain ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”

For Ms. O'Reilly, member of a grass-roots group called Save Kinvara Castle, the statement was as vaporous as the exhaust fumes of the idling buses near the tower. "So this petition is a way of trying to say, 'Enough,'” she said. "Get on with it."

The castle's name translates as "fort of Guaire," a seventh-century king. Technically a tower house, the structure was built around 1510 by the ruling O'Hynes clan as a defensive lookout and residence, but transformed over time into a symbol of permanence as integral to Kinvara's identity as the sea.

From the outdoor seating at establishments along the quay — Connolly's pub, perhaps, or the Pier Head restaurant — visitors can sit and, glass in hand, consider how the 75-foot tower has been a stone-silent witness to the evolving Irish story.

It was there, defining the horizon, as a place with a few crude buildings developed into the busy port of Kinvara. As the potatoes were harvested, the seaweed collected and the main street bustled on market days. As tenant farmers chafed under British landlords. As famine struck.

The mid-19th century calamity known as the Great Hunger devastated Kinvara with evictions, emigration and death. In a cow field a short walk from the castle, a modest monument marking the mass graves of hundreds features a prayer in Irish that translates as "May they all have a bed in Heaven."

A diminished Kinvara took generations to recover, but life continued. In the castle's shadows, people watered their horses, repaired the red sails of their single-masted Galway hookers and gossiped in forever-pubs like Green's, where the weight of whiskey still sags the shelves. Some fought in the war of independence early in the 20th century, even tearing down the British police barracks on the main road, then endured the civil war that followed.

After the author and poet Oliver St. John Gogarty took possession of the castle in the 1920s, the building became a gathering place for the literary lights of the Celtic Revival. Then, in the 1960s, the building came into the hands of Lady Ampthill, who had once rocked British society with a divorce centering on an unconsummated marriage and a “virgin birth.”

John Conneely, a retired teacher steeped in local history, recalled seeing her ladyship riding sidesaddle in the fields and driving into the village with her two hounds beside her. Ever aware of her elevated station — she once referred to local residents as “natives” — Lady

‘We’re not asking you to build the castle,’ an exasperated fan said.

Ampthill is nevertheless credited with completing a restoration of Dunguaire before selling the castle in the early 1970s to a government entity overseeing regional tourism, a forerunner of the Shannon Airport Group.

"Otherwise, the castle would have fallen down," Mr. Conneely said.

Dunguaire looked on as ancient pubs closed and chic cafes opened, as the local hotel became a refuge for asylum seekers, as the annual boat festival brightened the bay with red sails. As Granny Brogan kept watch from her candy shop window, and as a white-bearded German fisherman, Rainer Krause, rowed out from the pier every morning, for decades, in search of mackerel.

For most of the last half-century, Dunguaire was open to the public, offering tours, lectures and medieval banquets. It became an obligatory stop for visitors touring the West Coast of Ireland, a way station between the city of Galway and the Cliffs of Moher.

Several years ago, the Shannon Group, later rebranded as the Shannon Airport Group, worked out deals to transfer ownership of

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Fran O'Reilly, left at center, with American tourists outside the closed castle. Below left, the main street in Kinvara. Ms. O'Reilly urges visitors to sign an online petition expressing dismay over the closing.

various tourist sites under its aegis to local authorities. Clare County Council took over Bunratty Castle. Limerick County Council took over King John's Castle. But a similar plan to have Galway County Council acquire Dunguaire became mired in a bureaucratic bog, and the castle was closed.

So began years of structural assessments, financial projections and back-and-forth discussions, all rooted in Galway County Council's refusal to take ownership without significant government funding for a nearly \$6 million restoration.

Michael Owens, director of services for Galway County Council, said in an email that while the council did not have the “financial capacity” to reopen the landmark, officials recognized the castle’s historical value and “potential to serve as a critical tourism driver.” He also said that the national Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage was now “exploring the acquiring of title.”

But the talks have yet to open Dunguaire's doors, leaving the Galway county councilor Geraldine Donohue to imagine the deterioration being caused by the lack of proper maintenance.

“Here we are, going all over the world promoting Ireland and how wonderful we are,” Ms. Donohue said. “And yet we can’t get together five million to open one of the most iconic, most photographed castles in the world.”

"We're not asking you to build the castle," she said. "It's built!"

Outside Dunguaire, members of Save Kinvara Castle continued their campaign to shame the government into action. At his station near the locked gate, Eamonn Coy, a retiree, worked the economics angle, saying that tourism was essential to Kinvara, which has just 800 residents.

"The idea that we turn our backs on that is utter stupidity," Mr. Coy said of the potential earnings.

Ms. O'Reilly greeted tourists disembarking from buses and cars in the dusty parking lot. She emphasized the lost opportunity — the missed chance to step back in time — to a pair of Canadian tourists who agreed that a banquet at the castle might have been worth staying the night.

The Canadian visitors walked up to the soaring monument of Ireland's past, vacant now, save for the ghosts. On the other side of the padlocked gate, overgrown grass lapped against a portal that once led to souvenirs and the 16th century.

Then, like so many before them, they returned to their vehicle and headed on to the more welcoming Cliffs of Moher.

Terror Charge Added to Case On Defacing Trump Course

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Buses arriving at Dunguaire Castle this month, despite it being closed for the last three years.

LONDON — Scottish prosecutors will try to prove that pro-Palestinian activists accused of vandalizing one of President Trump's Scottish golf resorts last year committed acts connected to terrorism. The move is the latest in a widening effort in Britain to apply terrorism laws to protest groups.

In March 2025, prosecutors say, seven members of the British protest group Palestine Action broke into the resort, Trump Turnberry. They dug up turf and damaged sprinklers. They sprayed the clubhouse with red paint. And they emblazoned “Gaza is not 4 sale” on part of the course.

Charged with malicious damage to property, all seven are set to face a judge in a preliminary hearing in Glasgow on Monday.

But the prosecutors' 16-page indictment also argues that the vandalism was "aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection," which could lead to a harsher sentence if the accused were convicted.

In a social media post soon after the activists were arrested last year, Mr. Trump described them as “the terrorists who attacked the beautiful Turnberry” and said “they did serious damage, and will hopefully be treated harshly.”

At the time, Palestine Action had claimed responsibility for several acts of vandalism, mostly against British sites connected to an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems. Three months after the Turnberry episode, the group said two of its members had vandalized planes at a British military base to protest what it described as Britain's military support for Israel. The group posted footage of the episode online.

Days later, the government of Keir Starmer, the prime minister at the time, announced it would ban Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, a move that prompted fierce debate over free speech and the right to protest.

The ban was the first time Britain had used antiterrorism powers against a group for “serious damage to property” rather than because of the use or threat of violence against people.

Legal experts said the indictment against the protesters draws on 25-year-old laws originally designed to severely stiffen sentences for people convicted of murder or other serious crimes in the course of a terror attack.

Prosecutors in Britain have begun aiming to apply the same provisions to political protesters, with varying degrees of success.

Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, accused prosecutors of trying to advance the agendas of Mr. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's leader, by pushing to sentence protesters as if they were terrorists.

“By hitting the profits of arms companies and by daring to spray paint on the golf course owned by the demagogue who has enabled Netanyahu's crimes, we made powerful enemies,” she said in a statement. “The British government chose to appease them by criminalizing us as ‘terrorists.’”

That designation led to the arrests of thousands of protesters for holding signs saying: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action." The terrorism law used against Palestine Action criminalizes the wearing, display or publication of anything expressing support for a banned group.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration also designated Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, saying in a statement that the decision “complements the U.K.’s proscription.”

Jonathan Hall, an independent adviser to the British government on terrorism laws, said the authorities were right to want more tools to prevent terrorism, which is broadly defined in British law and can include serious property damage. But he said the government was grappling with when to apply those tools. "The really tricky thing," he said, "and I've got no brilliant answer for this, is where do you draw the line?"

Amnesty International has accused the British government of overreach. In the case of the vandalism at Turnberry, Felix Jakens, Amnesty's director of communications, said it was “completely disproportionate to equate painting on a golf course with terrorism,” describing the defendants' actions as “nonviolent protest.”

While in office, Mr. Starmer rejected charges that his government was endangering free speech by targeting protesters.

In February, judges at England's High Court ruled that the government's ban of Palestine Action was unlawful, saying it was disproportionate and breached the right to protest. The Court of Appeal overturned that ruling in June. The Supreme Court will consider the case in November.

In May, he said that he wanted "tougher action" against protesters who chant slogans that cause fear among British Jews.

JAMES BROOKS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
MARCO DI MARCO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Many opponents fear that joining the bloc could hurt Iceland's major fishing industry. Top right, a supporter with a T-shirt reading "Yes, to see." An opposing sign on hay bales read "E.U. no thanks."

Bitter Debate Over E.U. Pursuit Is Dividing a Generally Genial Iceland

From Page A1

what could be a watershed moment for its 400,000 people. If the vote passes, the country will start a yearslong process of E.U. accession negotiations. A second referendum, on whether to actually join the bloc, would be held once a deal was reached.

Many Icelanders have spent months wrestling with how to speak with each other about the divisive choice.

"It has become something of a 'hot potato,'” Arni Ingolfsson, a 55-year-old program manager at a tech company, wrote in an email. He said he was avoiding talking to his co-workers and even a close relative about the issue.

"It's bombarding everyone, from every angle — everywhere,"

said Lisa Margret Gunnarsdottir, 31, an advocate for Icelandic students. She said that there were extreme disagreements in her immediate family and that no one talked about anything else.

"The sauna is hot and uncomfortable these days," said Greta Gudjonsdottir, 57, who works in tourism. She said she had not yet decided how she would vote but just wanted it over with.

With this vote, Icelanders are trying to figure out the best way forward in an increasingly precarious and divided world. For years, they had little reason to doubt that their country would remain safe, stable and sovereign. Then NATO, to which Iceland has long entrusted its security, threatened to crack under pressure from President Trump, while wars, climate change and tariffs shook the global economy.

Some “yes” voters say that Iceland should seek strength in numbers — and the financial stability of being part of one of the world’s biggest economic blocs — by moving toward joining the E.U.

Many opponents worry that membership in the bloc would cost Iceland its autonomy on several fronts. Icelanders are acutely aware that their country only gained full independence in 1944, after centuries of Norwegian and Danish rule.

Fishing is widely seen as the biggest concern about E.U. membership, with many “no” voters worrying that joining the bloc could hurt this major industry.

"It feels very existential, this debate," said Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Bifrost University in Iceland. "It's really a fight over where Iceland belongs." Of course, Iceland has had contentious times before.

The 2008 global financial crisis hit the country particularly hard — its banks collapsed, and its currency plummeted. The strife led Iceland to explore E.U. membership, but that effort fizzled after its economy started to recover.

Still, many Icelanders live with the memory of that economic precarity, which is animating the debate for both sides. Some think joining the European economic bloc could help lower Iceland's high inflation and interest rates, while others worry that it could burden the country with regulations that make it less nimble.

Ms. Bjornsdottir and her husband, Thor Magnusson, who were having the recent family dinner in Talknafjordur, make their living off fish. He goes out alone on a boat. They work together to prepare the catch and sell the fish out of a glass house, which runs on the honor system.

Like other Icelandic fishermen, they believe that staying out of the E.U. will give them more control over their own fate.

The discourse over the referendum has become so heated that Margret Einarsdottir, a law professor at Reykjavik University, said she saw echoes of American-style polarization and misinformation in some of the ugliest corners of the domestic debate.

"I'm sad about how much anger is in this discussion," she said. Icelanders do not shy away from disagreement. But this feels different, she and other experts said.

"We are not used to it," Dr. Einarsdottir said.

Others see things more positively, saying it is a good thing that Icelanders can disagree openly but cordially, and still keep their tight communal bonds.

"It's a lively debate, which is also a very healthy sign of democracy," said Bjarni Mar Magnusson, a partner at a law firm, Polestar, and a former dean of the law faculty at Bifrost University.

Hallgrimur Oddsson, the founder of Evropustraumar, an Icelandic think tank focused on relations with the E.U., said that despite the acrimony, Icelanders still share the same values.

"At the end of the day," he added, "we can still talk to our neighbor."

Plan to Cast Migrants Out Of Malaysia Raises Fears

By ZUNAIRA SAIEED

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Two years ago, Muhiduzamal fled religious persecution and civil war in his native Myanmar, traversing land and sea for four months before arriving in Malaysia. As at home, he found work in a paddy field, and moved into a traditional Malay home, a wooden structure on stilts.

He tried to register as a refugee with a United Nations agency in Malaysia, and was waiting for an appointment. But without that status, Malaysia considered Mr. Muhiduzamal, 35, who is a Rohingya Muslim and uses only one name, to be in the country illegally. In June, he was arrested and sent to a detention center, his brother said.

Malaysia has more than 10,000 undocumented migrants from Myanmar in custody. Last month, it announced plans to send about half of them back home. The migrants, their families and rights groups say that they are worried that once the migrants are back in Myanmar, the military government there will conscript them — men and women — and force them into battle. Rohingya fear the worst: They are stateless in their own country and have suffered what the United Nations and the United States have determined was a genocide conducted by the Myanmar military.

"It is better to kill us in Malaysia rather than send us back to Myanmar," said Mohammad, 25, who has refugee status and lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, but asked to be identified only by part of his name while discussing his brother's case.

"My brother will be killed if he is sent back, as the junta in Myanmar will send him to the frontline to fight."

Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of people from Myanmar have sought refuge in Malaysia in the hope of escaping ethnic cleansing and a brutal junta. Tens of thousands have refugee status in Malaysia but they still face intensifying discrimination. Hundreds of undocumented migrants have died in detention.

In a statement released on Thursday, Malaysia's Home Ministry said that the influx of migrants had become a “major financial burden, caused serious social problems and created a real security threat to the country.” It added that about 1,500 migrants in detention centers would be “voluntarily repatriated” next month, using a Myanmar Navy fleet of two warships and a hospital ship.

Rohingya refugees were evicted in Malaysia, where more than 10,000 undocumented migrants from Myanmar are in custody.
HASNOOR HUSSAIN/REUTERS

"There is no clarity on what the government means by voluntarily," said Ramachelvam Manimuthu, the president of the National Human Rights Society, a prominent nonprofit in Malaysia. "Was it a free and informed choice? Does voluntary deportation also mean detainees were given a choice of being registered as refugees?"

Fear and panic is rippling through the Myanmar migrant community.

"Everyone is on alert," said Bibi, an undocumented 18-year-old Rohingya woman who has lived in Malaysia for over a year and asked to be identified only by part of her name. "We are scared of the authorities and the public."

Yap Lay Sheng, of Fortify Rights, a nonprofit, said, "People are skipping work even when it means losing daily income and keeping their children from refugee schools because they fear being targeted by the public and authorities."

Malaysia does not grant political asylum to migrants. But if they are given refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — even after arriving illegally — Malaysia allows them to stay.

Now Malaysia is starting its own registration system for refugees. On Thursday, the Home Ministry said that over 4,000 detainees, primarily Rohingya, will be subject to this program. Migrant advocates say the registration process must provide every person with a fair, individualized assessment of their protection needs, including access to interpreters, legal assistance, and a right of appeal.

"The government must expedite the refugee registration, and make sure that refugee cardholders have lawful access to work, education, housing, and guarantee against the arbitrary arrests, detention and pushbacks," Mr. Yap said.

Fahmi Fadzil, Malaysia's communications minister and the government spokesman, has said that migrants would not be deported if their lives are threatened in Myanmar, saying that the authorities had been assessing who could be returned and under what conditions.

About five years ago, soon after the coup that brought the military to power in Myanmar, Malaysia said it repatriated over a thousand migrants. It is unclear how they fared.

"For people who fled Myanmar seeking safety, forced return represents a profound betrayal of the protection they sought abroad," said Nickey Diamond, who is originally from Myanmar and on Fortify Rights' board.

Hla Maung Thein, 32, an undocumented ethnic Chin migrant from Myanmar, was arrested this month and is being held at a detention center in Kuala Lumpur, according to his wife. She added that sending him back to Myanmar, even if he got home to his native Rakhine state, would amount to a death sentence.

The U.N. refugee agency has said that conditions in Myanmar are not safe for migrants to return.

"I have heard that people who were previously sent back by ship never made it home," said Nwe Nwe, his wife, who also asked to be identified by part of her name. "Even if my husband makes it home, he will certainly be forced to serve military service in the Arakan Army," she said, referring to the rebel group that controls most of the state.

Mr. Manimuthu of the National Human Rights Society said the Malaysian government should put a hold on the deportations until there is an international consensus that it is safe for detainees to return.

"History has shown we cannot accept the words of Myanmar authorities," he added. "The repatriation of refugees cannot be based on hope and prayer. It must be solid evidence that it is safe for returning."

WHITE HOUSE MEMO

COLE BURSTON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
Wielding a Sharpie to change Lake Ontario to Lake America was President Trump's latest branding effort meant to slight an ally.

Atop a Wartime Leader's List: Lake What?

By KATIE ROGERS

WASHINGTON — Americans hadn't seen President Trump in a few days, not since he diverted from an education policy event on Monday to give reporters a tour of the new helipad he is building on the South Lawn of the White House.

A curious citizen may wonder: What has Mr. Trump been up to in the days since we last saw our wartime president? What are his priorities?

We all got an answer on Thursday, when Mr. Trump decided to take a private event, previously billed as a “Signing Time” session on his daily schedule, and make it public. He beckoned reporters into the Oval Office, where he sat next to a large poster of the Great Lakes, which were displayed alongside the words “Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.”

This is not really possible, as the Great Lakes are perfect as they are. But Mr. Trump decided to bump renaming Lake Ontario to the top of his priority list anyway. With a flourish of his executive-order Sharpie, Mr. Trump rechristened the body of water Lake America, sticking it to the Canadians as trade negotiations continued to devolve.

This was only Mr. Trump's latest maximally patriotic (and, some may say, diplomatically petty) branding exercise meant to slight an old ally. On the first day of his second term, Mr. Trump pulled out that Sharpie and — Presto! — turned the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, as part of a broader effort to "honor American greatness." On Thursday, Mr. Trump also mused that he would rename an ocean and complete the set.

As one of the five Great Lakes of North America, Lake Ontario didn't ask for this. The lake existed peacefully long before humans arrived and started divvying up their shares. Now, there is a dividing line separating the United States and Canada, drawn right through the pancreas-shaped body of water. Mr. Trump's executive order asserts that the deepest waters of the lake are in the United States, along with most of the lake's volume.

Inside the Oval Office, a reporter asked Mr. Trump a question relevant to his priorities: Why target allies over adversaries?

“Well, they haven’t treated us well,” Mr. Trump said. “The Canadian officials have treated us very badly; they’re nasty people. They charge our farmers 400 percent tariffs. They’ve been doing it for a long time. And I had them figured out in my first term, and I did some pretty strong things and had it getting pretty good. And then the election was rigged, and now I'm coming back and doing it the way it — and finishing the job."

(Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Canadians bring exorbitant tariffs against American farmers, and those past assertions, just like this one, were misleading.)

Mr. Trump's rebranding-focused executive orders can direct federal agencies to adopt the new names, but other countries do not have to acknowledge the change, and the Canadians definitely do not seem interested in doing so.

"The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari'io, which, appropriately, means 'the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.'” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada wrote on X — in English, and in French — in a rebuttal to Mr. Trump's decision. "The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

"We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always."

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, has grown frustrated with souring trade talks and escalating lake threats, and has said the president could kiss a certain body part — the French call it a derrière. On Thursday, though, Mr. Ford issued a succinct response: “It’s Lake Ontario to Canadians and the rest of the world. Now and forever.”

And so goes another Thursday in the doldrums of Mr. Trump's August, when he has poked his head up long enough to cause a diplomatic disturbance before retreating from the public eye to turn to other pressing matters. (Some supporters suggested that this was all a highly strategic way to whip the news media up: "Trump Controls the News Cycle Volume 87187585124782," Tricia McLaughlin, a former Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, wrote on X in support of Mr. Trump's work that day.)

On his Air Force One flight to a (private) Republican National Committee event in Houston, Mr. Trump kept the public updated on staffing — Ben Moss is the new White House staff secretary — and his thoughts on presidential performance, posting a graphic of past presidents next to rankings ranging from “THE GREATEST” (take a wild guess) to “FAILURES” (now take another one). He posted an image declaring that the war in Iran was “MISSION ACCOM-PLISHED” — not quite true — and he congratulated Nvidia on a record sales year.

He eventually circled back to the matter of renaming the lake, posting a letter from Dr. Ned Mamula, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, who told him that his wish had been granted.

"The change will begin occurring in printed documents over the next several days," Dr. Mamula wrote.

Mr. Trump's job approval rating has reached record lows. The war he began against Iran turned six months old on Friday, which is about five months longer than he had originally promised. And old allies — the Canadians, of all people — are growing comfortable showing greater degrees of defiance in the face of Mr. Trump's threat.

But at least this mission, this matter of renaming a lake, was accomplished.

The New York Times

Interns at the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women in Herndon, Va., writing thank-you notes during a session.
CAROLINE GUTMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

• • • • • • •

CASE OVERVIEW TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. ET AL. v. BARRARA ET AL.

On January 20, 2023, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14160...[t]he Order provides that children born in the United States of parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present here are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.

- Does the Executive have the power to issue this order?

A research project. Many participants said they felt themselves scraping against expectations from both sides of politics.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Lucy Carney, 19, an intern who once confronted a male classmate when she heard that he had quoted Andrew Tate.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Young Conservatives Aim for Besieged Ideal: The Working Mom

Supporting Women In Life Path Criticized By the Left and Right

CAROLINE GUTMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Lynn Williams, an etiquette expert, instructing interns on the different types of cutlery. They receive a crash course in practical and professional skills.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Clare Boothe Luce, left, was a congresswoman, diplomat and conservative activist. Right, Kimberly Begg, president of the Luce Center, a nonprofit.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

By VIVIAN YEE

HERNDON, Va. — The young women bent their heads over their books one morning in July — studying, if such things can be studied, how a woman should be.

One of them read aloud from a passage about Mary Wollstonecraft, the early women's rights advocate, who had slammed the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau for writing, in her words, that “man was made to reason, woman to feel.”

Kimberly Begg, the president of the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women, stood at the front of the conference room, leading one of her periodic book club sessions for summer interns and young staff members.

She had designed this discussion of 18th-century ideas specifically to confront a charged new political movement.

"I actually hear this a lot right now, that women are 'feelers' and men are 'thinkers,' Ms. Begg said. "Wollstonecraft is saying if we embrace this," she added, "we are going to be not just harming women, but all of society."

For the women listening, Rousseau's assessment did not match reality. But it did sound familiar.

These days, the idea that women are intellectually inferior leaches steadily from manosphere podcasts, influencers who promote traditional gender roles and ultraconservative pulpits.

Ms. Begg, a lawyer with five children who often draws on her Catholic faith, has heard some conservatives pushing for a return to rigid gender norms, with women firmly planted at home. One of her sons told her that some of his male high school classmates have openly questioned whether women should be able to vote.

From a squat brick office park in Northern Virginia, the Luce Center is staking out what seems like a fraught position these days: that it is possible to be a conservative woman who values motherhood and family, but one with a career, an egalitarian marriage and a voice.

High-powered women are not exactly missing from the conservative world. President Trump has hired women for prominent positions, including his chief of staff and press secretary, as well as several in his cabinet (though many have left or been fired). Erika Kirk has led Turning Point USA since her husband and the group's founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated last year. Many of the Make America Healthy Again movement's biggest stars are women.

Yet such women, even those encouraging conventional gender roles, are often told to be quiet. Some red-pill conservatives have rebuked Ms. Kirk for her public role away from her children. They have chastised Alex Clark, a star MAHA podcaster, and Brett Cooper, a YouTube commentator, for having a platform.

And every summer, it seemed to Ms. Begg, more Luce Center interns have stories about coming face to face with open sexism from classmates, friends and boyfriends.

Mary White, an earnest 19-year-old bookworm in Invisalign braces, found herself debating a male classmate at the University of Dallas about the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Women tend to lean liberal, he told her. Replacing women's suffrage with "household voting," in which husbands cast ballots for their wives and families, would fix that, he said, echoing arguments that have circulated online and in far-right circles.

Another intern, Lucy Carney, 19, a forthright politics and government major, was the only woman in her class to serve last year in student government at Benedictine College in Kansas.

She said she once confronted a male classmate when she heard that he had quoted Andrew Tate, the manosphere influencer accused of rape and human trafficking: "So I guess women just want to be raped."

Anastasia Leffas, 22, a junior staff member and former intern, also had a story from college. At coffee with a male classmate, she mentioned being interested in law school. "I don't know if women should be lawyers," he said, casually.

"I really think he just wanted women to thrive, and very faultily thought that that's how women best thrive," she said. She retorted, "That was truly absurd of you to say, because I think I'd be a much better lawyer than you would be."

It isn't only men. Anastasia Shanahan, 22, Ms. Begg's assistant and another former intern, was startled when two female friends said they were unsure whether women could lead. "Of course they can," she said.

The Luce Center, a donor-funded non-profit, says its mission is to mold young women into “strong, conservative leaders” like the center’s eponym, the congresswoman, diplomat and conservative activist Clare Boothe Luce.

With a new book, campus events and other programming, Ms. Begg is trying to offer a vision of womanhood and marriage that she says avoids the “false choices” presented by conservatives and liberals.

From some conservatives, including people Ms. Begg considers ideological allies on other issues, the message is “a diminishing of women’s intelligence and a discouraging of women from using their gifts, their God-given gifts,” she said.

From some on the left, young women hear “the denial of biological sex and the devaluing of marriage, motherhood and family,” Ms. Begg said. (Many liberals, however, say conservatives like Ms. Begg are limiting women by emphasizing motherhood’s importance and de-emphasizing the right to bodily autonomy, including for transgender people.)

The summer internship program, which is paid, offers Ms. Begg another avenue to counter what she sees as harmful messages.

The interns don't fetch coffee or answer phones. Instead, they receive a crash course in practical and professional skills, alongside tutelage in conservative principles. One day is dedicated to media training and public speaking, another to constitutional law. In July, the interns visited the United Nations in New York. A National Review columnist, Caroline Downey, came to speak about what she described as Gen Z's dangerous embrace of socialism. Later came training in self-defense and firearms and a tour of the Museum of the Bible.

One morning in July, an etiquette expert, Lynn Williams, gave a lecture on silver table settings (asparagus servers, tomato servers, five-o'clock teaspoons), what to carry to your gala dinner table ("a lady does not walk with a cocktail") and when to blot your lipstick (before you sit down, lest you smear the linens, and before every sip, lest you sully the crystal).

They practiced introducing parents to their future bosses — perhaps a politician or a judge, she suggested. They discussed sending thank-you emails after job interviews.

"Given some of the careers that you all are pursuing, if you're here in Washington, chances are you will be invited to black ties and white ties and other very special events where you're expected to know what to do," she told them, before elucidating the proper writing of a thank-you note.

As the summer went on, as the 13 interns debated their majors, next internships and careers, their conversations sometimes brought to mind the mid-2010s, when “The Future is Female” T-shirts and tote bags seemed to be everywhere — not so improbable, perhaps, given that these interns were raised in a world that had long accepted women in the workplace. Trading tips on hot yoga studios, gossiping about Taylor Swift's wedding and comparing beauty products, they didn't sound so different from many liberal young women.

But they were different. At a time when Gen Z women have become the most progressive group in America, these young women largely supported Mr. Trump's conservative policies, if not his character or the often-misogynist views of the manosphere, which has flourished with Mr. Trump's rise.

Many young liberal women want partnership and children someday. But at the Luce Center, marriage and family were far more likely to be concrete, near-term goals: Financial stability and career success need not come first.

At a time of falling birthrates, several of the young women said their faith and upbringing taught them that large families were beautiful. They embraced the idea that life was seasonal, saying that they would happily have their careers take turns with child-rearing.

Their aspirations, they said, could feel strangely lonely. They felt themselves scraping, sometimes painfully, against expectations and stereotypes on both sides.

Mary White was debating whether to major in English or political philosophy; law school or academia might be next. She wasn't waiting around for a diamond ring. But Ms. White could also see herself following her mother, who postponed her law career to raise eight children.

"I would love to be a stay-at-home mom, but I feel like a lot of times, girls are belittled for wanting that," she said. Then again, she added, "On the right, there's this idea that women shouldn't work."

She liked a “middle ground,” she said, “where it’s actually a beautiful thing to be a mother, but it’s also a beautiful thing to share your talents with a wider public spirit.”

That was exactly the message Ms. Begg hoped the interns would absorb.

During the book discussion, Ms. Begg invoked Mary Wollstonecraft's argument that education in critical thinking would train girls for the professions, as well as to be wives capable of raising virtuous children.

The women's rights advocate, she told her audience, said that "we should never understand domestic life as inferior."

The young women nodded, taking notes. They were only on Chapter 1.

2026 Election

From left: Jorge Toledo tears up after every Jets loss; Tracy Patterson learned about the Jet-vs.-Jet battle through a local fan club's group chat; Dan Moskow joked that the group is necessary to stay sane.

In House Race, 2 Candidates With Jets Ties Give Fans Certain Victory

his marriage.)

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CASSIDY ARAIZA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Jay Feely, a Republican candidate for a House seat in Arizona, was the starting kicker for the Jets in 2008 and 2009.
Amish Shah, a Democrat, was a doctor for the Jets. "But let's be really clear," he said. "I'm from Chicago, and that's my team."

From Page A1

coping mechanism. "The New York Jets are guaranteed at least 1 win in November this year," wrote one jaded New York sports fan on social media.

In political terms, the race is no joke. At a time when the outcome in so many districts is all but predetermined by gerrymandering, Arizona's First Congressional District is widely considered a coin toss and a contest that could help determine control of Congress.

Dr. Shah, who worked for the Jets for five seasons ending in 2012, seems uncertain how much to advertise his connection to such a losing franchise. His time with the Jets was a "job of a lifetime," he said in an interview. "But let's be really clear," he said. "I'm from Chicago, and that's my team." To reinforce the point, he quoted the Bears head coach Ben Johnson: "Good, better, best!"

Mr. Feely, who played for six teams over a decade and a half in the N.F.L., more readily embraced his Jets past. He was the starting kicker in 2008 and 2009, which he said was the “most fun” he had in the N.F.L. It was before the Jets became the punchline of late-night comedy. The last time they reached the NFL playoffs, in 2010, seems like a different era: TikTok was still years from existence and former President Barack Obama was in his first term.

Although Mr. Feely's tenure with the Jets overlapped with Dr. Shah's, the two men don't remember meeting each other. Yet there are subtle hints of sportsmanlike camaraderie in the race. When Dr. Shah won the Democratic primary last month, Mr. Feely called him to praise what he said was his opponent's civil approach to campaigning and his avoidance of personal attacks.

"I told him I want to do the exact same thing," Mr. Feely said, "and hopefully you and I can be a model for the rest of the country."

The civility seemed to have a short shelf life, with Mr. Feely this week accusing Dr. Shah, a moderate, of aligning with far-left Democrats who oppose private prop-

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

erty and prisons.

Among the sharpest policy differences between the two men are their approaches to health care. Dr. Shah supports a Medicare option for people of all ages alongside private insurance. Mr. Feely says he is opposed to that idea because costs skyrocket “anytime the government gets involved and guarantees something.”

Mr. Feely says he will "stand un- apologetically with Israel."

Dr. Shah says that “Israel shouldn’t be treated any differently from many of the other countries that we consider our allies.”

In a state famous for producing politicians willing to buck their party establishment — Barry Goldwater, John McCain and

Kyrsten Sinema being three major examples — both Dr. Shah and Mr. Feely portray themselves as independent-minded. The district also happens to be the wealthiest in Arizona, with the most college graduates.

Dr. Shah is a state lawmaker who has disagreed with his party on legislation involving crime and cracking down on illicit drugs. He has won the endorsement of two police unions, a rare feat for a Democrat in Arizona. He strengthened his image of independence when the Democratic House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, supported his rival in a bitter primary campaign. Dr. Shah won anyway.

"I'm a guy who stood up to the Democratic establishment and won," he said.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district by around 60,000 voters, but both candidates agree that the large cohort of independents will be crucial in deciding the election.

"It's a district that voted for Trump and Ruben Gallego in the same election," Mr. Feely said, referring to the Democratic senator, who appeared on the same ballot as Donald Trump in the 2024 election. "It's a district that truly cares about the candidate. They are not just going to vote for one party, one side."

Yet Mr. Feely may have a hard time convincing voters of his independence. He is one of Mr. Trump's occasional golf partners, and his campaign signs in the district say "Trump Endorsed" in bold letters. That may be a liability at a time when the president's poll numbers are starting to resemble the Jets' chances of winning the Super Bowl anytime soon.

Mr. Feely initially planned to run in Arizona's Fifth Congressional District, where he has lived for more than a decade. He said he had switched to the First Congressional District at the request of Mr. Trump and other party leaders. (Mr. Trump had someone else in mind for the Fifth District, Mark Lamb, a former sheriff who has been embroiled in a scandal involving sexting women outside

So it was Mr. Trump, a man from Queens, who helped set up the contest involving the team from Queens. (The Jets got their name partly from the planes taking off all around them for the two decades they called Shea Stadium, sandwiched between the La-Guardia and Kennedy airports, their home. They moved to New Jersey in 1984.)

Ms. Patterson said she had found out about the Jet-on-Jet political contest when someone mentioned Dr. Shah's connection to the team in a local group chat for Jets fans: "I said, 'What doctor are you freakin' talking about?' I had to look it up and then I said, 'You've gotta be kidding me.' From MetLife to Maricopa."

Ms. Patterson, who works as a nurse, says she has no doubt who she is voting for. "I'm very liberal," she said.

Everyone in the group dresses in green and white for games, but politically they are pretty evenly divided between red and blue.

Daniel Moskow, a group member who works in finance, is a three-time Trump voter from Long Island who says he favors Mr. Feely. Mr. Moskow helped set up the fan group, which he jokes is necessary for mental-health reasons. “We have to watch each other and make sure no one does any self-harm,” he said.

Jorge Toledo, who had the misfortune of attaching his football devotion to the Jets growing up in Mexico City, tears up after every loss. "He literally cries," said his friend, Linda Bader, who shares Mr. Toledo's loyalty to the team.

As each consecutive losing season wears them down, fans in the group talk about a numbness that sets in. Some say they feel the same way about being voters in today's political environment, wanting to put paper bags over their heads after watching the news just as Jets fans are known to do to protest a dismal performance.

Sometimes, the despair becomes irrational. Mr. Moskow mused whether the curse of the Jets might actually affect the House race.

"Somehow, they will both end up losing," he said.

With Her Term Winding Down, Pelosi Works to Anoint a Little-Known Successor

BENJAMIN FANJOY/GETTY IMAGES
Representative Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Connie Chan, center right, a city supervisor, in the race for her congressional seat.

By HEATHER KNIGHT

SAN FRANCISCO — Nancy Pelosi has a meaty to-do list in her final months in office: Ensure Democrats take back the House of Representatives. Fend off attempts by the Trump administration to make it harder to vote in the midterms.

And persuade San Franciscans to send a local elected leader little known outside the city to replace her in Washington.

Ms. Pelosi, 86, who is finishing her final term in Congress after representing San Francisco since 1987, has never been one to sit back and watch politics play out. This particular campaign is no exception.

She has engaged in the race to a surprising degree, considering that she did not seem to have long-standing ties with her preferred candidate, Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Still, Ms. Pelosi has publicly inserted herself in the race and has worked vigorously behind the scenes to get Ms. Chan elected.

Ms. Chan and her opponent, State Senator Scott Wiener, will square off Nov. 3 in an intraparty battle. Like most San Franciscans, both candidates are liberal Democrats and share a disdain for the Trump administration, as well as a desire to expand rights for immigrants and gay and transgender people.

But they represent different camps in the city's combative political scene, particularly on housing. Mr. Wiener, 56, has gained national attention as a prolific state legislator focused on getting as much housing as possible built. Ms. Chan, 47, has a reputation in San Francisco for regularly blocking housing proposals, which she sees as lining the pockets of developers to the detriment of low-income tenants who could be displaced.

He calls her an obstructionist best known for voting "no," saying she is trying to keep San Francisco frozen in amber. She calls him beholden to corporations and billionaires.

Enter Ms. Pelosi.

The first woman to serve as the speaker of the House, she stayed out of the primary campaign until the final two weeks, when she endorsed Ms. Chan. Since then, she has hosted a fund-raiser in the Jackson Square neighborhood for Ms. Chan, lent her communications director to Ms. Chan's campaign and worked the phones to gather endorsements, including an unsuccessful attempt to convince the labor leader Dolores Huerta to endorse both candidates, not just Mr. Wiener.

Mr. Wiener's camp believes Ms. Pelosi has been motivated less by wanting to elevate Ms. Chan than by seeking to block him from the seat he has long coveted. It was well known in California political circles that he had been eyeing Ms. Pelosi's seat for years, and he had once vowed not to run until she announced her retirement.

Last October, however, Mr. Wiener refused to wait any longer and jumped into the race before Ms. Pelosi announced her decision.

Ms. Pelosi has given few interviews about the congressional race. But she said this week that her support for Ms. Chan had nothing to do with her feelings about Mr. Wiener.

“Nobody knows Congress better than I do. Nobody,” Ms. Pelosi said. “And I think she would be the best member of Congress.”

Ms. Pelosi answered questions about the race after an event at San Francisco City Hall to herald the 106th anniversary of the certification of the 19th Amendment, which established the right to vote for women.

There, she listed reasons for her involvement: Ms. Chan is a woman at a time when women are losing political power. The two have long ties to the city's powerful labor unions. Ms. Chan performed well as the chairwoman of the board's budget committee. And Ms. Chan worked hard to help pass Proposition 50, the 2025 ballot measure that gerrymandered California's congressional map to the benefit of Democrats in response to a similar move in Texas that aided Republicans.

The only negative word Ms. Pelosi would say this week about Mr. Wiener was to reiterate her anger over a satirical, A.I.-driven chatbot his campaign created that was intended to parrot Ms. Chan and always say “no.”

The stunt backfired when supporters of Ms. Chan, who moved to San Francisco from Hong Kong when she was 13, typed in topics not related to policies, such as the word "accent." The bot responded with lines that included, "I'm afraid my San Francisco accent is so thick I can barely understand myself."

Ms. Pelosi released an open letter co-signed by numerous San Francisco female politicians and political groups saying that the chatbot relied on “racist, misogynist tropes for cheap political points.” Mr. Wiener apologized and took the chatbot down.

A group of prominent women who support Mr. Wiener held a rally last weekend in Alamo Square to denounce what they viewed as false outrage over the chatbot and promote his record of legislation important to women, including to expand reproductive freedom and health care access.

Susie Tompkins Buell, founder of the Esprit clothing company and a Democratic power broker in California, spoke at the rally and said in an interview later that she was confused about why Ms. Pelosi was going all-in for a less experienced candidate.

"It's not about any woman. It's about the right woman," she said. "Connie Chan is a place where progress goes to die."

This week, Ms. Pelosi said she held no ill will against Mr. Wiener for anything other than the chatbot.

"I haven't said anything about her opponent except when he tried to put words in the mouth of a woman, which is something that I have been fighting to protect my whole career," Ms. Pelosi said.

Some in San Francisco political circles have speculated that Ms.

Pelosi was frustrated with Mr. Wiener because his candidacy might have edged out her own daughter, Christine Pelosi, from running for her seat. But Ms. Pelosi said this week that she and her daughter had never talked about a succession plan; Christine Pelosi is now running to fill Mr. Wiener's seat in the State Senate.

“She wants to have her own path in California, which I love,” Ms. Pelosi said. “There was never any thought that she would run for my seat, although they like to use that because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Christine Pelosi, who was at the City Hall event wearing a tiny pin of a famous image of her mother in a red coat and sunglasses, reiterated that she had never planned to run for Congress and added that she, too, was supporting Ms. Chan. "With respect, some of us do things for positive reasons," Christine Pelosi said.

In an interview, Ms. Chan said she and Ms. Pelosi have talked often in recent months, and that the congresswoman has been generous with her advice. Ms. Chan described filming the endorsement video together as a pinch-me moment.

"Deep inside me, I was thinking, 'Oh, I only wish my mother was still alive to see this,' she said.

Mr. Wiener said in an interview that the chatter about Ms. Pelosi's involvement was a distraction.

"I'm not running against Nancy Pelosi. I'm running against Connie Chan," he said. "And I'm going to win."

Stung in Debate, Bass Eases L.A. Crackdown On Street Food Vendors

By LIVIA ALBECK-RIPKA

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday eased a crackdown on Los Angeles street vendors after saying last week that they shouldn't sell outside restaurants, just as homeless people shouldn't camp there.

Her statement, made during a heated debate with Nithya Raman, a progressive Democrat whom Ms. Bass will face in November's election, ignited criticism and created a flashpoint in

Directing the Police Department to stop issuing citations.

her re-election campaign.

"I do not think that you should have a food vendor in front of a restaurant. Period," Ms. Bass said, suggesting that the vendors should be restricted to certain locations, and, eventually, move into brick-and-mortar facilities.

"You can move that person so that person can have a living, make money, but not right in front of a restaurant that discourages patrons from going in," she said. "Just like you shouldn't have encampments in front of restaurants, or in front of schools."

The comments angered some constituents who criticized Ms. Bass for conflating vendors with homeless people. They said the comment showed that the mayor was out of touch with what many consider to be one of the most beloved parts of Los Angeles's food culture.

"These are individuals who are moms, who are our uncles, who work legitimately, who wake up really early," said Sergio Jimenez, who has organized with street vendors across Los Angeles for close to a decade.

"They're not addicts. They're not taking funds from the government," he said, adding that many had fought for years to legalize parts of their industry. "It was like a slap in the face," he said.

Across the sprawling city, vendors serve tamales from coolers, assemble flame-roasted meat on hot tortillas and grill bacon-wrapped sausages until crispy. They pop up on corners, in parking lots and outside grocery stores. Some have folding tables for patrons. Their food is far cheaper than what many restaurants offer. Yet many are just as well known and beloved — with lines often stretching down the road.

Historically, street vending has also been an easily accessible profession for new immigrants who may not have the resources to open a brick-and-mortar shop, and they offer a familiar taste of home to Angelenos far from their home countries.

Under state law, sidewalk vending is decriminalized, though vendors must follow local regulations and obtain permits. But advocates say that the police have sometimes used an anti-camping ordinance to issue citations to vendors at MacArthur Park, a hub in one of Los Angeles's most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Mr. Jimenez said he had worked with about a dozen vendors who he believed had been wrongly cited.

In a statement on Thursday, Ms.

ARIANA DREHSLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mayor Karen Bass' comments about the city's ubiquitous street vendors, who offer food from many cultures, ignited criticism.

Bass's office said she “stands firmly with street vendors” and had directed the Los Angeles Police Department to stop issuing them criminal citations, and to dismiss those issued in error, “ensuring they are not left with criminal records for working to provide for their families.”

"Street vending is a quintessen-

Paige Sterling, a spokeswoman for Ms. Bass, said that the police had informed Ms. Bass's office that criminal citations had been issued in error around MacArthur Park. The mayor's office has asked the police to confirm that the issue was not more widespread, the spokeswoman said.

tial part of L.A.'s world-class food scene and a livelihood for thousands of hard-working Angelenos," her office said, noting that it had spent nearly \$500,000 this fiscal year on a joint program with Los Angeles County that helps vendors establish or grow their businesses.

The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to a request seeking more information on Thursday.

The dispute has further highlighted the divide between Ms. Bass, 72, a nationally known Democrat who has struggled to rebound since the Los Angeles wildfires, and Ms. Raman, a City Council member and former Bass ally who has drawn comparisons to New York's democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

In recent months, the two candidates have clashed over policing, housing and homelessness — all evidence of an ideological and generational divide between the center-left Democratic establishment that has shaped the city for years, and young progressives. Ms. Raman, 44, has described the vendors as among the most vibrant and visible parts of the city's economy.

In 2024, Ms. Raman backed a measure reducing the city's vending permit fee to \$27.51 from \$541. She has criticized state laws and a confusing process that stops many stands from getting the health permits they need to operate legally.

Speaking at a taco stand on Wednesday, Ms. Raman said Ms. Bass "took a shot at street vendors" but that she planned to work with them to regulate and legalize operations.

Mr. Jimenez said that while there was a long way to go toward improving conditions, the news that the police would stop issuing criminal citations to vendors was "a positive step."

Chemical Tank That Imploded and Killed 11 Had Been Seen as Unsafe, Report Says

DAVID RYDER/REUTERS
The aftermath of the implosion on May 26 at a paper plant that is owned by Nippon Dynawave Packaging in Longview, Wash.

By ANNA GRIFFIN

A chemical tank at a paper plant in Washington that imploded and killed 11 people in May was deemed at risk of failure nearly a year before the disaster, according to federal investigators.

In a preliminary report released on Friday, the investigators said that Nippon Dynawave Packaging, the owner of the plant, had hired a private firm to inspect the tank in July 2025.

Inspections that month found "significant thinning" in the walls of G Tank, which held a caustic mix of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide.

The inspection firm, which also conducted follow-up inspections in October 2025 and February 2026, recommended that Nippon Dynawave conduct an internal inspection of the tank and make repairs.

But according to the new report from investigators with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the company "did not internally inspect G Tank or make any repairs to the tank's shell between the July 2025 inspection and the May 2026 inci-

dent."

Instead, Nippon Dynawave continued using G tank and did not reduce the amount of liquid stored or the frequency with which the tank was used.

The liquid mix is used in the process of turning wood chips into bleached paper pulp for packaging such as milk and juice cartons. The 1.2 million-gallon tank was installed in 1987 at the plant in Longview, Wash.

In a note sent to employees on Friday, Nippon Dynawave president's, Matt Peerboom, said the federal report did not include important context and details about how the company handled plant safety before the disaster. He noted that investigations into workplace accidents like the

Longview explosion could take several years and urged patience.

"We hope that all agencies share our commitment to allowing a full investigative process to proceed and establish a complete and accurate record before conclusions are reached," he wrote. "We will continue to communicate transparently with the investigating regulatory agencies."

Leaders of the union that represents Nippon Dynawave's Longview employees said the preliminary report was "deeply troubling" and that the families of victims "deserve a complete accounting" of how and why the tank was still being used.

