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Iran War Live Updates: Trump Threatens Iran Amid Prolonged Peace Talks; U.S. and Iran Trade Strikes - The New York Times

2026-06-10T12:03:09.393-04:00

Iran War Live Updates: After U.S. and Iran Exchange Strikes, Trump Issues New Threat

"President Trump said Iran would “pay the price” for taking “too long to negotiate” an agreement to end the war.

A rally in Tehran on Monday after Iran and Israel exchanged strikes.Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

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Lara Jakes Leo Sands Adam Rasgon and Max Bearak

Here’s the latest.

President Trump threatened Iran again on Wednesday, warning that Tehran would “pay the price” for taking “too long to negotiate a deal” to end the war, a day after he said a peace deal was imminent, and hours after the United States and Iran exchanged strikes.

As Mr. Trump alternates between threatening to reignite the monthslong conflict and promising peace, neither is happening, leaving it unclear how or when the war will end and prolonging the turmoil in the Middle East.

Mr. Trump made his comments on social media hours after the U.S. military said its jets had hit Iranian targets in response to the downing of an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Iran has not admitted or denied downing the helicopter, but its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said the American strikes had been conducted “under false premises.”

IRIB, the Iranian state broadcaster, reported that the U.S. attacks hit drinking water facilities in the Bamani district of Sirik County, in the southern Hormozgan Province, cutting off water for thousands of people. Video footage of the damage, published by IRIB, was verified by The New York Times, though The Times could not verify that it was a water system that was struck. U.S. Central Command did not respond to a request for comment on the report.

In retaliation, Iran said it had launched attack drones against U.S. naval targets in Bahrain and fired missiles at American military facilities in Jordan. The extent of any damage was not immediately clear, though officials in the countries said that the strikes had been intercepted.

The resumption of bombardments came hours after Mr. Trump said that a deal to end the war with Iran could be signed within days. The president has made such claims repeatedly, though there has been no clear sign of progress in negotiations.

A delegation of Qatari officials arrived in Iran on Wednesday to discuss efforts to negotiate a deal, according to a regional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Qatar, alongside Pakistan, has served as a key mediator between Iran and the United States in diplomatic efforts to end the war.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

Persian Gulf: The Jordanian military said it had intercepted five missiles launched from Iran toward a region that includes the Muwaffaq Salti base, which has been used for U.S. air operations. Bahrain’s military said it had taken out several Iranian drones and missiles. And the Kuwait Army said its air defenses had intercepted hostile targets. The Revolutionary Guards claimed to have caused damage at U.S. bases, but that claim could not immediately be verified.
Lebanon: Israel deepened its assault across southern Lebanon on Tuesday in attacks it said were aimed at Iran-backed Hezbollah militants after an exchange of strikes between Iran and Israel ended the previous day. In the southern city of Tyre, at least eight people were reported to have been killed after the Israeli attacks.
Economic impact: U.S. consumer prices rose 4.2 percent in May compared to a year earlier, the highest pace of inflation since April 2023, amid the stalemate over Iran. Oil prices also jumped on Wednesday. Read more ›
Nuclear talks: The Trump administration’s negotiations with Tehran have focused on four major elements of a nuclear agreement that U.S. officials say would grind Iran’s program to a halt for about 15 years."

Iran War Live Updates: Trump Threatens Iran Amid Prolonged Peace Talks; U.S. and Iran Trade Strikes - The New York Times

CPI Report Live Updates: Inflation Jumps 4.2% as Iran War Intensifies Price Pressures - The New York Times

2026-06-10T11:54:52.837-04:00

Live Updates: Inflation Jumps as Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze

"Consumer prices rose at a faster rate for a third-straight month in May, to 4.2 percent annually, as the energy shock put more pressure on the U.S. economy.

Annual change in C.P.I.

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Lydia DePillis

What to know about the report.

U.S. inflation accelerated for a third-straight month in May amid a stalemate in negotiations to end the war with Iran, adding to the price pressures confronting consumers.

The Consumer Price Index report rose 4.2 percent in May from a year earlier, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed on Wednesday. That is up from a 2.4 percent annual increase before the conflict in the Middle East started in February and is the fastest pace since April 2023. Over the course of the month, overall prices jumped 0.5 percent.

Energy prices drove the bulk of the increase in May, rising 3.9 percent over the month. Once those were stripped out alongside food prices, the “core” index rose 2.9 percent on a year-over-year basis. Core prices rose 0.2 percent for the month, a 0.2 percentage point decrease from April’s monthly rate.

Energy costs have been spilling into categories where they make up a large chunk of the ultimate price tag, including food and airline fares, which rose 2.7 percent in May and are up 26.7 percent since this time last year. Hotel rates also increased 0.5 percent, in a possible indication of impact from the World Cup, although the hospitality industry has been disappointed in demand for rooms.

For the Federal Reserve, which will vote next week on whether to change interest rates, the most important question is whether stickier categories like manufactured goods and services — the core inflation — are also being affected. This core reading was slightly softer than expected, and it may reassure monetary policymakers that they can stand pat for now, even though the labor market appears to be strengthening.

The war in the Middle East is not the only factor pushing prices up. The data center boom has created demand for the memory chips that go into nearly all consumer electronics, reversing a long slide in the cost of technology. And a persistent drought has thinned out production of some crops and livestock, especially beef.