Kyle Findley, a lawyer representing the family of two brothers who died in the implosion, Tyler and Bradley Covington, promised "to work tirelessly to ensure those responsible for this horrific accident are held accountable and their families receive justice."

Federal and state investigators are still trying to determine the precise cause of the May 26 implosion. A disruption elsewhere in the plant had driven the level of liquid in the tank to about 90 percent of its capacity when it imploded, according to the federal report.

The tank stood in a courtyard near several maintenance shops, locker rooms and an employee break room. When its walls failed, a wave of white liquor heated to 200 degrees flooded the courtyard, crushing several vehicles and rolling into the lower floors of surrounding buildings.

All 11 workers who died sus-

A private inspection in July 2025 cited the need for repairs.

tained severe chemical burns; one also sustained blunt-force injuries, and another died partly from asphyxia.

Federal investigators said Nippon Dynawave's initial call for emergency assistance from the company's internal medical team did not warn them that liquid had spilled. One person attempting to rescue a worker in the courtyard waded into the liquid, believing it was water, and sustained serious chemical burns.

Nippon Dynawave employs about 530 people at the plant in Longview, about 45 minutes north of Portland, Ore., along the Columbia River.

The spill also sent liquid into the plant's storm water and wastewater systems and nearby drainage ditches of the small city. Some contaminated water bypassed treatment and flowed into the Columbia River, and larger amounts collected in nearby ditches, contributing to widespread fish deaths.

During the cleanup, the local public works department flushed the contaminated ditches with water and pumped the runoff into the river.

Earlier this week, Washington State environmental regulators made an initial determination that Nippon Dynawave Packaging had committed 35 environmental violations related to the spill and its aftermath. The company has 30 days to respond before the state decides whether to impose fines or take other enforcement action.

Freeze of Rules to Restrict Mail-In Voting Is Appealed

By ZACH MONTAGUE

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday appealed a freeze on President Trump's plan to restrict mail-in voting, teeing up another series of legal decisions about whether the U.S. Postal Service can make changes to how ballots are handled ahead of the midterm elections.

The issue will likely be settled by the Supreme Court.

The administration's appeal came less than a day after a federal judge in Massachusetts found that a Postal Service rule published last week was likely unconstitutional and exceeded the agency's authority. Under the rule, the Postal Service would not deliver mail ballots in states that do not share voter data with the agency, and would only deliver ballots that meet certain criteria.

The Supreme Court has considered the issue once already, finding that it was too soon for litigants to challenge an executive order issued by Mr. Trump in March because the Postal Service had not yet taken steps to carry it out.

Other points of view on the Opinion pages seven days a week. The New York Times

But after the Postal Service published its plan last week, more than 20 Democratic state attorneys general and a coalition of voting nonprofits and organizations returned to court with a more concrete challenge.

The Trump administration had argued that the Postal Service plan would not give the agency an overly intrusive role scrutinizing

A federal judge found that a Postal Service plan was probably unconstitutional.

voters or regulating election mail.

"The Postal Service will not determine voter eligibility, ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures," the agency said in a filing.

In a ruling on Thursday, Judge Indira Talwani of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts wrote that while the Supreme Court had previously said the issue was not ripe, the justices had also concluded that it was not yet clear if the administration's plan was lawful. She wrote that it was likely not.

ICE Arrests Provocateur Who Was Early Trump Backer

This article is by Chris Cameron, Hamed Aleaziz and Ken Bensinger.

The Trump administration said on Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had arrested Milo Yiannopoulos, the prominent right-wing agitator and early supporter of President Trump, at the New Orleans airport.

Public ICE detention records confirmed that Mr. Yiannopoulos was in custody, but did not say where he was being held. The Homeland Security Department said that Mr. Yiannopoulos had overstayed his visa and was issued a final deportation order in July. That order means Mr. Yiannopoulos faces possible removal from the country.

The Homeland Security Department publicized Mr. Yiannopoulos's arrest, circulating an unflattering mug shot and warning other immigrants to "take control of their departure" by self-deporting.

The arrest follows the Trump administration's efforts targeting foreign citizens as they travel through airports, a tactic that opened a vast pool of people for deportation. Immigration agents in plain clothes have in recent months whisked away targets at check-in counters and arrival gates with the help of information provided by airlines to the Transportation Security Administration.

Mr. Yiannopoulos is a British citizen who has lived in the United States since 2015, when he entered the country to join the staff of Breitbart News using a nonimmigrant visa reserved for people with “extraordinary ability.” He did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Mr. Yiannopoulos was a prominent supporter of Donald J. Trump during his 2016 run for president. In addition to his work at Breitbart, Mr. Yiannopoulos was briefly offered a speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a pre-eminent platform for the American right, in 2017.

JULIO CORTEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

But Mr. Yiannopoulos abruptly fell from grace after the publication of a video in which he condoned sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and laughed off the seriousness of pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests. The organizers of CPAC rescinded their invitation, and he resigned from Breitbart under scrutiny for his remarks.

Milo Yiannopoulos in 2021. Once employed by Breitbart News, Mr. Yiannopoulos is said to have overstayed his visa.

An acid-tongued provocateur who is no stranger to controversy, Mr. Yiannopoulos was banned from the site then known as Twitter in 2016 for leading a harassment campaign against a Black actress. His account was reinstated in 2022 by Elon Musk, who purchased the platform and later renamed it X.

More recently, Mr. Yiannopoulos made headlines for serving as a temporary staffer for Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican representative, and for working for the fashion brand of Ye, the rapper formerly known as

Kanye West.

In 2022, he claimed credit for organizing a notorious dinner for Mr. Trump and Mr. West that also included the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. (Mr. Yiannopoulos claimed the meeting was an ambush, meant to “make Trump’s life miserable.”) Two years later, Mr. Yiannopoulos joined Mr. West’s exploratory campaign for president.

Mr. Yiannopoulos, who was openly gay and often said he was attracted to Mr. Trump, announced in 2017 that he had been married to a man who is a U.S. citizen, but never revealed the full identity of that person. He later claimed that he was "ex-gay," and had "demoted" his husband to the role of "housemate."

He has been a particular target of Laura Loomer, the right-wing activist who frequently speaks to Mr. Trump. The two were once close allies, with Mr. Yiannopoulos supporting her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2020, but had a public falling out.

Since late 2024, Ms. Loomer has been calling for him to be deported, claiming that he was in the country on an expired visa.

In a phone call on Friday, Ms. Loomer took credit for the arrest, saying that she had long ago notified the Department of Homeland Security of potential issues with Mr. Yiannopoulos's immigration status.

“Loomered!” she said, using a term she applies to the growing collection of people who have been fired, deported or otherwise reprimanded by the Trump administration after her specific calls for action. “I have been saying this should happen for a long time and now it did.”

Other prominent figures on the right were quick to celebrate the news. "Deport immediately," Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, wrote on X. "Good riddance."

Mr. Yiannopoulos himself had reveled in Mr. Trump's mass deportations, calling for ICE checkpoints at supermarkets and gas stations and "total legal immunity for ICE agents when they're on duty."

The 47th President

MARCH 2026: Stairs present

Sources: March and April images from files submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission. The August image is from the Supreme Court filings.

APRIL 2026: Stairs removed

AUGUST 2026: Stairs restored

Trump's Ballroom Stairs: Poof! They're Gone. Poof! They're Back.

By EMILY BADGER and JUNHO LEE

Plans for the White House ballroom that the Trump administration filed with the Supreme Court this month revealed previously unseen details. They include a golden seal over the building's main entrance and miniature lion heads perched atop Corinthian columns on the porticos.

But more curiously, the drawings appear to show that the administration has also reverted to earlier plans for the building's design, restoring a grand staircase on the addition's south side that was derided by architects as a frivolous adornment that led to no entryway.

The plans filed with the court, part of the administration's emergency bid to continue construction, differ from those approved by the National Capital Planning Commission on April 2 — and from what was last seen by the public.

President Trump told reporters in March that the staircase had been removed from the design. And the executive director of the planning commission had noted that eliminating the staircase was an “improvement” that preserved the visual and

Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting.

symbolic primacy of the Executive Residence facade next door.

The White House did not respond to questions about whether it had inadvertently filed outdated plans with the Supreme Court, or if it had changed what it is actually constructing. The solicitor general's office also did not respond to questions.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Friday temporarily allowed construction of the ballroom to continue, giving the full Supreme Court more time to consider whether the project can proceed. The order came after an appeals court ruled this month that the president does not have the authority to pursue a “massive” construction project on White House grounds without consent from Congress.

Floor plans for the project included in the court documents are identical to those shown to the public in February, before the staircase was removed in the lead-up to the final approval by the planning commission. The plans in the documents, however, are dated Aug. 12, suggesting that the staircase has returned in more recent designs.

Any substantial changes still underway, even as the administration says in court that construction is 65 percent complete, would add to the haphazard and rushed nature of the project. The ballroom sprinted through reviews by two federal panels this year and bypassed steps that major federal projects in Washington typically go through, including a public design competition.

Along the way, it has been difficult for the public to keep up with the president's exact building plans. Detailed drawings of the final ballroom plans were never publicly released. And in

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court, the administration has largely shifted its description of the project from a ballroom meant to entertain world leaders, as the president initially described it, to a “national security complex” that happens to have a ballroom on top.

"If this is indeed the new plan for the White House ballroom, it would clearly be a material change from what was previously approved" by the planning commission, Brent Leggs, the president and chief executive of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said in a state-

ment. The trust, a congressionally chartered nonprofit group, brought the lawsuit against the ballroom now before the Supreme Court.

Mr. Leggs said the plans would have to go back to the planning commission “for review, public comment and eventual approval by the commission — and, as our lawsuit has asserted from the start — authorized by Congress.”

In the initial unveiling of the design, the grand staircase on the building's south portico became a symbol among architects and preservationists of the project's incongruities. They criticized the ballroom as gaudy and out of scale with the White House grounds.

The staircase appears to lead to the ballroom, but there are no doors entering the building at the top of the stairs, and they end at a terrace that is still about 12 feet below the ballroom floor. Any dignitaries walking up the stairs would then have to walk around the west side of the building and up another set of stairs to reach the ballroom interior.

Renderings have also shown the staircase leading down directly onto the lawn rather than onto a walkway.

The project's architect, Shalom Baranes, acknowledged in a planning commission meeting in March that the inclusion of the staircase had been “an aesthetic decision." (Mr. Baranes declined to comment on Friday on any subsequent changes to the plans.) The main entrance to the building is around the corner on its northeast side, facing the Treasury Department.

In late March, President Trump appeared stung by criticism of the building's design, and of the staircase in particular. Aboard Air Force One, he abruptly unveiled new illustrations announcing that the plans had been revised and the stairs removed, just days before the ballroom was scheduled to be considered for a final vote by the planning commission.

"We got rid of — a long, quite a while ago — the stairs that were on the south side, and it's become really beautiful," the president said, displaying new renderings of the ballroom.

Those revised plans are the ones the planning commission approved, with a new switchback staircase on the building's west side.

A spokesman for the planning commission said it had held no discussions with the administration about further changes since the panel approved the design in April. "That approval ended N.C.P.C.'s role with the project," the spokesman, Stephen Staudigl, said of the planning commission in an email.

In previous years, substantial late changes to the design of a public building or monument in the capital would have prompted the project to return to at least one of two design commissions. The Commission of Fine Arts, which approved the ballroom earlier this year, would have typically weighed in on an aesthetic decision like mounting large gold seals on the exterior of a government building.

But that commission, like the planning commission, has been filled with appointees who are the president's allies. Whether any ballroom changes would return to the fine arts commission for further review would be subject to discussion with the president, said Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the commission's chair. He added that he does not comment publicly on his private conversations with the president.

"We meet with the president routinely on all matters that have to do with design; he's very focused on it, and he enjoys it," Mr. Cook said. "I'm hopeful we'll continue to do that until he leaves the White House."

Renderings included in the court filings also show the ballroom interior awash in gold details. From the inside, it would look remarkably similar to the ballroom at the president's private retreat at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Marine One's Close Call May Be Tied to Construction

KENT NISHIMURA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A passenger jet came within a mile of Marine One, after garbled communications about takeoff.

By KAROUN DEMIRJIAN

WASHINGTON — Construction at the White House might have contributed to an incident this month in which President Trump's helicopter came dangerously close to a commercial jet over Washington, according to a new report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

According to the report, work to build a new ballroom at the White House forced officials to move the helicopter's takeoff location temporarily from the South Lawn to the Ellipse, the park south of the White House. But the new location might have been less optimal for communicating with air traffic controllers, leading to communication glitches, the report said.

Technicians “conducted a coverage analysis and determined that there was not adequate line-of-sight to ensure communications” between the Ellipse and the tower “while construction was ongoing at the White House,” the board’s report reads. There had been no known issues with the radio frequency before the incident.

The report chronicled how garbled communications caused the airport controller to miss multiple warnings from the helicopter crew that they were minutes from takeoff — a notification that would have signaled to the controller to temporarily ground planes while the helicopter passed through the area. Instead, the controller allowed an Envoy Air jet bound for Pensacola, Fla., to depart from an airport runway just as Marine One was about to take off, resulting in the plane and the helicopter passing each other less than a mile apart.

The board's findings are preliminary, and its investigation of the incident is ongoing.

The White House grounds have been the site of extensive construction, as crews work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, to make progress on Mr. Trump's plans to build a massive ballroom. The project has been hotly contested, but last week, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed Mr. Trump to forge ahead while it considered whether the 90,000-square-foot project could be completed.

Representatives for the White House did not address questions about the role that the White House ballroom construction might have played in the incident.

"Marine One flights are piloted by the finest aviators in the world, and the White House maintains the utmost confidence in these patriots and other security officials who are responsible for ensuring the president's safety," Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. "Although the president was at no point in harm's way during the Aug. 4 momentary loss of separation, the White House continues to work with relevant military, F.A.A., and other security personnel to ensure the president's continued safety."

Under current procedures, controllers are expected to keep the congested skies around Ronald Reagan National Airport clear of traffic when the president's helicopter is traversing the area.

In the wake of the Aug. 4 incident, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said the president was never in danger because the flight paths of the two aircraft would not have converged. He blamed the incident on faulty telecom issues. Bryan Bedford, who leads the Federal Aviation Administration, told reporters this week that his agency had made changes to communication procedures and had relocated an air traffic antenna to help fix the problems.

"The F.A.A. took immediate action following the Aug. 4 incident involving Marine One," Hannah Walden, an F.A.A. spokeswoman, said in a statement, listing the changes that Mr. Bedford had referred to earlier in the week.

But those changes might not have fully addressed the problem. On Thursday, just hours after the N.T.S.B. released its preliminary report, air traffic controllers again appeared to have difficulty receiving transmissions from Marine One, just minutes before it was due to depart the Ellipse. They relied on other helicopters operating nearby to prepare for the president's departure.

"Eagle 2, Marine One is trying to reach you at three minutes to lift," one helicopter was heard radioing the control tower at Reagan National, according to transmissions captured on LiveATC.net, a site that compiles and posts recordings of air traffic audio collected by aviation enthusiasts.

"Oh, I couldn't hear any of that," the controller responded.

"Do me a favor: I can't hear Marine One," the controller said a couple of minutes later to another helicopter pilot. "If you hear Marine One, can you let me know?"

A little more than a minute later, the controller could be heard making contact with the Marine One crew, and the takeoff proceeded without incident, with controllers halting other traffic before takeoff. When asked about the incident, Ms. Walden said in a statement the sequence had been smooth.

"The three-minute notification was communicated by alternate means, acknowledged by a controller, and positive contact was established with Marine One before takeoff," she said.

But the events nonetheless harked back to last year's tragic collision over National Airport, in which a passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided in midair, killing 67. That accident focused national scrutiny on longstanding shortfalls in air traffic control staffing, and revealed that senior F.A.A. officials had ignored years of warnings that crisscrossing flight paths through the skies surrounding the airport posed critical safety risks.

In the months that followed, the F.A.A. took steps to reroute helicopter flight paths through the area, allowing only the most important government rotorcraft — such as Marine One — to traverse the airspace, and only when other flight traffic was grounded. The agency also ended the practice of visual separation, by which overtaxed controllers left helicopter pilots on their own to “see and avoid” oncoming airplane traffic, near busy airports like Ronald Reagan National Airport.

But critics, including most of the families of the victims of last year's fatal crash, say the moves are not enough to avoid a repeat of a similar disaster.

The victims' families have lobbied for new laws to force the F.A.A. to require that all aircraft be equipped with advanced technology that would allow pilots to track real-time location signals from other aircraft, arguing that would reduce their reliance on air traffic controllers to alert them to potential collision risks. An N.T.S.B. report into the crash determined that if the airplane and helicopter had been equipped with such technology, the pilots would have had almost a minute's forewarning that they were on a collision course, giving them ample time to avoid each other.

Efforts to enact such legislation, however, have been gridlocked for months as lawmakers in the House and Senate bicker over two competing approaches, which differ over what airplanes would be required to carry such technology and how strictly the military would be curtailed from turning off its location-broadcasting equipment when flying through restricted airspace.

Stars and Stripes Journalists Sue Pentagon Over Termination

By MINHO KIM

WASHINGTON — Three journalists at the federally funded but independent Stars and Stripes news organization sued the government on Thursday, claiming that the Pentagon fired them in retaliation for writing about the worsening conditions inside a Navy aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East.

The journalists accused the government of violating their First Amendment right to free speech, asking the U.S. District Court in Washington to reject their terminations as well as new Pentagon policies that they say severely limit the editorial independence of their work.

The lawsuit is the latest in a streak of public pushbacks against the Pentagon's efforts to exert control over the storied newspaper, which started publishing during the Civil War and has had a long history of independent reporting.

The publication has reported on difficulties faced by military communities because of the war in Iran. The challenged firings were first discussed a day after Stars and Stripes reported on hardships Navy sailors were facing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier whose deployment was extended to nine months, according to the complaint. President Trump has called reporting on the carrier's troubles from Stars and Stripes and other news outlets “fake news.”

The lawsuit “seeks to prevent the blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of these journalists and challenges the U.S. Department of Defense’s extraordinary censorship efforts,” the three journalists said in the complaint.

The Department of Defense declined to comment. Capt. William Urban, who became the military deputy to Stars and Stripes's publisher earlier this month, said in a letter published last week that his priority was to ensure “the highest quality of editorially independent reporting.” Captain Urban had previously served as a senior spokesman for the Defense Department and NATO.

Captain Urban told senior leadership at Stars and Stripes last week that he would eventually assume the role as the publisher, according to an official not authorized to speak about the matter.

For months, the Defense Department has faced public disagreements on its new operations policy on Stars and Stripes from the news outlet's members.

In June, the newspaper's editorial watchdog, Jacqueline Smith, filed a lawsuit after being fired, which she attributed to having publicly criticized Pentagon leadership for editorial interference. Several members of the publisher's advisory board also sued the Defense Department that month for adopting policies that banned Stars and Stripes from publishing comics and wire reprints.

In July, CBS News interviewed the paper's editor in chief, Erik A. Slavin, and its Middle East correspondent, Lara S. Korte, on accusations of editorial interference at Stars and Stripes.

This month, the publisher, Max D. Lederer Jr., who had given Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte permission for the CBS interview, refused to fire them despite the urging of the Pentagon. After continued pressure, Mr. Lederer announced that he would retire by Sept. 30 and issued public statements on his strife with the Pentagon leadership. He was fired Aug. 21.

Ms. Korte and Mr. Slavin were also given termination notices Aug. 21, which cited insubordination and an unauthorized media appearance. In a statement then, Mr. Slavin said, “According to the notice, I am being fired for stating in a CBS interview that censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.”

Mr. Lederer's termination notice charged him with insubordination for refusing to deliver the notices of dismissal, according to the complaint.

Mr. Lederer, Ms. Korte and Mr. Slavin are now challenging their dismissals in court.

Their lawsuit says the Defense Department moved to fire Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte a day after Stars and Stripes published an article on the Abraham Lincoln, detailing how its sailors endured food and water shortages, disrupted mail service, long workdays, little time off and poor physical and mental health from the carrier's extended deployment.

For decades, federal regulations and Pentagon policy emphasized editorial integrity of Stars and Stripes, requiring “a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.” Congress created the watchdog position in 1991, designing it to report directly to lawmakers and to ensure the publication’s independent reporting, acting after repeated attempts by military commanders who tried to censor the paper’s content in the 1980s.

In January, the Pentagon rescinded that 20-page regulation. That same month, the Defense Department started asking applicants to Stars and Stripes to say how they would support Mr. Trump's policies in their work.

The 47th President

Fear of Trump Chills Choices of Nonprofit Over Book on Cohn

by his Justice Department.

From Page AI

ministers the artist's estate and catalog, to decline the request to license the photograph, according to three people familiar with its deliberations.

Mr. Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989, is widely remembered for fighting censorship. In this case, the foundation's board feared that Mr. Trump could retaliate, perhaps by threatening its nonprofit tax status, if the president — who has used the levers of government to pressure universities, law firms and TV networks — were to take offense, the people said.

As a charitable organization, the Mapplethorpe Foundation is legally prohibited from engaging in certain political activities. Mr. Bird's book is subtitled "Roy Cohn's Dark Journey From Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump," and the board was concerned that the photo's inclusion could be construed as a kind of political act, the people said.

It would not be the first time that a cultural organization has been alarmed by the president's hardball tactics — some of which he honed under Mr. Cohn, who prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and aided Senator Joseph McCarthy in his witch hunt for communists.

Mr. Trump has demanded changes at the Smithsonian and taken control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He has threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status. Nonprofit groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Democratic fund-raising platform ActBlue, have been investigated

Mr. Bird, whose 2005 biography of Robert Oppenheimer, “American Prometheus,” was adapted into the Oscar-winning Christopher Nolan film, said in an interview that he was “thunderstruck” and “outraged” when he learned that the Mapplethorpe Foundation had declined to license the portrait. “It’s astonishing that these people are being so cowed, so easily,” he said.

In his biography of Mr. Cohn, Mr. Bird writes that the foundation's decision was "yet another example of Roy's ghost haunting us from the grave."

The Mapplethorpe Foundation declined to comment on Mr. Bird's criticisms.

Mr. Mapplethorpe started the foundation shortly before his death "to protect his work, to advance his creative vision and to promote the causes he cared about," according to the foundation's website.

His photography, which explicitly depicted the sexual lives of gay men, was the subject of several well-publicized battles over free expression, notably when Jesse Helms, the conservative North Carolina senator, objected in 1989 to the use of federal funds for exhibits of his work.

When the matter of Mr. Bird's biography arose last year, the artist's foundation made a different calculus. Its board determined that any kind of government retaliation could drain its financial resources, creating an existential risk for the organization, according to the people familiar with the board's decision-making. And while the biography may have brought attention to Mr. Mapple-thorpe's work, the photo would ultimately be in service of one author's commercial endeavor.

Donald J. Trump and Roy Cohn, then his lawyer, in 1984, announcing a billion-dollar lawsuit against the National Football League.
MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Several First Amendment lawyers, none of whom were involved in the foundation's discussions, said the use of a photograph for a scholarly biography would not typically constitute political activity. But the lawyers acknowledged that it was difficult to ignore the uneasy atmosphere the Trump administration has created.

"The idea that a photograph of a dead mobster lawyer could somehow qualify as political activity, even under the Trump administration, is hard to fathom," said Suzanne Nossel, a former chief executive of the free expression group PEN America. "And yet, we're in an environment where no one feels they can rule anything out."

The photograph itself has a colorful history.

In 1981, Andy Warhol dispatched Steven M.L. Aronson, a writer and book editor, to conduct a Q. and A. with Mr. Cohn for Interview magazine, Mr. Warhol's culture publication. By then, Mr. Cohn was a New York celebrity: a power player who partied at Stu dio 54 and represented moguls, mobsters and media barons.

Mr. Aronson persuaded Mr. Cohn to pose for Mr. Mapplethorpe, a friend whose work was still relatively obscure. Their meeting was an unusual encounter between an artist who celebrated the lives of gay men and a closeted lawyer whose anti-gay virulence would later be depicted in the Tony Kushner play “Angels in America.” Both Mr. Cohn and Mr. Mapplethorpe would die from AIDS complications before the decade’s end.

Mr. Cohn adored the photograph of himself, and later dined with Mr. Mapplethorpe and Mr. Aronson at the downtown New York restaurant Raoul's. "He loved publicity, for one thing," Mr. Aronson recalled of Mr. Cohn, "and the photograph was glamorous, as evil often is."

For the cover of “American Scoundrel,” Mr. Bird and his publisher ultimately settled on a portrait by the photographer Britain Hill, showing Mr. Cohn in a blue pinstriped suit with his hands folded beneath his chin.

He is still staring directly at the viewer.

WASHINGTON MEMO

Around Town, Swelling National Debt Elicits Shrugs

ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES
An eye-watering milestone provoked a reaction from the bond markets, but seemed to be barely an afterthought in Washington.

By PETER BAKER

It used to be that a new report of budgetary red ink would touch off a political crisis in Washington. There would be speeches and news conferences and blue-ribbon commissions and legislation and brinkmanship over how to get the nation's fiscal house in order.

But when the national debt topped \$40 trillion last week — that's trillion with a T — the collective body politic all but shrugged. Never mind that the U.S. government now owes twice as much money as a share of the economy than two decades ago. Republicans and Democrats issued perfunctory, my-we're-concerned statements and promptly moved on.

The bond markets were not so sanguine, as a sell-off indicated, but the relative indifference in the nation's capital demonstrated how drastically the politics of deficit spending has changed in recent years. For generations, the nation's fiscal imbalance was a constant preoccupation of presidents and members of Congress, a defining issue that shaped the rest of their agendas. Now it seems to be barely an afterthought as Washington borrows heavily to finance tax cuts and spending programs.

Both parties are engaged in a kind of conspiracy of silence about the eye-watering numbers, preferring to concentrate on other issues, whether it be the Iran war or the cost of living. President Trump is busy trying to restrict mail-in voting in the midterm elections and build his ballroom. Democrats are busy tying Republican opponents to an unpopular president in hopes of taking back one or both houses of Congress.

It has been 15 years since the last time Washington engaged in a serious bipartisan effort to curb the deficit, and both political polarization and government indebtedness have only grown exponentially since then. Few think that today's leaders would or could come together anytime soon to make the hard choices, compromises and sacrifices that analysts say are necessary.

"The fiscal situation has never been worse and yet the political situation has never been worse and so we are absolutely unable to meet the moment," said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, one of the few institutions in Washington that still consistently focuses attention on deficit spending.

"The political norm was as soon as you passed some line where things started to feel worrisome, everyone would put on their grown-up pants and do some of the hard work of being political leaders," she said. "And

Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.

that's just not the case anymore."

Erskine B. Bowles, who led a bipartisan commission to tame deficit spending in 2010, said leaders in both parties these days are applying “the ostrich theory” to the issue, putting their heads in the sand. “They get the arithmetic,” he said. “They understand that we have a dysfunctional government, that we’re addicted to debt, that we have these \$2 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see. And we don’t have a plan to deal with it.”

The only real reaction from Mr. Trump's administration came from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who tried to settle the bond markets with a debt buy-back plan that failed to reassure investors and was derided even by his mentor, the hedge fund billionaire Stanley F. Drucken-miller. In the long run, Mr. Bessent's stated prescription for the sky-high deficits was to say that "we're going to have to grow our way out of this." That is a hope, not a plan, and one that would require the kind of sustained economic growth not seen in decades.

The government is set to spend \$1.9 trillion more than it takes in this fiscal year, or 5.8 percent of the entire economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That gap is projected to grow to \$3.1 trillion, or 6.7 percent, by 2036. Debt held by the public already equals 101 percent of the American economy and at this rate will grow to 120 percent in 2036, surpassing the record of 106 percent just after World War II. The government now spends more on interest payments than on the Pentagon budget.

Both parties have contributed to the gap over the years through tax cuts and spending programs that appealed to voters. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pushed through an expansive economic stimulus package after the Covid-19 pandemic as well as legislation to finance roads, bridges and other infrastructure and to invest in climate change,

semiconductors and other priorities. Mr. Trump has enacted large tax reductions while pushing for a vast increase in military spending.

While the conservative House Freedom Caucus has noisily tried to use government shutdowns or debt ceiling fights to force major spending cuts, neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Trump devoted much energy to finding a way to bring the books closer to balance. Nor did they pay a political price, reflecting a new reality when it comes to deficits. During Mr. Trump's first term, Mick Mulvaney, while his acting chief of

Bipartisan apathy over a figure topping \$40 trillion.

staff, reportedly told supporters of the president that “nobody cares” about the deficit anymore.

That may not be exactly true but it is not quite as high on the voters' priority list. Fifty percent of Americans said they cared about the deficit "a great deal" in March, down from 64 percent in 2011, according to Gallup surveys. Only 2 percent of voters think the deficit or debt is the most important problem facing the country today, according to Gallup.

On the other hand, the Pew Research Center found that those who consider the deficit a “very big problem for the country today” has swelled from 55 percent in 2018 to 64 percent this year. Taken together, the surveys seem to suggest that voters believe it is an issue but do not care as much as they once did.

Stephanie Kelton, a former chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, said Americans had grown in-ured to doomsday predictions that did not materialize. "It's just a running, century-long com-

mentary where there's always an iceberg or a giant dinosaur or a cancer eating you, gobbling you, terrifying you," she said. "But nothing bad has happened. You would think if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now."

That represents a profound change in Washington, where for years the deficit dominated politics. President Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 in part on the issue, but his tax cuts and military buildup only increased the deficit, forcing him to reverse course and raise some taxes again. President George H.W. Bush was so concerned about the deficit that he broke his “no new taxes” campaign vow and negotiated a package of increases and spending cuts with Democrats that helped doom his re-election in 1992.

President Bill Clinton pushed through his own politically risky deficit plan with tax increases and spending reductions, relying entirely on Democratic votes, which propelled Republicans in taking over Congress in 1994 elections. But in his second term, buoyed in part by strong economic growth, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bowles, his chief of staff, brokered a deal with Speaker Newt Gingrich that finally balanced the budget.

The brief surpluses turned back to deficits under President George W. Bush thanks to his tax cuts, a recession and national security spending prompted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Bush invested hundreds of billions of dollars to stanch the financial crisis of 2008, although the government recouped most of that. President Barack Obama spent hundreds of billions more to stimulate the economy.

Mr. Obama was the last president to make a serious effort to control the deficit, appointing a commission led by Mr. Bowles and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, who developed a painful menu of spending cuts and tax increases. It was too much for Mr. Obama, and his own negotiations for a “grand bargain” with Speaker John A. Boehner later collapsed.

Mr. Trump, who was such a prolific borrower as a private businessman that he termed himself “the king of debt,” has never seemed to care much about deficit spending. During his 2016 campaign, he almost offhandedly boasted that he could eliminate not just the deficit but the entire cumulative national debt in eight years as president. Instead, the debt has doubled since then under him and Mr. Biden.

Mr. Trump never mentioned the deficit as a priority in any of his State of the Union addresses in his first term, unlike every

president since Harry S. Truman, according to a database search. In his second term, he talked about stopping wasteful spending and empowered Elon Musk to find it. Mr. Musk, who initially promised to cut \$2 trillion in spending for Mr. Trump, managed \$200 billion in savings, then gave up.

The lack of alarm at the latest debt numbers suggests that budget doves have gained traction in the perennial debate over deficit spending. For years, some economists have argued that deficits are not necessarily bad and can even benefit the economy.

Ms. Kelton, now a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University and author of “The Deficit Myth,” is a leading champion of Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that if a government issues its own currency, it can always create money if needed to take care of its people.

A deficit on the government side, she said, means a surplus in the private sector, which can be good for the economy. The real restraint on spending, she said, should not be matching it to incoming revenue but making sure that the government does not pump so much additional money into the economy that it generates inflation.

Mr. Mulvaney's comment that no one cared about deficits anymore, she said, "felt like a sea change to me" in terms of the perspective of the nation's leadership. "I would like to believe there's been some learning along the way and that people have come to understand that the thing we call the government deficit has another side to it. Too often we only present half the story."

But deficit hawks argue that soaring government debt results in higher interest rates, which make it harder to take out a car loan or a home mortgage.

“We're spending a trillion dollars a year on interest,” former Senator Rob Portman, a Republican of Ohio who served as the younger Mr. Bush's budget director, said in an interview. “It's crazy. Almost 20 cents of every dollar you send to Uncle Sam is interest now. It's gotten to the point that it's crowding out other priorities of the American people. We haven't done a good job explaining that.”

Despite the restrained response to the latest debt numbers, Mr. Portman said he sees signs that people are taking the situation seriously and he has been trying to generate interest through symposia, panels, hearings and other efforts.

"I think there's a little bit of a groundswell now to do something," he said. "It isn't going to be easy, it never is. But even kicking off some sort of process is important."

Trump Creates Space School; Crew Honored

By LUKE BROADWATER

HOUSTON — Declaring that space exploration is “the hot thing,” President Trump on Friday signed an executive order creating a U.S. space academy and presented Medals of Honor to the Artemis II crew, which completed a historic 10-day flight around the moon.

At an event at the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Mr. Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the crew's commander, Reid Wiseman; its pilot, Victor Glover; and the mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

In doing so, Mr. Trump carried out the traditional presidential duties of honoring American heroes who united the country with their achievements. He referred to the astronauts as “fearless explorers.”

Mr. Trump also announced he was signing an executive order to create a U.S. Space Academy to feed the U.S. Space Force and NASA. Few details were released on Mr. Trump's plans for the academy, but the president indicated they were preliminary and its location had not been determined.

The executive order created a commission chaired by the head of NASA tasked with “proposing key details for the establishment of the Space Academy” within 120 days.

"Space is the hot thing," Mr. Trump told the crowd.

The event also carried a political dimension ahead of the midterm elections. The president's approval rating is underwater, dragged down by high prices and an unpopular war against Iran, and his party is in danger of losing its control of both chambers of Congress.

Speakers at the event in Houston heaped praise not only on the astronauts, but also on Mr. Trump.

Col. Matt Anderson, the deputy administrator of NASA, told the crowd that “none of this would be possible without strong leadership from the top.”

“President Trump ignited the golden age of exploration and discovery. He gave us the vision,” Mr. Anderson said. “His Working Families Tax Cut Act gave us the resources, and the Artemis II crew took the first steps.”

In April, the Artemis II mission galvanized the country and trans-fixed the public.

Over 10 days, the astronauts looped around the moon's far side before returning to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The astronauts saw parts of the moon no human had ever laid eyes on. They broke the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.

The Congressional Space Medal of Honor has been awarded to fewer than three dozen astronauts, according to NASA.

F.D.A. Approves New Covid Vaccines, to Be Available Soon

All 65 and Older And Others Having Risks Are Eligible

By MAGGIE ASTOR

The Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid vaccines on Thursday, clearing the way for manufacturers to ship doses to pharmacies and doctors' offices.

People not formally eligible may still be able to get vaccinated. Doctors can give shots off label, or outside F.D.A. approval criteria.
JAMIE KELTER DAVIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Moderna and Pfizer, which make the most commonly used Covid vaccines, are expected to begin shipping soon; Pfizer said it would do so “immediately,” and Moderna has done so within days of approval in past years. Sanofi, which distributes a non-mRNA option called Nuvaxovid (commonly known as Novavax), said doses would be available in the coming days, with the timing varying by location.

However, criteria set by the F.D.A. and a legal dispute stemming from past Trump administration actions could complicate access for some people.

Here is what we know.

Who is eligible for the vaccines?

As was the case last year, the F.D.A. approved the shots for all people 65 and older, as well as for younger people who have a condition that increases their risk of severe illness from Covid. The Moderna shot is approved for ages 6 months and older; the Pfizer shot for ages 5 years and older; and the Sanofi shot for ages 12 years and older. (A lower-dose Moderna shot, called mNexspike, was also approved for ages 12 and up.)

About 30 percent to 60 percent of Americans have a qualifying condition, F.D.A. officials estimated last year. Aside from age, a long list of factors can increase the risk of severe illness. They include asthma, diabetes, obesity, physical inactivity and pregnancy, as well as cancer, immune deficiency, some mental illnesses and various heart and lung diseases.

People who are not formally eligible may still be able to get vaccinated. Doctors can administer vaccines off label, meaning outside F.D.A. approval criteria.

But there may be logistical hurdles: Because most Americans who get Covid shots do so at pharmacies, not all doctors' offices stock the vaccine. And pharmacists in some states may be unable, or may decline, to administer shots off label.

Last year, after significant initial confusion, Walgreens and CVS — two of the nation's largest pharmacy chains — allowed people to self-attest that they met the criteria, without requiring medical documentation. The companies did not immediately respond to requests to confirm what their policies would be this year.

Can I get a vaccine at a pharmacy? In most states, the answer is likely to be yes. But some states may not let pharmacists give vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not recommended, as millions of Americans discovered last year.

Normally, the C.D.C.'s vaccine panel would recommend the new shots either for everyone or for specific groups. But the panel is in legal limbo after a federal court ruling in March that temporarily invalidated the appointments of members chosen by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for CVS, said it expected to begin administering doses within days "to eligible patients in all states as permitted by law." A spokeswoman for Walgreens said it would begin offering the shots "for eligible patients in the coming days." However, it is not yet clear how that will look in specific states.

That should become clearer over the next few days. Pharmacies' websites will let people check availability in their area. But keep in mind that if you see no or limited availability near you, that may not be permanent. Last year, access expanded significantly over several weeks.

Will insurance cover the vaccines?

It's looking likely that most insurers will, but we can't say for sure for everyone.

Almost all insurers have to cover shots recommended by the

C.D.C. panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. But the panel's suspended status raises questions.

In the absence of an A.C.I.P. recommendation, Medicare still has to cover the shots, but private insurers don't, said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

However, AHIP, a trade organization that includes most major insurers, said its members would continue to pay for Covid vaccines anyway. UnitedHealthcare, which isn't part of AHIP, said the same. (Always double-check with your insurer, because some employer-sponsored plans may differ from their parent companies.)

The area of most uncertainty is the Vaccines for Children program, which about half of American children rely on for free vaccinations. The C.D.C. ships the doses provided through this program, and if there is no C.D.C. recommendation, it's not clear whether those shipments will happen, Ms. Reiss said.

Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to a request for comment on V.F.C. coverage.

How effective are the vaccines?

The updated vaccines target the XFG variant of Covid, as an F.D.A. committee recommended this spring. That should be a good match for the virus that is circulating, said Dr. Ian Mellis, an assistant professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University.

XFG is the most common variant in North America as of late August, and closely related variants account for most other cases, Dr. Mellis said. One variant, BA.3.2, is less related but is decreasing.

The shots should significantly increase antibodies that can prevent Covid and reduce symptoms if you do become infected, Dr. Mellis said.

When should I get one?

There isn't a clear consensus. Ask your doctor if you're not sure about timing, especially if you're in a higher-risk group. (If you had Covid recently, wait three months.)

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor and infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said October was the ideal time for both Covid and flu shots, to provide the best protection during the respiratory virus season. Protection wanes after a few months.

But Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor and infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, recommended that high-risk people get vaccinated against Covid as soon as the new shots are available, while waiting until October for a flu shot. (It would be reasonable for people under 65 with no high-risk conditions to time their Covid shot more “strategically” ahead of the holidays or travel, he said.) While we can expect a winter wave, he noted, there is also a summer wave happening now.

Are the vaccines safe?

Yes. Like all vaccines, Covid shots can have side effects, almost always mild and brief. But a large body of research has shown that the benefits outweigh the risks.

It's common to have a sore arm or flulike symptoms for a day or two, as the vaccine stimulates your immune system to build protection against the virus. Very rarely — in a fraction of a percent of patients — Covid vaccines have been associated with heart inflammation. But you are much more likely to develop this from Covid than from vaccination.

How high is Covid risk?

As of late August, a Covid wave appears to be underway. Wastewater shows rising levels of coronavirus in most of the country.

Waves in the last couple of years have been much smaller than those early in the pandemic. And because of vaccination and prior infections, far fewer cases lead to hospitalization and death. But that doesn't mean the risks of severe illness or long Covid are gone.

"The number of very sick people continues to decrease, but we will still see very sick individuals go to the hospital. We will see people die," Dr. Chin-Hong said. "It's hard to have an average message."

Mother in Psychosis Found Not Responsible for Killings

By MARIA CRAMER and EMILY PALMER

She was naked from the waist up, sitting on a bed and holding a children's book upside down when the police found her in a Bronx shelter on Nov. 26, 2022, according to prosecutors.

The woman, Dimone Fleming, 22, had repeatedly stabbed her sons, Octavius Canada, 11 months, and Daishawn Fleming, 3, and then submerged them in a bathtub full of water.

Both efforts are early safety studies and are years away from becoming an option people will be offered in a doctor's office. But an approach that once seemed almost outlandishly far out has inched closer to reality as evidence accrues that it works, and that the results stick.

A one-time gene-editing treatment to lower cholesterol had long-lasting effects a year later, scientists reported on Friday. The results highlight the potential to treat even common diseases by altering people's genes.

Gene-Editing Just Once Decreases Cholesterol

On Monday, nearly four years later, prosecutors and a lawyer for Ms. Fleming, now 26, agreed she was in a state of psychosis when she killed her children. A judge found her not responsible by mental disease or defect. As a result, she will avoid prison, but could be hospitalized for months, if not years, if doctors determine she is still mentally ill.

Earlier this year, a similar “one-and-done” clinical trial that used a different gene-editing approach also reported significantly reduced “bad” LDL cholesterol in 35 patients.

The resolution, reached quietly in Bronx Criminal Court, came as national attention has been focused on the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts woman charged with murdering her three young children in 2023.

A one-and-done treatment is appealing to many patients and physicians. Despite an ever-growing armory of pills, injections and lifestyle interventions to lower the risk of heart disease, it remains the No. 1 killer of Americans. About half of people who start taking a daily statin stop, and many who could benefit from the drugs don't start them. Lack of access to health care, an inability to tolerate the drugs and concerns about taking a medicine for life all can play a role.

In the small study, which followed only 15 patients, participants who got the highest dose saw their cholesterol levels plunge by half — and stay that way for a year. The results were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Her case, unlike Ms. Fleming's, has drawn local and international coverage with Court TV constantly streaming testimony, and has revived discussion on how mentally ill mothers who kill their children should be treated and prosecuted. Ms. Clancy has admitted to strangling her children, but has said she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, a condition that can cause hallucinations and delusions. In contrast with Ms. Fleming's case, Massachusetts prosecutors have rejected Ms. Clancy's defense and have argued that she "coldly and calculatingly executed" her children.

"As a preventive cardiologist, you're really thinking, I'll treat people chronically for many, many years," said Dr. Luke Laffin, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who led the new study. "To have the possibility of giving a one-time cure is much more akin to other specialties, like a surgeon."

In the new study, funded by the biotechnology company CRISPR Therapeutics, 15 patients received a one-time infusion of lipid nanoparticles, essentially fat bubbles, carrying gene-editing machinery to their livers. That machinery was programmed to snip and disable a gene involved in cholesterol metabolism called ANGPTL3.

Dimone Fleming stabbed her sons, Daishawn Fleming and Octavius Canada, then submerged them in a bathtub full of water.

In November 2022, Ms. Fleming was working at a concession stand in Flushing Meadows in Queens and living in a shelter in the Mount Hope neighborhood of the Bronx with Octavius and Daishawn. Columbus Canada, then Ms. Fleming's boyfriend and Octavius's father, lived with her and the children at the time.

For about two months, Ms. Fleming had been going to the Floating Hospital in Queens, where she was being treated for symptoms of anxiety and depression, according to court records. Doctors gave her a diagnosis of major depressive disorder and prescribed her psychotropic medication.

In the Bronx case, prosecutors, who had initially charged Ms. Fleming with first-degree murder, said that trying her for the killings and seeking a prison sentence would not serve justice.

The night she killed her children, Ms. Fleming was “grossly psychotic and out of touch with reality,” Dr. Eric Goldsmith, a psychiatrist who evaluated her at the request of prosecutors, wrote in a report.

But she was not taking the medicine and instead was using marijuana daily, which exacerbated the symptoms, according to court records.

ELIAS WILLIAMS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By CAROLYN Y. JOHNSON

She was hallucinating, convinced that the world was coming to an end and that a spirit had invaded her body, Dr. Goldsmith wrote.

Columbus Canada, Ms. Fleming's ex-boyfriend and Octavius's father, said that he forgave her and that "she was a loving person."

According to a forensic psychiatric report written by doctors retained by the defense, "Ms. Flem-

“Prosecuting mothers does not and cannot prevent these crimes from happening, but public discourse might,” Tiffany Wichman, a Bronx assistant district attorney, said in an interview after the judge, Audrey Stone, accepted the plea. “People talking about it is important, and I hope people continue talking about it.”

VIA COLUMBUS CANADA

ing believed her actions were necessary to protect or 'cleanse' her children."

She stabbed her children with kitchen shears, then placed them in the bathtub where she covered them with a sheet.

The experiment was inspired, in part, by the discovery that there are people who have naturally occurring versions of the ANGPTL3 gene that aren't functional. Those people have very low levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Gene-editing technology allows scientists to try to emulate this trait.

Sometime before 7:30 p.m., an employee of the shelter called 911 after smoke and water started coming from the apartment. (She had left the stove on and the faucet running.) When the police arrived, the officers, who did not know about the boys and did not see the children, waited for emergency medical services to take Ms. Fleming, who was visibly agitated, to St. Barnabas Hospital.

Mr. Canada found the children when he returned home later that night. The boys were later declared dead at a hospital.

In court on Monday, Ms. Fleming, dressed in a white sweater and sweatpants, said she under-

A Bronx woman avoids prison in the deaths of her two sons.

stood Judge Stone's questions about her ability to comprehend the proceedings.

Ms. Fleming will be evaluated again by court-appointed psychiatrists and return to court on Sept. 18, when Judge Stone expects to make a ruling based on the results of their examinations.

Ms. Fleming faces three possible consequences, Judge Stone said.

If doctors determine she still has a mental illness and is dangerous, she could be committed to a high-security hospital and held for an initial six months, with her commitment extended indefinitely if her condition does not improve. If doctors find she is not dangerous but still mentally ill, she could be sent to a less restrictive hospital and evaluated again, with the possibility of an indefinite hold.

If they find she is mentally fit, she could be discharged, Judge Stone said. The court is likely to place conditions on her release, such as requiring her to attend counseling programs, according to Ms. Fleming's lawyer, Jodi Morales.

Mr. Canada, 35, was in court on Monday and said in an interview that he forgave Ms. Fleming.

"She's a good person," Mr. Canada said. "She was a loving person. She loved kids."

Ms. Fleming, who has been held at Rikers, still mourns her children, said Ms. Morales.

Ms. Morales praised Ms. Wichman, the prosecutor, describing her approach to the case as compassionate and understanding.

"Everybody recognized what we were dealing with here, so I think the resolution was a result of collaboration," Ms. Morales said. "That doesn't happen often when you're on opposite sides of the table."

In the four patients who received the highest dose of the treatment, levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, both risk factors for heart disease, dropped by about 50 percent and remained steady a year later.

“You do a one-time treatment; you're done,” said Dr. Amrut Ambardekar, a cardiologist at the University of Colorado, who was not involved in the study. “You don't have to worry about it. I think that's what's exciting. I think the thing that we still are trying to figure out is safety, and so far the studies have been very small.”

Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the study, said, "The data look good in terms of stability." Dr. Musunuru co-founded Verve Therapeutics, a biotech company focused on developing gene-editing for heart disease that was acquired by Eli Lilly.

CRISPR Therapeutics' chief executive, Samarth Kulkarni, said that the results of the next phase of the trial — in a few dozen patients — were expected by year's end. Then, discussions will begin with regulators about a large Phase 3 trial designed to test safety and efficacy. Because gene-editing is a new technology with many unknowns about safety and durability, patients are required by regulators to be followed for 15 years.

Dr. Musunuru recalled that initially, there was skepticism from companies that were more interested in using the technology on rare diseases, instead of a common killer that already has many traditional treatment options.

"I tried very hard to convince people you should work on cardiovascular disease," he said.

Even as a proponent of the approach, Dr. Musunuru cautions that these are still the early days and that much larger studies need to be done. He predicted that this might become an option for patients in the early 2030s.

Judge Again Denies Trump Bid to Shift His Felony Conviction to Federal Court

President Trump in 2024 at the Manhattan court where he was convicted of falsifying records.
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

By HURUBIE MEKO and SANTUL NERKAR

A federal judge on Friday denied President Trump's request to move his 2024 felony conviction in Manhattan to federal court, blocking the president's quickest path to overturning it.

In a 35-page ruling, the judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York, said that Mr. Trump's arguments were "neither new nor legally sufficient." It was the third time that Judge Hellerstein had rejected efforts by Mr. Trump's lawyers to move his criminal case to federal court.

"I reaffirm my former decision," the judge wrote. "The president's motion is denied."

Robert J. Giuffra Jr., a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said he would appeal the decision. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, declined to comment.

An appeal of Mr. Trump's conviction, which made him the first felon president, would send the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. If the court decides to review the case again, Mr. Trump may be able to take it to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority.

Mr. Trump is also continuing to appeal his case through state court, but that process could take years.

In March 2023, Mr. Trump was indicted in Manhattan state court and charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a scheme to conceal a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Bragg said that the payment had been made to hide information from American voters.

Shortly after the indictment, lawyers for Mr. Trump, who was not in office at the time, tried to move the case to federal court, arguing that he had a right to be tried there. The argument went before Judge Hellerstein, who presides in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

In the summer of 2023, he ruled against Mr. Trump, saying his lawyers had failed to show that the acts at the center of the charges — reimbursements made to Mr.

Seeking a friendlier arena to contest a New York verdict.

Trump's former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, for the hush-money payment — were related to the office of the presidency.

Mr. Trump was convicted in May 2024.

In July of that year, the Supreme Court found that presidents were entitled to presumptive immunity for official acts, raising the bar for any prosecution.

In September, Mr. Trump's lawyers asked Judge Hellerstein to take a second look at the case, and he once again denied their efforts to move the case to federal court, saying that Mr. Trump's claims to immunity from criminal prosecution were groundless. The hush-money payments, the judge wrote, "were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority."

Mr. Trump then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The judges who handled the case, Raymond J. Lohier Jr., Susan L. Carney and Myrna Pérez, did not rule on the merit of the defense's argument, but asked Judge Hellerstein to take another look at it.

They said that Judge Hellerstein should more closely examine if the evidence at trial touched on acts for which Mr. Trump should have been immune and to evaluate whether the law allowed for someone in the president's position — a federal officer who is also a defendant — to move a case to federal court after a trial has been held and a judgment has been made.

Judge Hellerstein rejected those arguments. The evidence in question, which included trial testimony of witnesses like Mr. Cohen, he wrote, did not “infringe on presidential immunity.”

"Paying hush money to an adult film star or engaging in a cover-up of an embarrassment are not subsumed in presidential immunity," he wrote.

Tainted by Torture: Judge Rejects Key 9/11 Confession

From Page AI

cluded 183 rounds of waterboarding, from the case.

But the trial judge, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, went further, concluding that Mr. Mohammed's subsequent interrogations in 2007 at Guantánamo were also inadmissible.

"The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad's statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given," Colonel Schrama wrote in the conclusion of his 45-page ruling, which was not immediately released to the public but whose unclassified contents were confirmed by several lawyers who had seen it.

Colonel Schrama cited several factors, including an “unbroken continuation of the C.I.A.’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” at the time of Mr. Mohammed’s questioning at Guantánamo in 2007.

He also found that F.B.I. agents intentionally failed to explicitly tell Mr. Mohammed that he had a right to be silent and to consult a lawyer, and that what he told them could be used against him at a trial.

The chief prosecutor, Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, said his team would review the ruling

The judge gave prosecutors five days to decide but said they could request an additional five days.

"and will make a decision on whether to appeal in the near future."

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at Guantánamo Bay in 2022, in a photo provided by his lawyers.

Ruling could further delay a trial that is scheduled to begin in June 2028.

Defense lawyers had argued that Mr. Mohammed was essentially conditioned by the C.I.A. through torture, coupled with years of isolation and solitary confinement, to later tell F.B.I. agents what they wanted to hear. He was not allowed to consult a lawyer until long after he had confessed and was charged.

Mr. Mohammed's lawyer Gary Sowards said the judge's decision "serves as a civics lesson for why the government shouldn't engage in such shameful conduct."

Without the confessions, prosecutors would need to rely on documents, telephone intercepts and transcripts of other conversations to put him on trial. Some of those are also at issue in the case.

But under Guantánamo's detention doctrine, the United States believes it can hold Mr. Mohammed forever, even without trial and conviction, as part of its war against terrorism.

The purpose of the trial is to lay out how 19 hijackers from the Middle East reached the United States to carry out the worst terrorism attack on its soil in American history.

Mr. Mohammed is accused of dreaming up the plan in the 1990s, pitching it to Osama bin Laden and helping to select and train the hijackers.

Colonel Schrama has yet to rule on the confessions of two other defendants in the Sept. 11 case, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Haw-sawi. An earlier judge, Col. Matthew McCall, threw out the confessions of Mr. Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, who is accused of helping some of the hijackers with finances and travel arrangements.

A different judge, Col. Lanny Acosta, suppressed the confession of the defendant in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, in an explicit finding that he had been tortured by the C.I.A. His death-penalty trial in the 2000 attack, which killed 17 U.S. sailors, is scheduled to start in October.

The Sept. 11 case has been mired in pretrial proceedings since arraignment in 2012. Over the years, four other judges gathered evidence on the question Colonel Schrama decided on Friday. An earlier judge found a fifth man, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, mentally incompetent to stand trial, a condition the defendant's lawyer blamed on torture.

Funding Delays Imperil Mamdani's Child Care Plan

MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York at a news conference this month when families got their 2-K offers. Two weeks before the program is set to begin, providers are still without money from the city.

From Page AI

structure to make it work," said Nurita Love, who operates four day care centers in the Bronx and will have four 2-K classes.

Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said that the city would be temporarily moving workers from other agencies to the city's Department of Education, which oversees early childhood programs, to speed up the review and approval of the contracts for day care providers, which has led to the delay in payments.

Ms. Lyle said that the city would also contact the more than 1,100 providers over the coming days to explain how they could receive bridge loans. She added that the department would be rebuilding the early childhood education division, which lost hundreds of employees during the previous administration.

"These delays are unacceptable, and we are going to fix them," Ms. Lyle said in a statement. "The Mamdani administration is working around the clock to ensure child care providers have the funding they need by the first day of school."

Providers have diverted money from their private day care programs or made cuts, such as eliminating snacks for children. Some have asked parents to bring crayons, toilet paper and food on the first day of day care.

The monthly expenses at Ms. Love's centers exceed \$320,000, she said. Without city funds, Ms. Love said, she decided to take out a personal loan and a reverse mortgage on her house to pay her employees, utilities and insurance.

"I had no choice," she said, adding that this had been the most stressful period in her 43 years running day cares.

Mr. Mamdani made universal child care a centerpiece of his campaign, pledging to make New York the first U.S. city to offer free care from infancy to kindergarten. In recent months, Mr. Mamdani has held celebratory news conferences about the addition of 2,000 seats for 2-year-olds this fall, building on the city's free child care system for 3-K and pre-K.

The backbone of the city's universal child care system is not the public schools but neighborhood early childhood centers, which enroll a majority of children. Day care operators have long complained that the city does not treat them equally and that reimbursements routinely arrive weeks or months late.

But in interviews with 18 day care owners and administrators, none said they could recall ever being in such a precarious state. Several day care centers have closed in recent weeks. At some sites, employees have not been paid in a month or longer.

Day care owners added that the Department of Education was hard to reach, often failing to return calls and emails about funding or the bridge loans.

The administrators said they had been hopeful that the pro-

'The start of the school year is not an unexpected event. This needs to be fixed immediately.'

MARK LEVINE, New York City's comptroller, on contract registration issues. The current situation has led to some finger-pointing between city agencies.

gram would be improved under Mr. Mamdani, given his focus on universal child care and his pledge to run a city that delivered "public excellence."

Maria Mavrides Calderon, an assistant professor at the Hunter College School of Education and a former education director at a preschool in the city, said she was “deeply concerned that we are expanding a system that was on a very shaky foundation.”

Theresa Hyland, who operates Little Tots Red Wagon, a preschool in Queens that is slated to run a 2-K classroom of 12, said that an Education Department official told her Wednesday that she would have to cover the estimated \$90,000 in upfront costs for the class and submit receipts for reimbursement later. Ms. Hyland also said she could not register the students in the department's internal system.

"I have bailed them out before, but I am not doing it again," she said of the department, and added that the center would not open if city funding didn't arrive soon. "It's an absolute disaster."

Samantha Peters, who owns a 3-K and pre-K center in Queens that serves 75 children, had planned to tell her employees on Thursday that the center would not open on Sept. 10 because she had no reserves or savings to afford upfront costs. But she said she found a way to stay open at least for September: Her landlord will allow her to postpone the next rent payment of \$10,600, and she will ask her employees to apply for temporary unemployment benefits.

"I am worried — I am scared," Ms. Peters said. "I don't know what to do."

In past years, the centers have received 30 percent of their annual contract in a lump sum before the school year starts, the providers said.

The current situation has led to finger-pointing between city agencies. Education department officials have told day care owners that the payments cannot be disbursed until their annual contracts are registered by the Office of the City Comptroller. But the comptroller's office said the Education Department must first share the contracts for them to be registered.

None of the providers contacted by The New York Times said that their contracts had been registered. The comptroller's office said that no contracts for the 2-K program had been shared with it.

"The start of the school year is not an unexpected event," Mark Levine, the city comptroller, said in a statement. "This needs to be fixed immediately."

In mid-July, the Lucille Rose Day Care Center in Queens had run out of money when a Department of Education official urged the organization to apply for a bridge loan, saying that the money could be paid out in less than two weeks. The center's leaders asked for \$125,000.

But the loan was not quickly disbursed. Still waiting for the money, they decided to take out a separate loan for about the same amount.

The bridge loan finally arrived in mid-August, but it was for \$75,000, said Sonia R. Banks, the chairwoman of the center's board. The organization now has \$31,000 in the bank, not enough to pay all its bills in the coming weeks, as it prepares to welcome 74 students to its 2-K, 3-K and pre-K classes.

Ms. Banks said that the Mamdani administration should have started to prepare the payments and contracts for the early childhood centers at the beginning of the year.

"Under Mamdani, he swears that he is for community day cares," Ms. Banks said. "Then he needs to show up and fix it."

Corrections

ARTS

Because of an editing error, an article on Page 9 this weekend about the film “Coyote vs. Acme” describes incorrectly the process of the writing of the script. Several writers had worked on drafts of a screenplay; they had not declined the opportunity entirely.

An article on Thursday about Dolly Parton's essential songs misidentified the type of guitar used in "Little Sparrow." It was a resophonic guitar, not a pedal steel guitar.

FOOD

An Off the Menu column on Wednesday misstated information about the location of Good Enough to Eat. The restaurant moved to 85th Street and Columbus in 2013, not 1983. It also misstated the year that Carrie Levin died. It was 2023, not 2003.

MAGAZINE

The introduction to this week's Crossword misstates the number of clues tied to the puzzle's theme. There are 10, not eight.

Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.

Contact the Newsroom To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, please email corrections@nytimes.com.

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On 9/11, She Filmed The Burning Towers. She Finally Watched It.

By STEVEN KURUTZ

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Thuc Doan Nguyen-Brophy was startled awake by a violent crash. The sound was so loud and seemed so close, she said, that she thought a delivery truck had slammed into her apartment building on the corner of Canal and Essex Streets in Lower Manhattan.

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy had moved to the city after college three years earlier with a boyfriend. During the day, she temped in corporate offices. At night, she worked as a go-go dancer in gay bars. She felt like she had finally

Reckoning with long-buried feelings and a former life.

found her tribe downtown — below 14th Street was her self-imposed boundary.

Her family had come to America as refugees from Vietnam in 1980, and she had faced discrimination growing up. She found a sense of safety and belonging in New York's nightlife scene among drag queens. She bought a mini digital video recorder to film her clubland adventures and conversations with friends.

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy got up from the sofa where she'd been sleeping. From the window of her second-floor apartment, she saw a crowd beginning to gather on the street below. They were facing west, toward the World Trade Center. The north tower was engulfed in thick black smoke.

Instinctively, Ms. Nguyen-Brophy grabbed her JVC video camera, climbed out onto her fire escape and began filming. She zoomed in and pulled back from the Twin Towers, adjusting the focus and angle, panning from the burning building to the spectators on the sidewalk below her. In total, she kept the camera going for seven minutes and four seconds — long enough to capture United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the south tower.

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy left the city three months after the attack. The office work and club gigs dried up in the wake of the tragedy, and seeing the faces of the missing or presumed dead on posters around town overwhelmed her.

She moved to Los Angeles, where at first she recreated her life in New York, temping for entertainment companies and dancing in gay bars. She lived in California until the coronavirus pandemic.

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy said she did not look at the footage for more than two decades. She rarely spoke about the tape, which she kept in a small safe along with her passport and other papers. She feared it contained images of men and women who jumped from the burning buildings to their death.

Then, in 2022, while unpacking after another move (this time to New Orleans), Ms. Nguyen-Brophy resolved to do something with the footage. She'd read that Minidisc tape can degrade with age, and she was tired of dragging it around from place to place.

Last year, Ms. Nguyen-Brophy donated the physical tape and the license to show the footage to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The museum actively collects and solicits donations of photographs and video related to the Sept. 11 attacks. Footage is examined to corroborate the person's motivations for chronicling what they witnessed or experienced. A metadata analysis of Ms. Nguyen-Brophy's video confirmed it was taken on Sept. 11, 2001.

Dylan Williams, associate curator of the 9/11 Museum, said the amateur clip is a visual artifact from an age before everyone carried a high-resolution camera in their pocket. "With social media, things are scripted before they ever get filmed and posted," Mr. Williams said. "So footage like Thuc's is remarkable because it really does animate a moment in time."

For Ms. Nguyen-Brophy, now 50, the act of donating the tape was also a reckoning with long-buried feelings and her former life in New York.

She has returned to the city to grapple with what she witnessed and recorded. And she knows the question everyone will ask.

"I purposely didn't watch it because I knew it would make me feel badly," Ms. Nguyen-Brophy said, sitting at a cafe on Essex Street in Chinatown, near her old apartment. "I never bring it up in therapy. None of my friends ever brought it up because no one knew I was there."

Thuc Doan Nguyen-Brophy visiting the Manhattan apartment where she lived on Sept. 11, 2001.
TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy was accompanied by Keith Maitland, a filmmaker, and Alisa Payne, a producer. The two are working on a short documentary titled "My Fire Escape" about Ms. Nguyen-

Brophy's footage and experience of Sept. 11, as well as the larger experience of the residents of Chinatown, which they say remains an untold story.

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy said she has a tendency to dissociate in moments of fear and danger. One of the things about Sept. 11 she half-buried, she said, was that had she not missed a call that morning from her temp agency, she might have been working the reception desk at Oppenheimer Funds, a firm that occupied several floors of the south tower.

Now a writer, Ms. Nguyen-Brophy has visited New York many times in the last 25 years. But until this summer, she had not returned to her old block.

"I actually avoided corners," she said. "I'd go down Essex, feel funny and leave."

Ms. Nguyen-Brophy had lost the digital camera. And Minidisc technology is antiquated. After the museum digitized her tape, she was able and finally ready to watch the footage she'd been carrying around so long. She was surprised at how calm she sounds as she confers with the onlookers below trying to make sense of an event that defies comprehension.

At first, Ms. Nguyen-Brophy said, she thought the smoke from the north tower might be Hollywood special effects for a movie shoot, something out of “Die Hard.”

"It was an airplane," a man in a white T-shirt says, looking up at Ms. Nguyen-Brophy and her camera.

"An airplane?" another man asks in disbelief.

"An airplane crashed into it," the first man repeats. "I mean, that could have been a terrorist act."

Around the halfway mark of Ms. Nguyen-Brophy's video, Flight 175 looms into view in the clear blue sky behind the towers. Ms. Nguyen-Brophy's footage goes black for a few seconds. She doesn't know why. Her best guess is that she stopped recording briefly. The clip resumes just as the second plane hits the south tower and explodes.

Mr. Williams, the museum curator, said much footage exists of the second plane strike. What makes Ms. Nguyen-Brophy's tape significant is its unscripted and unknowing quality.

"It does convey the shock, the confusion, the horror in real time," he said. "It's raw. Yet it's taken from the intimate confines of someone's apartment."

The footage is available upon request to researchers. And it will feature prominently in the forthcoming documentary. Ms. Nguyen-Brophy's tape and others like it may also soon be viewable by the public through the museum's website, Mr. Williams said.

When Ms. Nguyen-Brophy visited her old apartment this week with the filmmakers, she cried, unexpectedly. "That was my final home here," she said. "I never thought I would stay in Los Angeles. I thought I would move back."

Going though her things recently, Ms. Nguyen-Brophy found another image from that period — a photograph taken six weeks after the attack, on Halloween night. She and a friend are standing on the sidewalk in the East Village in their costumes, “trying to be regular 25-year-olds like in the before times,” she said.

On a wall behind them is a poster of an American flag and the motto during those grim days: United We Stand.

The latest victim, a woman whose name was not released, is the first identification in nearly a year.
DAVE SANDERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

'Breakthrough' Method Identifies 9/11 Victim

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

For nearly 25 years, forensic scientists have been testing and retesting bone fragments and other human remains found at the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. In that time, they have identified over 1,600 victims.

On Monday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City medical examiner's office announced that they had identified another victim, the first identification in almost 12 months.

But this time, they did so using a new tool — one that combines DNA analysis with detective work from the Police Department, whose officers conducted research into the victim's family tree.

The medical examiner's office relied on the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Squad, a group of investigators who receive genetic profiles and seek potential matches for them from public genealogy databases. The investigators then combine those genealogy searches with traditional methods to make identifications.

They have used that process to solve some crime cases that had gone cold, but this was the first time such methods had been used to identify a Sept. 11 victim.

"We've had a breakthrough," said Dr. Jason Graham, the city's chief medical examiner. Dr. Graham said he was hopeful that this new tool, known as "forensic investigative genetic genealogy," could lead to more remains being returned to victims' families.

The latest identification was the 1,654th that the medical examiner's office had made since 2001. The victim was identified only as an adult woman because her family did not want her name released, a spokeswoman for the office said.

Mr. Mamdani said the latest identification was “a powerful example of what is possible when we pair cutting-edge technology with an unwavering commitment to those we lost.”

The finding still leaves many people — 40 percent of the 2,753 people who died in the city on Sept. 11 — whose names have not been linked to remains, Dr. Graham said.

"This was the largest mass murder in the history of the United States," he said. "And it created the most complex identification efforts in our history."

The remains from the World Trade Center site that are still unidentified were subjected to a variety of forces, including extreme pressure and heat, that have complicated the ability of forensic scientists to sample and study the DNA contained within them, Dr. Graham said.

The last three identifications of Sept. 11 victims in New York came in August 2025. The medical examiner's office identified one of them as Ryan Fitzgerald of Floral Park, on Long Island, and another as Barbara Keating of Palm Springs, Calif. The third victim was an adult woman whose name was withheld at her family's request, the office said.

Scientists made the identifications based on advanced DNA analysis of their remains, as well as outreach to their families, the examiner's office said.

Dr. Graham said on Monday that while the medical examiner's office would "absolutely" continue to use such traditional DNA analysis, the complementary work of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Squad provided another avenue of investigation in cases where DNA samples had been "tested and retested over time" but failed to yield results.

Trump Plans to Mark 9/11 at the Pentagon

This article is by Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Dana Rubinstein and Sally Goldenberg.

President Trump is not planning to attend a ceremony in Manhattan for the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in part because he wanted to deliver a speech and the annual event has long barred remarks, according to four people with knowledge of the events.

Mr. Trump's team had conducted advance visits at the site and had initially signaled to officials in New York and in Washington that the president intended to visit the memorial space known as ground zero, two of the people with knowledge of the events said.

The president's interest in speaking on Sept. 11 was conveyed to memorial planners in recent weeks, three of the people with knowledge of the events said. But since 2012, politicians have been barred from speaking at the site. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, has worked rigorously to keep the venue nonpartisan and focused on the solemnity of the day.

Mr. Trump, a native New Yorker who talked often about the Sept. 11 attacks during his 2016 presidential campaign, is now expected to commemorate them at the Pentagon, two of the people with knowledge of the events said. The Pentagon also came under attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Vice President JD Vance is expected to represent the White House in New York.

The president will go to the Pentagon after he attends a midterm political convention in Texas. Officials have discussed some kind of tribute to the terrorist attack victims during that convention, which takes place Sept. 9 and 10.

There are other considerations that led to Mr. Trump honoring the day in Washington, including that he will depart the next day for his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, where the Irish Open tournament will take place. Leaving from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, or from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, would snarl air and motor traffic to a much greater extent than with Mr. Trump leaving from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

Mr. Trump last attended the ceremony at ground zero in 2024, when he stood alongside Mr. Vance, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President Kamala Harris.

None of the officials made formal remarks. Mr. Trump visited a fire station in New York City after the event.

This year's anniversary marks a quarter-century since the worst attack on the United States after the assault on Pearl Harbor. Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for the

The president won't be at ground zero, where organizers prohibit political remarks.

White House, did not address the president's plans in a response to an email seeking comment.

"On the 25th anniversary of this tragic day, the president will remember those who were killed at the hands of evil terrorists, honor their loved ones, and pay tribute to the brave first responders who put their lives on the line to rescue their fellow Americans," she said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Trump will be allowed to speak, as he did last year, when he attended the remembrances there. His speech that day came less than 24 hours after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose efforts to draw college-aged voters into the MAGA movement were seen as significant to Mr. Trump's 2024 victory, was shot and killed while speaking on a campus in Utah.

The ceremony had been intended to be held in a different spot that day, but was moved to a new one amid security concerns about the president after Mr. Kirk was assassinated.

"We recall the light of America's best and bravest and the love that they showed in their final moments," Mr. Trump said at the time. "In their memory, we make a solemn pledge and a noble promise. We will honor always our great heroes, and you are our heroes."

The president has faced two assassination attempts and other murder-for-hire plots by alleged Iranian proxies. He has faced an uptick in threats since he began a war against Iran on Feb. 28.

This year's event in Manhattan is expected to include former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani; former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton; former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura; and former President Barack Obama, among others, according to several people who have been close to the planning.

In the first decade after Sept. 11, elected officials would read poems and historic American documents, like the Gettysburg Address, at the ceremony. But since 2012, the memorial has barred any speeches by politicians. Instead, politicians stand alongside their peers from opposing parties as families step onto a stage to read the names of the dead over the course of hours.

Mr. Trump's advisers have discussed possibly taking federal control of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, including as recently as last year. Families of the Sept. 11 victims have in recent years criticized the site over its leadership and finances.

Mr. Trump, who was in New York on the day of the attacks, spoke to a New Jersey television station in the aftermath, saying that a building he owned had gained in stature because the twin towers had fallen. That building, 40 Wall Street, “actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually — before the World Trade Center — was the tallest.”

He went on, “And then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest. And now it’s the tallest.” (The statement was not correct; 70 Pine Street, nearby, was taller than Mr. Trump’s building.)

Other points of view on the Opinion pages seven days a week. The New York Times

HARLEQUIN

WARNER BOOKS

Margo Howard, 86, 'Serial Wife' And Reluctant Columnist, Dies

By PENELOPE GREEN

Margo Howard was a reluctant columnist, despite the encouragement of her mother, Eppie Lederer, the wildly popular advice maven known as Ann Landers, and a succession of admiring editors.

She lacked ambition, she was quick to say, as well as journalistic training. (She had dropped out of Brandeis University to marry her first husband.) But she was mouthy — a “mouth on a trolley,” as her father put it — and possessed of a tart wit.

When she divorced that first husband, she thought that a job might be nice, if it wasn't too taxing, and in 1970 she began producing a frothy, thrice-weekly column called "Margo" for The Chicago Tribune. She wrote of mores on college campuses ("Parietal rules are so relaxed they're prone"), the conundrum of marriage ("Marriages are all quite happy. It's the living together afterward that's so tough") and playground hierarchies, deploying the phrase "the nanny mafia" to describe the action, after which the novelist Tom Wolfe's lawyers threatened to sue, saying she had stolen the phrase from him.

David Reuben, the author of "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)," the 1969 blockbuster, also threatened a lawsuit after she compared the book's style to a cross between Helen Gurley Brown and Popular Mechanics. ("I was only nervous once," she wrote of their interview. "When he removed his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves.")

Ms. Howard was proud, she said much later, that soon all her columns had to pass muster with the paper's lawyers before publication.

"You are the star in my crown and the thorn in my side," her exasperated editor told her.

Ms. Howard died on July 13. She was 86. Her daughter Cricket Coleman confirmed the death but did not give a cause or location.

Over the decades, Ms. Howard dipped in and out of the news business, and marriage. After ditching the wealthy businessman whom she described as her “starter husband” and who was the father of her three children, she went on to marry three more times. Husband

MARGO HOWARD

Ms. Howard's 2003 book of her mother's letters chronicled their relationship through the decades. Below, in 2014, she published a memoir of her matrimonial adventures.

No. 2 was an undertaker — when she left him after three years, she gave him the family dog as consolation, which upset the children — and No. 3 was the actor Ken Howard, whom she married in 1977.

She and Mr. Howard fell in love after she interviewed him for a column, after which she gave up newspapering for a spell. It was a mostly happy union, and lasted more than a decade.

No. 4, a keeper, was Ronald J. Weintraub, a cardiologist whom she referred to variously as Dr. Pussycat and Dr. Perfect.

In 2014, Ms. Howard published a memoir of her matrimonial adventures, "Eat, Drink and Remarry: Confessions of a Serial Wife."

"Writing is what Margo does between husbands," the editor James Hoge once teased.

But Ms. Howard's most significant relationship was with her mother. Her first book, "Eppie: The Story of Ann Landers" (1982), told of how the twin daughters of Russian-Jewish immigrants became celebrated (and often feuding) advice columnists.

Esther Pauline Lederer was first to the game, winning a contest in the 1950s to write the "Dear Ann Landers" column for The Chicago Sun-Times. Soon after, her deeply competitive sister, Pauline Esther Phillips, known as Popo, began writing her own advice column for The San Francisco Chronicle, "Dear Abby." The rivalry, as depicted by Ms. Howard, was one-sided, with Ms. Phillips sniping, often in public, at her sister, and Ms. Lederer doing her best to rise above, and frequently cutting off contact altogether.

"She was a girl who kept on trucking," Ms. Howard said, describing her mother to an interviewer in 2003. "She sucked it up."

When Jules Lederer, Ms. Lederer's husband of 35 years, left her for a much younger woman, she soldiered on, even buying him clothes and food once he was in his new apartment. It had been a drawn-out process: Mr. Lederer had enlisted his daughter to deliver the news of his affair and plans for divorce months earlier.

Unlike her mother, Ms. Howard never forgave him, and they remained estranged until just before his death.

Ms. Howard's second book, “A Life in Letters: Ann Landers' Letters to Her Only Child,” published in 2003, a year after her mother's death, chronicled their intimacy through the decades. Her mother's vivid, salty style, peppered with the Yiddishisms she grew up with, is enticing, as are her passions, which included the Democratic Party and antiwar activism, as well as the happiness and intellectual growth of her precocious daughter.

Margo Lederer in an undated photograph during her time at Brandeis University. She dropped out of to marry her first husband. They divorced, and she went on to marry three more times.

With her sassy and wise tone, she made 'Dear Prudence' a hit for Slate.

"One of the good things she passed on to me was that it's almost immaterial what happens to you—it's how you deal with it that matters," Ms. Howard told Alex Witchel of The New York Times in 2003. "She'd say, 'When things go seriously haywire, take a nap and then get busy.' I went into a depression when she died, so I had my nap. It was time to get busy."

Margo Lederer was born on March 15, 1940, in Sioux City, Iowa. Her father was a salesman turned businessman who would go on to found Budget Rent A Car. He wooed her mother, then Esther Pauline Friedman, who was affianced to someone else, while she was shopping for wedding veils.

The family lived in eight cities by the time Margo was 7, including New Orleans and Eau Claire, Wis., before moving to Chicago, where she would later settle as an adult, after her first marriage.

Throughout her peripatetic journalism career, Ms. Howard fielded many offers to write an advice column, including a plea from her mother to take over as Ann Landers. "Honey, I don't want to work that hard," Ms. Howard responded.

But in 1998, when the economist Herbert Stein quit after a few months of writing “Dear Prudence,” the pithy advice column he had pioneered (and written anonymously) for Slate, the publication’s editor, Michael Kinsley, offered the column to Ms. Howard. The effort required would be minimal, he promised; she would have to answer only four letters twice a week.

As she told Vanity Fair, “I’d had a big life: I’d been analyzed, I’d been married — certainly more than once — and I decided that I would write from my experience.”

Her tone was both sassy and wise, and "Dear Prudence," which she wrote for eight years, was a hit.

To Turned Off in Kansas, a reader whose boyfriend's underwear was problematic, Ms. Howard replied:

VIA HOWARD FAMILY
Ms. Howard with her mother, Esther Pauline Lederer, better known as Ann Landers.

Dear Turned,

He wears the baggy briefs underneath? I offer you two suggestions. Since things are going over his head, try under his nose. Write him a short love note saying it would mean a lot to you if he — forgive the pun — bagged his lucky underpants and only wore boxers. Alas, the alternative is to forget it. Would you think Prudie salacious if she were to suggest that it's what's inside the briefs or boxers that counts?

— Prudie, briefly

In addition to her daughter Cricket, Ms. Howard is survived by her husband, Dr. Weintraub; another daughter, Abra Coleman; a son, Adam Coleman Howard; and seven grandchildren.

In 1972, Ms. Howard used her "Margo" column to answer a few readers' letters.

"I do not have a bone to pick about any column in particular," wrote one correspondent named Chuck. "I think they're all horrendous. Why I continue to read what you say is a mystery. May I ask, with all due respect, why you write a column in the first place?"

She replied: "Dear Chuck, the reason is simple. I like to pick up a newspaper and read something with which I entirely agree."

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KOPPELMAN—Murray. Brooklyn College President Michelle J. Anderson, Brooklyn College Foundation Board Chair Anthony R. Castellanos '85, the Brooklyn College Foundation Board of Trustees, and the Brooklyn College community mourn the passing of distinguished alumnus, dedicated trustee, and transformative philanthropic committee Koppeleman S7. His steadfast commitment to educational opportunity and his extraordinary generosity helped shape the future of Brooklyn College and the Brooklyn College. His generations of students. His legacy will endure through the lives he touched and the institution he loved.

in radiology. He was also deeply committed to fueling the future of cancer research and treatment, creating a fellowship for graduate students. He had been a major role in Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, PhD program. Benjamin's admiration for the most recent year was not a remarkable, as he named both chairs and the fellowship program in honor of three years. His most dissatisfied scientists. His contributions will continue to impact people with cancer and their families at ASK and around the world. The most successful efforts were our deepest sympathies to Benjamin's entire family as well as our most heartfelt life. She could still be did to support MSK's mission of ending cancer for life.

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The New York Times

Congress Should Stop the President's Nuclear Deal

W.J. Hennigan

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALEKSEY KONDRATYEV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A writer on national security for Opinion.

THE most significant nuclear development in the Middle East in a generation now sits in the hands of Congress. The Trump administration this week

The Trump administration this week presented its nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia to lawmakers for review, opening the door for the kingdom to enrich its own reactor fuel.

President Trump has not publicly released the complete text of the deal, so it's difficult to assess whether it aligns with American security interests. Unquestionably, the most provocative aspect is the prospect of enrichment — even if for peaceful purposes at the outset — because it could hand Saudi Arabia the technical means to pursue a nuclear device.

If it does go through, the accord could trigger a cascading effect across the region that culminates in a dangerous arms race. Washington should expect partners like the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey to demand similar terms for programs of their own, threatening to reverse decades of U.S. non-proliferation efforts.

It now falls to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee to stop that from happening. Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act requires the committees to review such accords, colloquially called 123 agreements. Congress then decides whether to let a deal proceed or reject it within 90 days while in session to halt it from moving forward.

Lawmakers should say no to this one. Not only does the prospective deal complicate relationships with allies; it also brings the most elusive goal of the president's war with Iran to the fore: a decisive resolution of Tehran's nuclear program and the retrieval of all its highly enriched uranium. If Iran's pathway to the bomb is not cut off completely, Saudi Arabia, its archrival, would be even more certain to develop a weapons program of its own, making the nuclear deal more dangerous.

In 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia said his nation would “without a doubt” pursue a nuclear weapon if Iran did. Ernest Moniz, a physicist who oversaw the U.S. nuclear complex as energy secretary in the Obama administration, said that Iran’s estimated 970-pound stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, most of which is now believed to be buried under rubble inside a tunnel complex in Isfahan, already provides Riyadh with the incentive to push ahead. “The half-ton of enriched uranium is directly usable in a bunch of nuclear bombs,” Mr. Moniz said. “While true that it is not quite weapons-grade, it’s a fallacy to think that you need weapons-grade material to make a bomb. In fact, the Hiroshima bomb did not have weapons-grade uranium, nor was it tested.”

Even if Congress does not stop this agreement, it's still not guaranteed to move ahead. A day after announcing the accord, Mr. Trump conditioned its terms on Saudi Arabia's normalizing relations with Israel, a move the kingdom has refused to make until Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. Even if a diplomatic solution is found to that thorny issue, the agreement is subject to a two-year technical study on the development of a manufacturing plan for the reactors, fuel and other nuclear-related materials.

Trump's Saudi accord could reverse decades of nonproliferation efforts.

All this would take time, of course, and would not come to fruition until the end of Mr. Trump's term.

For now, Saudi Arabia is far from becoming a nuclear state. The kingdom says it has no intention to build a nuclear weapon, and even if the deal went into force tomorrow and the other hurdles were cleared, it would take several years to develop the capacity for the infrastructure, establish the technical know-how and manufacture the fuel for one.

That's not to say that Saudi Arabia does not have a right to nuclear power. But Mr. Trump is not publicly insisting on its acceptance of the so-called gold standard, involving International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Under a core tenet of those terms, which more than 140 other countries abide by, the agency's inspectors have access to verify that nuclear energy facilities are not secretly used to produce weapons-grade material. Side-stepping this essential element of nonproliferation agreements sets a dangerous precedent not only for the United States but also for Russia and China, which could be emboldened to reach similar agreements in the future.

“Other nuclear technology exporters will be incentivized to cut deals with their friends as well, abandoning strict I.A.E.A. safeguard inspections in favor of vague promises not to cheat,” said Scott Sagan, a professor and nuclear expert at Stanford University. “President Reagan used to say that when making arms control agreements with the Russians we should always ‘trust but verify:’ With the Saudis, President Trump seems to be placing too much faith in ‘trust’ and not enough in ‘verify’.”

Saudi Arabia has long sought to control the nuclear fuel cycle from start to finish, a process that involves enriching uranium for nuclear reactors at the front end, then reprocessing fuel rods after they're spent to extract unused uranium and plutonium. The risk is that if the United States grants this wish, the kingdom would have centrifuges that can, theoretically, enrich uranium up to weapons-grade. Reprocessing plants used for waste disposal can separate reactor-produced plutonium, which can also be used in nuclear bombs.

Should Saudi Arabia get the green light on enrichment or reprocessing, it will most likely prompt neighboring countries to demand the same terms and provoke renegotiation requests with nations like the United Arab Emirates and South Korea on existing nuclear agreements. It will loosen the proliferation safety net that's been tightly woven for decades. "It's really concerning," said Scott Roecker, a vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group dedicated to reducing the spread of nuclear weapons. "Without strong nonproliferation requirements, it will set a new starting point for negotiations with nations seeking nuclear energy."

The new precedent will be set as Mr. Trump is aggressively pushing nuclear technology exports in a broader attempt to revitalize the American nuclear industry. In May 2025, he signed an executive order instructing the State Department to pursue at least 20 new 123 agreements around the globe.

The deal under consideration today says U.S. companies will have a central role selling nuclear reactors to the Saudis over a 30-year period, a potential windfall worth billions of dollars for the industry. It has the added benefit of deterring Russia, China or another foreign supplier from forging deals with Riyadh that would be outside of Washington's control. Saudi Arabia could import uranium from the United States, but a two-year study will decide whether it makes economic sense for the country to produce its own nuclear material or purchase it.

Mr. Trump doesn't have a good track record of negotiating nuclear deals. He abandoned the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran in 2018, which he still has not replaced. His 2018 détente with North Korea fell apart a year later with no meaningful resolution. In February, he allowed the last major nuclear arms control pact between the United States and Russia to expire despite Moscow's stated willingness to collaborate on an extension.

Congress must try to avoid another blow to the era of nonproliferation that's contained the global number of nuclear powers to just nine. It's a staggering accomplishment; in 1963, President John F. Kennedy said he could envision "a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations" have nuclear weapons within a decade.

The agreement with Saudi Arabia should not reopen the possibility of that prediction becoming true in the 21st century.

This Times Opinion essay is funded through philanthropic support from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation (formerly the Carnegie Corporation of New York), the Outrider Foundation and the Prospect Hill Foundation. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Times retains full editorial control.

What Did I Miss? Your Summer Politics Quiz.

Gail Collins

A. Their affair.

A contributing Opinion writer.

WELL, people, summer is coming to an end, at least for most of us. We're writing down dates for September in our calendars and making lists of the stuff we failed to do on vacation — everything from buying that new rug to seeing "The Odyssey" to keeping up with politics. I know, I know, that last one can be a tad depressing. But, hey, let's see how you've been doing. Has to be better than a quiz about Homer, right?

1. President Trump has been getting lots of flak from Americans who think he's bad at handling the economy. The president ranted about all this negative thinking, telling a Wisconsin audience that Black unemployment rates were at an all-time low, according to . . . A. "My good friend Clarence Thomas."

B. A survey conducted by Don Jr. and his chums.

C. "I don't know where that stat came from, but I'll take it."

nor of Kentucky, recently called Vance's book:

2. In fact, Trump said in a nearby state, 2026 has been...

A. The "single greatest year we've ever had as a country."

B. "A lot better than it is in, say, Burundi." C. "Tariffilicious."

A. "Boss."

3. There's lots of excitement about this fall's elections, of course. Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat who won a hard-fought Senate primary in Michigan, became one of the party's new-era progressive stars. The Times reported that one of his aides calls him:

B. A "Muslim Bruce Springsteen." C. "Everyone's favorite epidemiologist."

A. "A stupendous depiction of the challenges our vice president overcame growing up." B. "A hell of a lot better than anything Trump has written."

4. JD Vance is being talked about a lot as a possible Trump successor. He made his name with a memoir about his childhood called "Hillbilly Elegy," which is set partially in Kentucky. Andy Beshear, the Democratic gover-

C. "Poverty tourism."

5. Beshear was a Kentucky farm boy himself. He's said that he has fond memories of a childhood task that "prepares you for politics." Beshear said his job was ...

A. Shoveling manure out of a neighbor's horse stalls.

B. Counting cows.

C. Pretending to be interested in the

livestock's opinions.

6. One of the few positive stories out of Congress lately was the passage of a bill to address the housing crisis — the biggest attempt to tackle that problem in more than 30 years. Trump called the measure:

A. "The most important piece of legislation since that thing about transportation."

B. "A bill whose success has made me very proud."

7. The president has been having quite a few tussles with the Smithsonian Institution. In a new memoir, Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian secretary, recalled taking Trump on a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and stopping at an exhibit focused on the Dutch role in the slave trade. Bunch said Trump commented:

C. "A yawn."

A. "Now, this is the sort of thing it's useful for people to learn about."

B. "You know, they love me in the Netherlands."

C. "Do you have a place where they can put my name on the wall?"

8. One of the Democrats talked about as a possible presidential candidate in 2028 is Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. Recently, his former appointments secretary wrote an article revisiting a more-than-20-year-old scandal about ...

B. The time they got confused about daylight saving time.

C. Their former membership in Kimberly Guilfoyle's hiking club.

C. Cryptocurrency business.

9. The Trumps have made mega-fortunes since the president returned to office. More than \$1 billion of that came from the family . . . A. Constructing moderate-priced housing in

the Midwest for middle-class Americans. B. Golf prizes.

10. The entire globe seemed to be watching this year's soccer World Cup. Americans got a chance to be reintroduced to FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, whose head, Gianni Infantino, is a big Trump fan. Last year, he awarded the president the "FIFA Peace Prize" after Trump failed to ...

A. Win the Nobel Peace Prize.

B. Win a special medal for

self-aggrandizement.

C. Float a meme coin based on English Premier League scores.

11. Another Republican who seems to want to be the party's presidential nominee is Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense. Recently, Hegseth announced a mandatory screening of all 30-and-over service members, including women, for testosterone deficiency, because he says he wants ...

A. "To bring the ladies into all our military stuff."

B. A "High-T Department of War." C. More attention.

12. So far this year we've sure been focused on those Senate primaries. The Democratic one in Maine started off with an oysterman who had to leave the race after he was accused of rape (an accusation he denies). He was replaced by a ...

A. Scallop breeder.
B. Lumberjack.
C. A.I. entrepreneur.

It's perfectly sane to want to ignore current events, but attention must be paid.

13. Penn Station in New York is the busiest transportation center in the country. The current administration wants to rename it, and speculation is rife that the plan is to call it ... A. Immigration Station.

B. Alexander Hamilton Station. C. Trump Station.

14. Speaking to a group of autoworkers recently, Trump said:

A. "Nothing has improved the lot of the American workingman like organized labor."

B. "I've done more for you than your parents." C. "Never met a back seat I didn't like."

15. Americans have heard a lot recently about the story of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier whose crew had been reportedly facing food and water shortages, not to mention mental health crises, after roughly nine months at sea. Top officials' response to the complaints from families about the distress on board ranged from sympathetic to defensive. Our president said three-quarters of a year on the water without a break was...

A. "Just what you need High-T for."

B. "Not nearly long enough."

C. "A story that reminds me of the time I sold my yacht to a Saudi prince for only \$19 million."

ANSWERS

1-C, 2-A, 3-B, 4-C, 5-A, 6-C, 7-B, 8-A, 9-C, 10-A, 11-B, 12-B, 13-C, 14-B, 15-B

Give yourself five points for each question you got right, and 25 just for making it through. And I don't just mean the quiz. If you got 50 or lower, you're really not paying attention. It's perfectly sane to want to avoid thinking about current events, but really, your job as a citizen is to face the darkness. A score of 55 to 75 indicates avoidance to a more rational degree. When the next generation asks you, in horror, for Trump stories, you won't want them to think you weren't paying attention at all. If you scored 80 to 85, you're very well informed. Congratulations. Anything beyond that and you're going to need more help than I can offer.

The Original Sin of Anthropic's Claude

Charles Graeber

The author of "The Good Nurse" and "The Breakthrough" and one of the named plaintiffs in Bartz v. Anthropic.

WE NEED to talk about a potential A.I. famine.

W If we do nothing, starving A.I. chatbots may be left with nothing to eat but their own responses. Think of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy (if you remember photocopies). Quality degrades; mistakes amplify and dominate.

The result is what experts describe as model collapse. Imagine a world where A.I. slop is even worse. It's not a future we want.

I know this because I did my part to head off where we are now.

Kirk Wallace Johnson, Andrea Bartz and I brought a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic. Our complaint was piracy and copyright violation; Anthropic had stolen our books because it needed them to create a commercial product, a generative A.I. chatbot designed specifically to write like us. But they didn't ask us or pay us. That seemed unfair, and illegal.

Piracy is a crime as old as gold — or in the modern digital context, Napster. And intellectual property theft is pretty much baked into the A.I. development story. Most, if not all, A.I. companies built their tech on piracy — though they may call it “fair use.”

Anthropic's story offered a twist. While many A.I. companies scraped the internet (including The New York Times, which is why OpenAI, Perplexity and Microsoft are currently being sued by the company for copyright infringement) for material, Anthropic also scanned, digitized and later destroyed physical books through a secret and expensive legal workaround.

If this was Anthropic's legal fig leaf, it worked. The judge found that training the A.I. on physical books that Anthropic purchased was fair use, but illegally downloading and storing millions of copyrighted books, which Anthropic also did, was copyright infringement.

At \$1.5 billion, ours was the largest copyright settlement in American history. Nearly half a million works were represented in our class action. After fees and lawyers (who deserve full credit for this case even existing), that works out to about \$3,000 per book, which the author has to split with the publisher.

For a writer like me, who spent about 14 years researching and writing two books, that money is hardly life-changing. But in legal circles, it was considered a big win, four times the most common per-work penalty for illegal downloads.

FOR ANTHROPIC, stealing was a smart business expense.

In 2021, Anthropic was a late but ambitious entrant to the A.I. race. Its goal, according to the fair use order in our case, was to create an artificial intelligence capable of writing that “an editor would approve of,” and that consumers would pay for.

Such a chatbot couldn't be trained on mere tweets and trolls. It would need to mimic quality human writing at an industrial scale.

The Anthropic founder and chief executive Dario Amodei wanted to avoid the “legal/practice/business slog” of buying and licensing the books the company needed. Stealing was faster and cheaper. The price of virtue was deemed too high. Instead, the company is expected to be valued at \$2 trillion in its looming I.P.O., which would make it the largest in history.

But the problem of stolen material won't go away.

For many authors, it's potentially ruinous. And this is where an A.I. famine could have its roots.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANNA MALINA

Even millions of stolen books cannot satisfy ravenous A.I. chatbots.

WE HAD HOPED our case would help confirm the protections of copyright in the age of A.I. and the rights of artists and creators to control their own work. And we hoped a judge would rule that our life's work, in whatever form, was not a free natural resource that could be taken against our will and used to compete with us, if not put us out of work.

That did not happen.

Another judge in the same California district court disagreed, pointedly calling the analogy between for-profit mimic machines and ambitious schoolchildren “inapt” and casting doubt on the ruling.

There will be other cases, and other judges with other opinions. This question is far from settled. It will be kicking around the courts for a long time.

Claude was built and may still be training on our copyrighted books. I'm not aware of any major A.I. companies doing otherwise.

For several years, authors have had a sense that the harm caused by unlicensed training on books had a negative impact on their livelihoods. A working paper published this month looked at more than 14,000 books sold on Amazon between 2023 and March of this year, putting that harm into hard numbers.

The paper found that the book market has been increasingly flooded with A.I. slop that has financial implications for publishers and authors. The slop confuses consumers and may mess up best-seller lists. Increasingly, even “human-authored” books are contaminated with A.I.-produced material.

For authors, “market dilution” by A.I. slop will result in loss of sales and income. It’s bad and getting worse. The median income of a full-time author is about \$20,000. There’s not much further to fall.

But sadly, it's the A.I.s that may suffer the most. A.I.s can't keep improving by training only on A.I. output. The model collapse scenario threatens to wipe out whatever gains chatbots like Claude enjoyed from being trained on books in the first place.

And fewer working authors means fewer original, A.I.-free books. For a ravenous A.I chatbot, this is a potential death spiral. For both authors and Anthropic, it's a future we should work together to avoid.

ONE DAY, hopefully copyright protections will be extended to prevent the unlicensed training of A.I.s.

Until then, we live in a legal gray area, in which giant cash-rich corporations gorge freely on the rights of individual creators. The big ones will continue to eat the little ones unless the little ones can band together.

It's up to us to demand legislation extending copyright protections in the 21st century. Many members of Congress appear willing; property protections have appeal for both sides of the aisle.

Affirming those copyright protections to include A.I. might even force A.I. companies to hire human writers to create original works for their L.L.M.s to train on. Or perhaps they'll start spending their treasure like modern Medicis, funding the quality work A.I.s need to stay sharp. At the very least, they might invest in publishing houses and writing programs, fending off model collapse while ushering in a Silicon Era of artistic enlightenment.

I worry for this generation of artists coming of age in yet another technological adolescence, on the brink of so many cultural and economic disruptions. But I do not worry for the future of art itself. We will always need human mediators to translate the human experience and make the flesh word.

LETTERS

Trump's Battle Against Mail-In Ballots

TO THE EDITOR:

Re "Justices Clear a Path to Curb Mail-In Voting" (front page, Aug. 25):

The latest moves by President Trump to restrict mail-in voting are not about election integrity; they are about political advantage. Mr. Trump has spent years insisting, without a shred of credible evidence, that mail-in ballots are riddled with fraud. The real reason for his crusade is far simpler: He believes mail-in voting benefits Democrats. That belief is unsupported by data, but it drives his actions.

Now, with his administration pushing to limit mail-in ballots to voters deemed eligible by federal agencies, Mr. Trump is attempting to reshape elections to suit his political agenda. This is not safeguarding democracy; it is a blatant attempt to manipulate its machinery.

Equally troubling is the Supreme Court ruling that lifted an injunction blocking Mr. Trump's order. The court did not rule on the order's legality, yet the ruling does allow parts of it to move forward, thereby injecting a big dose of confusion into states' midterm election planning.

Free and fair elections are at the heart of a functioning democracy. When a president seeks to tilt the playing field and the Supreme Court seems willing to assist, the damage is not just procedural but potentially existential. Americans deserve an electoral system that protects voters, not one

Don't Ban Data Centers

TO THE EDITOR:

Re "Fury Over Data Centers Quickly Shifts Midterms" (front page, Aug. 24):

Concentrated demand from data centers can strain local power grids, and residents are right to demand answers. The solution is regulation and transparency, not blanket obstruction.

We don't ban cars or appliances for consuming energy; we require efficiency standards and hold manufacturers to them. Data centers should face the same discipline: mandatory disclosure of energy metrics and clean power plans before construction — accountability that won't stifle useful development for communities.

The alarm over data centers can be overstated: They are projected by the International Energy Agency to reach only about 3 percent of global electricity by 2030, and the technology helps other industries cut energy use.

This technology is here to stay. Our response should be measured and practical: rigorous efficiency standards, not bans.

STEVEN HIRSCH GREAT NECK, N.Y.

that protects the political fortunes and desires of a single man.

KEN DEROW SWARTHMORE, PA.

TO THE EDITOR:

In these Trumpian days, the shadow docket of the Supreme Court has, for me at least, become the shady docket. What rationale does the court have to consider President Trump's challenge to mail-in voting, which is constitutionally under the purview of the states and Congress? That a six-member majority of the court decided to support Mr. Trump's desperate attempt to skew the midterm elections is disheartening.

The rationale for their decision was that the Trump administration was “likely to suffer irreparable harm.” Did these justices consider the harm that Mr. Trump causes every single day to others, both in this country and beyond?

Standing up to Mr. Trump might eventually dissuade him from his belief that he is all-powerful — that his words “I alone can fix it” are just not true.

CAROL HARRINGTON YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y.

TO THE EDITOR:

President Trump's plan for federal intervention to hamstring mail-in voting infringes on the duty of states to administer their elections.

To do even a mediocre job of carrying out Mr. Trump's executive order would require creating vast new bureaucracies in the Department of Homeland Security and the Postal Service. That's the opposite of the usual G.O.P. demand to shrink the federal government. And when did Republicans become so trusting of bureaucrats' performance?

How much would carrying out Mr. Trump's order add to our \$40 trillion debt? How much might the Postal Service raise stamp prices to pay for the extra costs of screening ballots? How many ballots will the Postal Service fail to deliver to eligible voters in time?

Mr. Trump's "cure" is far worse than the alleged (and unverified) ills he's claiming to treat.

My home state has run mail-in voting efficiently and securely for many years. Mr. Trump opts to use mail-in voting for himself. He should quit interfering with its use by the rest of us.

PAUL DAVIES, ALBANY, ORE.

The Times welcomes letters from readers. Letters must include the writer's name, address and telephone number. Those selected may be edited, and shortened to fit allotted space. Email: letters@nytimes.com

Push Your Musical Gods Off Their Pedestals

Jonathan Biss

A concert pianist.

“T THIS school, your teacher is your God.”

A I can remember hearing this more than once while a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, several decades ago, but friends and colleagues who attended other conservatories have confirmed my suspicion that the sentiment was not specific to Curtis. In the music world, gods were everywhere: I'd already heard story after story in which teachers, conductors and soloists were praised as all-knowing and treated as all-powerful. I didn't give it a second thought, despite having learned in Sunday school that it is dangerous to believe in false idols.

Today, as a grown-up musician myself, I find it to be an astonishing statement. Every one of my musical experiences — whether as a performer, a teacher or simply a person trying to come closer to the music I love — leaves me more convinced that deifying teachers is wrong. It encourages deference and passivity, instead of the exploration and commitment that a true musician must spend a lifetime practicing.

All fields have teachers with worshipful ac-olytes, but it seems to me that musicians have a particular penchant for turning their teachers into deities. Why do we do it? A good teacher can offer invaluable guidance, but not a direct path to excellence and enlightenment, a route some would hope for. That is a myth. Being perpetually curious is hard work. Grappling with an unruly instrument and the infinite subjectivity of music is extremely hard work. This makes students susceptible to would-be gurus who purport to have all the answers and opens them up to several forms of mistreatment.

I recently contacted colleagues at the top of the profession about their experiences with harsh teaching. Stories of (usually at public master classes) humiliation came in quickly: a world-renowned pianist screaming at a student to stop after three notes; a violin teacher calling a student a racial slur; a legendary violinist advising a student to quit music; a venerated teacher comparing a student performance to bird excrement.

I've heard multiple teachers say that it is acceptable — even necessary — to beat up (figuratively, I presume) on their students. A celebrated violin teacher once told me that she did not consider it to be a true lesson until the student cried. This approach should appall us, but we should also take time to consider what it says about our attitudes toward music and learning. You can browbeat people into obedience; you cannot browbeat them into understanding.

If we want musicians who engage deeply with the music they play, who approach it with imagination and courage and marry instinct to insight, then we should elevate teachers who acknowledge their own fallibility and who help their students learn to think and listen critically. If we want musicians who reduce their work to a set of rules to be followed, we should elevate teachers who think they can do no wrong and demand that their students think the same.

Famous teachers have connections that can open — or close — professional doors for their students. But this cannot fully explain why students and institutions are so much in their thrall. There are plenty of powerful people in the music world, and not all of them consider themselves superhuman or abuse their power. We would not be so quick to excuse imperiousness or cruelty if we didn't believe, erroneously, that certain people held the keys to absolute truth. The problem is not that some people are vicious: The problem is a musical culture so addicted to veneration that they are able to operate with impunity.

And operate they do. Recently, I saw the remarkable documentary “Dear Lara,” which tells the stories of (mostly) women who said they were sexually abused at a conservatory. The film makes a convincing and distressing case that the problem is systemic. Apparently, turning (mostly) men into gods can turn them into monsters.

I was lucky: None of my teachers were abusive. In fact, they were inspiring. I doubt

Deifying teachers is wrong. It stunts exploration.

that any of them believed for a moment that they knew everything. But I had absorbed that message, endowing them with a mystique they may not have wanted. If you asked me, in my student days, how my week had been, I would have responded by telling you how my lesson had gone. It was only one hour, but it was the hour that mattered.

BRYCE WYMER

Even then, though, I had an inkling that there was another approach. I knew on some level that the lesson could do no more than suggest possibilities, and that it would be my job, in all those other student hours, and all the years that would follow, to explore and develop and usually reject them, in the search for something authentic both to me and to the music I was playing. I knew that simply trying to please a teacher was the easy road, which is rarely the right one.

Being a musician means embracing complexity and ambiguity. It means living with all of the many possibilities a great piece of music suggests. This is often uncomfortable. It is human to wish for the complex to be simple, for the subjective to be objective. This wish can be so intense that people sometimes not only overlook poor treatment, they even welcome it. Several students have told me, to my amazement, that they want their teacher to speak to them in a way I can only describe as abusive. This phenomenon may even offer a hint about the appeal of authoritarianism — the bogus simplicity of its message justifying, for some, its inherent cruelty and even the ultimate inability to solve the problems it misdiagnoses.

Music-making should be a spiritual undertaking that requires lifelong devotion. Displacing this devotion onto a human avatar is alluring and wrong. It may make students feel safe, but it leaves them ill prepared for their life's work and creates an environment that can expose them to danger. As both a moral and an artistic matter, we must reject this path.

Harald V, 89, Dies; King Who Updated Norway's Monarchy

when they met.

By ALAN COWELL

King Harald V of Norway, whose 35-year reign opened an ancient monarchy to a contentious cast of family connections, including a draper's daughter; a celebrity shaman; and Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, died on Friday in Oslo. He was 89.

The death, in a hospital, was announced by the Royal Court. The king had been receiving treatment for a bacterial infection of his blood.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement on Friday, "A whole nation is in mourning and the people of Norway are left with a deep sense of gratitude for a long life in the service of Norway."

"King Harald found the words to bind us together when we needed them the most," he added.

The king was born into a centuries-old lineage that shared part of its heritage with the British monarchy, anchoring him in a network of inherited privilege in an era when Europe was moving toward replacing all-powerful rulers with more ceremonial constitutional monarchs like Harald. He was a distant cousin of King Charles III of Britain.

Of his reign's many collisions between tradition and modernity, perhaps the most perilous came recently.

This year, the United States Department of Justice released a huge trove of documents related to Mr. Epstein, including emails linking Crown Princess Mette-Marit, the king's daughter-in-law, to the sex offender.

In the emails, the relationship between the crown princess and Mr. Epstein — unfolding several years after Mr. Epstein was convicted in 2008 on charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution — came across as intimate and teasing, and showed that she was closer to him than the palace had previously acknowledged. The disclosures prompted questioning of Mette-Marit's suitability as a future queen and emboldened some Norwegians to call for the abolition of the monarchy.

There had already been some public questioning in 2001, when Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the throne, married Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby, a former waitress, divorcée and single mother. But Harald himself had already begun the process of change that brought so-called commoners — people with no royal ancestors into the regal House of Glücksburg created by his forebears. Risking a rift with his father, King Olav V., and threatening not to wed at all if his plans were frustrated, Harald had in 1968 married Sonja Haraldsen, the daughter of a clothing merchant and an undergraduate at the University of Oslo

Lynsey Chutel and Henrik Pryser Libell contributed reporting.

Their secret on-again-off-again courtship lasted for nine years before Olav dropped his opposition and consented to their wedding.

The marriage was the start of a family tradition: Both of their children followed Harald's example by choosing commoners as spouses.

The disclosures this year about Mette-Marit's friendship with Mr. Epstein forced her to issue a statement saying that she regretted "having had any contact with Epstein." But the royal family refused to comment further, opening it to accusations of evasiveness and more. "Can Mette-Marit become queen after this?" a leading newspaper editor asked.

The scandal was all the more incendiary because it emerged just days before Mette-Marit's son, Marius Borg Hoiby, the stepson of Crown Prince Haakon, went on trial on multiple charges of rape as well as other crimes. In June, he was found guilty of many of the charges and sentenced to four years in prison, and has been under house arrest as he appeals the verdict. Also in June, the crown princess, who was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, underwent a successful lung transplant.

The crisis this year eclipsed other moments when Harald's family had inspired public scrutiny. In 2002, his daughter, Princess Martha Louise, married an author, Ari Behn; they divorced in 2017, and he died by suicide in 2019. In 2022, the princess announced her engagement to Durek Verrett, an American and a self-proclaimed shaman who counted Gwyneth Paltrow among his celebrity clients and friends. They married in 2024.

Their relationship brought hostile attention to some of Mr. Verrett's past utterances, including his claim that he had used an amulet — which he sold for \$222 on his website — to combat Covid-19, and his assertion that cancer is a choice. The princess had also been criticized for many years for claiming to be clairvoyant and for urging others to contact “the angels and the divine universe.”

Disapproval of their relationship inspired media comparisons to the turmoil in the British royal family provoked by Prince Harry's 2018 marriage to Meghan Markle. There were indeed parallels: In 2022, the Norwegian royal family announced that, like Prince Harry and his wife, Martha Louise and her partner would step back from royal duties; and, like Harry and Meghan, the princess and Mr. Verrett, who is Black, ascribed public criticism of their bond to racism.

But unlike the acrimonious rift in Britain between King Charles III and Harry, his younger son, Martha Louise characterized her separation from the royal family as friendly. For the Norwegian king's part, he said that he and Mr.

Harald V after taking the oath as king of Norway in 1991, after the death of his father, King Olav V.
INGE GJELLESVIK/NTB, VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

LEFT: SJÖBERG BILDBYRÅ/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES. RIGHT: FREDRIK VARFJELL./NTB/A.F.P. VIA GETTY IMAGES
In 1968, Harald married Sonja Haraldsen, the daughter of a clothing merchant, over the objections of his father. Both of their children also married so-called commoners. Right, Harald in 2025.

Verrett "agree to disagree."

Harald was born on Feb. 21, 1937, on the royal Skaugum estate outside Oslo, the third child — after Princess Ragnhild and Princess Astrid — of Princess Martha of Sweden and the future King Olav V of Norway, who ruled from 1957 until his death in 1991.

Harald and Queen Sonja had two children, Martha Louise, born in 1971, and Haakon, in 1973. He is survived by them, his wife and six grandchildren.

The king's early years were shaped by World War II, which began in September 1939. Six months later, German troops invaded Norway and the royal family fled. Harald's grandfather, King Haakon VII — who had refused to surrender to the Germans — and his father, then called Prince Olav, took up residence in London, where a Norwegian government in exile had been established to oppose the German-

A contentious cast of family members drew scandalous headlines.

backed administration of Vidkun Quisling, a Nazi collaborator who was in office for much of the occupation.

Along with his mother and sisters, Harald traveled to Washington, where he spent most of the war and where the family befriended President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At 7, he stood behind the president at his fourth inauguration in January 1945.

After the end of the war later that year, the royal family returned to Norway. Harald attended the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Military Academy (from which he graduated in 1959) and the University of Oxford in Britain, where he studied history, economics and politics at Balliol College in the early 1960s. He was known as an athlete, and as a yachtsman he was part of the Norwegian team at three Summer Olympics from 1964 to 1972, in Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich.

He became Norway's king following the death of his father on Jan. 17, 1991, a new reign that was credited with greater openness toward the public than his predecessors had allowed. Beyond his acceptance of commoners into the royal family, he ordered the renovation of royal buildings, including the Royal Palace in Oslo, so that they could be opened to the public.

Harald was the country's first Norwegian-born monarch since the 14th century. (After long political unions with Denmark and Sweden, Norway became independent in 1905.) Like other European monarchs, his powers as head of state were circumscribed by the Constitution and parliamentary convention to ensure that his political role was limited and largely formal. Much of his reign was underpinned by an economic boom that brought prosperity to Norwegians from offshore oil and gas deposits.

But in July 2011, he faced a brutal challenge to the nation's self-image and self-esteem when Anders Behring Breivik, a far-right extremist, killed 77 people in attacks on government buildings in Oslo and on the island of Utoya. Some Norwegians compared the shock to the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

With an address to Norwegians, meetings with bereaved families and a public display of grief when he wept at a national memorial service, Harald was credited with emerging as a symbol of patriotic resolve and unity.

"Now it's important that we stand together and support each other, and that we don't let fear take over," he told his compatriots on the night of the attacks.

In a rare interview with The New York Times a few months later, the king said: “I’ve always had the feeling that in times of crisis, that’s what we’re here for, really. That showed in 1940, and we’ll see if this will come out the same way. You do what comes natural to you, and if that’s correct, all the better for that.”

'Grandfather of All Norway' Is Mourned by Thousands

This article is by Lynsey Chutel, Henrik Pryser Libell and Louise Krüger.

OSLO — As news of King Har-ald V's death broke on Friday, thousands of Norwegians left their homes, classrooms and offices to gather in collective grief outside the Royal Palace in Oslo.

Some cried, others hugged. Many laid flowers on the grounds leading to the palace's arched entrance, where flags flew at half-staff. The gray sky after an unusually sunny week appeared to reflect the country's mood.

"I didn't think I would be this sad," said Shain Thomas Jellum Gundhus, 45, an artist who wore black and was placing red roses at the palace. "He was absolutely wonderful."

Many of the mourners outside the palace described the king as a unifying figure who had held a changing Norway together. Harald had been Norway's king since 1991, reigning, though largely in a ceremonial role, during an economic boom and as the country grew increasingly diverse. Within his own household, he presided over a series of public scandals involving members of the royal family.

Until his death, at age 89, he remained a popular figure, even as public support for the monarchy appeared to dip with each embarrassing headline.

On Friday, mourners remembered how Harald had used his position to steer the country toward inclusivity. Several people pointed to a 2016 speech in which Harald defined what it meant to be Norwegian.

Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting.

“Nordic people are girls who love girls, boys who love boys,” he said. “Norwegians believe in God, Allah, everything and nothing.”

In a tribute on social media, Kamzy Gunaratnam, a lawmaker who as a child arrived in Norway as a refugee from Sri Lanka, said, "He put into words what kind of Norway he wanted us to be."

CORNELIUS POPPE/NTB, VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Harald was the first Norwegian king born in Norway since the 14th century — the country became independent in 1905 after previous unions with Denmark and Sweden — and his marriage to Sonja Haraldsen, the daughter of a clothing merchant who had no royal ancestors, entrenched the family's Norwegian identity.

Soon after Harald became king at age 53, he opened the palace and other royal buildings to the public. This summer, the palace grounds hosted a celebration after Norway's run to the quarterfinals of the soccer World Cup. Already frail, Harald welcomed the team.

Another mourner outside the palace, Fredrik Hognerud Traeland, 40, recalled the moment. "He was no longer able to stand, but he was determined to greet them as upright as he could," Mr. Traeland said.

During moments of national crisis, the king brought a sense of stability, many said. When a neo-Nazi terrorist killed 77 people in a 2011 attack, Harald's public tears during a memorial service offered a rare show of emotion, and served as a comfort to many.

Mourners gathered and placed flowers at a memorial outside of the Royal Palace in Olso after King Harald V died on Friday.

Lisbeth Kristine Royneland, 68, who led a support group for grieving families after the attack, said, "When he cried, the atmosphere was so powerful."

"He has been an incredibly sympathetic and wonderful king, and the grandfather of all Norway," she added.

Turid Haugvik, 49, a sales assistant in central Norway, said that she had watched the wall-to-wall news coverage of the king's death. "Whenever something happened in our little country of Norway, both painful and joyful, he showed that he was one of us," she said in a phone interview.

In recent years, crises in the royal family threatened the future of the monarchy. Harald's son, Haakon, succeeds him as king, and beside Haakon will be his wife, Mette-Marit, who has been at the center of some of the palace scandals.

The couple worked hard to overcome the initial raised eyebrows over Mette-Marit's status as a divorced single mother when they married in 2001. But their standing took a blow this year after revelations about Mette-Marit's friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whom she described in emails as "my crazy friend." The links became what historians described as perhaps the worst crisis the royal family had suffered since the dynasty was established

in 1905.

In June, Mette-Marit's eldest son, Marius Borg Hoiby, was convicted of rape, domestic violence and transporting cannabis. Soon after, she underwent a lung transplant to treat pulmonary fibrosis, a life-threatening illness.

King Harald's eldest child, his daughter, Princess Martha Louise, stepped away from royal duties in 2022 after her relationship with an American celebrity shaman, Durek Verrett, attracted bad press. Many found their made-for-Netflix wedding in 2024 tacky.

The scandals tarnished the royal family's standing. A survey for Norway's national broadcaster showed that support for the monarchy dropped to 64 percent in May, from 81 percent in 2017.

Therese Askerud, who works as a nurse, picked flowers from a community garden to place at the memorial on Friday.

"It will be a period of transition for all of us," Ms. Askerud, 51, said. "Not least for our new king who will be grieving the loss of his father while also dealing with the turmoil his family has been through."

Crown Prince Haakon, 53, Steps Into His Father's Shoes

By LYNSEY CHUTEL

After the death of King Harald V on Friday, Norway has a new king.

Crown Prince Haakon, 53, has succeeded his father to become King Haakon VIII, according to an official announcement. While the role of king in Norway is mostly a ceremonial and symbolic position nowadays, the monarchy still plays a public role in Norwegian society, representing the country at home and abroad.

As heir to the throne, Haakon has spent a life carrying out royal duties, and he increasingly took on a more central role as his father's health deteriorated. On Friday, in his first task as king, he met in Oslo with the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, and the cabinet. The new king was accompanied by his daughter, Princess Ingrid Alexandra.

Although Haakon has an older sister, Norway's succession law used to dictate that male heirs took precedence. The law changed in 1990, meaning Ingrid Alexandra is next in line to the throne.

Haakon was born in Oslo on July 20, 1973, to Harald and Queen Sonja. He has an older sister, Princess Martha Louise. After attending public and private schools in Oslo, he followed family tradition and enrolled in the Norwegian military.

After graduating from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, Haakon bucked the tradition of enrolling at Oxford University in England, like his father and grandfather had, and studied political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He then went to the London School of Economics, where he graduated in 2003 with a master's degree in development studies, with a focus on international trade and African

DUSAN VRANIC/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Crown Princess Mette Marit and Crown Prince Haakon in 2013. He is Norway's new king.

studies.

Like his father, he wed a “commoner” — a person with no royal ancestor — but his 2001 marriage to Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby was not without controversy. She was divorced and had a young child from her first marriage, and the tabloids soon dug up details of her party-girl past. But the family stood by the couple, and Mette-Marit was accepted by the public.

In recent years however, revelations over her friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein soured public perception. Her eldest son, Marius Borg Hoiby, has also had run-ins with the law. In June this year, an Oslo court convicted Mr. Hoiby of rape, domestic violence and other charges, and sentenced him to four years in prison.

Mette-Marit underwent a lung transplant this year.

Haakon and Mette-Marit have two children together, Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus.

How 6 Months of War in Iran Jolted Oil, Gas, Stocks and More

Source: FactSet.

Strait of Hormuz Ship Crossings

Source: Kpler.
Source: FactSet.
JASON KARAIAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A look at the markets' movements during the global conflict, and where they might be headed in the future.

By REBECCA F. ELLIOTT

After the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the price of oil immediately jumped, interest rates rose and stocks slumped. Within a week, American drivers were paying 34 percent more for gasoline, as the flow of energy from the Persian Gulf froze.

Six months later, the war has locked into a fragile holding pattern. Oil is getting out, but less of it, and gas prices remain high. Ships are moving but fewer than before the war, and through different routes. Investors in stocks and bonds have turned their attention - mostly — to other issues.

Here's where markets stand after six months of war.

The price of oil is up more than 20 percent.

At \$89 a barrel, oil costs 23 percent more than it did before the war, driving up prices for everything from gasoline to plastics.

But had you asked most energy executives six months ago to predict oil prices after such a long conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, they would have picked a much higher number. The global economy has been surprisingly adept at getting by without all of the energy it used to buy from the

Persian Gulf, one of the most important oil-producing regions in the world.

There are a few reasons for that. Countries that are highly dependent on oil from the Middle East cut back. The Trump administration and other governments withdrew oil from strategic reserves. Companies across the Americas pumped more oil than expected, and many of those in the Gulf found ways to export oil despite the dangers of traveling through the strait. And in a move that few anticipated, China — typically the world's biggest oil importer — CONTINUED ON PAGE B3

Promises of Economic Relief Falling Short

By TONY ROMM

WASHINGTON — In the nearly two years since President Trump clinched his to office, the U.S. economy has come under great duress, leaving families and businesses to suffer through the expensive consequences of constant global conflict and soaring government debt.

It was the financial frustration of a pandemic-weary electorate that helped to catapult Mr. Trump and his fellow Republicans to a rare supermajority in 2024, which they promised to use to defeat the scourge of inflation and slash the profligate government spending they saw as the root of the problem.

But Mr. Trump's actions in office have complicated — if not undermined — those pledges. With a little over two months until the midterms, some of his policies have prolonged or worsened the economic fortunes of those he promised to help.

It began with a punishing global trade war, which exacerbated the nation's long quest to bring down the cost of living in the years following the pandemic. This week, the president escalated that offensive and took renewed aim at Canada, setting off a costly tariff tit-for-tat that could drive up prices for Americans.

Nor is the war with Iran anywhere close to complete. The seemingly intractable conflict, which reached its sixth-month anniversary on Friday, has kept gas prices sky high. And the costs of Mr. Trump's ongoing military intervention have further exacerbated the nation's fiscal woes, helping to send the debt soaring past \$40 trillion. The development has roiled the bond market in CONTINUED ON PAGE B4

The latest round of tariffs on Canadian imports could drive up prices further.
MAGGIE SHANNON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Warsh Aims To Allay Trepidation On Inflation

The Fed chairman said the central bank's main focus is the target rate.

By COLBY SMITH

JACKSON, WYO. — Kevin M. Warsh, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, sought to alleviate concerns about his commitment to taming elevated inflation, suggesting in a closely watched speech on Friday that the central bank would have “work to do” if price pressures did not ease in a timely fashion.

Mr. Warsh, delivering his first address to the world's leading economic policymakers at the Fed's annual conference in Jackson, Wyo., affirmed that the central bank was chiefly focusing on getting inflation down after half a decade of its overshooting the Fed's 2 percent target.

The Fed will not waver on that goal, Mr. Warsh said, although he stopped short of revealing whether the current moment required higher interest rates.

"The responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank — and that is where it belongs," he said in prepared remarks.

"Here is my standard: We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed," Mr. Warsh added. "Otherwise, we have work to do."

Mr. Warsh made clear that adjustments to the Fed's overnight rate, which stands at 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent, were the “predominant tool” to achieve both low, stable prices and a healthy labor market.

"Price stability is not self-executing," Mr. Warsh said.

In the wake of Mr. Warsh's speech, two-year Treasury yields, which are sensitive to changes in interest rate expectations, rose to their highest level in roughly a month. Stocks, which typically slide in response to higher inter-CONTINUED ON PAGE B3

China Sees Opportunity In A.I. Scares

By STEVE LOHR and MEAGHAN TOBIN

SEOUL — In the United States, recent episodes where powerful artificial intelligence software broke free and hacked into other computer systems prompted a wave of anxiety and intense debate about how to guard against the risks of A.I.

But in China, these incidents and the growing capabilities of A.I. have not caused the same level of alarm. The government already controls many kinds of technology including A.I. The prevailing attitude in the industry has been that the benefits of A.I. far outweigh the risks.

That was exemplified on Friday when Z.ai, a Beijing-based A.I. start-up, made public the details of its latest model. The company claims the new model is nearly as powerful as those developed in Silicon Valley, especially when it comes to hacking and coding capabilities.

Z.ai, like most other leading Chinese companies, has embraced an approach known as open-source or open-weight software. The weights are the mathematical parameters that determine how an A.I. system operates. Z.ai published the weights on its new model, GLM-5.3.

With open-weight software, anyone has access to and can tinker with the rules of an A.I. system. American companies, which generally keep the weights of their most powerful models secret, warn that opening the technology could increase cyberattacks. The open-weight camp CONTINUED ON PAGE B5

......

INTERNATIONAL

Japan Spent Record \$96.5 Billion to Back Yen

Japanese authorities spent a record 15.4 trillion yen (\$96.5 billion) intervening in foreign exchange markets over the past month to support the local currency, Finance Ministry data showed on Friday.

The size of the intervention shows the level of Tokyo's resolve to pull the yen away from four-decade lows, with currency weakness threatening profits at Japan's

RETAIL

Gap's Shares Climb After Leadership Change

Gap's shares jumped as much as 24.1 percent on Friday to a four-month high, after the apparel retailer named industry veteran Michael Francis as chief executive of Old Navy, a move aimed at reinvigorating the brand in a challenging spending environment.

Old Navy, Gap's biggest brand, has struggled to gain traction in select women's apparel categories in recent quarters, a key hurdle in the company's turnaround.

Since CEO Richard Dickson took charge in 2023, Gap has revamped its leadership and marketing, boosting Gap and Banana Republic, but Old Navy continues to lag.

heavyweight exporters and push- ing up import costs, including for energy.

Japan imports almost all its energy, with 95 percent of that coming from the Middle East, exposing it to supply disruption caused by the Iran war.

The BOJ held rates steady at its last meeting in July. REUTERS

But the relatively slow pace of Bank of Japan policy tightening has kept Japan's interest rates low compared with markets such as the United States, encouraging investors to continue funding global trades with cheap yen.

JOHN SIBLEY/REUTERS

BYD's Rebound Weak, Despite Posting Profit

"It is true that the family demographic that Old Navy serves is under pressure, but Old Navy did not give them enough reasons to buy," said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, adding that the weakness points to a broader problem that Gap can no longer pass off. REUTERS

The Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD posted its first quarterly profit rise in more than a year on Friday, helped by a surge in exports that offset weak domestic sales.

AUTOMOTIVE

Even so, the rebound was weaker than expected, lagging forecasts from Morgan Stanley, UBS, Citi, Deutsche Bank and CMBI, whose estimates implied an average 48 percent increase in second-quarter profit against the 30 percent growth delivered year-on-year.

The world's largest EV maker by shipments has been at the forefront of Chinese automakers' overseas push, gaining market share across Europe and Southeast Asia, as it looks to reduce its reliance on an increasingly crowded home market.

Net profit rose to 8.2 billion yuan (\$1.22 billion) in the second quarter, ending four straight quarters of declines and reversing a 55% drop in the preceding quarter. REUTERS

S&P 500 INDEX -0.2% 7,711.76

Bond Market Readies for an Increase; Stocks Drift Lower

DOW JONES INDUSTRIALS -0.0% 53,559.99

NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX -0.5% 26,402.42

THE NEW YORK TIMES

10-YEAR TREASURY YIELD 4.73% +0.055 points

CRUDE OIL (U.S.) \$83.40 -\$0.13

\$4,529.90 -\$134.10

Stocks & Bonds

Source: FactSet

Position of the S&P 500 index at 1-minute intervals on Friday -- Previous Close: 7,730.99

By The Associated Press

The bond market swung Friday as investors built bets that the Federal Reserve may hike interest rates soon to get the nation's high inflation under control. U.S. stocks, meanwhile, dipped but not by much after economists said a speech by Chairman Kevin Warsh helped strengthen faith that the Fed will do what's needed to bring inflation down, even if it causes pain for the economy in the short term.

The S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent after flipping between modest gains and losses through the morning. The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 9 points, or less than 0.1 percent, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.5 percent.

The reaction was stronger in the bond market following Warsh's first speech as chairman of the Fed at an annual economic symposium held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The mountain setting has been the backdrop for major Fed policy announcements in the past, and the pressure was on Warsh.

Worries had grown that his tough talk about getting inflation down to the Fed's 2 percent target may be just that, unless the Fed backs it up with action. The Fed could hike short-term interest rates to get inflation under control, but it could also feel deterred from doing so because that would slow the economy and hurt prices for investments. And President Trump, who appointed Warsh, has been vocal about wanting interest rates to be lower rather than higher.

Warsh was adamant again on Friday that he wants to give financial markets fewer clues about what the Fed plans to do with rates for its two jobs of keeping inflation low and the job market strong. He has said he wants markets to react to what incoming data says about the economy and inflation rather than what the Fed says.

But Warsh also said Friday that "short-term interest rates are the predominant tool" for the Fed to

The S&P 500 Index

do its job. And he said, "I would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive," an implication that short-term interest rates may not be high enough to tamp down the economy and inflation.

The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do with its federal funds rate, jumped to 4.35 percent from 4.22 percent just before the speech.

That's a big move for the bond market, and it was because traders upped their forecasts that the Fed will hike its federal funds rate as soon as next month. They're now betting on a nearly $58\%$ probability of that, up from the $35\%$ seen a day earlier, according to data from CME Group.

Longer-term yields also rose following some initial zigzags, but not by as much as shorter-term yields. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.72 percent from 4.67 percent late Thursday, and the 30-year Treasury yield got to 5.21 percent from 5.19 percent.

All the moves, including the modest ones for stocks even though higher interest rates tend to hurt them, indicate investors "pricing a more credible Fed," according to economists at Bank of America led by Aditya Bhave.

"The positive market reaction highlights that investors place a premium on policy clarity, even when that clarity carries" a message implying higher interest rates, according to Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.

Yields had gotten so high for longer-term bonds this summer, in part because of worries about inflation staying high in the future, that the U.S. Treasury Department made an unusual move last week and said it would buy back more bonds, though analysts said it will likely have only a limited effect.

Marvell Technology fell 10.3% even though the chip company reported profit and revenue for the latest quarter that edged past analysts' expectations. CEO Matt Murphy said its business related to artificial-intelligence technology is strong, and it raised its forecasts for upcoming revenue growth.

NEWSLETTER: DEALBOOK

DealBook helps you make sense of the day's most important business and policy headlines. Sign up for the newsletter at nytimes.com/dealbook

What Happened in Stock Markets Yesterday

Worst performers
Nasdaq Composite Index 26,402.42 ↓ -0.5%

Best performers

Most active

Dow Jones Industrials 53,559.99 0.0

S&P 500 COMPANIES	CLOSE CHANGE
1. PayPal Holdings (PYPL)	$53.66	-12.7%
2. Marvell Technology (MRVL)	$216.62	-10.3
3. PG & E (PCG)	$16.60	-7.5
4. Generac Holdings (GNRC)	$183.80	-6.8
5. Lumentum Holdings (UTE)	$895.00	-6.4
6. Coinbase Global A (COIN)	$178.64	-6.3
7. Comfort Systems USA (FIX)	$1,518.73	-6.0
8. Coherent (COHR)	$279.20	-5.5
9. Ciena Co. (OEN)	$378.44	-5.4
10. Lam Research (LRCX)	$301.90	-5.2

FACTSET

S&P 500 COMPANIES	CLOSE	CHANGE	VOLUME IN MIL.
1. NVIDIA (NVDA)	$217.55	-4.6%	193
2. PG & E (PCG)	$16.60	-7.5	114
3. Intel (INTC)	$89.47	-2.8	85
4. Marvell Technology (MRVL)	$216.62	-10.3	48
5. Amazon.com (AMZN)	$266.43	+4.0	48
6. Ford Motor (F)	$13.88	-0.5	40
7. Apple (AAPL)	$319.70	+1.6	38
8. PayPal Holdings (PYPL)	$53.66	-12.7	36
9. Salesforce (CRM)	$256.00	+1.6	34
10. BoA (BAC)	$62.32	+1.9	33

S&P 500 COMPANIES		CLOSE	CHANGE
1. Workday (WDAY)		$204.72	+5.8%
2. Domino's Pizza (DPZ)		$350.00	+5.4
3. Lululemon Athletica (LULU)		$120.81	+5.1
4. ServiceNow (NOW)		$144.71	+4.5
5. SLB (SLB)		$57.33	+4.2
6. Amazon.com (AMZN)		$266.43	+4.0
7. eBay (EBAY)		$105.62	+3.6
8. Charter Communications (CHTR)		$153.62	+3.6
9. Bunge Global (BG)		$115.48	+3.5
10. Expedia Group (EXPE)		$329.44	+3.3

Midcap and small-cap stocks
	TOTAL RETURN		TOTAL ASSETS
	1 YR	5 YRS	IN BIL
1. Vanguard Morningstar Mid-Cap Index Fund Institutional Plus Shares (VMCPX)	+15.0%	+7.8%	224,7
2. Vanguard Morningstar Small-Cap Index Fund Institutional Plus Shares (VSOPX)	+23.9	+7.5	183,4
3. Vanguard Extended Market Index Fund Institutional Plus Shares (VEMPX)	+20.7	+6.1	93,6
4. Vanguard Morningstar Small-Cap Value Index Fund Admiral Shares (VSIAX)	+25.7	+9.7	68,3
5. Fidelity Mid Cap Index Fund (FSMDX)	+18.7	+8.2	52,1
6. Vanguard Morningstar Small-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares (VSGAX)	+21.1	+4.1	43,9
7. Fidelity Extended Market Index Fund (FSMAX)	+20.6	+6.1	40,1
8. Vanguard Morningstar Mid-Cap Value Index Fund Admiral Shares (VMVAX)	+24.9	+10.1	38,6
9. Fidelity Small Cap Index Fund (FSSNX)	+34.3	+7.2	34,1
10. Vanguard Morningstar Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares (VMGMX)	+2.2	+4.9	33,5

Source: Morningstar
Sector performance S&P 500 SECTORS

What Is Happening in Other Markets and the Economy

Bonds

Currencies

Consumer rates

Commodities

Economy

Investors Expect Higher Rates After Fed Chairman's Inflation Pledge

By JOE RENNISON

Investors raised their expectations for higher interest rates on Friday in response to a high-profile speech by Kevin Warsh, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, in which he said the central bank might have “work to do” if inflation remained high.

Mr. Warsh, speaking at the Fed's annual economics conference in Jackson, Wyo., expressed his resolve to tackle inflation, while continuing to avoid committing to how the central bank would accomplish that. The central bank's traditional tool to control an overheating economy is to raise interest rates.

"Here is my standard: We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed," Mr. Warsh said. "Otherwise, we have work to do. That's our job."

The two-year Treasury yield, which is sensitive to Fed rate moves, rose roughly 0.1 percentage points on Friday. It's the biggest one day move higher since June — a large, though not panicked, move in that market.

Stock investors typically recoil from higher Treasury yields, which flow through to higher costs for companies and consumers, but investors appeared to welcome Mr. Warsh's comments on inflation. The S&P 500 initially fell as he spoke at the conference, before rising to a small gain for the day.

Investors lifted the probability of the Federal Reserve's pushing

Increased uncertainty about Warsh's lack of public remarks.

up interest rates before the end of the year. A quarter of a percentage point increase is expected by the end of the year.

The likelihood of a quarter-point raise at the Fed's next meeting in September moved higher, but remains a coin toss, with investors giving the outcome a roughly 50 percent chance.

“Overall, it was a deliberately hawkish speech that will put to rest any concerns about the Fed's willingness to raise rates to restore price stability,” said Vail Hartman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

Investors were also looking to Mr. Warsh's remarks on Friday to see how the recently appointed Fed chief would explain to the markets the central bank's moves.

Mr. Warsh restated that he would limit the Fed's public remarks about the economic outlook. He told attendees that he hoped that reducing guidance would prompt investors to make their own decisions for where the economy was headed, sending signals to the Fed via prices in financial markets.

Some analysts have doubted the efficacy of this strategy, noting that investors always try to gauge what the Fed is going to do next. The increased uncertainty, the analysts have warned, would instead result in broadly lower asset prices and higher interest rates, as investors sought to protect themselves from the unpredictability that came with less information.

Warsh Seeks to Alleviate Worries About Fed's Grip On Heightened Inflation

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE est rates, edged lower. Investors now see nearly even odds that the Fed will raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its next gathering in September.

The comments are Mr. Warsh's most extensive to date about the economy since he took over the Fed's top job in May amid a confluence of risks. They range from a protracted Iran war that has worsened the trajectory of inflation to rising Treasury yields that recently prompted surprise interventions by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Mr. Warsh struck an upbeat tone about the prospects of “substantially higher growth,” saying the potential for it was “on the rise.” He cited the “ever-expanding pools of capital” that were being deployed to expand artificial intelligence abilities.

Mr. Warsh also noted pockets of weakness, in sectors like housing and agriculture, but concluded that he would be “hard-pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive.”

Perhaps most important, he seemed to downplay recent progress on reducing inflation, despite two months that showed slightly less acute price pressures. "They do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved," he said of inflation data this summer. Moreover, he suggested that with the labor market "quite stable" and inflation running above target, "the Fed's predominant focus right now should be on prices."

"If you've just indicated your predominate concern is inflation that's too high, then your statement about financial conditions gives a pretty clear indication of which way you're leaning — a greater likelihood the next move will be a hike rather than a cut," said David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former leader of the Fed's research and statistics division.

"All that is a pretty stark turn from his July press conference," added Mr. Wilcox, who is also the director of U.S. economic research at Bloomberg Economics.

In his first months at the helm,

Mr. Warsh has made it a priority to emphasize the Fed's intolerance for inflation. But up until this point, he has not given a clear sense of how he views the drivers of the inflation he wants to root out or what it might take from a policy standpoint to do so. That approach, which Mr. Warsh employed after the Fed's most recent meeting in July, set off a swift rebuke from markets.

Mr. Warsh's obscurity is by design. It reflects his strategy to recast how the Fed communicates. Unfettered transparency from past leaders, he has argued, has muddied an important signal officials would otherwise have gleaned from financial markets. It has also left officials too bogged down by the near-term rate decisions that Mr. Warsh believes are less relevant than the overall arc of central bank policy.

Investors say this framing misses the fact that expectations about what the Fed is going to do factor heavily into how markets behave. In fact, a significant portion of the recent move in Treas-

The Fed chief calls adjustments to a rate a 'predominant tool.'

ury bond yields stems from the fact that the central bank, once thought to be lowering rates this year, appears more inclined to raise them.

Mr. Warsh on Friday did not endorse a specific policy move at either the Fed's next meeting or beyond that point. He defended his decision to keep close to his chest his preferences on the path forward for rates.

“Oversharing policy deliberations and overcommitting to future decisions can lead markets, businesses and households astray,” he said in his critique of the Fed’s practice of providing forward guidance. “And I believe when policymakers make quasi-commitments on interest rates through the cycle, we inhibit our own freedom to make the right calls when it’s time to decide.”

Kevin M. Warsh, left, said that the Fed would have "work to do" if price pressures did not ease in a timely fashion.
NATALIE BEHRING/GETTY IMAGES

Investors, he added, will always try to anticipate what the Fed will do next. "But we should not indulge a regime in which market participants are looking primarily to the Fed for their next trade."

William English, a Yale professor and a former director of the Fed's division of monetary affairs, said Mr. Warsh's speech gave some ground to the idea that it was to central bankers' benefit to provide details on their thinking about the economy and what they might need to do to achieve their goals.

"There's a gray area of what's forward guidance and what isn't," said Mr. English. "He's been a forward guidance hard-liner until today."

Mr. Warsh's colleagues have more readily embraced the possibility of higher rates. In fact, a growing group of policymakers have argued that the central bank should already have raised borrowing costs to hasten progress on getting inflation down. They maintain that rates are doing little to hold back economic activity and, in turn, counteract inflationary pressures, which are now emanating from a variety of sources.

The war with Iran is no closer to a resolution, keeping energy prices high. Computer chips and semiconductors, among other items, have become expensive with the splurge of A.I.-related spending. And President Trump has waded into new trade wars; the latest target is Canada. While the bulk of these sources of inflation are out of the Fed's control, the central bank has the ability to influence the intensity of demand across the economy, which enables it to achieve its goals.

A failure to act now, these policymakers warn, could mean the Fed is eventually forced to raise rates more aggressively than otherwise would have been the case, imperiling a labor market that remains on slightly shakier footing than it was on at the start of the year.

However, this cohort has yet to convince a majority of officials, who are still holding out hope that their forecasts of easing inflation in the second half of the year are going to bear out, thereby obviating the need to raise rates. If that progress does not materialize, these officials have said they will support higher rates.

On Wednesday, new data from the Commerce Department indicated the Fed's preferred gauge — the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price index — showed little improvement in July.

Core prices, a measure that strips out the volatile food and energy categories, were up 3.3 percent from a year earlier, unchanged from June, after a 0.2 percent monthly increase. The Fed pays closest attention to the core measure because it is seen as a reliable indication of the trajectory of inflation in the months ahead.

How the Fed measures and models inflation is the focal point of one of the five task forces Mr. Warsh convened earlier this year to look at issues core to the central bank. The other groups — all of which are being led by a slate of external advisers spanning former policymakers, academics and business leaders — include how the Fed communicates, its \$6.7 trillion portfolio of government debt and mortgage-backed securities, the data sources it prioritizes and productivity trends and jobs.

Mr. Warsh set up the task forces, whose work is set to be completed by the end of the year, to be unconstrained in their scope and scale. But Mr. Warsh has in the past indicated his preferences.

For example, he has long championed a smaller Fed balance sheet, arguing that past interventions not only stoked inflation, but also distorted financial markets and eroded the central bank's independence by veering it into fiscal policy. He has also maintained that the proliferation of A.I. is going to lead to significant productivity gains that over time will support stronger growth without stoking inflationary pressures.

On Friday, Mr. Warsh said that the recommendations of the task forces would have “no bearing on decisions we make in the current policy conjuncture.”

“But I believe that for future policy challenges, this intellectual investment today will leave us far better prepared,” he added.

A Look at How 6 Months of War in Iran Has Jolted Oil, Gas, Stocks and More

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE slashed purchases.

Looking ahead: Where prices go from here will depend on, among other things, how long the United States and Iran continue to interfere with traffic in the strait and whether China starts importing more oil. For now, though, the market appears to be settling into a new normal. The bigger concern is that wars — in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine

— have knocked out refineries, leaving the world with less capacity to turn oil into gasoline and diesel and making those fuels much more expensive. REBECCA F. ELLIOTT

Prices at the pump are higher.

Rising oil prices translate to higher gas prices, and the jump in the cost of gasoline is perhaps the most visible effect of the war for American consumers. The U.S. national average price of unleaded gasoline, at \$4.09 per gallon on Friday, has risen 38 percent since the start of the war, according to the AAA motor club.

Prices are rising largely because of costlier crude oil, which accounts for roughly half of retail prices at the pump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Taxes, transport costs and the profits earned by gas stations constitute much of the rest, but the effects are not spread evenly: Gas is \$5.65 per gallon on average in California versus \$3.63 in Texas.

The price of diesel has risen even faster than gasoline, approaching the record high it set in

2022. At \$5.61 a gallon, prices are up nearly 50 percent from prewar levels.

Diesel powers large parts of the United States, used by trains, trucks and other heavy machinery. As prices climb, businesses often pass on the costs to customers, with broad implications for inflation.

Prices are rising because there are fewer refineries making diesel. The volume of diesel produced in the Middle East has dropped amid the fighting, with the effects compounded by the buckling of Russia's refining capacity after Ukrainian attacks on its facilities.

Looking ahead: Energy analysts often describe the swing in fuel prices as “up like a rocket, down like a feather” — a phenomenon that means gas costs quickly track increases in the price of oil but are slow to follow when it falls. When crude dropped to its prewar price for a brief spell in late June and early July, the average cost of gas remained 30 percent higher than before the war. That pattern is expected to continue. ARUNI SONI

Shipping in the Middle East is scrambled.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that carried one-fifth of the world's oil before the war, is still mostly paralyzed.

Before the war, more than 100 ships per day transited the strait between Iran and Oman. Now, the traffic is at a trickle. Only around a dozen ships per day have recently

passed through the strait, according to Kpler, a maritime data company.

The Trump administration has urged ships to make the passage, with the U.S. Navy guiding them through the southern part of the strait in Omani waters. As of this week, U.S. forces had cleared the mines that Iran planted in the strait, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command.

But passing through the strait remains perilous. Two seafarers have been killed in the last two weeks, and another is missing. In total, there have been at least 71 attacks on ships since the start of the war, and 19 sailors have been killed.

In June, Iran and the United States signed a deal to reopen the strait, and for three days more than 60 ships passed through daily. But the agreement fell apart, and U.S. forces reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports. Iran has sought to assert its control by creating a new system in which it charges ships for passage through the strait, which was previously free.

The turmoil has forced many shipping companies to bypass the strait. Saudi Arabia, the region's biggest oil producer, has shifted to export more crude via the Red Sea.

But then the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, which controls part of Yemen, threatened to blockade Saudi ships in the Red Sea. A new workaround, through the northern part of the Red Sea, is more complicated and costly. Energy exports from the Persian Gulf remain below what they were before the war.

Looking ahead: It's unclear when — or even if, some experts believe — shipping in the region will return to what it was before the war. This week, Iran and Oman, an American ally, said they were discussing a plan to manage traffic in the strait. There were few details about how such an agreement would work. JENNY GROSS

Stocks are up. Bonds are looking shakier.

Investors have learned over the years not to pay much heed to geopolitics. Short, sharp slumps in the stock market followed shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas's attack on Israel, before the market swiftly rebounded and ascended to new heights.

The S&P 500 dropped in the first month of the war, then recovered to hit a series of fresh record highs, the last one in the middle of August. The index is now 13 percent higher since the start of the war.

With oil prices in the futures market settling under \$90 a barrel through the end of the year, stock market investors have largely turned their attention elsewhere. In particular, their focus has centered on the enormous profits generated by companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence, with quarterly earnings continually surpassing expectations.

This week, Nvidia, the tech giant, more than doubled its quarterly revenue, to almost \$100 billion, and showed few signs of slowing down.

As expectations increase about how much cash Nvidia and others riding the A.I. boom might generate in the future, so have their stock prices, which have a major influence on indexes because of their multitrillion-dollar market values. So far, blockbuster corporate earnings have largely shielded stock investors from other worries, not just the war in Iran.

Bond investors appear more anxious, with rising yields — which move in the opposite direction to prices — reflecting higher expected economic growth because of A.I. but also intensifying worries about inflation, government debt and geopolitical uncertainty. The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences mortgages and business loans, has risen to just under 4.7 percent from around 4 percent six months ago.

Looking ahead: Over time, higher bond yields result in higher interest rates throughout the economy, including for the A.I. companies borrowing billions of dollars to build data centers. Higher interest costs tend to eat into corporate profits, a worry for stock investors. "The bottom line for investors is that interest rates are going to stay higher for longer," said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. JOE RENNISON

Eric Schmitt and Emmett Lindner contributed reporting.

Jobs Numbers Back on Course After Upheaval Over Revisions

By BEN CASSELMAN

After two years of big data revisions that shook public confidence in its estimates and drew political scrutiny, the Bureau of Labor Statistics appears to have gotten the recent jobs numbers pretty much right.

There were about 79,000 fewer employees on U.S. payrolls in March than previously believed, the agency said on Friday. That suggests that employers added about 16,000 jobs per month on average in the last three quarters of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, rather than the 23,000 jobs per month that had been indicated in monthly jobs reports.

The revisions are part of a long-standing annual process known as benchmarking — a procedure the government uses to reconcile monthly estimates, with more accurate but less timely data from state unemployment offices.

The updates used to get relatively little attention, but large downward revisions in 2024 and 2025 led some economists to question the reliability of the monthly estimates, which are based on surveys. Policymakers, including Jerome H. Powell, then the chair of the Federal Reserve, said last year that they believed the monthly reports were consistently overstating the amount of hiring, and that the labor market was weaker than the numbers suggested.

The revisions also became a political problem for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. President Trump cited the large 2024 revision when he fired the head of the agency, Erika McEntarfer, last summer, arguing without evidence that it showed she was biased against him. Economists across the ideological spectrum rejected that claim, noting that the agency made revisions in both directions under presidents of both political parties.

The 2026 revisions, however, are on track to be the smallest since 2021, representing a downward adjustment of just 0.1 percent of the total work force. That could help ease concerns that the

Policymakers believed the labor market was weaker than reported.

16,000 Number of jobs added per month, on average, over four quarters.

government is struggling to measure the economy accurately.

Some of the largest downward revisions this year were in the wholesale and retail trade sectors, where employment was overstated by a combined 240,000 jobs. Employment in construction and in transportation and warehousing was understated, however, and is set to be revised up by nearly 200,000 jobs.

The numbers released on Friday are preliminary. Final figures will be released and incorporated into the government's official jobs numbers early next year.

Economists aren't sure why the jobs numbers drifted so far off course in recent years, or why they seem to have gotten better more recently. The agency this year updated its procedure for estimating the number of jobs created by new businesses and lost by those that shut down. That could help explain some of the recent improvement but probably not all of it, economists said.

Perhaps a larger factor is simply that the labor market has settled into a more normal — and easier to measure — period after years of large disruptions. The pandemic and its aftermath led to huge shifts in seasonal hiring patterns, business formation activity and other once-predictable behavior. Big swings in immigration policy during the Biden and Trump administrations further jumbled employment patterns.

Such rapid shifts can upend assumptions that are baked into the statistical models the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to produce its monthly estimates. The smaller revision on Friday could suggest that hiring is settling into a more predictable pattern again.

"Part of it maybe is we're in more of a steady state," said Guy Berger, a labor economist. "Maybe some of what caused these models to malfunction has stopped."

The problem, Mr. Berger said, is that problems could re-emerge if hiring patterns shift again.

"We don't know whether it's going to work in perpetuity," he said. "Let's not get too excited about having solved this problem once and for all."

ECONOMY | LITIGATION

Promises to Defeat Inflation and Slash Spending Are Falling Short

A senior economist with Wells Fargo cites a major gap between what American consumers are taking in and “how fast money is going out the door.”
EMILY ELCONIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE ways that have implicated Americans' finances, chiefly by making borrowing, including mortgages, more expensive.

The president still maintains that his administration has helped families and businesses, and righted the wrongs of his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. But, as polls increasingly suggest, voters have tired of Mr. Trump's appeals for patience as he enacts his full agenda. That appears poised to turn the midterms into a referendum on Mr. Trump's credibility on the economy — a key source for his political rise.

Olu Sonola, the head of U.S. economics at Fitch Ratings, described the dynamic around persistently high prices in America as "death by a thousand cuts."

He pointed to a confluence of factors, from war to tariffs, that have surfaced over the past year. Mr. Sonola said those developments had exacerbated inflation — and, importantly, shaded consumers' expectations about the state of the economy.

"The drip, drip, drip — week in and week out, month in and month out — has an impact," he said.

For Mr. Trump, the stakes are laid bare in a series of concerning economic snapshots released in recent weeks. That includes a key gauge of inflation, published on Wednesday, which found that prices in July rose by 3.7 percent compared with a year earlier.

It was the same annualized rate as measured in June, illustrating that price pressures are stuck at a level well above the Fed's target.

Not all is bad for Mr. Trump. The economy is growing, manufacturing is on the upswing and the labor market has remained steady. Those positives come amid a surge of new investments in artificial intelligence, one that has produced record days in financial markets and raised the odds of an economic boom as the technology truly takes hold.

But Gregory Daco, the chief economist at EY-Parthenon, said some of the data nonetheless illustrated the “economy that could have been.” In a research note this week, he said the United States might have seen more robust growth and other improvements if not for a set of recent shocks that were “policy driven.”

One of those shocks arrived last Saturday, when Mr. Trump officially slapped new tariffs on a subset of imports from Canada, then threatened additional, steep duties on the country's auto industry. As Canada moved later to retaliate, the spat recalled the frenetic opening days of Mr. Trump's global trade war that roiled allies and adversaries alike.

Tariffs are taxes on imports, so much as before, the president's actions appeared primed to hammer American shoppers who buy Canadian goods. In one estimate, the nonpartisan Yale Budget Lab projected this month that households would face, on average, about \$1,100 in additional annual costs from Mr. Trump's updated slate of duties. But, when asked on Thursday about the potential for price increases, Mr. Trump claimed that his tariffs on Canada would be “very good for us.”

Sarah House, a senior economist with Wells Fargo, ultimately projected that inflation could end the year around 3.5 percent. That would be well above what some experts had originally anticipated at the start of 2026, she said, before a confluence of factors — from the rise of A.I. to policy decisions in the nation's capital — up-ended the rosier forecasts.

"There's this big gap between what consumers are taking in" and "how fast money is going out the door," Ms. House explained.

In a statement, Christopher Phelan, the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, maintained that long-term expectations around inflation “have remained tempered and unchanged since the beginning of the administration.”

But the uncertainty stemming from Mr. Trump's policies has complicated matters for the Fed, where policymakers have grown restive about inflation but have held back on raising rates to tame it — at least for now.

"We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed," Kevin M. Warsh, the chairman of the Fed, said during a speech Friday in Jackson, Wyo. "Otherwise, we have work to do."

The central bank has been tested in particular by Mr. Trump's war with Iran, which has caused fuel prices to rise globally. By Friday, the average price at the U.S. pump was still above \$4 per gallon, according to AAA, about a dollar more than a year ago.

While the Fed has opted for caution, Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his demands for swift cuts to interest rates. Ignoring the risk that a steep drop could actually exacerbate inflation, Mr. Trump portrayed the reluctant Fed board this month as political and insisted that its governors give cuts a try.

"Now, when we announce good numbers, which we're doing all the time, they keep driving the interest rates up, because they're so afraid of inflation," Mr. Trump said this month. "And they shouldn't be. They should allow interest rates to go down."

For Mr. Trump, there's much at stake in the Fed's decision. As he browbeats the board on monetary policy, the president has also spoken openly about his desire to see borrowing costs lowered so that it is cheaper for the government itself to borrow.

Those demands have come against the backdrop of an ominous milestone: the national debt's surpassing \$40 trillion, further outpacing the country's total economic output in a given year. The gap underscored just how little Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have managed to cut spending, despite promising austerity to voters two years ago.

"It's all talk," said Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution and former aide to a Republican senator.

Ms. Riedl recalled Mr. Trump's promises to eliminate the debt entirely, a goal many saw as unrealistic. Instead, the fiscal imbalance has worsened, as has the cost of servicing the debt, which now ranks among the government's largest expenses.

"Republicans always say, 'Give us control of government, and we'll slash spending,' Ms. Riedl added. "They have control of government, and they have no excuse left."

Twice, the G.O.P.-led Congress has rejected the deepest cuts in Mr. Trump's budget submissions. In the process, the president has added to the problem. He has pushed this year for a surge of new military funding that would add to the debt. That is on top of a package of tax cuts enacted last year, which may spur economic activity but still could cost the country trillions over the next decade.

Otherwise, Mr. Trump's attempts to cut spending have largely been limited to unilateral actions to cut spending it sees as wasteful — efforts that often have been stymied by federal courts.

"I think they're doing the things they can do with the levers that are available to them as an administration," said Daniel Kowalski, a budget policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning group. "But there does come a point where you need some help from the legislative branch, and that has not been happening."

Still, two years of inaction in Washington have rattled Wall Street. Rising yields have rippled across the economy, since consumer borrowing closely tracks the trajectory of 10-year bonds.

In response, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, announced a rare move this month to buy up more government bonds, though it had only a temporary effect. Mr. Bessent also promised a full road map for “fiscal consolidation” to rein in spending, though he provided no details about those plans.

The pledge recalled Mr. Bessent's bold promises at the start of Mr. Trump's term to bring the nation's deficit down to 3 percent of its total output, a target still far in the distance. Still, the secretary maintained that the Trump administration was on track — and would reach its goal.

"We are creating productive assets for future growth, which will be paying taxes all the way down the line," he told Newsmax. "So I think of that more like pulling back the slingshot and creating a lot of potential energy that becomes kinetic."

Judge Says White House Used Illegal Retaliation In Penalizing A.I. Firm

By SHEERA FRENKEL

SAN FRANCISCO — The Trump administration acted illegally when it labeled the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic a security risk and barred the company from working with the U.S. government, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

Judge Rita Lin of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California wrote in her 59-

Anthropic did not want its technology used in certain cases.

page ruling that the government had unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic “for constitutionally protected expressive activities” after the A.I. company spoke out about how its technology should be used.

"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," she wrote.

In a statement, Anthropic said:

"We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful. We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness A.I. for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology."

The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling caps the first of two lawsuits that Anthropic filed on March 9 in response to the Trump administration's action. The second lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is ongoing. The Trump administration could appeal Judge Lin's ruling or wait for a decision in the second lawsuit before taking action, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The California ruling is the latest chapter in the fight between the Trump administration and Anthropic, which is heading toward what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering.

The two sides came to blows at the start of the year over a \$200 million contract to provide the

KARSTEN MORAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pentagon with A.I. technology on classified systems. Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco, insisted that its technology not be used in mass surveillance of Americans or for autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon said a private company could not establish policy for the U.S. government.

The two sides could not come to an agreement. Defense Secretary

Pete Hegseth then announced that Anthropic was a “supply chain risk,” a formal designation that had previously been used against foreign companies that the government deemed a national security risk. The designation meant no contractor or supplier that works with the military can do business with Anthropic.

Anthropic's lawsuits argued that the legal statutes for labeling it a supply chain risk were narrow and did not apply to American firms. The company also said that the label was ideologically motivated to penalize Anthropic, and that the company's First Amendment rights were being violated.

Before her ruling, Judge Lin had said the Pentagon's argument that Anthropic's public criticism of the government justified barring the A.I. company from fed-

Dario Amodei, co-founder and C.E.O. of Anthropic. The company filed two lawsuits in response to being labeled a security risk.

eral work was “really troubling.” She also said she saw no evidence for the government’s claims that Anthropic could “flip some kind of kill switch” to potentially disable or alter its A.I. models during war.

In her final ruling on Thursday, Judge Lin said the Trump administration had backed away from many of its central claims that Anthropic could sabotage its own technology. She wrote that the government's decision to bar Anthropic had come down to “a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government.”

She added that the Trump administration's ongoing talks with Anthropic over its new A.I. model, Mythos, showed that the company was not a national threat.

In June, the Trump administration told Anthropic to restrict its clients' access to Mythos, citing national security concerns. After two weeks of negotiations, the government allowed Anthropic to restore access to most clients after adding some safeguards.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thanked Anthropic at the time, adding that the company had committed to working with the government on protocols for future releases of A.I. models.

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Trump Updates Defamation Lawsuit Against New York Times

By KATIE ROBERTSON

President Trump updated his defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and the book publisher Penguin Random House on Thursday, expanding on his argument that several reporters had disparaged his record as a businessman in articles and a book about him.

The new filing adds specific claims of inaccuracies to a lawsuit that Mr. Trump first filed last year over the articles and the book, which was written by two Times journalists. Lawyers for Mr. Trump said then that the reporting was “specifically designed to try and damage Mr. Trump’s business, personal and political reputation” ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. They asked for \$15 billion in damages.

Judge Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed the initial complaint four days after it was filed, saying it was unnecessarily lengthy and digressive. The president refiled it in October.

The Times has defended the accuracy of the reporting and moved to dismiss the refiled lawsuit, arguing that the president failed to identify false or defamatory statements or to explain “what President Trump contends the truth to be.” The Times also said the complaint did not show the reporters had acted with “actual malice,” a legal standard requiring that they had published something knowing it was false, or with reckless disregard to its truth.

Judge Merryday gave Mr. Trump time to amend his complaint last month, deferring his decision on The Times's request to dismiss the lawsuit.

The second amended complaint expands on Mr. Trump's allegations about the veracity of some of the statements in the book and articles, adding context to parts of the articles and book that he claims are not true. It also seeks to show with more detail that the reporters acted with actual malice.

Mr. Trump named The Times and its reporters Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner and Peter Baker, as well as Penguin Random House, as defendants. Ms. Craig and Mr. Buettner wrote the book about Mr.

Trump for the publisher.

A Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said in a statement that the suit should be dismissed.

"The president has been given three opportunities to amend his claims, and the lawsuit remains obviously meritless," he said.

A spokeswoman for Penguin Random House pointed to its past comments, in which the publisher called the lawsuit “meritless” and said it “stands by the book and its authors.”

Mr. Trump previously sued The Times in 2021 over an investigation into his finances. That case was dismissed. His re-election campaign sued The Times in 2020 over a 2019 Opinion essay, a case that was also dismissed.

China Sees a Chance In Problems America Has With A.I. Security

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE argues the opposite: Giving more people access means more eyes looking for security flaws and ways to fix them.

In a speech last month, China's leader, Xi Jinping, called open models a “rare and historical opportunity” to spread the benefits of A.I. globally, a clear signal of how China plans to compete with the United States.

But Mr. Xi paired that call for openness with a warning. He urged governments to cooperate on regulations to “ensure that A.I. is always under human control.”

His statement represented “a subtle but meaningful posture shift on A.I. safety,” said Xiaomeng Lu, a director focused on geopolitics and technology at the Eurasia Group, a research and consulting firm.

When Chinese labs lagged behind U.S. tech companies in developing leading-edge models, safety was “a distant concern and a low priority,” Ms. Lu said.

But as Chinese companies have approached the technological frontier, that calculation has started to change. China, she said,

A Chinese A.I. start-up said open software is safer.

now recognizes that “credible leadership” requires making A.I. safety a priority.

Chinese universities, government labs and tech companies have sharply increased their research on the safety of the most powerful A.I. models in the past year, according to a study by Concordia AI, a Beijing-based consulting firm focused on A.I. safety. The monthly number of papers on cutting-edge models and A.I. agents rose 60 percent from June 2025 to April 2026, the analysts found.

The report also said the increase marked a departure from China's focus on A.I. safety as policing online speech and imagery produced by the technology.

The growing attention to advanced models expands the notion of A.I. safety from what A.I. says to what A.I. does. That, the Concordia AI study said, is “a shift in China’s framework from content control toward action control.”

The Chinese government has also begun drawing attention to those risks. After software made by OpenAI, the Silicon Valley giant, broke free and hacked into another company's computer systems, China's Ministry of State Security, which oversees the country's intelligence services, issued a warning this month. The statement, titled "When A.I. Learns to Act on Its Own," urged serious consideration of the technology's safety and security risks.

An incident in which OpenAI's software hacked into another company's computer system has prompted ongoing debate over A.I. safety in the United States.

Yet the article stopped short of questioning whether A.I. could continue to advance safely. Instead, it places the burden largely on individual users, cautioning them not to enter sensitive information into A.I. systems.

LUCAS FOGLIA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

In an interview, Bill Gates warned that A.I. posed a great threat to humanity.
Xi Jinping, China's leader, at the World AI Conference in Shanghai in July.
NG HAN GUAN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
CHONA KASINGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

So far, China has pursued broader A.I. safety rules mainly through multilateral organizations like the United Nations and the China-led World AI Cooperation Organization. Experts say U.S. and Chinese interests overlap in this area. In May, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two nations planned to discuss A.I. safety.

Chinese companies, too, are taking more visible steps to manage the risks of increasingly capable models. In preparation for the release of its new model, Z.ai said, it started a “security disclosure ledger” with the help of security teams at Tsinghua University, Nankai University and other institutions.

But Z.ai has also made a forceful case that openness itself can make A.I. safer. The closed approach taken by the big U.S. tech companies “turns cutting-edge security capabilities into a privilege enjoyed by a select few institutions,” Z.ai said. Later, the security article, published on its WeChat account, offered what amounted to a manifesto: “When the most powerful spear is locked in the hands of a few, the best shield must belong to everyone.”

Recent A.I. security lapses in the United States have strengthened that argument. When OpenAI's system hacked into a popular online service called Hugging Face, Hugging Face turned to an open-source model made by Z.ai to contain the breach.

For supporters of open models, the episode seemed to invert the argument about the dangers of open models. In China, many concluded that the incident showed that the harm caused by an unsafe, closed American model could be undone by a safe, open Chinese system.

"The narrative was that the West tells us the open models are unsafe, when really their models are overly restrictive and truly unsafe," said Scott Singer, who studies China's A.I. policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The view contrasts from the debate unfolding in the United States, where technologists and policymakers increasingly worry about the unchecked advance of autonomous A.I. models.

Last month, OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed a letter signed by more than 1,000 employees of leading A.I. companies asking the U.S. government to help find a way to slow the pace of the technology's development. In Washington, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require A.I. companies to establish a "kill switch" to shut down or slow their models.

In an interview with The New York Times last week, Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, warned that A.I. posed a grave threat to humanity and was more dangerous than the tech companies were willing to admit.

Behind the divergent approaches to A.I. safety lies a more fundamental difference in how the United States and China view the technology and who can be trusted to control it.

In Silicon Valley, many see A.I. as an unprecedented force destined to change the world, with the people building it endowed with something approaching superpowers — and thus bearing extraordinary responsibility.

By contrast, many in China view A.I. as transformative but broadly comparable to major general-purpose technologies of the past, from steam power to electricity to the internet — life-changing, but ultimately manageable. There is also a view that, in contrast to America, the government stands ready to step in.

"For the Chinese companies, there is a sense of the government being like a helicopter parent," said Ms. Lu of the Eurasia Group.

Steve Lohr reported from Seoul, and Meaghan Tobin from New York. Xinyun Wu contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.

Google Is Hoping You Want a Phone With Plenty of A.I.

Its new Pixel model, starting at \$900, can help you order groceries, book restaurant reservations and take photos.

Brian X. Chen

TECH FIX

SAN FRANCISCO — Your next smartphone will probably be what the tech industry calls an artificially intelligent phone, a handset that does all the work for you.

But is that something people even want?

Google thinks so. Each year, the search giant releases new Pixel smartphones that include quirky new A.I. software for speeding up tasks. Its Pixel 11 phones, which arrived in stores last week, will let users ask Google's A.I. assistant, Gemini, to order groceries, hail rides and book restaurant tables.

The A.I. in the new Pixel phones is part of Google's ambition to redefine personal computing. The company is betting that A.I. will eventually supersede the operating system in importance as people rely on Gemini instead of using apps themselves. Apple will test a similar idea this fall with the release of Siri AI, a new version of its personal assistant (also powered by Gemini) for iPhones.

Google's Pixel phone, which starts at \$900, doesn't sell well and makes up a tiny portion of the handset market. But it is very influential. Many companies, including Apple and Samsung, eventually add some of Google's best ideas to their own phones. So each year, I take the new Pixel for a spin to assess which features are likely to start a trend, and which are likely to be a fad.

In addition to Gemini-controlled apps, Google debuted new camera software on the Pixel 11 to help people take better pictures with minimal effort. It also released a translation tool that automatically dubs a video or podcast into a user's preferred language.

To try Google's new A.I. technology, I tested the \$1,100 Pixel 11 Pro for a week. Though I was impressed with the automatic dubbing technology, I walked away unconvinced that people would prefer letting A.I. take control of their apps and cameras. Here's what you need to know.

A.I.-Controlled Apps

Live Translation

The new Pixel phones are among the first to feature Gemini Intelligence, which is software that lets its A.I. control apps. For example, if you and a friend are text-messaging about making dinner plans at your favorite restaurant, you can ask Gemini to book a table for two there. That triggers the assistant to check OpenTable, the app for booking restaurant reservations, for available slots.

I also asked Gemini for help placing an Instacart order from Costco. I held down the button and started reading out my order: diapers, baby wipes, sugar, brown sugar, toilet paper, paper towels and more. Because my list was long and my request was taking a while, the phone turned off. That's because the button for talking to Gemini is also the power button for the phone, and holding it down for 60 sec-

A 'Magic' Camera

This sounds like a time saver, but in my tests, the experience was buggy. In one test, I held down a button to summon Gemini and asked it to book a table for two at Zuni Café in San Francisco for lunch on Friday. OpenTable showed a few time slots. Minutes later, I checked with my wife to see what time would work for her. When I went back to Gemini to book a table, the slots had disappeared from the screen. (I manually checked the OpenTable app, and there were plenty of tables.)

The new Pixel phones include a new camera mode that Google calls Magic Capture, which tries to take and curate photos for you.

To use it, you open the camera app and tap on the Gemini logo (a four-pointed star). When you take a picture, the camera records a video and chooses a still frame that Gemini considers to be the best photo. For example, when you photograph fidgety toddlers, the software will ignore images of their frowns and blinks and pick out the one where they are smiling.

I had a mixed experience with Magic Capture. It did a fine job picking out a nice photo of my corgi, Max, sitting in a onds forces the phone to restart.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MINH CONNORS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The phones arrived in stores last week, with software designed to speed up tasks.

Gemini was so clunky with controlling my apps that I would have saved more time booking restaurant reservations and ordering groceries manually. I'm not optimistic that mainstream consumers will warm up to the idea of A.I.'s controlling their apps anytime soon.

Google said it was working on addressing the issue I experienced with OpenTable. Regarding the Instacart order that was cut short, it said I could have released the button after summoning Gemini, but in my experience, the assistant stopped listening to me momentarily after I released the button.

A camera mode, called Magic Capture, tries to take and curate photos for you.

The most wow-inducing feature arriving with Pixel 11 phones is an automatic dubber for videos and podcasts. While a user is watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast, a window will appear offering to dub the audio into the user's chosen language. The A.I. will even try to imitate the speaker's voice.

The Pixel 11 launched with a small number of languages available for live dubbing. I tested the feature with French, which I studied in college, on some New York Times cooking videos produced in English. A window popped up offering to do the translation, and within seconds, I was watching Tom Holland and Matt Damon chatting about pizza in French. While the translation seemed vaguely accurate, my colleague Léo Hamelin, a native French speaker, reviewed a few A.I.-dubbed clips and found the translations to be overly literal and occasionally jarring. Nonetheless, if the technology improves, it's a strong example of how A.I. can improve the experience of using a phone for users worldwide, similar to the live translation technology that arrived in Apple's AirPods last year.

chair. But when I tested it on my 2-year-old daughter, it picked out a photo of her with a neutral expression. After reviewing the video clip, I preferred an image of her smiling.

A Google spokeswoman said I could choose a different image if I disagreed with the A.I.'s preferences. While it's nice to have that flexibility, choosing a different shot felt counterproductive compared with the normal process of taking a burst of photos by myself and picking out my favorite shot.

People generally love the ritual of shooting lots of photos, reviewing them later and choosing their favorites. Letting an A.I. bot take over your photography feels joyless.

The Pixel 11 is launched with a few languages available for live dubbing.

Bottom Line

My experience with the latest Pixel convinces me that people will treat A.I. like another app that they turn to for certain tasks rather than a new interface that transforms the way they use their phones.

Only a few A.I.-powered phone features that Google has introduced over the years have stuck with the masses, including the ability to erase photo bombers from a picture with the press of a button, a call screener for filtering scam calls and a tool that automatically transcribes recorded phone conversations. Live dubbing will probably be another when more languages become available and the technology becomes more polished.

None of those features fundamentally changed the way we use phones, but they certainly made our phones better.

Léo Hamelin contributed reporting.

Sports

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

PHELAN M. EBENHACK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bill Belichick, a six-time Super Bowl champion as a head coach, guided North Carolina to a 4-8 record in his first collegiate season. He brought in 60 newcomers this off-season, including 40 freshmen.

Drained of Hype, Belichick's Tar Heels Try to Salvage Hope

didn't have initially."

JARED C. TILTON/GETTY IMAGES
BEN McKEOWN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
JARED C. TILTON/GETTY IMAGES

Belichick's relationship with Jordon Hudson, top left, drew much of the interest last season. Steve Belichick, top right, his son and the team's defensive coordinator, is on medical leave with no timetable to return. Fans exited early, above, during a 48-14 loss to Texas Christian in the 2025 opener. The Tar Heels begin this season against T.C.U. on Saturday.

Rising Risk of Apathy As Second Year Starts With Added Turmoil

By BRENDAN MARKS The Athletic

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The sale section of the Shrunken Head Boutique on bustling Franklin Street sits in a back corner, past the back-to-school specials. A paper sign advertising a 50 percent discount identifies the leftover inventory, tucked beneath autographed basketballs and baby onesies.

In that rack is a remnant of hope from the start of the Bill Belichick era, which a year later is still trying to take flight. It's a gray hoodie, marked down to \$34.99, bearing a tagline in Carolina blue lettering that has not caught on as planned: CHAPEL BILL.

"Been back there a while now," the cashier hollered from behind the register.

As the University of North Carolina kicks off the 2026 football season on Saturday against Texas Christian in Dublin, the wave of momentum and interest in Belichick's first college football gig has disappeared.

Considering North Carolina's investment in Belichick, a six-time Super Bowl champion as a head coach — including his \$10 million annual salary and lucrative guarantees for staff and roster spending — there is pressure not only to see on-field improvement, but also to regain some of the buzz that first surrounded his hiring.

After a distraction-filled 4-8 debut, however, Year 2 has begun with more of the same.

Michael Lombardi, who is the highest-paid general manager in college football, making \$1.5 million annually, remains on administrative leave while the university's general counsel and an outside law firm investigate an H.R. complaint. Meanwhile, the College Sports Commission — which oversees name, image and likeness deals and compliance — has separately approached the university about a potential investigation. Additionally, the team's defensive coordinator, Steve Belichick, Bill's son, is on medical leave with no timetable to return.

Some of those headlines would be easier to swallow if the on-field prognosis were rosier than being picked to finish 15th in the 17-team Atlantic Coast Conference. Or if the “Belichick effect” carried the same weight it did a year ago.

Brendan Marks is a staff writer for The Athletic. Jon Machota contributed reporting.

Last August, North Carolina boasted about record season-ticket sales and donations to its fund-raising body, the Rams Club. This preseason? The school directed questions about ticket sales for the 2026 season to its public records department, which has yet to fulfill those requests.

The Belichick hype train was almost immediately derailed in last season's opener, with an embarrassing home loss to the Horned Frogs, casting doubt over whether the N.F.L. great could truly

15th

North Carolina's predicted finish in the 17-team A.C.C., according to a vote of more than 185 news media members.

transform North Carolina football. As the rocky season unfolded, reports came to light of the self-proclaimed "33rd N.F.L. team's" dysfunction, from a poorly assembled roster to an assistant coach suspended for an N.C.A.A. violation and scuttled plans for a season docuseries.

"There's definitely a learning curve any time you go to a new job," Belichick said recently. "You set things up, and then you modify them and adjust them as you go, based on the changing circumstances — or maybe knowledge that you

But in an era in which a team like Indiana can flip from 3-9 to undefeated national champion in the span of two seasons, Belichick's pitch of patience is a tough sell.

"We just need to see the money turn into wins now," said Sam Howell, the quarterback who starred at North Carolina from 2019 to 2021 and is now with the Dallas Cowboys.

To facilitate that, Belichick, 74, brought in 60 newcomers this off-season — although 40 are freshmen, in contrast to college football's increasing reliance on age and experience. He also hired a proven (if not problematic) offensive coordinator in Bobby Petrino, to jump-start a unit that ranked near the bottom of the Football Bowl Subdivision in total offense and points per game.

There is natural uncertainty surrounding those moves, but some observers maintain cautious optimism. That includes Ken Huff — an all-American offensive lineman at North Carolina in the 1970s and now a Chapel Hill business owner and football donor — whom Belichick invited to speak at practice a few weeks ago.

"They've bought into the program," Huff said of the players. "Now, if that translates into wins, that'd be great. But I think if we see progress, that's — you can't expect Indiana to pop up every year."

That sound you hear is North Carolina fans responding in unison: Why not?

Steve Newmark, the first-year athletic director, served on the hiring committee that recommended Belichick, and said North Carolina is trying to resist the common urge in college sports to judge programs too quickly.

"You have to have a solid foundation of players who have come up through the program, understand the culture and understand what's important," he said. "But when you do that, you also have to have patience if that doesn't happen overnight."

But when North Carolina hired Belichick in December 2024, it was not for a slow burn with a coach in his 70s. The Tar Heels envisioned Belichick quickly emerging as the turning point for a program that, historically, has been solid yet unspectacular.

North Carolina also knew that the sports world would eagerly tune in to watch, even if some of that interest stemmed only from Belichick's relationship with Jordon Hudson.

"You turned on any channel on TV, and that's all you saw," said Holly Dedmond, a North Carolina graduate and the manager of Chapel Hill Sportswear on Franklin Street. "Didn't matter if it was ESPN or the local network. Everybody was so excited."

Continued on Page B8

Street Race Spectacle May Be Just First Lap For IndyCar in D.C.

By JEFF GLUCK The Athletic

WASHINGTON — Bud Denker, head of IndyCar's street race here, sat in a suite with President Trump and the secretaries from nearly every cabinet agency on Sunday while overlooking the Pennsylvania Avenue portion of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix racetrack.

To hear Denker tell it, they were impressed enough that they urged Denker, the president of the Penske Corporation, to bring IndyCar back to the nation's capital city next year.

Denker said of Trump, "His strategy, 'Let's do it for five years because that guarantees you're going to be here through my term, then two more years for whoever is in office next.'"

Then, on the way out of the suite, Melania Trump, the first lady, said to Denker, "We look forward to seeing you again next year."

What had been billed as a one-and-done race by Denker heading into last weekend suddenly seemed to have the door wide open for a return, a sentiment that was echoed by the city's mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.

That would represent quite a twist because there was seemingly no long-term vision to continue racing around the National Mall — mainly because it is wildly expensive (IndyCar reportedly spent well over \$35 million on the race) and requires complex planning. (Denker said IndyCar needed more than 1,350 pages of permits to execute the event.)

Of course, the latter problem was smoothed by Trump's executive order, which paved the way for the race to take place after Denker was stonewalled while trying to gain bipartisan support in Congress.

Even after the approval, it seemed overly ambitious that anyone could handle the logistics that go into a street race in less than seven months. After all, some of the major headlines around street racing in American motorsports this decade have been about community pushback and the ensuing red tape rather than welcoming events with open arms.

In 2023, NASCAR held its first street race by putting on an event surrounding Chicago's Grant Park, with cars racing up Michigan Avenue and down DuSable Lake Shore Drive. It took a monu-

Jeff Gluck covers motorsports for The Athletic.

mental effort with city officials, area residents and businesses to make it happen, and the race lasted three years.

But when NASCAR tried to bring the event back to downtown Chicago for 2027, negotiations hit a snag over how much NASCAR would pay, and NASCAR will instead race on its oval in nearby Joliet, Ill., next year.

Formula 1, which contests many races on street circuits around the world, also had a splashy debut in 2023 with its street race down the Las Vegas Strip — but one that drew stories of angry business owners and traffic nightmares. Still, despite some continued complaints from locals, the race was recently extended through 2037.

IndyCar, the North American open-wheel series, has much more experience with street races. The Long Beach Grand Prix in Southern California and the season-opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in Florida are two of its traditional stops. But IndyCar has also experienced its headaches with street racing in major markets over the years, with short-lived events in places like Houston and Baltimore.

Could the District of Columbia become a tradition? The participants seemed to hope so.

"I hope they come back," said the NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon, who won last Saturday's International Race of Champions event at the track. "This is special. I'd love to see NASCAR and Indy-Car here."

“Definitely want to come back here,” Will Power, the 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner, said. “Amazing event. Amazing backdrop.”

MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Kurt Busch, who raced in last Saturday's IROC event, said: "I was completely blown away. First practice, didn't look like there was an empty seat anywhere. The vibe, the crowd, just the excitement. I was like a kid in a candy store."

MOTORSPORTS

Kyle Kirkwood, the IndyCar race winner last weekend, recalled peering at the fences on both sides of the track and seeing so many fans lined up that it almost gave him a claustrophobic feeling similar to the Indy 500.

Denker said IndyCar scanned in 215,000 people over the two-day event (tickets were free), and fans bought nearly \$1 million of merchandise last Saturday. On Tuesday, the ratings told another success story: The race averaged over 3.2 million viewers, Fox Sports said, the most for any non-Indy 500 race in the circuit since the 2008 merger that formed the series.

The two-day Freedom 250 Grand Prix event drew 215,000 ticket-holders. Fox Sports said the race averaged over 3.2 million viewers.
CHRIS GRAYTHEN/GETTY IMAGES

"I think we found our sweet spot in this sport: Urban races for us are very, very important," Denker said. "The demographics fit well for an urban race."

He added: "The urban markets draw people in and make it exciting. The vibe creates part of the event."

And the word "event" was something Denker emphasized. IndyCar wants to "create events, not races," he said.

"I'd love to find another street course on the East Coast marketplace if we don't do it here," he added.

The problem is that it is hard to make a splash in cities if the event is not downtown. Racing series have also been willing to try getting close: NASCAR this year raced on the streets of Naval Base Coronado, across the bay from downtown San Diego, and IndyCar and Formula 1 have held races in the parking lots around N.F.L. stadiums (Dallas Cowboys for IndyCar, Miami Dolphins for Formula 1).

What else could have the type of impact that racing around the National Mall does? Sports Business Journal reported NASCAR discussed a race on the Golden Gate Bridge but could not come up with a viable course layout, and holding a race somewhere in New York City has long been a dream. (Formula E raced in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for several years.)

Ultimately, it is not just community cooperation but cost that makes the difference, and Denker gave a small peek into the finances and logistics of why such an event is so challenging.

Take the 1.7 miles of concrete barriers that made up the walls on both sides of the track for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, for example. Those walls cost IndyCar \$3.5 million, and they are so big that only four can be transferred per truckload. So IndyCar had to transport 300 truckloads of the walls from Fredericksburg, Va., and, since they are too expensive to ship across the country to other sites, they will sit indefinitely in a lot on New York Avenue that costs IndyCar \$300,000 to lease over an unspecified time frame.

"Those walls are like the half-life of uranium; they don't go away," Denker said.

In some sense, it would save money to use them again. But the walls account for only a small percentage of what it took to build the track, and tens of millions of dollars would have to be spent to hold another race. Denker also noted IndyCar was able to tap into corporate budgets set aside for the country's 250th birthday celebrations, and that level of support may not be available next year.

That said, Denker has something significant on his side: proof of concept. After hundreds of meetings with all sorts of government agencies, he was able to show he delivered on his promises.

"You know what we built? We built trust and transparency," Denker said. "Because we have that with the city, every single agency. Because of the team I have, there would be nobody to say not to do this again.

"I'm confident of that. The decision is up to us."

BASEBALL

ANALYSIS

Gambling Enterprises Dangle Money to M.L.B., and Teams Keep Taking It

By TIM BRITTON The Athletic

You can't predict baseball. But that has never stopped anyone from trying.

The bond between the sport and prediction markets has tightened over the last month, with seven major league teams formalizing sponsorships with a prediction market. On Tuesday, Kalshi announced partnerships with five major league franchises: the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. They join the New York Mets and New York Yankees, who had earlier announced their own deals, with Novig and Polymarket. Meanwhile, Kalshi is also reportedly in talks for a league-level deal.

This is all happening as Congress is asking for more stringent regulations on the sport's promotion of gambling and the State of New York is trying to upend the industry with a lawsuit. Here is how the landscape may evolve.

Why are these sponsorships happening now?

When M.L.B. formed a partnership with Polymarket before the season, it was inevitable that teams would follow suit. A lot of organizations view partnerships with prediction markets like those with sports betting companies, and they are aware the money does not flow endlessly.

"There's a real explosion of spending, and once the customer acquisition race isn't quite as heated, a lot of that spending becomes almost pointless," said Danny Funt, author of "Every-

Tim Britton is a senior M.L.B. writer for The Athletic.

body Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling." "You have all these different players, and most customers aren't using a bunch of platforms. They're using one or two. So you want to spend a lot to be the one or two."

While there may not be a huge advantage to being the first team to announce this kind of deal, there is a significant financial edge in ensuring you are not left out.

"We were well aware of the process happening at the league level," said Lew Sherr, president of business operations for the Mets, whose deal with Novig was the first for a major league club with a prediction market. "When the opportunity presented itself, we were well prepared to act on it."

Being first might have meant more to Novig than it would have to Kalshi or Polymarket.

"We know we're newer to the market," Nikhil Panu, the senior vice president for growth at Novig, said. "Being able to be first movers on different things is important to us."

Dustin Gouker, a sports gambling analyst, said of Novig: "They have a lot of catch-up to do. Being promoted by a team is a huge deal for someone that doesn't have a ton of name recognition in the world right now."

What do the prediction markets get out of the arrangement? Two main things: legitimacy and access to greater rewards for their best customers.

"These team deals are about legitimacy," Gouker said. "The team and the leagues are putting their backing that this is a good product that is fine. With all the angst about gambling or not

JENNY KANE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Polymarket says insider trading is an issue, but “inevitable.”

gambling, legitimacy has a lot of currency."

Talking about the initial deals the Mets and Yankees made, Funt said: "At a time when they're really in legal limbo, when their claim to be something other than gambling is not persuading a lot of judges, two of the biggest franchises in sports giving them a stamp of approval is pretty significant."

Ari Borod, Polymarket's president for sports business development, said in an email, "For us, it's a great way to introduce Polymarket to more sports fans."

Borod said fan experiences for Polymarket users could eventually include taking batting practice or running the bases at Yankee Stadium. Panu mentioned that Novig's deal with the Mets contains integration with the club's rewards program, which could also lead to users having enhanced experiences at Citi Field.

"It seems clear prediction markets are trying to ramp up their version of the V.I.P. business," Funt said. "It's not just luxury boxes but taking V.I.P.s on the field beforehand and doing meet-and-greets or events with retired players — all this stuff they can do to pamper V.I.P.s that are made possible by the team deals."

Those V.I.P. programs have invited scrutiny of late. This month, Congress asked M.L.B. and the players' union to better regulate promotional materials to sports betting customers. That came in the wake of the controversy between FanDuel and the Phillies' Bryce Harper; FanDuel used a personalized greeting from Harper to a V.I.P. user in 2024 without receiving Harper's approval. That user is suing multiple sportsbooks, including FanDuel, for leveraging V.I.P. perks to coerce further betting.

On Tuesday, the players' union responded to Congress by noting its proposal in the latest labor negotiations to further limit prop bets and other bets on an individual's single-game performance — and mentioned the rapid growth of prediction markets specifically in its response. While the union has advocated players being permitted to engage in sponsorship deals with sportsbooks just like M.L.B. and its clubs have, it does aim to prohibit players from participating in personalized marketing campaigns tied to V.I.P. programs.

What do teams get out of the arrangement?

Money. These deals can be worth as much as eight figures per year.

Teams also gain access to a different demographic of fans, one craved by most every business: young adults.

"All of us in sports are always looking for ways to appeal to young adult audiences in a new way," the Mets' Sherr said. "It's very different than what would have worked 10 or 20 years ago. Partners like Novig allow us to be front and center with a group of sports fans that follow information and leverage data religiously. This is a way for us to leverage their customer base to promote the Mets and hopefully attract and bring new interest."

Should we expect to see deals for all 30 teams?

"You're likely to see many more," Sherr said before Tuesday's news about Kalshi's agreements. He noted that Novig was not the only prediction market the Mets engaged with on a potential sponsorship.

Whether it reaches total saturation with all 30 teams having a prediction market sponsor is less certain. But Tuesday's news with Kalshi reaffirmed that we are in a land-grab moment for teams.

"These companies are keen to get in front of sports fans," Sherr said. "The value of live events and the value of sports have never been greater. You'll see these brands become well represented across sports."

How do the league and markets combat potential insider trading? Insider trading has been a major issue for prediction markets. Polymarket's own chief executive has referred to insider trading as "inevitable."

After last summer's suspensions of Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, M.L.B. took steps to eliminate or cap betting amounts on certain types of possible wagers — like the outcome of individual pitches that Clase and Ortiz were accused of having manipulated.

"Our agreement with M.L.B. includes an integrity framework that restricts markets that could be more vulnerable to manipulation," said Polymarket's Borod, "including individual pitches and certain decisions by managers and umpires."

Novig's Panu suggested sports wagers would be more difficult to manipulate than some of the general ones offered on other platforms.

"While obviously there have been a few incidents over the past couple years, this is a system that's been in place with a lot of protocols already in place for sports," Panu said.

“Ultimately, it comes down to what the players are doing on the field, how the teams are performing. With a lot of other markets, it's sort of the wild west where that infrastructure doesn't exist as of yet.”

Is there any reason the New York teams went first?

Funt and Gouker were surprised that the first major league teams to agree to partnerships with prediction markets were in New York, given that sports betting is legal in the state. They had figured it would be more attractive for the prediction markets to make deals in states like California and Texas, where sports betting remains illegal.

But the Mets and Yankees are huge brands, with fan bases that extend outside their home state. Novig, Polymarket and Kalshi are all based in New York.

Four of the five teams now sponsored by Kalshi play in states where sports betting is illegal. Four other major league teams operate in such states: the Houston Astros, Los Angeles Angels, Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Week 0 Serves Up Some Tasty Appetizers to Whet Your Appetite

By JUSTIN WILLIAMS

TEXAS CHRISTIAN The junior running back Jeremy Payne (26) and his Horned Frogs teammates are hoping for a repeat of last year's success over the Tar Heels.

ERIC GAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARK J. TERRILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA The Trojans have playoff aspirations, and quarterback Jayden Maiava should rack up yards and points against San Jose State.

The Athletic

Folks, we made it.

After slogging through an off-season of eligibility lawsuits, congressional lobbying and playoff expansion debates that no one asked for, we finally have some actual college football to watch this weekend — from the sun-kissed shores of Southern California to the lush, rolling hills of Ireland. It's not a full slate of matchups just yet, but there is plenty to tide us over.

Let's rank the eight Football Bowl Subdivision games of Week 0.

All games are on Saturday; all times are Eastern. Rankings are from the Associated Press Top 25.

North Carolina vs. Texas Christian

Noon, ESPN

Another season kicks off across the pond in Dublin, Ireland, and there is definitely some schadenfreude afoot for college football fans on the heels of another headline-making but discouraging off-season from North Carolina. The much-maligned general manager, Mike Lombardi, was placed on administrative leave last month, and the on-field vibes are not much better in Year 2 under the legendary head coach Bill Belichick. Yet we can't look away. The outlook is sunnier for T.C.U., which is aiming to repeat last season's smack-down in Chapel Hill, this time with the Harvard transfer Jaden Craig at quarterback. There is Big 12 sleeper energy for the Horned Frogs after they won nine games in 2025.

Memphis at Nevada-Las Vegas,

10 p.m., Fox

U.N.L.V. is getting the Group of 6 darling treatment after 10 wins under the first-year head coach Dan Mullen in 2025. The Rebels have a chance to set the pace in the Mountain West with Boise State and others off to the Pac-12. Jackson Arnold, a transfer who spent time at Oklahoma and Auburn, enters as the top quarterback alongside the star running back Jet Thomas. For Memphis, Charles Huff replaced Ryan Silverfield as head coach of a team that should have one of the highest roster budgets in the Group of 6, and Huff has been cagey about the quarterback competition between the Division II transfer Marcus Stokes and the former four-star recruit Air Noland. This game could have big implications for the race for the Group of 6 spot in the College Football Playoff.

North Carolina State at Virginia

3:30 p.m., ESPN

There is quite a back story to this one, which was originally slated to be played in Rio de Janeiro but was moved to Charlottesville in June because of operational problems overseas. It was also

Justin Williams covers college football and basketball for The Athletic.

originally scheduled as a nonconference meeting between the two Atlantic Coast Conference foes, though that was adjusted when the league moved to a nine-game conference schedule. Logistics aside, the A.C.C. petitioned to keep the game in Week 0, bringing a little extra shine to what should be a fun matchup. Virginia is fresh off a program-record 11 wins and a trip to the A.C.C. title game, while N.C. State returns quarterback CJ Bailey and some optimism for 2026.

San Jose State at No. 14 Southern California 3 p.m., NBC

The spread does not suggest a close game, but the Trojans are still one of the more intriguing teams in 2026. The star quarterback Jayden Maiava is back, and Gary Patterson, a longtime head coach, was hired as defensive coordinator to fix a unit that has held the program back under Coach Lincoln

Riley. U.S.C. has playoff aspirations but a tough schedule, and patience for Riley is fading. Many will expect a dominant Week 0 performance against a San Jose State squad that threw it more than 40 times a game last season.

Hawaii at Stanford

7 p.m., ACC Network

The former Stanford quarterback Tavita Pritchard returns as head coach of his alma mater, marking the third coach in three seasons for a Cardinal program desperate to get back on track. That could be a challenge this year, with a tough schedule and questions at quarterback, where the Michigan transfer Davis Warren takes over after missing last season to injury. Stanford can ill afford a second straight season-opening loss to Hawaii, which in 2025 improved to nine wins in Year 4 under Coach Timmy Chang.

Jacksonville State at North Dakota State

5:30 p.m., CBS Sports Network

Do not sleep on what is now a Group of 6 matchup, with N.D.S.U. making the leap to the F.B.S. this season. The Bison, standard bearers of the Football Championship Subdivision with 10 national titles since 2011, are joining the new-look Mountain West and will immediately welcome a Jacksonville State squad that has reached the Conference USA title game two years running. Both teams have solid continuity considering their place in the college football pecking order, and each could be in the mix for a conference title. Plus, Week 0 in the Fargodome should be a hoot.

New Mexico State at Florida State

7 p.m., CW

It's nice to have a marquee brand like the Seminoles on opening weekend, but the talk all off-season has been about Coach Mike Norvell's place on the hot seat. The large spread on this game suggests that Florida State should do just fine — though last year's team started 3-0 with an upset win over Alabama before finishing 5-7. Norvell will have every incentive to run up the score in this one.

Sacramento State at Eastern Michigan

6:30 p.m., ESPN+

Week 0 MACtion features the F.B.S. and Mid-American Conference newcomer Sacramento State hoofing it all the way to Ypsilanti to face Eastern Michigan for a very green showdown. The former Michigan State transfer Noah Kim returns at quarterback for E.M.U. against a Hornets squad that makes the leap from the Big Sky (F.C.S.) to the MAC after going 7-5 last season.

Belichick's Tar Heels Lost Their Hype. In Year 2, They Try to Salvage Some Hope.

After he was hired by the University of North Carolina in late 2024, Bill Belichick appeared at a media event and held a sweatshirt that had belonged to his father, a staff member in the 1950s.
BEN MEKEOWN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

From First Sports Page

But eventually, the games began. North Carolina lost its first three Power 4 contests — to Texas Christian, Central Florida and Clemson — by an average of 29 points and did not beat a major conference foe until Syracuse, which finished 3-9, on Halloween. It eventually closed out Belichick's inaugural campaign by losing to Wake Forest, Duke and North Carolina State for the first time since 1989, snapping a six-year postseason bowl streak.

Then, come April, North Carolina failed to have a player drafted for the first time since 2016.

Still, there were still some positives from Belichick's first season.

The team's TV numbers spiked, with the Texas Christian game ending up as the A.C.C.'s sixth-most-viewed contest of the regular season. And among games with publicly available data tracked by the site Sports Media Watch, North Carolina ranked at least seventh in A.C.C. football viewership. That's a significant jump compared with 2024, when the Tar Heels were 15th in the league — and possibly a lucrative leap, given the A.C.C.'s revenue distributions based on TV viewership, which have not been publicly disclosed.

The Texas Christian game was also North Carolina's most attended of the last five seasons, according to public records, with just under 40,000 tickets scanned. That contest was a key reason the school also saw a small year-over-year attendance increase compared with Mack Brown's final

season in 2024.

But that trend bottomed out, fast, after North Carolina's dismal start. The Tar Heels' home tilt against the eventual A.C.C. champion, Duke, was easily the least-attended iteration of the rivalry since before the pandemic, and empty stands come November weighed down the school's season-long attendance average of 32,923.

Some of that is because Belichick did not inherit a moribund program. In the six seasons before his arrival, under Brown, North Carolina was 44-33, and the 2020 team played in the Orange Bowl. The Tar Heels regularly sent players to the N.F.L. and were competitive with their rivals, even if they never fully arrived at the national level.

Compare that base line with the pervasive sentiment regarding Belichick's second team.

"There's probably a bit of apathy," said Beckett Brantley, the sports editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. Last year, she and her colleagues leaned into Belichick mania, putting his face on the cover of the football preview. "We wanted people to grab it and hang Bill Beli-chick on their walls," she added.

But this preseason, the paper's football preview intentionally focused elsewhere, on the 100th anniversary of Kenan Stadium and player features.

"Really, we're not highlighting much of the coaching staff," Brantley said, "just because obviously there's so much uncertainty."

For business reasons, Dedmond and other Franklin Street shop owners have made a similar pivot. The store did mostly sell out of its commemorative gear highlighting Saturday's Aer Lingus

College Football Classic in Dublin, but it did not place any additional "Chapel Bill" orders.

“I need to hope and pray that people are going to buy Carolina gear and support the team,” Dedmond said, but winning is essential for that. She added: “Nobody wants to get dragged up and down the field and lose by 50 points to Clemson on Saturday, and then wear their Carolina polo to the office on Monday. So we need to win these games for my store, too.”

That North Carolina's opener is across the Atlantic Ocean does not add much gas to North Carolina's fledgling hype fire. But the school is trying to do its part, including by continuing the free Chapel Thrill Concert Series it began last season in conjunction with Belichick's arrival. This year's lineup features DJ Diesel (Shaquille O'Neal), Neon Trees and Waka Flocka Flame scheduled to perform.

"Those," Brantley said, "might draw some bigger crowds than the games."

For all the uncertainty surrounding Belichick's second season at North Carolina, one thing is fairly guaranteed: Where the Tar Heels stand will be known relatively early.

After Texas Christian, North Carolina welcomes East Tennessee State, a team from the Football Championship Subdivision, for its home opener. But from there, it's a relative murderers' row.

A trip to Clemson. A home date with preseason top-five Notre Dame. A rivalry tilt at Duke, which won the A.C.C. last season, in mid-October. And even Miami, last year's national runner-up, all by Halloween.

"Our team could be infinitely better, and we may not win any more games than we did last year because our schedule is just so much harder," Dedmond said.

With the caveat that anything is possible, North Carolina could well enter November with another uphill battle to bowl eligibility.

If that happens, would North Carolina really pull the plug on its Belichick investment during the season? Who would make that decision, after so many — Chancellor Lee H. Roberts, Newmark, the board of trustees — stuck their necks out for Belichick not even two years ago? What about Belichick's remaining \$10 million guaranteed and the idea of starting over again? And despite saying this summer that he enjoys college coaching, what is Belichick's appetite for continuing?

To that point, Newmark said he had been asked multiple times how he would evaluate the program and maintained that it would not just be based on wins and losses but on showing “continuous improvement.”

"Are we developing players? Are we getting better on offense, defense and special teams?" Newmark added.

Huff, who still believes Belichick can fulfill his five-year, \$50 million deal, agrees with that evaluation method.

"I just want to be competitive, you know, given the schedule," Huff said. "Gosh, if we were to win six games, that'd be exceptional."

There is still plenty of football left for Belichick to turn things around in Chapel Hill. But there's no wave of momentum shielding him from the reality that befalls all underperformers in college athletics.

TENNIS | U.S. OPEN

ANALYSIS

Defending Champions Will Have to Overcome Tricky Draws

By AVA WALLACE, JAMES HANSEN and MATTHEW FUTTERMAN The Athletic

The U.S. Open begins Sunday in New York City, and the draws for the men's and women's singles have thrown up some blockbuster first-round matches as Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka seek to defend their titles.

The Athletic's tennis team analyze an intriguing draw before things get started.

What makes Alcaraz's opening match so dangerous?

Alcaraz, the defending champion, will not have to test his right wrist against a blasting server like Matteo Berrettini or Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in the first round, but the U.S. Open's draw still brought him a scare.

He faces Roman Safiullin, who was last seen at a Grand Slam knocking out Andrey Rublev and João Fonseca before giving Novak Djokovic some fits. Safiullin, a 29-year-old Russian, is just about the worst category of player for Alcaraz to meet after four months out. Alcaraz's rusty tennis possibly will need a bit of runway, or he will need to manage a match and give himself time to lose a set to play at a higher level.

Safiullin's ferocious serve and all-out attacking style don't let his opponents do that when he is on. He has a motor in his legs and in his racket and can play at a fast, staccato rhythm. Alcaraz needs time, but Safiullin is all too capable of taking that time away and putting Alcaraz in a position where he cannot recover before he has a chance to blink.

Safiullin has played on all sorts of big courts before, against big

Ava Wallace, James Hansen and Matthew Futterman cover tennis for The Athletic.

players. This isn't some teenage qualifier walking into Arthur Ashe Stadium who will melt against an all-time great in waiting.

If Alcaraz survives that first-round test, some other trouble lurks in his neighborhood, though his potential second- and third-round matches offer tricky but less explosive opponents against whom he might get the time he wants.

Tommy Paul is in his section. Ben Shelton is in his quarter. Novak Djokovic is in his half.

With a healthy wrist, all of that is more than manageable. With a questionable wrist, Alcaraz may have some questions to answer, none of them bigger than Safiullin first up.

What does a top star's injury mean for the women's draw?

Elena Rybakina's left Achilles' tendon, which she injured during the Cincinnati Open, could determine the trajectory of the title.

A healthy and fit Rybakina would appear to have relatively smooth sailing into the second week. Thea Frodin, a 17-year-old American who played a young Venus Williams in the movie "King Richard," isn't a bad first-round opponent if she needs to test her fitness.

But Rybakina's fortunes have implications far beyond her own success. She is vying for the world No. 1 ranking with Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, and she holds all the cards: With a semifinal run, nothing the others do would matter, and one of them has to win the title to deny Rybakina the top ranking.

Moreover, her absence in the bottom quarter of the draw would present a rich opportunity for Iga Swiatek, the resurgent 2022 champion who is in her quarter, and for others in that

In the first round, Carlos Alcaraz, above, will face the veteran Roman Safiullin.
CLIVE BRUNSKILL/GETTY IMAGES

half of the draw, given that the women's draw as a whole is relatively balanced.

All that is a long way off. Most times the draws don't go as anyone thinks they might in women's tennis, where the best-of-three format invites upsets. Before the action even starts, Rybakina might cause some of her own.

Why will Sabalenka need to be careful?

When was the last time that the top seed and defending champion at a major felt as vulnerable as Sabalenka does at the start of this U.S. Open?

The defending champion in New York, Sabalenka has reached just one semifinal in her past seven tournaments. She looked like a buzz saw at the start of this year, finding full confidence in her ability to blend her classic power game with the feathery drop shots and improved touch that she has built up the past couple of years. But she appears to have lost some confidence in that newfound nuance.

Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, has failed to capture a Grand Slam title this year.
MATTHEW STOCKMAN/GETTY IMAGES

A string of earlier losses than she is accustomed to has left her with more riding on this U.S. Open than arguably any other player in the draw. She has one last shot to win a Grand Slam title this year — as the world No. 1, she is expected to win at least one — and her No. 1 ranking could be up for grabs.

Given all that, Sabalenka has a thorny draw, particularly after a relatively smooth first two rounds.

She could face Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova or the No. 11 seed Marta Kostyuk in the quarterfinals. But before that, she could run into the two-time Grand Slam champion Barbora Krejcikova in the third round. Krejcikova's two major trophies have come on natural surfaces, not hardcourts, but she has exactly the type of angular, unpredictable, choppy game that could annoy Sabalenka into oblivion.

Speaking of angular, unpredictable, choppy games, Sabalenka could face the French Open finalist Maja Chwalinska in the fourth round. Or it could be Diana Shnaider, the woman who won a 6-0 third set against Sabalenka in Paris. All this could resolve into an easy run, but there is plenty of danger.

Is one half of the men's draw in need of some energy?

There is no doubt that there will be great tennis to watch early in the men's draw, but there is a small worry about the potential lack of atmosphere. Here is where Fonseca, who is out with an abdominal injury, will be missed, along with his droves of Brazilian fans.

Arthur Fils and Stefanos Tsitsipas should put on a show — Fils always draws the crowd into his matches — and Frances Tiafoe versus Martin Damm is an all-American match, where the home crowd will be lively. But most of the fun is in the bottom half of the men's draw, with the top looking a little light on intrigue early on.

For first-round vibes, maybe head to the women's draw instead, where Taylor Townsend and Chwalinska could carve each other to pieces and Coco Gauff and Zeynep Sönmez should be a fun clash of young players. Or catch the Alexandra Eala show, where her thunderous fan base is sure to be loud enough to compete with the rattle of the 7 train.

The relative lack of excitement might be over the heaviness around men's tennis these days. The number of injuries is a natural dampener. Alcaraz is just coming back from a wrist injury, and the world No. 1 Jannik Sinner is missing the U.S. Open with a knee injury, once again creating an opportunity for the field that, back during the French Open, felt exciting. Now it feels like smothering pressure that contenders like Felix Auger-Aliassime and Alex de Minaur, both in the top half with Alexander Zverev, could buckle under.

Perhaps that means it's time for a changing of the guard, similar to what happened in the Canadian Open, in which all eight quarterfinalists were born in the 2000s — the first time that had occurred at an ATP Masters 1000.

A balanced women's draw?

One of the most exciting things about the WTA Tour right now lies in the distinction between openness and parity. There are many potential U.S. Open champions, but they are part of an exclusive group that will knock each other out until the end — provided that upsets don't reign supreme.

The tournament's draw has delivered by distributing these players relatively evenly, though the bottom half outguns the top. In the top half, Pegula is in superb form on hardcourts despite not quite claiming a title in Canada or Cincinnati. Noskova and Karolina Muchova, the Wimbledon champion and finalist, are there — and Muchova has two U.S. Open semifinals on her résumé. Marta Kostyuk, who spent spring and early summer scorching to win after win, is there too.

In the bottom half, Rybakina and Swiatek are joined by Naomi Osaka, whose U.S. Open semifinal run last year marked the start of her sustained upturn in form. But it might be the low-key bruising top of the bottom half — with Gauff, Mirra Andreeva and Amanda Anisimova — that sees some of the contenders take lumps from one another. Provided the first week goes smoothly, the second week in the women's event promises to be a barnburner.

COMMENTARY

So Long, Pro Bowl. We'll Always Have The Hawaii Years.

By MICHAEL SILVER The Athletic

He was a salty old dog, the wrinkled skin on his bare torso stained and worn like a faded leather wallet. For the price of a Longboard Island Lager or three, this sketchy surf bum had a story to tell.

“Have you heard of the Beach Boys?” he asked, hoping to lure us in like a fisherman stalking an ono off Waikiki Beach, which happened to be our view. The looks on our faces said we had, but our uninvited table guest wasn’t waiting for an answer. His long tale ended with him revealing that he was, in fact, the hidden “sixth, or actually seventh,” member of the band.

While understandably dubious of the claim's legitimacy, John Elway took it all in with a bemused smile — and ordered another round of sashimi and beers. The quarterback was in a great mood as the sun disappeared under the Pacific Ocean on that January evening in 1998, about 72 hours removed from winning the Super Bowl on his fourth try.

It had been a whirlwind: Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after leading the Denver Broncos to an upset of the Green Bay Packers in San Diego; going up the coast to Disneyland as part of the obligatory promotional campaign; returning to Denver for a parade, then flying to Hawaii.

Upon landing in Honolulu, Elway and his coach, Mike Shanahan, went straight to the Barefoot Bar at Duke's Waikiki, where the celebration continued long past golden hour.

When I think about the heyday of the N.F.L.'s Pro Bowl, which was eliminated on Wednesday after a long, dubious decline, I marvel at the multitude of casual, unguarded moments that football's biggest names routinely experienced there. Getting swept up in poolside chess drama between San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, who died in 2012, and Jim Harbaugh, now the coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, is one of many examples near and dear to my heart.

PRO FOOTBALL

Though Elway didn't play for the A.F.C. in that 1998 Pro Bowl, there was a reason he bothered to show up. In Hawaii, even on Oahu's most storied and crowded beach, a superstar could blend in while being chatted up by the Seventh Beach Boy. And for one week each year, even a culture as regimented and hyper-serious as the N.F.L.'s could channel some fun in the sun.

From 1980 to 2009, the Pro Bowl enjoyed an uninterrupted, three-decade run at rickety Aloha Stadium as the soothing capstone of the N.F.L. season. Players acclimated to island time, cherished the collective exhale and staged a stripped-down showcase of their sport. Coaches wore flower-print shirts and leis and unfashionable shades. Viewers saw a low-stress spectacle that typically ramped up in the fourth quarter, when players started caring about the difference in checks (sometimes as little as a few thousand dollars) doled out to participants on the winning and losing teams.

For the N.F.L.'s standout performers and their families, the week in Hawaii that followed the Super Bowl was a reward for a job well done. And as word spread of Pro Bowl week's breezy vibe, plenty of nonstars started paying their way to join the party, too.

The late Russ Francis, a native Hawaiian who became an All-Pro tight end and Super Bowl champion during a standout career with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers in the 1970s and '80s, put it this way when I interviewed him for a

PAUL SPINELLI, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Sports Illustrated” feature in 1996: “The Pro Bowl is a celebration of football. It’s the one time when players can let down their guard, enjoy their status and revel in the joys of their profession. It’s camaraderie and adventure — the way football used to be.”

Even when those adventures bordered on the farcical, nobody seemed to mind all that much.

There was the time in the mid-80s when a bull escaped from a local zoo and, legend has it, the New York Jets' Mark Gastineau wrestled it on a Honolulu street. Numerous locals I talked to insisted it was true.

Nearly as unruly were some of the N.F.C. team's offensive huddles in 1993, which quarterback Steve Young described as total pandemonium. The mayhem featured Young's teammate Ricky Watters, a running back, screaming, "I'm the player they came to see!" while the two-way star Deion Sanders also demanded the ball. All the while, receivers Jerry Rice and Michael Irvin staged a running argument as to which one of them was the league's most selfish player.

Dallas Cowboys Coach Barry Switzer conspicuously scarfed a hot dog on the sideline of the 1995 game while watching his N.F.C. team get rolled by the A.F.C. Unbeknown to fans was the strange story of running back Marshall Faulk, the game's most valuable player. While driving to the game in his rented Ferrari with his A.F.C. teammate Na-trone Means, Faulk spun out on a rain-slicked freeway and totaled the car. After catching a cab and showing up perilously close to kickoff, he proceeded to run for 180 yards to break O.J. Simpson's Pro Bowl record.

And earlier that week, Arizona Cardinals running back Larry Centers was baptized in the Pacific Ocean shortly before

midnight by N.F.C. teammates and the future Hall of Famers Reggie White, Aeneas Williams and Cris Carter. True story.

As a television viewer, my favorite Pro Bowl moment occurred in 2003. A few days earlier, Indianapolis Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt had given an interview on The Score, a Canadian cable network, in which he criticized Coach Tony Dungy and numerous teammates — including Peyton Manning, with Vanderjagt saying the quarterback needed to show more emotion. Come Pro Bowl Sunday, Manning had yet to respond.

Given ABC's custom of conducting sideline interviews with players during the game, I waited excitedly for Manning to get his turn on the mic. When the sideline reporter Lynn Swann teed him up with a question about Vanderjagt, Manning didn't disappoint, going on a savage rant that depicted his

Aloha Stadium was the host for the N.F.L. Pro Bowl from 1980 to 2009, a three-decade run in which the game was played after the Super Bowl.

teammate as an “idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off.”

On the field, the action was typically far from idyllic, but the games got reasonably good ratings and served as a gentle bedtime tuck-in for the sport after a long, draining season. The league started messing with the Pro Bowl, however — beginning in 2010, when the powers that be moved it to the mainland (Miami) and shifted it into the Sunday slot between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl — and the vibe quickly degenerated.

Though the game returned to Hawaii in 2011 and stayed there through 2016 (aside from a 2015 interlude in Arizona), the Pro Bowl quickly lost its luster and any sense of legitimacy. It essentially jumped the shark in 2012, when the action looked so bogus that Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, publicly threatened to cancel the event if players did not start trying.

Two years later, the league scrapped the A.F.C. versus N.F.C. format in favor of a silly draft between honorary captains (beginning with Rice and Sanders), creating a sense of confusion among consumers. In 2019, the former Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, as part of ESPN's broadcast crew, unwittingly broke the trophy in half while congratulating the A.F.C. stars Patrick Mahomes and Jamal Adams, providing a fitting metaphor for the state of the event.

By 2023, the N.F.L. gave up any pretense of staging an actual game, replacing the Pro Bowl with a skills competition that culminated with a flag football game. On Wednesday, the league officially pulled the plug. Few, if any, tears were shed.

I'm not shedding any, either. Change is part of life. The Pro Bowl had its blessed run in the island sun, but was not destined to last forever.

The march of time is seldom subtle. Earlier this year, construction crews started tearing down Aloha Stadium. The Beach Boys recently canceled around 30 summer tour dates so their 85-year-old frontman, Mike Love, could “recharge.”

The Barefoot Bar at Duke's lives on, and I'm sure there are salty dogs with stories to tell roaming the sand as we speak. If you go there sometime, consider taking in the trade winds and raising your glass to toast an era of camaraderie and adventure — the way football used to be.

PAUL SPINELLI, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Cowboys' Michael Irvin and the Falcons' Deion Sanders speaking with Downtown Julie Brown, then with ESPN, in 1994. In 2013, the Packers' Jeff Saturday (63) joined the A.F.C. huddle to get a snap with his former Colts teammate Peyton Manning.
SCOTT CUNNINGHAM/GETTY IMAGES

An index of fuel consumption that tracks how far the day's mean temperature rose above 65
Yesterday	9
So far this month	318
So far this season (since January 1)	1078
Normal to date for the season	1019

Temperature

Sandusky Accuser to Recant His Trial Testimony

By MARK PULEO and ZACH POWELL The Athletic

One of the 10 victims who accused the former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky of sexual abuse is preparing to recant his testimony, according to court documents obtained Friday by The Athletic.

Sandusky, 82, is due to appear in court in Bellefonte, Pa., on Sept. 8 for an evidentiary hearing after a judge granted his request to review evidence that the accuser, recognized as R.R. or Victim 10 in court proceedings, has recanted or substantially disavowed his trial testimony.

In a signed affidavit from June 30, 2025, Victim 10 said he felt pushed to change his story. His testimony “evolved,” he said, after “leading questions, intense inves-

Mark Puleo is a senior editor and Zach Powell is a staff editor for The Athletic.

Victim 10 cites 'investigative pressure and psychological manipulation.'

tigative pressure and psychological manipulation."

"I was misled repeatedly during the process, particularly by prosecutor Joe McGettigan," Victim 10 said in the affidavit. "I now regret my role in facilitating what I have come to view as a deeply flawed prosecution."

McGettigan, who died in December 2025, was the lead prosecutor in the case that rocked Penn State and led to the firing of Coach Joe Paterno in 2011.

Even if the charges involving Victim 10 are dismissed, Sandusky is unlikely to be released from prison, where he is serving a sentence of 30 to 60 years after he was convicted in 2012 on 45 charges of sexual abuse.

In their motion for a trial, Sandusky's attorneys highlighted Victim 10's claim that he was told that the trauma may have fragmented his memory, and that he "could safely affirm details that he did not fully recall."

"I was led to believe that failing to testify in the manner prosecutors expected would allow a dangerous man to escape justice," Victim 10 wrote, later saying that he was unaware that his statements "would be used to secure a de facto life sentence for Mr. Sandusky."

Victim 10 said he was coached during pretrial meetings, one of which lasted approximately six hours, and was asked repeatedly to reframe his account until his responses aligned with what appeared to be desired by the prosecution team.

"I ask the courts, and any fair-minded reader, to consider that my testimony may have reflected not willful falsehood, but a tragic convergence of memory uncertainty, professional suggestion, prosecutorial coercion and my own vulnerability," he wrote.

According to the filing from Sandusky's attorneys, Victim 10's estranged wife is also prepared to testify that Victim 10 initially denied being abused by Sandusky.

Victim 10, who later received a \$5.5 million settlement from a civil suit against Penn State, did not immediately respond to a request for clarification about whether he is recanting all of his accusations, or just some of the details. He also did not respond to a request for clarification about what will happen with the settlement money he received.

The lawyer Andrew Shubin, whom Victim 10 named in his affidavit as part of the legal counsel that represented him in the civil case against Penn State, declined to comment on the story and would not say if he still represents

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GENE J. PUSKAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jerry Sandusky, left, a former Penn State football coach, was convicted in 2012 on 45 charges of sexual abuse. Joseph McGettigan, right, who died in December, was the case's lead prosecutor.

Sandusky has maintained his innocence since the initial accusations.

Victim 10.

Sandusky was an assistant on Paterno's football staff from 1969 to 1999. His nonprofit, The Second

Mile, was founded in 1977 and operated until 2011, when he was arrested. The foundation's purported mission was to help underprivileged youth, and it was through the foundation that Sandusky met several of the victims.

Weather Report

Metropolitan Forecast

TODAY ....Some sun, less humid High 80. There will be plenty of sunshine, with a few clouds. Temperatures will be near average for this time of year. Humidity levels will decrease.

TONGHIT ....Clear Low 65. The sky will be clear, with winds becoming light and variable. It will be dry, with temperatures near normal for this time of year.

TOMORROW ....Partly sunny and humid High 83. A few clouds will appear, but there will be plenty of sunshine. The humidity will increase throughout the day, with temperatures peaking just a few degrees above average for late August.

MONDAY ...... Afternoon showers Sunshine will be limited by clouds, although temperatures will remain above normal with a high of 84. There will be a brief shower or two in the afternoon.

WEDNESDAY ......Storms on Wednesday There will be intervals of sunshine and clouds on Tuesday, with afternoon thunderstorms. High 83. A couple of gusty thunderstorms will occur on Wednesday. High 84.

Meteorology by AccuWeather

A large dome of high pressure in the upper atmosphere will shift from the southern Plains to the lower Mississippi Valley region early next week. This will allow hot air from the Southwest and Plains to spread into the Ohio Valley and Middle Atlantic States from Sunday through at least Tuesday. Afternoon temperatures will climb well into the 90s, with an increase in humidity.

Highlight: Heat Wave to Expand Into the East

National Forecast

Thunderstorms will rumble from the Rockies to northern parts of the Midwest. From northern Utah and eastern Idaho into the Dakotas, storms will bring a risk of flash flooding, hail and damaging wind gusts. It will be humid in the Southeast, with spotty afternoon thunderstorms across the region.

Elsewhere, the Mississippi Valley will be mostly sunny. The Northeast will be less humid, with a mixture of sunshine and clouds.

Meanwhile, heat will blanket much of the Plains and Desert Southwest, with temperatures 5 to 15 degrees above the 30-year averages. Temperatures will trend lower compared to recent days across the Pacific Northwest. Despite the cooldown, the wildfire risk will remain elevated across the region.

Metropolitan Almanac

In Central Park, for the 13 hours ended at 1 p.m. yesterday.

Cooling Degree Days

Cities

High/low temperatures for the 16 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 16 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday. Expected conditions for today and tomorrow.

C	Clouds	S	...	Sun
F	...	Fog	Sn	Snow
H	...	Haze	SS	Snow showers
I	...	Ice	T	Thunderstorms
PC	...	Partly cloudy	Tr	.
R	...	Rain	W	Windy
Sh	...	Showers	...	Not available
N.Y.C. region		Yesterday	Today	Tomorrow
New York City	80/68 0	80/65 PC	83/72 PC
Bridgeport	79/71 0	78/65 PC	83/69 5
Caldwell	79/65 0.05	80/62 PC	84/67 PC
Crawbury	79/68 1	77/65 PC	84/69 4
Islip	81/71 0	78/64 C	82/69 5
Newark	81/69 Tr	82/67 C	87/72 PC
Newmont	79/68 0.01	80/60 PC	81/69 PC
White Plains	79/68 0	78/61 PC	81/67 PC
United States		Yesterday	Today	Tomorrow
Albany	81/54 0.04	78/58 S	82/63 PC
Albuquerque	96/71 0	95/68 T	92/67 C
Anchorage	61/50 0.22	63/47 PC	62/48 PC
Atlanta	89/72 0.17	91/71 T	71/71 T
Atlantic City	81/68 0.51	78/67 PC	82/73 PC
Austin	98/72 0.13	98/75 S	100/75 T
Baltimore	86/65 0.06	83/67 C	89/69 PC
Canton Rouge	74/73 0.05	76/67 T	73/71 T
Birmingham	92/70 0.04	91/74 T	91/74 T
Boise	87/67 0	85/53 S	77/53 S
Boston	82/68 0.17	79/64 PC	89/69 PC
Buffalo	73/53 0	79/63 PC	77/65 PC
Burlington	75/52 0.04	79/63 S	79/62 PC
Casper	88/61 0	84/58 T	80/49 W
Columbus	86/69 0.15	84/67 T	80/71 T
Chattanooga	91/70 0.04	92/72 PC	90/73 S
Chicago	83/65 0	81/70 PC	88/72 PC
Cincinnati	84/62 0	85/67 PC	89/68 S
Cleveland	85/68 0.05	85/67 PC	89/69 PC
Colorado Springs	92/63 0.15	90/63 T	87/62 T
Columbus	82/58 0.02	84/64 PC	88/68 PC
Dallas-Ft. Worth	84/59 0.05	84/53 S	89/64 PC
Dallas-Ft. Worth	101/79 0	102/81 S	99/79 S
Denver	95/68 0.04	92/64 T	87/63 T
Des Moines	85/68 0	87/72 C	91/75 T
Detroit	95/67 0	95/66 PC	88/68 PC
El Paso	100/74 0	100/77 S	102/75 S
Fargo	84/67 0	84/66 T	87/65 T
Hartford	82/67 0.05	84/64 PC	84/64 C
Honolulu	88/76 0.11	89/76 6	89/78 Sh
Houston	98/77 0.05	98/78 T	97/76 T
Indianapolis	84/62 0	84/66 PC	90/70 S
Jacksonville	95/69 0.04	94/64 PC	94/72 S
Jacksonville	89/72 0.13	87/74 T	87/74 T
Kansas City	86/66 0	91/73 PC	97/77 PC
Key West	91/83 0.11	90/83 T	91/82 T
Lexington	106/66 0.05	105/69 PC	103/73 T
Lexington	85/62 0	88/67 S	91/69 S

Little Rock	92/66	0
Los Angeles	98/75	0
Louisville	87/65	0
Philadelphia	91/70	0
Miami	92/80	0.30
Milwaukee	82/64	0
Mpls-St. Paul	84/66	0
Monterville	89/65	0
New Orleans	92/77	0.10
Norfolk	83/74	0.66
Oklahoma City	99/69	0.9
Omaha	86/71	0
Orlando	93/77	0.18
Pittsburgh	83/65	0.05
Phoenix	113/90	0
Pittsburgh	79/52	0
Portland, Me	78/57	0.08
Providence, Ored	78/58	0
Providence	84/62	0.11
Raleigh	87/71	0.24
Romey	73/50	0
Richmond	86/69	0.47
Rochester	72/50	0
Salt Lake City	84/62	0.02
Salt Lake City	89/65	0.01
San Antonio	98/76	0.05
San Diego	85/73	0
San Francisco	88/70	0.10
San Jose	78/58	0.11
San Juan	90/80	0.05
San Jose	74/54	0
Sioux Falls	86/69	0.45
Spokane	79/54	0
Tampa	86/65	0
St. Thomas	93/83	0.04
Syracuse	74/52	Tr
Tampa	89/78	0.39
Toronto	80/60	0
Tucson	107/79	0.08
Tulsa	96/71	0
Seattle Beach	93/74	0.80
Washington	87/69	0.05
Wichita	95/69	Tr
Wilmington, Del.	93/68	0.08
Africa		Yesterday
Algiers	92/72	0
Cairo	99/74	0
Cape Town	79/54	0
Columbus	88/61	0
Johannesburg	69/44	0
Nairobi	81/50	0
Tunis	108/84	0
Asia/Pacific		Yesterday
Bhagdah	114/89	0
Buenos Aires	91/73	0.32
Beijing	75/67	0.21
Damascus	97/68	0
Madrid	90/63	0.23
Jakarta	93/77	0
Jerusalem	87/70	0.00
Kashita	88/64	0
Manila	82/77	0.97
Mumbai	88/82	0.05

New Delhi	96/81 0	96/82 PC	97/80 PC
Riyadh	115/84 0	114/85 PC	115/85 PC
Seoul	90/77 0.12	88/73 T	84/74 R
Shanghai	90/81 0.55	91/81 Sh	91/79 R
Tokyo	90/60 0	92/61 T	91/60 R
Sydney	74/50 0	66/50 S	69/50 S
Taipei City	94/79 0	95/79 R	93/80 R
Hanoi	99/79 0	99/80 PC	100/83 PC
Tokyo	99/70 0.95	77/71 R	82/76 C
Europe	Yesterday	Today	Tomorrow
Amsterdam	73/61 0.39	71/62 Sh	71/60 Sh
Athens	93/77 0	89/73 S	90/74 S
Madrid	75/61 0.05	74/65 Sh	76/60 PC
Brussels	68/61 0.04	70/62 Sh	72/59 Sh
Budapest	88/66 0	86/58 PC	90/62 S
Capitanhagen	68/66 0.03	68/68 Sh	67/58 Sh
Dublin	73/59 0.27	64/54 Sh	66/53 Sh
Edinburgh	68/59 0.43	66/54 C	64/55 Sh
Frankfurt	81/66 0.25	77/63 R	77/60 C
Geneva	81/65 0.05	77/62 Sh	76/59 Sh
Helsinki	68/48 0	68/58 C	68/57 R
Istanbul	79/66 0.02	80/69 Sh	84/69 S
London	77/60 0	82/60 Sh	83/62 S
Lisbon	77/61 0	80/67 S	83/64 PC
London	77/59 0	67/59 Sh	73/57 Sh
Madrid	79/50 0	80/60 Sh	83/52 S
Oslo	68/50 0	68/53 PC	70/56 PC
Nice	88/79 0.08	88/71 S	83/71 S
Oslo	63/48 0.04	66/57 R	68/58 C
Paris	73/61 0.05	72/60 Sh	76/61 PC
Prague	81/59 0.76	76/60 Sh	80/57 PC
Rome	100/77 0	91/69 PC	91/66 S
Petersburg	94/60 0	72/58 PC	63/59 S
Stockholm	70/50 0	62/55 R	68/57 R
Vienna	90/68 0	83/61 Sh	87/62 S
Warsaw	77/55 0	73/55 T	82/60 PC
North America	Yesterday	Today	Tomorrow
Acapulco	88/78 0.15	92/78 T	81/78 C
Toronto	89/81 0.01	98/80 PC	89/80 PC
Edmonton	64/46 0.02	72/48 C	67/47 Sh
Guadalajara	76/62 0	81/60 T	80/60 T
Honolulu	91/72 0	92/71 R	92/71 A
Kingston	90/82 0	94/81 S	93/81 W
Martinez	90/81 0.03	92/76 R	90/78 Sh
Mexico City	70/67 0	73/74 R	75/75 S
Monterrey	90/71 0	92/70 T	92/71 S
Montreal	70/64 0	76/62 PC	74/56 T
Musissau	91/74 0.04	90/70 PC	90/80 PC
Panama City	90/77 0.13	89/77 R	89/76 R
Quebec City	70/66 0.36	71/57 S	72/50 T
Santo Domingo	91/76 0	92/76 T	95/76 T
Toronto	91/77 0	80/64 Sh	74/67 A
Vancouver	64/55 0.05	68/55 Sh	67/57 C
Winnipeg	74/50 Tr	84/62 T	82/62 T
South America	Yesterday	Today	Tomorrow
Buenos Aires	63/54 0	61/52 C	63/54 PC
Buenos Aires	92/80 0.11	92/72 S	91/77 S
Lima	76/67 0	77/68 PC	77/68 PC
Quito	66/47 0.01	68/48 PC	67/49 R
Tehran	84/59 0	84/54 Sh	85/79 Sh
Rio de Janeiro	79/65 0	87/77 C	85/71 PC
Santiago	61/41 0	66/40 R	66/47 Sh

Reservoir levels (New York City water supply)

Yesterday	89%
Est. normal	85%

Recreational Forecast

Sun, Moon and Planets

Last Quarter	New	First Quarter	Full
Sep. 4	Sep. 10	Sep. 18	Sep. 26

Sun	RISE	6:20 a.m.	Moon	S	7:46 a.m.
	SET	7:33 p.m.		R	8:08 p.m.
	NEXT R	6:21 a.m.		S	8:54 a.m.
Jupiter	R	4:22 a.m.	Mars	R	1:45 a.m.
	S	6:34 p.m.		S	4:48 p.m.
Saturn	S	9:34 a.m.	Venus	R	10:15 a.m.
	R	9:07 p.m.		S	9:02 p.m.

Boating

From Montauk Point to Sandy Hook, N.J., out to 20 nautical miles, including Long Island Sound and New York Harbor.

Winds in the morning will be variable at 5-15 knots. Waves will be 1 foot or less on Long Island Sound and 2-3 feet on New York Harbor and the open ocean. Visibility will be unrestricted to the horizon.

High Tides

Atlantic City	8:51 a.m.	9:06 p.m.
Barnegat Inlet	9:02 a.m.	9:17 p.m.
The Battery	9:32 a.m.	9:42 p.m.
Beach Haven	10:27 a.m.	10:40 p.m.
Bridgeport	12:23 a.m.	12:44 p.m.
City Island	12:15 a.m.	12:34 p.m.
Fire Island Lt.	9:55 a.m.	10:08 p.m.
Montauk Point	10:35 a.m.	10:43 p.m.
Northport	12:30 a.m.	12:49 p.m.
Port Washington	12:00 a.m.	12:47 p.m.
Sandy Hook	9:09 a.m.	9:22 p.m.
Shinnecock Inlet	9:00 a.m.	9:16 p.m.
Stamford	12:25 a.m.	12:45 p.m.
Tarrytown	11:21 a.m.	11:31 p.m.
Willets Point	12:19 a.m.	12:37 p.m.

Trends		Temperature		Precipitation
		Average		Average
		Below	Above	Below	Above
Last	10 days
	30 days
	90 days
	365 days

Chart shows how recent temperature and precipitation trends compare with those of the last 30 years.

Beach and Ocean Temperatures

Most beaches of the Northeast will be dry, except for a stray afternoon thunderstorm south of New Jersey. Sunshine will be limited by clouds throughout the day, but the sky will clear overnight. High temperatures will range from the mid-60s in the north to near 80 in New Jersey and areas south.

5 THEATER REVIEW

'Les Misérables' staged in the Hudson Valley countryside. 5 FILM

Science fiction stories, some of them with big scares.

NEWS | CRITICISM

8 TRAVEL

Walking the British coastline, and feeling like a modern-day pilgrim on the path.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2026 C1

The New York Times

IMAGES VIA ROCKSTAR GAMES

Lucia and Jason are on the run in Grand Theft Auto VI. Whether they navigate Vice City as lovers or just as partners in crime will be up to the player. "As soon as we had that Bonnie and Clyde concept," said Rob Nelson of Rockstar North, "we knew it was the only way for us to go."

Grand Theft Auto VI's Grander Ambitions

The game, out in November, is the series' first release in 13 years and ramps up the immersive world in its version of Miami.

By CHRISTOPHER BYRD

EDINBURGH — For nearly 27 minutes last month, I sat enthralled while watching Jason and Lucia, the main characters of Grand Theft Auto VI, ascend a social ladder from a drug deal gone bad in a seedy tower block to a party with coked-out entrepreneurs christening their new office building. Beyond the self-assured rough-necks and fidgety jet-setters, there was a panorama of scenes in the extended look at the video game: stock-car racing, sky-diving, bayou boating, kayaking, nightclub dancing and, of course, balletic violence.

When the lights came up inside Rockstar North's building here, a group of studio leaders peered my way. At a loss for words, I looked down, held up my hand and asked for a moment. There was quiet, polite laughter.

I was wrestling with the sense of elation that comes from glimpsing a work of art that promises to marshal one's full attention. A wave of positive emotion swept through the room, tears edging down faces.

That extended look at Grand Theft Auto VI was shared with the public on Netflix on Thursday, building further anticipation for its Nov. 19 release. The series, one drenched in violence and satirizing American culture, is a virtual playground where you can blow up police cars or organize productions of "Hamlet." The release of a new game is the equivalent of a fresh Beyoncé album or Martin Scorsese film, a rare monocultural CONTINUED ON PAGE C2

WESLEY MORRIS | AN APPRAISAL

Onscreen, Dolly Parton Embodied Authenticity

As a movie star, she was always in control of her persona.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Dolly Parton in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," a 1982 musical comedy. The film characters she portrayed knew their value.

MORE COVERAGE OF A STAR'S LIFE Dolly Parton's legacy includes her theme park and a literacy program. Page 6.

WHAT KIND OF MOVIE STAR was Dolly Parton? Brief, for one: Five movies in a dozen years. That's a number I had to check because surely the correct proportion is a dozen in five. But no, at her Hollywood peak, that's just how outsize she is in memory: more of her than there actually ever was.

Parton had just what you need for movie stardom. Control. Of a plot, but also of a persona. Didn't matter what the character did — secretary, brothel madam, hairdresser, radio show host, shock absorber for the bench-press singing of Sylvester Stallone — the women she played knew who they were, knew their value and knew it was worth nothing if they couldn't spread the wealth.

I don't know how she learned her lines, but Parton always made sure they came out true to her, that they sounded like the truth, whether it was wisdom or a joke. Nobody in movies talked the way she did, with a stagy candescence. "You know what burns my ass?" she asks Burt Reynolds in their popu-CONTINUED ON PAGE C6

JASON FARAGO | CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

VIA UNITED STATES EMBASSY, SANTO DOMINGO
A detail of Kehinde Wiley's "Young Artists After Siamesas 1960," which was deemed "aesthetically terrifying" and removed from an American Embassy.

Big Picture On Politics Of 'Woke'

Removing Kehinde Wiley's work wasn't about art itself.

DURING THE COLD WAR, the State Department maintained a robust program of American cultural diplomacy, sending the New York Philharmonic to the Soviet Union and Duke Ellington's orchestra to the Middle East. There is not much left of this policy, but the Art in Embassies program, established during the Kennedy administration, manages a collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs and helps organize art displays in 190-odd embassies and consulates abroad. It is led by Erin Scavino, a contestant fired in Week 9 of Season 3 of "The Apprentice."

This month, at the American Embassy in the Dominican Republic, one painting from the program was taken down with the help of a cherry picker. It was by the artist Kehinde Wiley, who painted the official presidential portrait of Barack Obama, but who shares with President Trump a taste for CONTINUED ON PAGE C4

Grand Theft Auto VI's Grander Ambitions

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1 moment in a fragmented world. Since Grand Theft Auto V was released in 2013, it has sold 230 million copies and generated billions in revenue for Rockstar.

In Grand Theft Auto VI, a player cannot whip out a rocket launcher without expecting the nonplayer characters to call the police.

“Most blockbusters have an opening weekend,” Geoff Keighley, the creator and host of the Game Awards, said in an email. “G.T.A. has an opening decade.”

Grand Theft Auto VI, the subject of leaks this month, will be expansive: Vice City, its alluring interpretation of Miami, is twice the size of Los Santos, the version of Los Angeles in Grand Theft Auto V, according to Rockstar. The overall map, the studio said, is three times as large as the playable area of its previous game, Red Dead Redemption 2.

IMAGES VIA ROCKSTAR GAMES

It also promises to be incredibly immersive. Unlike in other Grand Theft Auto games, a player in this one cannot whip out a shotgun or a rocket launcher and walk down the street without expecting the non-player characters to call the police.

Rob Nelson, who oversees Rockstar North with Aaron Garbut, said he considered Grand Theft Auto VI an evolution of what the studio achieved in 2018 with Red Dead Redemption 2, which told the story of a man unsettled by the erosion of the Wild West. That game's systems were built to be responsive to a wide array of actions, whether the player was hunting animals, helping someone in hope of a reward or unrepentantly robbing that person instead.

"Once we managed to accomplish that level of interactive fidelity in a more sparsely populated version of America 100 years ago," Nelson said, "we were already imagining what it would be like if we could do that at the scale and density of a modern environment."

Fight and Flight

Nelson picked up a controller and turned on Grand Theft Auto VI. “We are adding so much more depth and interactivity to the world,” he said while leading Jason around a safe house. “Here I am eating an apple, opening the fridge and drinking a smoothie. So this will increase my health temporarily for a while, allowing people to sort of role-play.” Exiting the apartment, Jason stooped down to pet a pedestrian’s dog. Nelson said you could buy pet snacks from convenience stores and dole them out if you wished.

As Jason walked past a tennis court, I asked whether there was a tennis minigame as in Grand Theft Auto V. Nelson said you could only pick up a racket and swat a ball.

"Of course we want to do everything, we want to have every mechanic that you can imagine," Nelson said. "But we do have to carefully pick and choose what we think is best for our characters and our story and what we can handle creatively and technically."

Nelson ducked Jason into a gym, where he walked past people on treadmills and stepped into a squat rack. Unlocking higher weights requires working out and a mastery of technique. By pressing down on the controller's triggers, players can manage the rise and descent of the movement. Flub the rhythm and it is harder to get out of the hole, which results in stamina drain. Success has a material effect on the character.

“I hope that there will be people that want to get up, have a cup of coffee, shower, get dressed, go out for a little exercise,” Nelson said. His 80-hour play-through of the game in February included the main story and some optional goals with narrative ramifications. Routines can escalate quickly. “Interact with some people, explore, maybe get into some trouble,” he added. “Rob some places, make some money.”

It was time to check on Lucia, Nelson said. The camera shot into the air overlooking the city and then descended on her walking down a street.

I watched Lucia get into a verbal altercation and then a fight with a group of women. After knocking one woman's sunglasses to the ground, Lucia scooped them up, put them on and sauntered away in style. A little later, Lucia linked up with Jason and robbed a convenience store. The two made their escape by jacking a motorcycle from some unlucky sap who called in the theft. (To steal older cars, you can smash their windows or jimmy their locks and hot-wire them. Newer cars will require a key cloner.)

Jason and Lucia are on the run in Grand Theft Auto VI, and to skate by, they will need to make money outside of the story missions. Beyond criminal activity, they can earn cash by racing monster trucks, scuba diving for treasure, playing pool and more.

Whether they do so as lovers or simply as partners in crime will be up to the player. Keeping the couple's relationship strong enough for Lucia and Jason to hold hands when leaving a clothing store will require effort — hanging out, responding to texts. "It's new for G.T.A., this idea of your actions having meaning in terms of how you treat your partner or how violent you are," Nelson said.

While there is no right or wrong way to play, the world will react according to how the characters conduct themselves. If players stick up places efficiently and destroy security footage when necessary, Nelson said, they should generally be able to stay in front of the law. Going around guns blazing will make the police aggressive.

To raise the stakes, Nelson has the couple rob a bank. Things go sideways when a guard triggers an alarm, but they are able to get away with marked bills that will have to be taken to a fence. Back in their vehicle, Lucia shoots out the tires of a trailing police car, causing it to spin out of control and flip over in a way that is nothing short of cinematic.

A Seamless Experience

Rockstar is well aware of the expectations surrounding Grand Theft Auto VI, which will be released on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. “Some people didn’t like G.T.A. V and think G.T.A. IV was better, or Red Dead 2 it was too long, too slow,” Nelson said. “There are opinions on all of this stuff from every angle. You have to try and keep it in perspective.”

I asked if the studio created a strong female character to address a longstanding criticism of the series. Nelson denied that was the case. Rockstar initially considered making four playable characters — one more than the previous game — but worried that might make it hard to emotionally connect. That was when the idea of a playable relationship emerged.

"As soon as we had that Bonnie and Clyde concept," Nelson said, "we knew it was the only way for us to go with this game."

Nelson began his career in 2003 as a lead animator at Rockstar Toronto, one of the many studios within the publisher Rockstar Games, and quickly transitioned to a producer role. After working on The Warriors, based on the 1970s gang movie, Nelson moved to New York in 2008 to help on the first Red Dead Redemption and to wrap up work on The Ballad of Gay Tony, an expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games and a creator of the Grand Theft Auto series, asked Nelson then to help glue the games together. "Get rid of the fades to black between gameplay and cutscene," Nelson recalls Houser saying, "to try and make the experience as seamless as possible."

Many consider immersive worlds the primary appeal of video games, and Houser's drive to build them has impressed creative minds.

"He is among the very few that so keenly understand, and in turn shape, our culture, and in doing so, has defined an entirely new medium," Jony Ive, the designer behind the iPhone, said in an email. "He is a remarkable designer, storyteller and craftsperson."

Nelson points to a powerful moment near the end of Red Dead Redemption when John Marston, its protagonist and a former outlaw, says goodbye to his family and goes to meet his death by throwing open the doors of a barn where soldiers lie in ambush. The crescendo was originally going to be a cutscene that players watch, but Nelson pushed to make it interactive.

"We don't like to see your character doing what you would do as the player," Nelson said. "The player should be able to attempt this futile last stand and let them feel it instead of just watching it play out in front of them.

“What we're always grappling with is when the narrative needs to take precedence versus player agency and freedom, and which is most important at any given moment.”

'A Love Letter'

Over the past decade, CD Projekt Red has been the only developer to come close to matching Rockstar's level of open-world immersion. Among its games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt set a standard for open-world fantasy, and Cyberpunk 2077 proved that games could leverage the talent of Hollywood stars like Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba. Their writing set a high bar for blockbuster games that Grand Theft Auto VI will be measured against.

Rupert Humphries, Rockstar North's senior vice president for narrative, acknowledged that conspiracy theories became more mainstream during the game's decade-long development. But some of the seismic events during that period — President Trump's rise to political power and the coronavirus pandemic — will not be directly addressed.

"We run the risk of dating ourselves in a sort of awkward way," Nelson explained. "So we have to look at things and go, What is going to have a timeless sort of quality that will speak very easily to relatable sort of human folly and foibles and will be remembered as part of this time?"

Social media certainly fits the criteria. Players will be able to learn about the world of Grand Theft Auto VI through an in-game feed known as Snapmatic, on which influencers, celebrities and friends of Jason and Lucia will share photos and videos.

One of the game's writers, Michael Wiafe, said, "I think if we can make a story about humanity where you are poking fun at greed and hubris and all these sorts of things that we can all agree are problematic, then I think that is a unifying thing."

Depicting a wide cross section of society meant on-the-ground research for Rockstar — visiting racetracks and nightclubs, riding along with police officers, meeting with owners of gun ranges. To make the game feel as authentic as possible, Nelson said, the studio interviewed people who were respected in all types of neighborhoods; Rockstar hired some of them as well.

Humphries said he was proud the game showed all parts of life in Miami and South Florida. "Everything is there, and you can take this ride through it, and that is something to escape into," he said. "It's a sort of critique, but it's also like a love letter."

The plenitude in the game's extended trailer put me in mind of capacious 19thcentury novels and films like “Nashville” that presented a maximalist vision of human activity. Toward the end of my visit, Garbut, the series’s art director since Grand Theft Auto III, stopped by and emphasized the lack of visual shortcuts. “You can see these vehicles from the top of a skyscraper and then parachute down and see that it’s the actual vehicle you saw there,” he said. “All these things cascade all the way down.”

The game, set in a sprawling version of Miami, features boating, stock-car racing, skydiving, kayaking, nightclub dancing and, of course, balletic violence.

"Everything is there, and you can take this ride through it, and that is something to escape into," Rupert Humphries of Rockstar North said of its Florida world.

While there is no right or wrong way to play the game, the expansive world in Vice City will react according to how the characters conduct themselves.

"Interact with some people, explore, maybe get into some trouble," Rob Nelson of Rockstar North said of the game. "Rob some places, make some money."

Similar rigor was applied to building the game's nonplayer characters, known as NPCs. Their behavior in Grand Theft Auto V, Nelson said, was quite simple: If you bumped into someone and he dropped an object, he would forget about it and walk away.

To make this world feel more believable, Rockstar built a new team of writers, directors and producers in Los Angeles that focused solely on creating more realized NPCs. Rather than use procedural generation to algorithmically mix and match body parts and clothes, the developers went for a bespoke approach.

"We art-directed each individual one of them," said Garbut, who with Nelson also leads development for Rockstar Games.

Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar said, has well over 600,000 animations, compared with 55,000 animations in Grand Theft Auto V and 300,000 animations in Red Dead Redemption 2. Garbut emphasized the new game's human-made craft.

“Every room in the game, somebody thought about this,” Garbut said. “Who’s sitting where, what they’re drinking, the marks that are left on the table. The pictures on the wall will have the people that are in that room, with their tattoos on their arms and their family behind them. That whole thing has been made, and built, and photographed, and placed in this random room in a random building in a huge city, in a world.”

Transformative Play

The inside of Rockstar North's building in Edinburgh, which once housed a newspaper, is an architectural stunner. Its vaulted glass ceiling, ribbed by thin steel supports, floods the interior with natural light. Backlit panels around the ground floor depict characters from Grand Theft Auto VI.

During my visit, Phil Hooker, a head of development for Rockstar Games, reiterated that the goal was immersion. "We wanted, whether you're on mission or off mission, for it to feel the same so you wouldn't really see the structure of the game underneath," he said.

His comment brought to mind James Joyce's famous dictum from "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man": "The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."

It is a lofty comparison. But the ambitions of Grand Theft Auto VI are great.

"All of it is a bit of a moonshot," said Nelson, noting that Jason and Lucia may go from shopping to getting food to robbing a store to escaping on a motorcycle.

“Having that all work dynamically has been incredibly challenging,” he said, adding: “For this story to really work, though, we needed to do it. It wouldn’t have been enough for the player to just have them as a couple in a few sort of scripted date missions. Not for the way we want players to connect with these characters.”

From time to time during Nelson's demonstration, he would call out imperceptible details he felt should be addressed, such as an NPC reacting too slowly. There are plenty of action set pieces in the game, he said, but some missions will allow for a greater number of approaches, which adds a level of unpredictability that is difficult to test.

With Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar hopes to retain cultural influence for another decade.

“We're trying to reflect a sort of crazy, warped version of this American state and city — we always try to do that,” Nelson said. I asked what he would say to my literary friends who were not into gaming but were interested in this particular game. He replied, “I think this story has — if you want it — themes of hopefulness, elements of sacrifice versus selfishness, and it plays out asking questions about whether love can survive through this storm.”

Humphries said the series's games were powerful because they gave people moments of serendipity.

“They’ll be driving down the street, the sun will hit a building in a way, and there’s a song playing on the radio,” he said. “There’s a sort of transcendental moment there. It’s transformative. And I think that with the tools we’ve got now making this new game, you could have that moment on a rooftop bar, or in a nightclub, or on an airboat in the swamps.”

In the gym, unlocking higher weights requires working out and a mastery of technique. Flub the rhythm and stamina drains.

At the Center of a Play, A Trove of Nazi Photos

'Here There Are Blueberries,' a Pulitzer Prize finalist, will open on Broadway this fall.

By MICHAEL PAULSON

The play “Here There Are Blueberries,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist about museum archivists wrestling with photographs of Nazi social life, is coming to Broadway this fall.

The drama reconstructs the true story of how the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum responded when the troubling photographs — which show concentration camp workers at leisure, and not their suffering victims — were gifted to them in 2007. The Pulitzer described the play as “an elegant and harrowing work of documentary theater that examines the provenance of a photo album from Auschwitz and probes the unsolvable mystery of how individuals can insist on normalcy while atrocity lurks outside the frame.”

The play is written by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich of Tectonic Theater

Project, a nonprofit in New York best known for “The Laramie Project.” Kaufman, who conceived the play, is its director; the Broadway production is scheduled to begin previews Nov. 2 and to open Nov. 9 for a 10-week run at the Barrymore Theater.

In a joint telephone interview, Kaufman and Gronich described the play as a “detective story,” in which the audience follows researchers as they try to understand what they are looking at, and what the images reveal about history and about the human condition.

"There's something unique about Broadway, where a play on Broadway opens up a national conversation, which is so thrilling for us, because we really do think that the issues that the play raises belong in a national conversation," Gronich said. "Each day that goes by, it feels more and more urgent."

"Here There Are Blueberries" has been embraced by America's nonprofit theater scene — it was workshopped at Miami New Drama in 2018, before the coronavirus pandemic, and then began its postpandemic production life in 2022 at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.

SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A scene from the 2024 New York Theater Workshop presentation of "Here There Are Blueberries."

The play was staged at Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington and New York Theater Workshop in Lower Manhattan. It returned for a full run at Miami New Drama, and a small touring production had runs at McCarter Theater Center in New Jersey; the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and Berkeley Repertory Theater in California; and Seattle Repertory Theater. The play was also staged earlier this year at Stratford East in London.

The Broadway production, a commercial venture, has a producing team led by Tectonic Theater Project and Brian and Dayna Lee. Casting has not yet been announced.

It's Still All Kennedy, for Now

A judge delays the planned addition of an inscription meant to honor Trump on the performing arts center.

By ZACH MONTAGUE and JULIA JACOBS WASHINGTON — An effort to inscribe President Trump's name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was stalled on Thursday when a federal judge asked officials to delay the project while he considered a legal objection from a Democratic lawmaker.

The center had said it planned to add the inscription — which would say “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” beneath the building’s main signage — as early as Sept. 8.

Democratic officials have characterized the decision by the center's Trump-allied board as an aggressive end run around an order by the judge, who said the center had unlawfully renamed the building the Trump-Kennedy Center. In May, Judge Christopher R. Cooper ordered the president's name removed from the building, citing a 1964 law dedicating the memorial strictly to Kennedy.

At a hearing on Thursday in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Cooper told Justice Department lawyers that unless they agreed to delay the inscription, he might have to issue a ruling blocking the center from moving forward.

"If the government doesn't see fit to extend this deadline a bit," Judge Cooper said, "there may be a bit of a temporary holding pattern while we give these issues the attention they deserve."

Late on Thursday, lawyers for the Justice Department said in a court filing that they would delay the inscription until Oct. 8, at the earliest.

Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio and an ex officio board member who is suing the center, has objected to the inscription and asked for it to be blocked. Her lawyers argued that it would be in “outright defiance” of Judge Cooper’s order to remove Mr. Trump’s name from the building. The center is appealing that ruling, but in the interim, it has taken the letters down, while devising a workaround that might satisfy the judge.

The board said the inscription was intended to honor the president for his role in securing \$257 million from Congress for major renovations to the building.

"I'm worried that they might do this overnight," Nathaniel Zelinsky, a lawyer for Ms. Beatty, said at the hearing.

Brantley Mayers, a Justice Department lawyer, argued that the inscription would be fully in line with the ruling that the center could not be renamed without the approval of Congress. He said the reference to Mr. Trump amounted to an “acknowledgment” of his role as a “builder and fund-raiser” backing the project.

The board also approved a second inscription on the building that would be added below the first once an endowment fund dedicated to the president reaches \$100 million. It would say “endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

"Neither inscription names the center for President Trump or anyone else other than President Kennedy," Mr. Mayers said.

JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS

Justice Department lawyers have argued that the renovation project is desperately needed — and that related fund-raising is contingent upon Mr. Trump being “appropriately” recognized on the building’s facade. They argued that without that recognition, donations would “dry up.” But The Washington Post reported this week, based on internal financial documents, that revenues suffered significantly after Mr. Trump’s name was added to the building in December.

This week, the Justice Department raised the alarm of Democratic lawmakers by suggesting that if the renovations did not proceed as planned, the building would continue to deteriorate and would ultimately have to be demolished.

The center said the suggestion was a "hypothetical scenario" of what could happen if the renovation was not allowed to move forward.

The board voted this month to close the center's main building for two years to facilitate the renovation, ratifying for the second time a decision Mr. Trump announced in February. Judge Cooper ruled that the board had not sufficiently scrutinized the closure plan in its first vote. Now that the

Tarps still cover work that removed a more prominent display of President Trump's name from the John F. Kennedy Center weeks ago.

board has voted again, the judge will soon consider whether to allow the closure to move forward.

Ms. Beatty's lawsuit has argued that the renovations are a cover for a closure necessitated by financial difficulties that have stemmed from Mr. Trump's takeover. Since he was installed as chairman of the board, the center has seen an exodus of audience members, donors and artists unwilling to associate with an increasingly politicized institution.

But Kennedy Center officials have said that the renovation is an urgent priority, and that keeping the center open during the work would introduce significant cost and safety issues.

Before the hearing, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was recently tapped by Mr. Trump to help oversee the center's affairs, suggested that if the renovation plan were not allowed to proceed, Mr. Trump would walk away from the institution.

"If they don't agree to let him close and renovate it, because the court steps in, what do you want the guy to do?" Mr. Lutnick said. "He's only the president for two and a half years."

Mr. Lutnick said the center would not be immediately demolished if Ms. Beatty prevailed in the lawsuit. But he predicted that if the building were not renovated under Mr. Trump's plan, it would deteriorate beyond the point of repair.

"It's just an eventuality," he said.

Two Not Touch

Put two stars in each row, column and region of the grid. No two stars may touch, not even diagonally. Copyright © 2024 www.krazydad.com
ANSWERS TO PREVIOUS PUZZLES

Wit Twister

Salons in all our ocean ____ are cowed by Pirate Pete, Whose wiry beard can dull the keenest blade you've ever seen. He loves to ____ with barbers, son, but don't admit defeat. Just ____ your razor till it's sharper than a guillotine!

Complete the verse with words that are anagrams of each other. Each underline represents a letter. PUZZLE BY STUART CLELAND

YESTERDAY'S ANSWER Belarus --> rubles

ACROSS 1 Main characters for an early reader 5 They get rings for hoops 14 Skin-care brand known for its pore strips 15 Large restaurant vessel shaped like another vessel 16 Conference handout 17 Dubious sighting in the night sky 18 Started to boil 20 Work, as a joke 21 Romance author Huang 22 They might be rehabbed with knee flexion 23 His #33 was retired by the Knicks in 2003 25 Winner of the 2025 Outstanding Drama Series Emmy, with "The" 26 Personne canonisée: Abbr. 27 __ Capital, investment firm co-founded by Mitt Romney 28 Hits the mark, in a way

Crossword | Edited by Will Shortz

KenKen

Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.

29 Many people climb it
33 Naturally concluded
35 Ones giving a toast at an outdoor party?
37 Court session, perhaps
39 Like much of Libya
41 Depicting the world bleakly and cynically
42 Put your back into it
43 "Sweet dreams are made of cheese / Who am I to dis a _?" (parody lyrics)
44 Is immersed
46 Fair trade, say
47 "It is not easy for a _ to balance himself on a ladder": "Animal Farm"
48 A word in closing
49 Relative of house music
51 Inverse of an exponential function
54 Vikings' offense?
55 What a supposed bug is often revealed to be
56 Grant

For more games: www.nytimes.com/games KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. Copyright © 2024 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

1	4	2	3
4	3	1	2
3	2	4	1
2	1	3	4

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

PUZZLE BY RAFAEL MUSA AND KATE CHIN PARK

8/29/26

57 Deftly evades 58 Come off as DOWN 1 Nonhuman provider of medical advice 2 Neck topper 3 Shoves (in) 4 Sonic system 5 Org. featured in 1998's "Enemy of the State" 6 Breaking character? 7 Like parts of Istanbul 8 Romanization of the common Chinese surname 9 ____ legs 10 Stability aids, informally

11 Soft, silky material
12 Depicts stylishly
13 Green day star, for short
14 Humongous, slangily
19 Stocked and sold, as goods
24 August ____, "Fences" playwright
25 Makes sense of
27 Deliberately exasperated
28 More sassy
30 Indecisive way to end
31 Gets by
32 Binary, in a way
34 Former
36 "Wow ... what are the chances?!"

Play all of our games plus over 10,000 past puzzles for Wordle, Spelling Bee, The Crossword and more online at http://nytimes.com/games. For puzzle talk, visit http://nytimes.com/wordplay.

38 Publisher of the front-page headline "This sport is stupid anyway" after a U.S. loss at the World Cup, in brief
39 Half-spoken, half-sung passages of an opera
40 Not fair
43 Nearly 90
44 It goes on top
45 Shockingly unconventional
46 Stepped-on instrument
48 "__ chic!"
50 Time divisions
52 "__You That Somebody?" (1998 Aaliyah hit)
53 Half of a couple

JASON FARAGO | CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

A Big Picture on the Politics of 'Woke'

GABRIELLA DEMCZUK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
1. 2017年1月1日，公司召开第五届董事会第十七次会议审议通过了《关于使用部分闲置募集资金进行现金管理的议案》，同意公司使用不超过人民币5,000万元的闲置募集资金进行现金管理。
CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

gilded ornament. Scavino explained in a podcast interview that her office intervened to remove the picture.

"It was very woke," Scavino explained. "It was by the gentleman who did Obama's portrait. And it was aesthetically terrifying."

Strong words for a group portrait of four fully dressed, largely expressionless figures in front of a background adorned with flowers. But aesthetic terror is a good place to start. Whether you find the work terrifying or otherwise, the meaning of this removal lies in psychology rather than in painting.

For 25 years, Wiley has painted in this consistent format: young figures, mostly but not always Black, posed flatly in positions nodding to Western European history painting (with large portions churned out by studio assistants in China and elsewhere). This was enough for a lot of people before November 2016. As the critic Rachel Hunter Himes persuasively argued last year, Wiley's art became "a kind of court style for the Obama era," and his one-by-one insertions of Black sitters in royal or imperial frames, not to mention his gift for business and taste for luxury, perfectly fulfilled that era's individualist mandate.

Wiley's rise from queer downtown New York to the State Department, Himes went on, “dovetailed with the emergence of a political culture that saw the presence of black faces in the halls of power as inherently progressive and black economic advancement under capitalism as anti-racist.”

Wiley's formulaic glorifications were emblematic of the lapsed age now called Woke 1, though I do not think that Scavino — married to Dan Scavino, the president's deputy chief of staff — is objecting on quite those grounds. But that is the bitter irony here: If she could look past the Black president whose administration commissioned the

Top, Kehinde Wiley speaking at the unveiling of his portrait of Barack Obama at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington in 2018. Above, President Trump's gilded Oval Office in the White House.

painting (and accept the Black models in the picture, too), Erin Scavino might see that Wiley's "aesthetically terrifying" painting could hang more naturally in the current Oval Office or the future White House ballroom.

The artist and the commander in chief have quite a bit in common, after all. Both love ostentation, glitter and flamboyance, and Wiley's use of ornate, even vulgar, gold frames jibes rather well with President Trump's Mar-a-Lago-fication of the West Wing. Both employ a populist rhetoric that in fact serves their own celebrity, access to elite institutions and personal enrichment.

Wiley and the president have also both faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct; both have denied wrongdoing and claimed their accusers are motivated by money and fame. (Trump was found liable in federal court for sexual abuse in 2023; Wiley has not been found liable for any sexual assault, but at least three museums — in Florida, Minnesota and Nebraska — decided not to go ahead with exhibitions of the artist after the accusations emerged.)

Look: There's nothing inherently sinister about swapping the art in an official building. Administrations come and go, their ambassadors arrive in Canberra or Copenhagen, and they redecorate. No doubt when Obama and Joe Biden were in office, their foreign plenipotentiaries unhooked a few pictures by their Bush- or Trump-appointed predecessors and shipped them back to Foggy Bottom.

What is different with this administration, in art as in life, is the vengeance. Before, a difference in cultural politics would play out with some BubbleWrap and spackling paste. Under this administration, culture war is waged publicly, optimized for the short-form vertical video. Our ambassador in the Dominican Republic decided to showcase the removal of Wiley's picture with Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" playing in the background and punctuated the caption with an American flag emoji.

It is not enough to dislike Wiley's painting; one must shame Wiley the painter. He is the second of the Obama portrayists to come under direct fire from the Trump administration; Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama, canceled her own exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington rather than accede to demands to censor (or "contextualize") a supposedly objectionable work. In both cases, the matter at hand is not the painters' quality or even their political stances, but the need — the pleasure — of functionaries as low down on the organization chart as the Santo Domingo political division to demonstrate loyalty to the president through carnivalesque acts of censorship and humiliation.

But what if your enemy resembles you in ways you cannot admit? That is the real aesthetic terror that this Obamaist kitsch triggers in the halls of the administration: that what you say you want to eradicate (if you ever looked at it at all) is the equal and opposite thing that defines you.

Bill Cosby's Assets to Be Reviewed at a Hearing

A woman who was awarded millions in a sexual assault suit seeks to enforce payment.

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

A judge in California has ordered Bill Cosby or his lawyers into court next month to address questions about his assets as a woman who sued him for sexually assaulting her seeks to enforce payment of a \$59 million judgment she was awarded earlier this year.

In March, a civil jury made the award after finding that Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted the woman, Donna Motsinger, a former waitress at a Sausalito restaurant, after escorting her to one of his comedy shows in 1972.

In court papers, lawyers for Ms. Motsinger said Mr. Cosby, 89, hasn't paid anything toward the judgment and, citing bank records, raised concern that in the past he and his family had moved assets around in a way that could hinder their ability to collect the judgment.

"Cosby has paid none of the judgment, while showing a clear record of liquidating assets and then immediately dissipating the proceeds," Ms. Motsinger's lawyers wrote in court papers.

Lawyers for Mr. Cosby did not respond to a request for comment.

A hearing in the effort to enforce the judgment had originally been scheduled for January in Los Angeles Superior Court. But

Ms. Motsinger's lawyers, citing the financial transactions outlined in the court papers, asked the judge in the case, Bradley S. Phillips, to move up the date. In an order issued Tuesday, the hearing was set for September.

Mr. Cosby has consistently maintained that any sexual contact he had with women was consensual. He has lodged an appeal of the trial finding.

Judgments become due at the time they are awarded, though enforcement of them is left to the party who won to arrange. The lawyers for Ms. Motsinger wrote in the complaint that Mr. Cosby had failed to respond to post-judgment questions meant to identify his assets.

One of the lawyers, Jesse Creed, detailed financial transactions in court papers that, while they occurred before the award of the judgment, were indicative, he argued, of an effort to transfer assets in ways that could prevent them from being subject to an enforcement action. For example, he cited bank records obtained by subpoena that showed that proceeds from the sale of a New York townhouse were wired into a Cosby account last November and within 48 hours, \$1.29 million was transferred to other accounts, including those belonging to friends.

Though dozens of women have come forward to accuse Mr. Cosby of sexual abuse, he was criminally charged in only one case. He was convicted, but in 2021 that conviction was overturned for procedural reasons after Mr. Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a prison outside Philadelphia.

In that case, he was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee to whom Mr. Cosby had become a mentor. He was freed after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant he should not have been charged.

Mr. Cosby promoted the Pennsylvania

Bill Cosby has said he has run into financial difficulties.

Cosby has lodged an appeal of the finding that awarded \$59 million.

Supreme Court decision as a full exoneration, and over the years, Mr. Cosby's lawyers have depicted him as someone who unfairly became a target of the emotions stirred by the #MeToo movement.

But the Motsinger case is one of two recent civil court findings that reinforce an image of him as a person who wielded his celebrity to take advantage of women.

Following his release from prison, Mr. Cosby was the subject of a civil trial in 2022 brought by another accuser, Judy Huth. In that case, the jury found that Mr. Cosby had sexually assaulted Ms. Huth in 1975, when as a 16-year-old girl she accepted his invitation to join him at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

In Ms. Motsinger's lawsuit, she described how Mr. Cosby had attacked her when they were both in their 30s, after giving her wine and a pill that had left her incapacitated. Mr. Cosby did not testify at the trial.

Years ago, Ms. Motsinger's case would have been time-barred because she did not make the accusation until after the expiration of the statute of limitations for such suits. But her case became possible because California is among the states that have amended the statutes in sexual assault cases so accusers can come forward even after a lengthy passage of time.

Mr. Cosby says he has recently run into financial difficulties. During a deposition in the Motsinger case, he described being unable to get the high-profile work he once enjoyed as a comedy star whose television series “The Cosby Show” became a major success.

But an expert witness Ms. Motsinger's lawyers called to the stand before the jury's final decision this year estimated that Mr. Cosby was worth roughly \$128 million.

Court Grants Blake Lively \$400,000 In Legal Fees

The actress had sought more than \$8 million for costs of defense in defamation suit.

By JULIA JACOBS

A federal judge on Wednesday awarded Blake Lively \$407,000 in legal fees and related costs associated with one part of the legal battle with Justin Baldoni that emerged from the making of the 2024 movie “It Ends With Us.”

The figure was a small fraction of the actress's request to recoup more than \$8 million that her lawyers said had been expended in defending her from an unsuccessful defamation suit that Mr. Baldoni and his associates had filed against her.

While a motion for legal fees is common after a lawsuit has been resolved, the deliberations over these costs were closely watched because Ms. Lively had received no financial compensation in agreeing to settle her broader dispute with Mr. Baldoni's company.

But that settlement, in May, just weeks before the case was set to go to trial, allowed Ms. Lively to continue pursuing a payout related to the dismissed defamation case.

In her original lawsuit, Ms. Lively said that while making the film, she had been sexually harassed by Mr. Baldoni, her costar and director. The suit said she then became the target of an online retaliation campaign that damaged her reputation. Mr. Baldoni and his associates responded to that suit with one of their own that said she had defamed them, characterizing her allegations as false depictions of innocuous interactions on the set.

In calculating the costs that Ms. Lively is due, Judge Lewis J. Liman of Federal District Court in Manhattan limited the payout narrowly to her legal team's defense against the defamation claim and related legal work. He rejected some specific requests that would have increased the award, such as hours billed toward media relations.

In a statement after the judge's ruling, Esra Hudson and Michael Gottlieb, lawyers for Ms. Lively, said financial compensation was never the motive for her lawsuit. They said Ms. Lively had “lifted the curtain” for others who are targeted by retaliatory online campaigns and “set the precedent for others to come forward and expose similar conduct.”

"As we have said from day one," the statement said, "Blake Lively's case was never about money — it was about accountability."

Bryan Freedman, the lead lawyer for Mr. Baldoni and his associates, said in a statement that the original \$8 million request had been unreasonable. He called the ruling a “significant victory for my clients” and said it “sends a clear message that, no matter how powerful you may be, the courtroom is not a place to take advantage of the law for your own personal gain.”

The production of "It Ends With Us," a movie about a relationship ravaged by domestic violence, spawned a fierce year-and-a-half-long legal battle over the reasonable bounds of Hollywood public relations in a digital world.

Ms. Lively argued that people hired by Mr. Baldoni and his company used strategic interactions with the news media and manipulation on social media to impugn her character and to discredit any allegations about Mr. Baldoni's behavior on set that might emerge.

Mr. Baldoni and his lawyers have denied that Ms. Lively was sexually harassed or retaliated against. They have said that the actor hired crisis public relations professionals to protect him amid fears that Ms. Lively would go public.

Judge Liman dismissed Ms. Lively's sexual harassment allegations on procedural grounds. But, before the settlement, he had agreed to let several retaliation claims against corporate defendants, including Mr. Baldoni's production company, Wayfarer, proceed to trial.

After the settlement, the judge awarded Ms. Lively legal fees and costs based on a recently enacted California law. Passed in 2023, it was designed to prevent people from using defamation suits to silence others from coming forward with complaints of sexual harassment or assault.

In one of the first applications of the law, Judge Liman found that Ms. Lively's case fulfilled the criteria of the statute, which requires the accuser to have made a sexual misconduct complaint "without malice." But, citing legal procedure, he allowed her only to recover legal fees and costs, not punitive or compensatory damages that could have led to a much higher payout.

Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, who co-starred in the movie "It Ends With Us."

HELEN SHAW | THEATER REVIEW

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Les Misérables Through Sept. 27 at Hudson Valley Shakespeare in Garrison, N.Y.; hvshakespeare.org. Running time: 3 hours.
"Les Misérables," performed by Hudson Valley Shakespeare's 21-person company in Garrison, N.Y. Below left, Josh Young, as the fugitive Jean Valjean, provides the immense vocal power required by Claude-Michel Schönberg's score.

The Barricades Rise Above the Hudson

In this semi-open-air staging, the musical conjures the seedy cobblestone streets of Paris with an adept Jean Valjean leading the charge.

IT TURNS OUT THAT the question "Do you hear the people sing?" — asked several times in Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schönberg's mega-musical "Les Misérables"—has a new answer. The answer is no longer just, yes. It's, how can you not?

The number of regional U.S. stagings has exploded after the conclusion of the most recent “Les Miz” tour. The show’s licensing company has already approved 107 new productions. If you’re not attending one right now, you may be manning a barricade yourself.

Yet, it seemed surprising, at first, that Hudson Valley Shakespeare would be joining the battle. The theater's programming sticks close to Shakespeare; this summer's "King Lear" and "As You Like It" are still in the repertory. And the company's semi-open-air venue backs onto a lawn-smooth countryside. "Paris is always showing its teeth," Victor Hugo wrote. How could this paradise-on-a-hill serve his epic about crowds and smoke and squalor?

Well, partly by trusting the audience to know the material. The director Jenn Thompson and her choreographer Rhett Guter use the actors' movement (eddying like flotsam in a sewer, staggering in a chain-gang) as the show's main palette. Thompson then relies on us to conjure Paris's seedy cobblestone streets, even, in her less clear staging moments, the plot. Her only major set piece is a huge French flag, burned with gunpowder. The 21-person company sometimes drags it around by attaching chains to the silk. A nation-state seems as hard to move as a cart in the mud.

There's a sense of strain elsewhere, too. Even for a theater accustomed to staging sweeping tragedies, "Les Miz" poses a challenge. Schönberg's score needs a phalanx of singers capable of punishing, octave-leaping parts, and in this outing, Hudson Valley Shakespeare hasn't found a full complement.

And “Les Miz” itself is massive enough to encompass multitudes. It’s a generation-defining opera-adjacent masterwork with all the stops pulled out, yes, but it also contains goopy pop diversions. These flaws combine in the sometimes repetitive second half: The breakneck pace bottlenecks, and this time, each lovesick ballad suddenly struck me as one ballad too many.

"Les Misérables," as adapted by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, has two narrative strands. First, the fugitive Jean Valjean (Josh Young) is on the lifelong run from the law, as personified by the coldhearted Inspector Javert (Denis Lambert). They're a pair of Titans smashing away at each other, forever, as Humanity struggles against Order.

And second, Valjean aids a dying woman, Fantine (Haley Dortch), by adopting her child. When grown, that girl, Cosette (Ana Paola Garcia), becomes one point on a love triangle with the scrappy Éponine (Haley Rose Ciaramella) and the dishy student rebel Marius (Alex Ross). Marius's involvement in the June Rebellion of 1832 — Hugo himself dodged bullets in the streets — connects the story's ideas about civic and personal love. To love the people, you fight for them; to love a person, you fight beside him.

Some of the meatiest stuff belongs to secondary characters. The dastardly innkeepers, the Thénardiers (Nance Williamson and the mischievous David Beach), are criminal Falstaffs; in the night's best number, "Master of the House," they steal everything, including the show. And Thompson makes a clever double-casting choice, asking Dortch to also play Enjoiras, the rabblerouser. I thought Dortch's voice somehow seemed better suited to Enjoiras' commands than to Fantine's pleas; how interesting that a woman, killed with neglect, comes into her own when she rises again with a cause.

The great and orienting star here, though, is Young. As Valjean, he holds his voice in reserve for long periods, but when he takes it out of its case, it's absolutely beautiful. The part requires immense vocal power, which Young can certainly provide, but he's most gorgeous up in the rafters of his voice, singing high, sweet, gossamer prayers. Musicians talk about "placement" in the skull when they sing, but here you can feel Young setting the notes down in our heads.

And it's in our heads that this show takes on meaning. It may be an accident of licensing and popularity that gave us this flood of "Les Misérables" productions, but I do wonder what we'll see in the flood's wake. What does it do to a nation to hear this particular work, again and again? There are plenty of Javerts about these days, for instance, struggling with the moral dimensions of their service.

And Hugo's vision is bleak: The revolutionaries die; they're picked clean in the streets by scavengers; the people they try to rally never come.

Yet the musical insists that next time could be different. I still have chills from the image of the company led by Luis Quintero — seemingly a head taller than everyone — out on the hilltop, waving a red flag the size of a crosstown bus. Everyone else is singing about hope: “One Day More!” But Nagraj looks as if he’s signaling to a plane for rescue. Would we help him? The audience shifted in its seats.

ELISABETH VINCENTELLI | STREAMING SCI-FI

They're Trapped in Alternate Worlds

A deadly contest, dinosaurs and pings from space.

Cooper Hoffman, left, and David Jonsson are friends in "The Long Walk," adapted from an early Stephen King novel and streaming on HBO Max.
MURRAY CLOSE/LIONSGATE

'The Long Walk'

Stream it on HBO Max.

This adaptation of an early Stephen King novel (which was published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) is as grim as required by the source material. Set in a totalitarian, alternate-reality United States, the story often recalls that of the classic drama “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969), about a dance marathon. Every year in the world of “The Long Walk,” 50 teenage boys compete in the endurance event of the title — a brutal contest in which falling below three miles per hour means literal elimination. Slack off, and you’re shot; walk until you’re the last one standing.

It's important here to recalibrate your expectations: "The Long Walk" is not an action movie, but an intimate drama centered on some of those boys and particularly on the friendship between Pete (David Jonsson) and Ray (Cooper Hoffman). The oppressive sense of hopelessness created by the director Francis Lawrence is more convincing than anything he's ever whipped up on one of his "Hunger Games" movies. Death here is simultaneously senseless and meaningful, making each loss tragic, especially since we grow to know and care for the boys. That girls don't walk feels part of the point, too: Maybe King meant the long walk, and their absence from it, as a metaphor for the draft, but now you can read this single-sex ordeal and its despair as masculinist ideology crashing into a wall of its own making.

'Primitive War'

Stream it on Hulu.

Set in Vietnam in 1968, this proud slice of B-grade entertainment is for dinosaur-movie fans who thought "The End of Oak Street" was too quirky. "Primitive War" defiantly stays within the lines of genre conventions: A mysterious machine creates havoc, overhead shots of gigantic beasts abound and the gore is served in generous portions. The visual effects are above average, too. But what makes Luke Sparke's film really stand out its dialogue. My favorite line drops after Sgt. Baker (Ryan Kwanten) and his elite unit are dispatched to an isolated valley and their mission instantly goes horribly wrong. "We've been attacked by all kinds of prehistoric beasts," Baker radios his superior (Jeremy Piven), "all of them hungry, pissed off and chopping at the bit for their little piece of the American pie." Dinosaurs are not the only ones doing serious munching here: Some of the actors must still be picking bits of scenery from between their teeth, with a special mention to Tricia Helfer as a stranded Soviet paleontologist.

'Signal One'

Rent or buy it on most major platforms.

Some of the most thought-provoking science-fiction films in recent decades have been about communication, whether it's among humans or with alien life forms. When extraterrestrials are involved, the films tend to involve various forms of language but also whether interacting with the unknown is a good idea in the first place. Both are at the core of Jonathan Sobol's tight film, which is set in a private lab on a Caribbean island funded by a billionaire (Dennis Quaid). There, the misanthropic genius Perry (David Thewlis) has built a machine that can scan for signs of life in the universe. But what to do when it appears that someone or something has cryptically pinged back? Charlie (Josh Hutcherson), an engineer, is optimistic about pursuing first contact, while Annika (Isabelle Fuhrman), a computer scientist, is cautious about revealing the existence of Earth to potentially hostile watchers. Sobol is very effective at laying out the stakes and turning indecision and incertitude into an effective low-boil suspense. And considering the huge stakes he's playing with, he even manages to pull off a satisfying ending.

'Exit 8'

Stream it on Shudder.

Anybody who has ever let out a primal scream while being stuck in endless loops or facing dead ends on an automated help line will empathize with this film's protagonist. The first hint that we are in for variations on a repetitive theme is the music: A commuter (Kazunari Ninomiya) listens to Ravel's famously hypnotic "Boléro" on headphones, barely paying attention to the other passengers on his crowded train. But when he tries to leave the station and make his way out, he ends up wandering around antiseptic corridors, always running into the same man carrying a briefcase (Yamato Kochi). Naturally, Genki Kawamura's puzzle box of a film brings to mind "Severance" and "Backrooms," in which people coldly navigate anonymous and often labyrinthine spaces. The problem for all the characters in these stories is that they are forced to play games whose seemingly arbitrary rules they don't understand. A cryptic poster in "Exit 8" suggests looking for "anomalies," so our commuter starts to obsessively memorize every detail of his surroundings. More generally, a main theme appears to be the necessity of paying attention to your environment — including other people — in order to move on.

'Lars Shrike Walks the Night'

Stream it on Amazon Prime Video or the Roku Channel.

A man (Kelsey Grammer) staggers around a desert landscape in shackles and what looks like a tattered jumpsuit. He only knows his name, Lars Shrike, but other than that he has no idea where he is or how he ended up there. "Am I narrating?" he asks. Why yes, and the director Gary Walkow makes great use of Grammer's plummy baritone. Eventually Lars finds his way to a suburban outpost — so either this wasn't a prison planet, or Earth is a prison planet — and a welcoming library. Searching his name online, he discovers that Lars Shrike is a character in a book titled "The Trouble With Dick," and the fictional alter ego of an author, Richard Kendred. So off he goes to Los Angeles to meet the man who created him.

Adding to the hall of mirrors is that Richard is portrayed by David Clennon, who played Lars in an earlier Walkow movie titled . . . “The Trouble With Dick” (1987). The director’s “Crashing” (2007) and “The Trouble with Dot & Harry” (2015) are also loosely connected, forming perhaps the most obscure tetralogy of modern cinema. Don’t worry, though: “Lars Shrike” works just fine on its own as a unique experiment in shoestring metafiction.

Dollywood Captured the Real Dolly

JOHN SEAKWOOD/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT, VIA GETTY IMAGES
Dolly Parton riding the Dollywood Express in 1987. Her theme park grew into one of the most popular attractions in the South.

The entertainer's idea became a billion-dollar enterprise, celebrating her home region.

By MELENA RYZIK

From her girlhood in the hollers of Tennessee, Dolly Parton had many outsize ambitions. She announced one of the most outlandish in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1982: She wanted to build “a fantasy city” in the Smoky Mountains — a “mountain Disneyland” in what she called “one of the most wonderful places in the world.”

Like most of Parton's monumental dreams, this one was achieved in just a few years. Dollywood opened in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., in 1986, with a steam train whistling through the towering Great Smokies, where Parton grew up. An expansion and rebranding of an existing amusement park, Dollywood at first represented a shrewd business deal: Parton was splitting the stakes with the park's previous owners, Herschend Family Entertainment, which benefited from her fame and promotional skills. Back then, Dollywood's museum displayed "a girl's small, faded coat made of pieces of corduroy by Miss Parton's mother," as one 1986 account put it.

It was a replica “Coat of Many Colors,” but still stitched by hand. Dollywood never lost that homey connection to its founder, and as it grew it came to symbolize much of what Parton, who died at 80 on Tuesday after treatment for cancer, stood for: uniting people through music, community, a good time — sometimes raucous, often corny, always genuine — and a faithful devotion to the region, the people and the culture that raised her.

I visited Dollywood a few years ago, during its busy Christmas season, and heard bluegrass, folk and other Americana styles, with string bands, fiddlers or a teenage banjo virtuoso around every corner. The park serves as a significant boosting ground for Appalachian roots music, a professor in the field told me. It also employs many members of Parton's large extended family, as singers and more; an uncle who conserved chestnut trees is memorialized with a plaque. It is profoundly local, and proud of its place.

Though Pigeon Forge is home to many entertainment businesses, Dollywood is the largest employer in Sevier County. A 2021 state government report said it directly generated \$1.8 billion annually, and it now has nearly twice as many visitors, upward of four million. In 2022, it announced a full-tuition payment program for college at partner institutions, available to any of its thousands of employees — including part-time or seasonal staff — starting on their first day of work.

"We want people to have opportunities," Parton, whose title at the park was dreamer in chief, told me in 2022. "The employees to feel proud to be working there. You don't want them to feel like they're just there to serve you. You also, in turn, want to be able

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

to do some things to help make their lives better, and to serve them."

Her vision for generosity was evident all over the park grounds, especially in the many performers and workers who relayed one of her mantras: "Dolly always says, 'If someone doesn't have a smile, give them yours.'"

Parton was a regular presence on the grounds, parading around in vintage vehicles at the annual opening day. One of her last public moments was on Aug. 14, when she appeared in a video introducing Dollywood's newest roller coaster, NightFlight Expedition, a one-of-a-kind indoor attraction that cost more than \$50 million. It's part of a planned decades-long expansion of the park and its adjacent resorts that Parton and Eugene Naughton, the operation's president, announced in 2021.

Naughton noted that Parton was an orchestrator of the project, especially its new hotels. "She's been able to help us develop and narrate each of the story lines," he told

The Knoxville News Sentinel last year. (She got too queasy to partake in the park's thrill rides herself, she often said. But she was still excited about the new coaster: With NightFlight, "we're able to tell stories about what happens in the mountains after the sun goes down," as she put it.)

To those who knew her, the fact that Parton was busy into her final days came as no surprise. "If she's still asleep at 3 a.m., it's a miracle," her longtime creative director, Steve Summers, whom she plucked from the performance line at Dollywood, once told me. "You can't outwork Dolly Parton. Nobody can."

Her ambitions for the park extended through at least 2050. "I hope they keep building on, even after I'm gone," she told The Wall Street Journal in May.

And so, in mourning her death on Tuesday, Dollywood announced that, in her spirit, it would remain open the following day — “as Dolly wanted.”

Cuts Threaten Her Literacy Program

ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dolly Parton reads to young children in 2018. Her Imagination Library, which she dedicated to her father, has program partners who have helped it withstand government funding cuts.

Dolly Parton founded a library that has donated millions of books to the youngest readers.

By ASH WU

After a tornado devastated swaths of their Nashville neighborhood in 2020, Traci Hilton and her young daughters found solace in a delivery from Dolly Parton. For several nights after the storm, Hilton read them "The Rabbit Listened," a picture book about how a child who builds a tower out of blocks learns to cope with grief after crows topple it. It quickly became a household favorite.

"I could not get through it without crying," Hilton said in an interview.

The Hiltons' copy of "The Rabbit Listened" is one of more than 300 million free books that have been given to millions of children by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, according to its website.

The program has a presence in all 50 states, and Washington D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and four other countries. (Representatives for the Imagination Library declined to answer questions about recent sign-ups, donations and other matters from The New York Times on Wednesday after Parton's death on Tuesday, explaining that they were overwhelmed.)

But in some states, the program, which relies heavily on state-sponsored grants to run, now finds its future threatened.

In 1995, Parton started the Imagination Library in Sevier County, Tenn., where she grew up. The program mails a free book each month to registered children from birth until age 5.

The Imagination Library mushroomed after forging an exclusive partnership with Penguin Young Readers in 2001; the agreement was later expanded to include Random House Children's Books, after Penguin and Random House merged in 2012. In the United States, books are selected by childhood literacy experts, according to the Imagination Library website. Educational nonprofits that team up with the library help to enroll children in their local communities in the program, paying an average of \$2.60 a child to cover the costs of books and postage each month.

Parton dedicated the library to her father, a farmer who never learned to read or write.

"My daddy just loved it when all the little kids would call me 'The Book Lady,' Parton wrote in a note to fans that was previously posted to her website. "That meant more to him than the fact that I had become a star and worked my butt off."

As Parton grew from a child born below the poverty line in rural Appalachia into an American icon, she retained her knack for connecting with everyday people. Each monthly package from the Imagination Library arrives with a personalized touch: the child's own name printed on the label.

The program has apparently made its mark on childhood literacy. In 2025, a study conducted by United Way, a nonprofit organization that teams up with the Imagination Library in some locations, surveyed more than 86,000 families and found that children enrolled in the program were four times more likely to demonstrate stronger emerging reading skills.

But even Parton's magnetism and the backing of a powerhouse publisher have not kept the organization immune from state-level budget cuts threatening public libraries and other educational nonprofits.

The Dollywood Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the Imagination Library, handles most overhead fees for the program. But to reach as many families as possible, including in the impoverished and rural communities that need the books the most, many of the program's partners rely on state grants to split costs and increase access.

While states including Oregon and Tennessee have taken steps to proactively protect the nonprofit's operations, the organization's legacy hangs in the balance in many others.

In Indiana last year, Governor Mike Braun cut state funding for the program entirely, prompting the state's first lady, Maureen Braun, to start a fund-raising campaign to keep it afloat. Kentucky lawmakers proposed a budget reduction this year that would have effectively shut down the program in about half of Kentucky's poorest counties before restoring the state's 50 percent funding match after public outcry.

In Maine, the program ended in June after losing state funding, according to WAGM, a local television station, leaving United Way scrambling to fill in the gaps by starting another initiative to provide books to newborns. And Missouri slashed \$4 million in funding for the nonprofit in its 2027 budget, effectively freezing new enrollment.

Storied, Inc., the Imagination Library's program partner in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, downsized to roughly 2,100 children from around 18,000 after a grant from the Nevada Department of Education ran out last year, according to its executive director, Meredith Helmick.

"We have not been able to find funding to reopen on a large scale," said Helmick, who runs Storied, Inc. with her husband, Kyle Helmick.

When Storied, Inc. announced that the state grant would not be renewed, “we were flooded with hundreds of emails,” she said, adding, “The legislative office in Carson City even was overwhelmed with the number of letters that they got from parents just talking about how much it’s brought their families together.”

Like many of the program's partners, Storied, Inc. stayed afloat with the help of community donors, including the Vegas Golden Knights Foundation. Once Parton's family had published a statement requesting gifts in her memory be made to the Imagination Library, Helmick saw an influx of donations.

The wave of one-time memorial contributions is unlikely to substitute for most state grants. Nevertheless, families from across the country say that Parton's desire to spread a love for reading has affected them indelibly.

When children turn 5 and age out of the program, they receive one last book, "Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come!," by Nancy Carlson. The package includes a note from Parton urging graduates to visit their local public library to discover even more books.

"I knew it was our last Dolly book that we were getting," Hilton said. "I was upset but I was trying to be brave.

"But my youngest, Vivian, just burst into tears and was like, 'I don't want to read the book! I'm not ready to read the last Dolly book! Please don't read it to me!' And when I was reading her the note, she was just crying and crying. And it just really, really amazed me at how important it was to her, too."

WESLEY MORRIS AN APPRAISAL

Onscreen, Parton Embodied Authenticity

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1 lar 1982 musical comedy "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." "A flame about three feet high." Gotcha, Burt.

Parton was a terrific movie star that way — like Mae West or Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli or Bette Midler or Cher. If a movie had them, it had no choice but to flaunt them, these vocalists who never ceased to amuse themselves, oddballs who nonetheless found themselves sexy, stars who could make a kind of sex essential to the comedy. Stars who couldn't disguise what they felt because, as very different singers, feeling is their currency. Makes sense that of all the down-home godheads Parton could've played in "Steel Magnolas" (1989), she wound up with Truvy, the one whose name sounds most synonymous with "candor."

Little about Parton made obvious sense. Petite but bodacious, kind and then canny. A woman of the lord and the loins. Artificial yet mood-liftingly, gravity-defyingly herself. Those of us who lament the abuse of “authentic” as a descriptor of both personalities and salads weep because Parton put that word out of business decades ago. All we should discover on its dictionary page is her photo.

In it, she'd surely be smiling. That smile is the reason we've been a wreck in the wake of her death. That smile felt permanent. It seemed profoundly meant. It was the capstone of her distinctly piquant Americanness, proof that life is worth the living, that she couldn't be sunk, that, as a poor girl from rural Tennessee, she could've been somewhere else, but instead, she worked and worked to get here. "If you see somebody without a smile, give 'em yours," she chirps to Reynolds one night in that brothel movie.

Setting aside her string playing, that pluck couldn't always be detected in the songs. What Parton's honeyed, drawling soprano often conveyed was unvarnished ache, even during her glorious, latter-period bluegrass era. But at the movies, the glass was always half full. The smiling could cul-

TRI-STAR PICTURES

Dolly Parton, left, with Olympia Dukakis in the 1989 film "Steel Magnolias."

minate in chew-toy squeals of amusement. A Dolly Parton squeak is the opposite of nails on a chalkboard — it's nails on the back. Look at her, sexually harassing Dabney Coleman's Mr. Hart to tears during a weed-induced fantasy in "9 to 5," from 1980. The pot lets Doralee, her character, reverse role-play a harassment scenario we'd have watched her resist, in reality, with blithe consternation. But the comedy of the fantasy comes from how naturally and pleasingly revenge suits her. She luxuriates in comeuppance.

“9 to 5” was her first film, and there’s a world in which the title song she wrote for the opening credits is the real star. But she and Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin help take this strange, exuberant movie (feminist anthem, stoner flick, office comedy, sex farce) to some harmonious sororal realm. And Parton’s joy is the emotional sealant. If she’s there, even when their schemes fail, everything will still somehow work out. You’re not rooting for people, per se, you’re rooting for friendship. And nobody leaves “9 to 5” — or “Steel Magnolias,” for that matter, which is all but built around Truvy’s beauty salon — thinking anything other than Dolly Parton is the best friend.

Once, in the late 1970s, in an interview with a vividly skeptical Barbara Walters, Parton was forced to defend her cosmetic self-construction. ("I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable," Parton tells Walters she's always been fond of saying.) In the movies that authenticity was expressed as a refusal to desist, as owning how she looked. Normally, a star acts and we come to watch. The way it worked with Parton is she'd act and we'd ogle. When she and Fonda meet in "9 to 5," Fonda finds herself stealing glances at Parton's chest, patting her more modest breasts as she walks away, checking for them. But I always interpret that moment as proof of how it must have felt to encounter this radiant, beaming, ethereally earthen woman. Ostensibly, Fonda's comparing cup sizes. She's also checking to see if her heart can begin to measure up.

WHAT TO MAKE NEXT WEEK | MIA LEIMKUHLER

Five Days, Five Dishes

I assume there are quite a few moms reading this newsletter, so I'm going to curry favor by saying something nice about mine. My mom is a fantastic cook, and the only thing better than her skill is her curiosity. When I was a kid, she made one new recipe each week for our family, clipping recipes from Bon Appétit, Sunset magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle. Of course, I didn't appreciate her love of cooking back then, because I was a kid and would have sold my soul for some Lunchables.

As an adult, however, I understand how impressive this “try something new all the time” attitude is, and have been inspired to do the same for my household of two. So here I’m sharing five New York Times Cooking recipes that have caught my eye and I want to make in the near future. They’re all easy and fast and look so, so delicious. Shall we? For more, visit nytcooking.com.

JULIA GARTLAND FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: SPENCER RICHARDS.

ANDREW BUI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: LIBERTY FENNELL.
LINDA XIAO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: YOSSY AREFI.

Tangy Chicken, Tomato and Couscous Salad

I am such a sucker for any recipe that contains dried fruit; I adore the way it adds both sweetness and a little chew to salads, pastas, roasts, what have you. In this Ashley Lonsdale recipe, chopped pitted prunes (or raisins, apricots or dates) play off juicy cherry tomatoes, briny capers, lemon and warming cumin. I'm not surprised at all that this dish has already racked up five stars.

BY ASHLEY LONSDALE TIME: 30 MINUTES YIELD: 4 TO 6 SERVINGS

1½ pounds cherry tomatoes, halved (4 cups) Salt and freshly ground black pepper

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup finely chopped fresh parsley

2 cups cooked chicken, finely chopped (about 8 ounces)

8 sun-dried tomato halves packed in olive oil, roughly chopped, plus $\frac{1}{4}$ cup olive oil from the jar (or more extra-virgin olive oil as needed)

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup roughly chopped dried fruit, such as pitted prunes, raisins, apricots or dates

$\frac{1}{4}$ teaspoon ground cumin $\frac{1}{8}$ teaspoon ground ginger 2 cups water

1½ cups couscous 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (from ½ lemon)

2 tablespoons capers, plus 2 to 3 teaspoons caper brine

1. In a medium bowl, toss the cherry tomatoes with salt, pepper, parsley and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil reserved from the sundried tomato jar. Set aside.

2. Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of sun-dried tomato oil in a large saucepan over medium. Add the chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, prunes, cumin and ginger and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until sizzling and fragrant. Add the water, bring to a boil over high heat and season the liquid with salt to taste. Stir in the couscous, cover, remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes, until liquid is fully absorbed.

3. Fluff the couscous-chicken mixture with a fork and stir in the lemon juice, capers and caper brine. Spoon the warm couscous and chicken onto a platter and top with the marinated tomatoes.

If you, like me, have a little container of chermoula sitting in your fridge, all you need to do to make this Ali Slagle dish is stir that with big ol' butter beans, sliced carrots and chopped dates (yes, again with the dried fruit), and you're set. But if you don't have chermoula ready to go, no worries — the first step of this recipe is putting together the North African green sauce with herbs and spices you might already have on hand.

Salt and black pepper 8 ounces rice vermicelli noodles

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling 1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 (15-ounce) block extra-firm tofu, drained and cut into 1-inch cubes

Golden Tofu Noodle Bowl

This glorious new Hetty Lui McKinnon number is inspired by bun cha, the vermicelli noodle bowl from Hanoi, Vietnam. Turmeric-coated seared tofu steps in for the more traditional pork, but the characteristic handfuls of fresh herbs and crunchy cucumbers and carrots remain. The sauce here is a clever vegan take on nuoc cham, with lime, maple syrup, soy sauce, garlic and chile hitting all those sweet, salty, tangy, punchy notes.

BY HETTY LUI MCKINNON TIME: 40 MINUTES YIELD: 4 SERVINGS

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup lime juice (from about 4 limes)

5 tablespoons maple syrup or brown sugar

2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari

2 medium carrots (about 5

1 garlic clove, finely grated

2 Persian cucumbers, cut diagonally into $\frac{1}{4}$ -inch slices

1 handful fresh basil leaves, for serving

1/3 cup roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

The noodle bowls and the sauce can all be prepared 24 hours ahead of time and refrigerated until ready to serve. Since the sauce is not added until the time of eating, everything stays fresh and crisp.
LINDA XIAO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: YOSSY AREFI.

1 handful fresh cilantro leaves, for serving

Grilled Hoisin Pork Tenderloin

Hoisin is such a powerhouse sauce and condiment, the dictionary definition of salty-sweet. Mixed with a little honey, oil, garlic, ginger and chile-garlic sauce, it makes a really killer marinade and glaze for quick-cooking slices of pork tenderloin. Not a pork person? This Yossy Arefi recipe works well with boneless, skinless chicken thighs, too.

BY YOSSY AREFI TIME: 1 HOUR 30 MINUTES (INCLUDING MARINATING) YIELD: 3 TO 4 SERVINGS

1 packed cup cilantro leaves and tender stems

4. Make the vegan nuoc cham: Place the lime juice, maple syrup, soy sauce, garlic, Thai chile and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine.

1 (1 to 1¼ pounds) pork tenderloin

1. In a food processor, pulse the cilantro, parsley, serrano and garlic until finely chopped. Add the paprika, cumin, lemon juice, olive oil and a big pinch of salt. Pulse until saucy. (Makes 1 cup.)

1 packed cup parsley leaves and tender stems

3. Heat a medium skillet on medium high for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the tofu cubes and cook until golden all over, about 2 minutes per side (depending upon the size of your pan, you may need to cook in batches).

3 Medjool dates, pitted and coarsely chopped

5. Drizzle 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the noodles, season with a pinch of salt and toss them to loosen them up. Divide the noodles among four wide bowls or rimmed dinner plates. Nestle bundles of the tofu, carrots, cucumbers and lettuce on top, along with small handfuls of peanuts, basil and cilantro. Serve with a bowl of the nuoc cham on the side.

6. Start the salad: Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the rice noodles and cook according to package instructions until tender, using a wooden chopstick or tongs to gently separate the noodles. Drain, refresh under cold water, and drain again.

BY ALI SLAGLE

1 tablespoon canola or grapeseed oil

2. Meanwhile, add the olive oil, turmeric, 1 teaspoon salt and a big pinch of black pepper to a medium bowl and stir to combine. Add the tofu and toss gently to coat.

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup hoisin sauce

2 medium carrots, thinly sliced into bite-size rounds or half-moons

2. In a large bowl, combine the sauce, beans, carrots and dates. Stir to combine, then taste for salt. Salad will keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days refrigerated.

3. Cut the pork tenderloin crosswise on a diagonal into $\frac{1}{4}$ -inch-thick slices.

1 tablespoon finely grated garlic

1 serrano chile, roughly chopped (seeds removed if desired)

1 tablespoon finely grated ginger

1 teaspoon chile-garlic sauce (such as sriracha) or your favorite hot sauce Black pepper

$\frac{1}{3}$ cup extra-virgin olive oil Salt

Chermoula Bean Salad

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the hoisin, water, honey, oil, garlic, ginger, chile-garlic sauce and a few grinds of black pepper. Reserve $\frac{1}{4}$ cup of the marinade, then add the pork slices to the medium bowl with the remaining marinade and stir to coat on all sides. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to overnight.

3. When ready to cook, heat the grill or a grill pan to medium-high. Grill pork slices until charred and cooked to 145 degrees for medium-rare, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer to a serving platter.

$\frac{1}{3}$ cup lemon juice (from 2 lemons)

4. While the meat rests for a few minutes, add the reserved marinade, mayonnaise and lime juice and zest to a small bowl and whisk to combine. Taste and add more salt and pepper if desired. Serve the grilled pork with sauce on the side for dipping.

2 tablespoons mayonnaise 1 lime, zested and juiced Kosher salt

2 (15-ounce) cans butter beans, drained and rinsed

2 garlic cloves

1½ teaspoons sweet paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

RYAN LIEBE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: SIMON ANDREWS.

Harissa Shrimp With Greens and Feta

This sheet-pan dinner isn't new to New York Times Cooking, but it is new to me. I've never once made a Yewande Komolafe recipe without immediately wanting to eat it again, and I have no reason to think this spicy, smoky mix of plump shrimp, crisp-edged kale, creamy feta and sharp lime will be any different.

BY YEWANDE KOMOLAFE TIME: 40 MINUTES YIELD: 4 SERVINGS

1 pound peeled and deveined large shrimp

$\frac{1}{4}$ cup harissa paste

4 garlic cloves, grated

2 teaspoons ground cumin

5 tablespoons olive oil

2 limes, divided Salt and black pepper

1 bunch fresh chard or kale (about 8 ounces), leaves and stems chopped into 1-inch pieces

1 medium avocado, sliced

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup chopped red onion

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup crumbled feta

$\frac{1}{2}$ cup chopped fresh cilantro Couscous or rice (optional), for serving

1. Move a rack in the oven about 3 inches from the top. Heat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, combine the shrimp, harissa, garlic, cumin and 1 tablespoon oil. Zest and juice 1 lime right into the bowl and cut the other into wedges and set wedges aside. Season shrimp mixture lightly with salt and pepper, toss and marinate for 10 minutes. (If you have time, you can cover and refrigerate the shrimp to marinate for 30 minutes and up to 12 hours for a deeper flavor.)

3. Place the greens on a large rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Use your hands to toss and coat the greens and spread in an even layer. Pour $\frac{1}{2}$ cup water into the baking sheet.

4. Roast on the top rack, rotating once and stirring with a pair of tongs, until the greens are wilted and stems softened with a slight crunch, about 10 minutes. Move the greens to one side of the baking sheet and turn the oven setting to broil.

5. Add the shrimp in a single layer on the other side and drizzle the shrimp and greens with the remaining 2 tablespoons oil.

6. Broil on the top rack, rotating the pan once, until the shrimp are just cooked, brown around the edges and the greens are brown in spots, 8 to 10 minutes.

7. Toss the shrimp and greens together. Top with avocado, onions, feta and cilantro. Serve immediately, over couscous or rice if you'd like, with lime wedges for squeezing.

Travel

A Path Fit for a King, Open to All

Paul Theroux traced the British coastline in 1982 for a book. Now he is walking a part of it again.

By PAUL THEROUX

Photographs by JEREMIE SOUTEYRAT

There's a glorious Latin expression for the benefits of taking a hike — solvitur ambulando: "It is solved by walking." Is something fuddled in your mind? Searching for an idea? Wishing for clear skies, fresh air and broad sunlit uplands? Then lace your boots, leave the house and set off alone: Chances are you'll find the answer on the way. This remedy (attributed variously to Diogenes the Cynic and St. Augustine) is one that all true pilgrims know, and in many respects serious hikers are the modern embodiment of medieval pilgrims.

England now has the longest organized coastal footpath in the world for anyone wishing to test this maxim.

The path's formal origin dates from 1935, when the British Ramblers Association dedicated itself to “removing barriers so everyone can enjoy walking in green spaces.” I was well aware of barriers when I decided in 1982 to travel the entire coast of Britain — on foot, on trains and buses — for my book “The Kingdom by the Sea.” Long stretches of the coast were then forbidden to hikers; many beaches and shorelines were private; and there were fences, coils of barbed wire and walled-off farmland that prevented access. Now and then, a tetchy resident would wave me away with a forbidding finger. My circumambulation of the kingdom involved detours, improvisations bordering on fancy footwork and, in some cases, covert trespassing. All for the sight that lifts my soul when I'm next to the sea — a glimpse of infinity.

The writer in London between legs of his hike.

Now, as a coronation gift to the new king, the whole coast of England is open to hikers: 2,689 miles of continuous trails, inaugurated by Charles III himself in March as the King Charles III England Coast Path. Anyone who is physically able can sling on a backpack in the far northeastern town of Berwick-upon-Tweed and, following signposts, walk uninterruptedly south by the sea, rounding the bulge of the Forelands, following the southern coast to Cornwall, then heading north (skipping Wales) to the uppermost limit of the western path, ending close to the Scottish border near Gretna.

Studying the maps on the path's website, I devised an itinerary that would allow a sampling of three portions: one on the Isle of Wight, a stretch on the Yorkshire coast south from Whitby, and the northern path out of Dover. In other words, downland, meadowy headlands and the White Cliffs, towns and villages, tussocks of grass on one side, and the immensity of sea on the other, treading a narrow trail in the late June sun.

Above, the beach at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight, where the writer began his walk along the King Charles III England Coast Path.
At 2,689 miles, England now has the longest organized coastal footpath in the world.

The Isle of Wight

After landing at Heathrow Airport, I made my way to the Isle of Wight via buses, ferry and train, arriving in Ventnor, which I had previously visited for my book, in time for lunch. I was staying at a cottage around the corner from the house where Karl Marx enjoyed several bourgeois winters, seeking the fresh air he was denied in befogged London.

To my surprise, Ventnor was mostly unchanged from my last visit 44 years ago. It is a steep layered town, with terraces of houses from cliff to cliff, unusual in England for its mild climate — temperate enough for palm trees and banana groves in the gardens of Victorian and Edwardian villas. My neighbor had spotted a pod of dolphins near shore that morning.

The following day I took a bus west to Freshwater Bay. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “a compulsive walker,” as he is described on the website for his house, Farringford, visited Freshwater in 1865 out of curiosity and was so bewitched by its beauty he decided to live there for the next 40 years. Julia Margaret Cameron, the pioneering Victorian photographer who portrayed him, also decided to make her home in Freshwater. When she showed Tennyson his portrait (wild hair, rumpled cloak) he called it “The Dirty Monk.”

You can visit Tennyson's Farringford and Cameron's house, Dimbola, near the beginning of the footpath. Up a long meadow, past browsing cows, the path led through dense woods, where I came upon Mike Dennis. He was 87 and had lived and hiked on the Isle of Wight since 1963 when he'd left his native South Africa.

"I was against apartheid. I needed to leave," he said. He expatriated himself and after retirement walked even more.

He was headed to Tennyson Down a mile off — through moorland populated by rabbits and ravens and blurred by blowing fog, which made it very eerie, across wind-flattened grass with the hint of a path. Other walkers emerged, making their way west through the fog: Andrew and Sarah and their teenage daughter June, who'd traveled from Devon in their camper van for the Isle of Wight music festival that was starting in a few days; and Gillian and David, backpackers from Bournemouth; and a heroic old woman hitching herself forward with the use of two trekking poles.

I now had a glimpse through gauzy fog of the cliffs ahead, and after a while, past the hilly meadows, I saw a sheer wall and beyond it the chalk-white Needles, eroded fragments of the bluff, like a row of half-submerged molars extending seaward. In a level area below me the path passed a cluster of gift shops and cafes, accessible by road, visited by busloads of tourists and school children. Serious hikers stopped for a cup of coffee and proceeded onward for a closer look at the Needles.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Paul Philbrow, whom I met near the Needles, was also a bird-watcher who urged me to look for kestrels and sea eagles. He was born on the Isle of Wight — his mother's family had lived there for generations, he said, "from the mists of time."

A dedicated hiker, he welcomed the foot-path, saying, "The thing about footpaths is they have a degree of legal protection here. Once established as a right of way, they are difficult to do away with. Which is a good thing."

He agreed that not much had changed on the island. "More people, better restaurants, no fast food."

Enid, who worked in one of the cafes, said, "No fast food, because local people wouldn't eat it, would they?"

I said that for my return on the path back to Freshwater Bay, I wanted to be nearer the edge of the cliff.

"The path is just past that upper gate," Enid said. "It's wet today and the cliff is steep. Be careful. If you fell to your death, I'd never forgive myself."

In any event, the visibility was so poor, I stayed clear of the edge, and so did Roger, a man of about 60, not here for the hike but headed inland, and looking as though he'd had a rough passage — wild hair, torn jacket, muddy shoes.

"Because I live in a cave," he said. "There's caves all along this coast. People don't know about them. I could show you some huge ones."

He laughed and vanished into the fog.

“What you walked is one of the best paths on the island,” said Simon Ayres, my neighbor in Ventnor, who’d showed me Karl Marx’s house. He suggested extending the walk by starting from Blackgang and then hiking via Freshwater to the Needles, 13 miles of cliffs and sea and gull-clawed sky.

From Whitby to Scarborough

It was easy enough to return to the Portsmouth railway station, and London, where I stowed my bag. I simplified my gear to fit into a small backpack — a change of clothes and assorted necessities, all I would need for a four-day hike from Whitby to Scarborough.

From King's Cross Station, I traveled north, changed trains at Northallerton and Middlesbrough, and took the train to Whitby. In 1982 I feared this branch line would be abandoned, but it was still in use, creeping through the valley of the River Esk, stopping at tiny villages, going past shapely hills, hedgerows and Yorkshire moorland, some of the stops no more than isolated platforms embowered by fuchsias in bloom.

From my hotel room on Whitby's West Cliff I had a view of the high cliff on the far side of the harbor and Whitby Abbey — in ruins because Henry VIII ordered this Gothic masterpiece demolished in 1539. Skeletal, blackened and hollowed out, it called to mind lines in the Shakespeare sonnet, “Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

St. Hilda established the abbey in 657. Captain Cook was born nearby, and J.M.W. Turner made three visits and painted sea-scapes of Whitby. Billy Bennett, a man of about 60, had been camping up and down the coastal path for the past five years, after he ditched his job at a bank in disgust: "I'm a wanderer now," he said.

Rugged up in heavy clothes, a wool cap and speaking through a dense reddish beard, he said he spent his nights under a "basha" — a simple tarp — and had humped his gear that morning from a campsite on the coastal path.

"What do you do about bathing?"

He smiled. "It gets to the point where it doesn't matter," he said, and shared his hiker's wisdom: "If you go far away you come back a different person."

John Cross, down from Derby to fish for cod, agreed with that. He was 75, retired from the Rolls-Royce factory, a lifelong climber of cliffs in Derbyshire, El Capitan in Yosemite, and Peril Rouge in France. He was a supporter of the coastal path, too. "People retire and sit in front of the TV all day. That's not for me," he said.

In sunshine, I continued seven miles along the cliff path to Robin Hood's Bay, much of it level, but with declivities so steep that ladderlike stairs had been cut into the valley walls. Young Ben, a techie from Coventry, passed me, a heavy rucksack on his back — he had walked almost 20 miles from Scarborough, and when I marveled at that, he said, "I walk fast."

"You might see puffins," Sue Knapton said, seeing me admiring flocks of terns and gulls nested in crevices in the outer cliffs. She had come down from Leeds with her

Middle left, the Whitby town center. The town perches on cliffs around a harbor.

husband, Andrew, who said, "There seems to be something special about walking near to the sea. It appears to lift people's spirits."

We walked together, and at one point I mentioned that I saw mainly older people on the coastal path.

"Here's what I think," Andrew said. "Older people are tougher" — and his Yorkshire accent was emphatic, toofah — "tougher than the young. They've been through a lot. They grew up without the social media that softens people up."

After a few miles, the tile roofs and brick villas of Robin Hood's Bay appeared far below at the stony seafront of a deep valley. I'd planned to stay the night and continue on the path to Scarborough the next day, but the few hotels were full. I idled in this lovely former fishing village, then caught a bus, and rode 15 miles to Scarborough.

The next day, a hot Sunday, Scarborough was thick with visitors seeking ice cream, cold beer, fish and chips, and picnics on the beach. A number of swimmers braved the cold water. Scarborough has been an English seaside destination since the 18th century — and though a bit faded now is still vital. Its local playwright Alan Ayckbourn (still active at 87) was to premiere his 92nd play in September at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theater.

The following morning, I took the King Charles III England Coast Path past Scarborough Castle, along the seaside and the elegant Victorian-era Scarborough Spa, onward and upward to Wheatcroft and rural Osgodby, to Cayton Bay and Filey. On my way, I met Brian Hallet, a retired printer from Derby, taking the air.

"This is my 50th visit," he said. "Scarborough's a classic Victorian resort."

"That's part of its charm!"

"A bit decaying in places, though?"

The White Cliffs of Dover

Welcome to France, I saw on my cellphone — a Verizon message.

But I was on the outskirts of Dover, England — 21 miles across the English Channel from France — as a coda to my other hikes, climbing to the edge of the White Cliffs, following the directions of a woman I'd met who had introduced herself as Twigs Redman — “Twigs is a made-up name,” she said. “I hate my real name. I've been Twigs since I was a little girl.”

At Dover Station I took Dame Vera Lynn Way to Marine Parade and up to East Cliff, "There's all sorts of caves there," Twigs had told me. "During the war the children who were evacuated came back and lived in those caves. They were known as 'the Uneducated' because all the schools were closed."

At the cliff top, I had lunch at the National Trust Visitor Center Cafe, chatted with Mary and Greg, travelers from Athens, Ga., and set off across the White Cliffs. Through the sea mist, France was a dim shape, so near, migrants cross on small boats, almost a thousand had been intercepted in the Channel that week and brought to Dover for processing.

This was the busiest section of the coastal path I'd taken — hikers from Germany and Canada; Kelvin and Tom from Hong Kong; many young families; about 20 small boys in yarmulkes and their three black-clad teachers from a shul in London. And young Lola sitting on a bench, admiring the jack-daws strafing the cliffs, celebrating her birthday by hiking the path alone, a day off from her work at the National Crime Agency in London. "I wanted to do something special," she said.

I was with my son, Marcel, who tramped

Center, the King Charles III England Coastal Path climbs to the top of the White Cliffs. Above is the ferry between France and England as seen from the path.

down a precipitous path to the beach at Langdon Hole and reported there was a wrecked ship under the cliff. Then we talked about children, books, favorite movies, food, travel, memories of other walks and certain family issues, aided by solvitur ambulando.

This undemanding round trip to the South Foreland Lighthouse is enhanced by the brilliant whiteness of the chalk cliffs that endows the eight-mile stretch of the coast with almost edible beauty — like traversing a wedge of wedding cake, a chunk of ice cream, or a slab of Stilton cheese, depending on the variations of marine sunlight.

This Dover path can be extended northeast to Deal or west to Folkestone. I had no time for that now, but with several thousand miles untrodden, I promised myself I'd return, to paraphrase the poet Philip Larkin, to swagger the nut-strewn paths.

36 HOURS

THE COTSWOLDS, ENGLAND

The Cotswold region has long been distilled into a tableau of honey-colored limestone villages and grazing sheep arranged with almost theatrical precision. Yet these scenes reveal a mere fraction of its over 100 towns and settlements across five counties. Beyond the obvious lies bucolic splendor, overlooked cultural riches, ancient woodlands and Neolithic monuments. This itinerary requires a fair amount of driving, but the journey is part of the experience. On the roads through historic Malmesbury, Northleach and Slad, you'll discover the region at its most beguiling, a world away from the crowds in Bibury and Bourton-on-the-Water. Yet the area is no museum piece; ambitious restaurants, shops and contemporary comforts are woven unobtrusively into a landscape shaped by centuries of country life. SHARON MARTIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY OWEN RICHARDS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Friday

2 P.M. | FOLLOW THE WOOL MONEY

Begin at the Old Prison, on the edge of Northleach, now a heritage attraction exploring Cotswold farming traditions and rural crafts. Step inside a replica of a wheelwright's workshop and working blacksmith's forge. After inspecting the original prison cells, retire to the cafe for a Parole Punch or Jailbreak Juice (£5.50, or about \$7.50). Walk 10 minutes into Northleach to the Church of St. Peter & St. Paul, known as the Cathedral of the Cotswolds. Engraved brasses on the floor and walls, circa about 1400 to the mid-16th century, reveal how the wool trade transformed this corner of England into a place of extraordinary wealth.

3:30 P.M. | ENTER AN EDEN

Head south on the A40 to Kelmscott, an idyllic village, home to the retreat that William Morris shared with his wife, Jane, and the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose “Water Willow” painting still hangs on the wall. This atmospheric manor house offers a glimpse into the creative world of Morris the artist, designer, writer and socialist. Explore the manor and gardens and take in the “Good Women” exhibition by the textile artist Chrissie Freeth, through October (£15.50). Set off to St. George's Church, which isn't much to look at from the outside, but inside you will marvel at the 13th-century paintings.

7 P.M. | STOP FOR A PIE AND PINT

After a 40-minute drive, tuck into a rustic British supper at the Black Bear Inn in Moreton-in-Marsh. The beef and ale pie (£23) makes a hearty companion to the locally brewed Cotswold nitro stout, (£6.50). In a county known for pale ales, the velvety brew is perhaps a Cotswold counterpoint to Guinness. The inn, owned by Donnington Brewery, takes its name rather seriously: Keep an eye out for three life-size bears, two in the bar and another in the restaurant.

9 P.M. | WHISPER WITH WITCHES

Drive south for 15 minutes to the Rollright Stones, a prehistoric complex with some parts predating even Stonehenge, at more than 5,000 years old. Folklore claims a king and his followers were turned to stone by a witch after failing a test of destiny. Archaeologists believe the site served as a ceremonial gathering place for Bronze and Neolithic communities. Either way, the atmosphere is unforgettable, particularly as darkness approaches. Walk beyond the main stone circle to find the burial chamber of the Whispering Knights, said to be the king's plotting advisers who were turned to stone. Then seek out the solitary King Stone, standing watch over one of the region's most haunting landscapes (entry, £2).

Saturday

9 A.M. | WANDER AN OLD BOROUGH

Start the day at Malmesbury Abbey, where Athelstan, widely regarded as the first king of a united England, lies buried. Duck into the free Athelstan Museum for a brisk encounter with Anglo-Saxon kings, medieval monks and the "Malmesbury and the American Connection" exhibition (running until Dec. 20). Stroll to Jackdaws Café Lounge for its cheesecake (£5.95) before exploring Malmesbury's center. Fashion-conscious ladies should call at Sassy & Boo, home to its Luella label. At Aethelstans Gentleman's Outfitters, off-the-rack clothes are tailored for a bespoke fit. Finish at Barn Owl Books.

10:30 A.M. | IN LITERARY FOOTSTEPS

From the Woolpack Inn in Slad, follow the Laurie Lee Way into the steep-sided valley immortalized in “Cider with Rosie,” written in 1959 by Laurie Lee, one of England’s best-loved 20th-century writers and poets. The trail climbs through nature reserves and ancient pastures. Poetry posts inscribed with Lee’s words punctuate the route, placing his writing in the landscape that inspired it. Expect hilly and uneven terrain. Follow the trail for 30 minutes before retracing your steps back. The Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust produces a downloadable map of the full route for £1.10. The path leads to Holy Trinity Church, where Lee is buried. His grave has become something of a pilgrimage site, often adorned with pens, pencils and handwritten notes.

NOON | TUCK INTO PUB GRUB

The Woolpack Inn in Slad owes much of its character to the artist-owner, Dan Chadwick, who has spent decades preserving its bohemian soul. The son of the celebrated sculptor Lynn Chadwick, he is something of a Renaissance figure, equally at home discussing art, architecture, food or the peculiar folklore of the valley. A simple plate, a well-brewed beer and an uninterrupted panorama is very nearly the definition of a perfect afternoon. The menu changes monthly, but includes dishes like pig head and potato pie (£14), and pigeon peas and bacon (£27).

2 P.M. | UNCOVER TUDOR SECRETS

About 30 minutes away, Sudeley Castle & Gardens is the final resting place of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's last wife and the only English queen buried on private grounds, combining Tudor intrigue with some of the finest gardens in the country. Explore the romantic ruins of the royal banqueting hall built under Richard II, a lock of Parr's hair, a love letter to Sir Thomas Seymour, lacework said to have been made by Anne Boleyn for Elizabeth I's christening, alongside the rare medieval Bohun Book of Hours, believed to be one of only a handful known to survive. The castle remains home to Lady Ashcombe, its longest-serving chatelaine. There are few better ways to spend £21.

4.30 P.M. | TAKE AFTERNOON TEA

Despite its bloodthirsty name, Upper Slaughter, about 20 minutes from Sudeley Castle, has no grisly past. The name comes from the Old English slothre, meaning a muddy place, a reference to the gentle River Eye that meanders through the village. It is also the perfect setting for a quintessentially British ritual: afternoon tea. Take a seat at Lords of the Manor, an elegant country house hotel, a 17th-century former rectory set within eight acres of gardens. For £35, expect delicate finger sandwiches, quiche, scones with fruit preserves and clotted cream, and an elegant procession of cakes and pastries. Add a glass of Taittinger Champagne for £12.50 for a wonderfully indulgent experience.

Top, the cottage garden in Highgrove, the Cotswold home of King Charles III, who has been instrumental in shaping the grounds. Above from left: Dan Chadwick, the owner of the Woolpack Inn in Slad; sweet treats at Lords of the Manor in Upper Slaughter; a house along the Laurie Lee Way.

6:30 P.M. | RAISE A GLASS TO CIDER

Follow the signs to Cheltenham, and in 20 minutes you'll arrive at Dunkertons Park, where organic cider, street food and entertainment give country life a thoroughly modern twist. The operation was founded by the pioneering cider-makers Susie and Ivor Dunkerton, whose traditional hand-blending methods and distinctive fruits are still used today by their son, Julian. A standout is the organic Black Fox cider. Food trucks, live music and fire pits give the place a fun, festival-like atmosphere.

8 P.M. | FEAST ON FLAVOR

Drive 15 minutes to Elkstone and find Lardon, the freshest addition to the Cotswolds' expanding food scene. The venue draws on the expertise of its owners, a local butcher, baker and delicatessen whose businesses date to the 1800s. Here, local produce is given a passport, traveling from the Cotswolds to the flavors of San Sebastián and Tuscany, without losing its sense of place. Try the 34-day-aged Longhorn rump cap with café de Paris (£23), or focaccia with rosemary and smoked sea salt. The arancini with Parmigiano Reggiano and truffle (£3) are hard to resist.; the Negroni float (£9) makes a suitably decadent finale.

10:30 P.M. | REACH FOR THE STARS

End the day on Cleeve Common, a 20-minute drive from Lardon, and the highest point in the Cotswolds National Landscape, about 1,000 feet above sea level. Local folklore speaks of a ghostly horseman riding the ridge on stormy nights, which feels exactly like the sort of story a landscape like this ought to possess. With Cheltenham glittering below and the Milky Way scattered overhead, there can be few more fitting finales to an evening. Invest in a red night-vision flashlight. You can also book a stargazing experience with an astronomer (£180).

Sunday

9 A.M. | START THE DAY

Tetbury, in Gloucestershire, is a small market town that wears its history well, with cobbled streets and a longstanding reputation for antiques. Yet beneath the old-world facade, a fresh energy is emerging. A recent opening, Charlie's Cafe & Wine Bar, provides a useful reminder that vegetarian cooking need not involve lectures, lentils or a sense of moral obligation. Bright, current and already attracting a devoted following, it's one of the town's most talked-about tables. Order the Cacklebean eggs on toast (£10.50). Produced by a heritage flock in the Cotswold countryside, the eggs arrive with yolks of deep golden intensity and are creamy in flavor — practically worthy of Fabergé status. You can add seasonal asparagus (£5) or a vegan sausage (£3), but both feel faintly beside the point.

9:45 A.M. | HUNT FOR TREASURE

Tucked away on one of Tetbury's handsome historic corners, Top Banana Antiques is the sort of hidden gem that rewards curiosity. Less a polished showroom than a cache of carefully amassed treasures, it invites leisurely rummaging rather than purposeful shopping. Creaking floorboards lead through rooms brimming with character, where Georgian furniture sits alongside antique maps, quirky curiosities, vintage jewelry and all manner of decorative finds. Consider it an opportunity to take home a small piece of British history that's an eccentric talking point, whether it's a beautiful Art Deco flapper necklace, a Georgian hand-painted gouache portrait miniature or a rare Victorian novelty cigar cutter. With over 50 specialist antique dealers peddling their wares, the center has a trusted reputation.

11 A.M. | DRIFT INTO A KING'S DREAM

Highgrove, which is also in Tetbury, is the Cotswold home that King Charles III has spent decades shaping into one of Britain's most personal and idiosyncratic gardens. Highgrove Gardens tours (from £45) must be booked in advance, often weeks ahead, with parking and security formalities to negotiate; but once inside, they quickly seem a small price to pay. The gardens move from the productive beauty of the kitchen garden to the fern-filled stumpery, with its thatched tree house and oak temple. The cottage garden blends Tibetan-inspired colors with English planting, while the sundial garden pairs box hedging with colorful delphiniums. Then comes the four-acre wildflower meadow, which began with a seed mix devised by the king and an eminent British scientist. You can buy it in the gift shop before leaving, and plant a little piece of the king's garden at home.

KEY STOPS

Sudeley Castle, where nearly 1,000 years of English history unfold among Tudor treasures, romantic ruins and gardens, was the final home of Henry VIII's sixth wife, Katherine Parr.

The Rollright Stones site includes three prehistoric monuments, among them an atmospheric stone circle wrapped in folklore, witchcraft and atmosphere.

Kelmscott Manor, William Morris's riverside "Heaven on Earth," has gardens, a tearoom and exhibitions.

WHERE TO EAT

Dunkertons Park offers cider, street food, live entertainment and a festival-like take on modern Cotswold life.

Jackdaws Café Lounge in Malmesbury serves superb coffee and freshly made cheesecake.

The Woolpack Inn is a bohemian valley pub with acclaimed cooking and sweeping Slad Valley views.

At Lords of the Manor in Upper Slaughter, enjoy a traditional afternoon tea.

Lardon celebrates the Cots-wold larder with a Mediterranean twist, through wood-fired cooking and seasonal small plates.

The Fox Inn in Broadwell is a village inn overlooking the green, serving Donnington Brewery's bubbly Cotswold nitro stout — a Cotswold contender for Guinness.

Charlie's Cafe & Wine Bar in Tetbury is a new vegetarian cafe where the Cacklebean eggs on toast are the star.

WHERE TO STAY

Estelle Manor is a lavish country-house hotel on a 3,000-acre Witney estate that oozes classic elegance. Its location makes it an excellent base for Kelmscott Manor and the Rollright Stones. Rooms start from around £600 per night, or about \$810.

Within easy reach of Kelmscott Manor, the Double Red Duke in Clanfield is a stylish reimagined coaching inn with individually designed bedrooms and roaring fires. Rooms start at around £180 per night.

For a budget-friendly base, the Bear of Rodborough sits high on Rodborough Common with sweeping views across the rolling countryside, free on-site parking, characterful rooms and easy access to Slad Valley and Cheltenham. Rooms start from £125 per night.

For a short-term rental, consider Cirencester, a handsome Roman market town with a wide choice of Cotswold stone cottages.*