The main factor keeping a lid on prices: consumers, who have by now spent their tax refunds and have lately seen smaller increases in their paychecks. Annual increases in average hourly earnings have now fallen behind inflation for two months in a row. If some categories are not accelerating, it could be because shoppers simply lack the ability to pay more.

“Weakening of pricing power tells you something about how the seller was thinking about their final consumer, and that tells you a little bit about growth,” said Atsi Sheth, chief credit officer at Moody’s Ratings. “Despite the still relatively low unemployment, the household’s capacity to consume is eroding.”

CPI Report Live Updates: Inflation Jumps 4.2% as Iran War Intensifies Price Pressures - The New York Times

Trump is 'lustily booed' in New York City attending NBA Finals

2026-06-10T11:42:16.665-04:00

Trump is 'lustily booed' in New York City attending NBA Finals

Charles Blow STOPS THE SHOW And Calls MAGA Donor a LIAR To His Face!

2026-06-09T15:51:00.682-04:00

Charles Blow STOPS THE SHOW And Calls MAGA Donor a LIAR To His Face!

Donald Trump given hostile reception as New York crowd boos and jeers president at NBA finals | NBA finals | The Guardian

2026-06-09T10:28:20.527-04:00

Donald Trump given hostile reception as New York crowd boos and jeers president at NBA finals

Bryan Armen Graham and Ella Brockway at Madison Square Garden

Donald Trump given hostile reception as New York crowd boos US president at NBA finals – video

"Donald Trump was loudly booed when he was shown on the video screens at Madison Square Garden on Monday night before Game 3 of the NBA finals between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks.

Trump was shown on the jumbotron while the Star-Spangled Banner was being sung before the game, and jeers and boos broke out around the arena. The president was shown for a little over eight seconds and held a salute the whole time with a smile on his face. A few seconds later, the video board showed Knicks players in line and the boos turned to cheers.

The US president, a longtime Knicks fan, attended as the guest of team owner James Dolan as New York hosted their first NBA finals game since 1999. Trump entered the arena amid a heavy security presence. He watched the game from the owner’s box above center court, while Secret Service personnel commandeered the neighboring suites on either side. Also in the box were Dolan, interior secretary Doug Burgum,
transportation secretary Sean Duffy and Trump’s granddaughter Kai. Later in Monday’s game, which the Knicks lost 115-111, Trump appeared to fall asleep.

The hostile reception comes as little surprise. NBA fans skew liberal and the Knicks play in a city that firmly backed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s appearance added another layer of spectacle to a city already in the thrall of basketball fever. The Knicks entered the night carrying a 2-0 series lead over the Spurs and seeking to move within one victory of their first championship since 1973.

Hours before tipoff, fans encountered heightened security around Madison Square Garden. A 10-foot perimeter fence surrounded the arena, ticket holders were advised to arrive at least two hours early and the team implemented a strict no-bag policy.

By midday, dozens of fans were already queueing to pass through metal detectors manned by Secret Service agents to access the team store.

“He could have picked any other day. This night is for the fans,” said Joanne Cadden, 53, a Knicks supporter from the Bronx who has followed the team since the early 1990s. “You’re making people go away from the Garden. This wasn’t the time.”

Gesturing toward the fencing and checkpoints surrounding the arena, Cadden added: “This looks like prison.”

Not every fan objected to Trump’s attendance, but many said it had altered the atmosphere around one of the biggest nights in the team’s history.

Rich Becker, a 54-year-old Knicks fan from Queens who came to Midtown despite not having a ticket, said the president’s visit had changed the feel of the day, including the cancellation of the outdoor watch party that had drawn thousands of fans outside the Garden during earlier playoff games.

“It changed everything,” Becker said. “Should he be here? I don’t think he should, but he’s coming. He used to be a Knicks fan. He spent a lot of time at the Garden back in the day. But now it’s a little different. Just stay away.”

Becker said he worried the extensive screening procedures could affect the atmosphere inside the building.

“There is some concern,” he said. “Not everybody’s going to be in their seats by tip-off.”

Beginning at around 4pm, authorities sealed off several blocks around the arena, creating what NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch described as a “frozen zone”. The restrictions encompassed the area between West 30th and West 35th Streets and Sixth and Eighth Avenues, with police checkpoints limiting access to ticket holders, rail passengers, credentialed personnel and others with an authorized reason to enter.

The restrictions also led officials to cancel the outdoor watch party that had drawn thousands of fans outside the Garden during earlier playoff games, though city officials said other viewing events, including ones at Bryant Park and Central Park’s Wollman Rink, would go ahead as planned. The watch party outside MSG was expected to return for Game 4 on Wednesday.

The precautions echoed scenes from Trump’s appearance at last year’s US Open men’s final in Queens, where security bottlenecks produced lengthy queues outside Arthur Ashe Stadium. Despite a delayed start, thousands of fans were still filing into their seats well into the second set.

The heightened security followed massive celebrations around the Garden after New York’s Game 2 victory in San Antonio on Friday. Thousands of fans packed the surrounding streets, while police said multiple arrests were made after some supporters climbed light poles, blocked traffic and refused orders to disperse following the Knicks’ win.

Trump confirmed last week that he planned to attend the game after receiving an invitation from Dolan. His appearance on Monday night made him the first sitting US president to attend an NBA finals game.

While Trump has become a regular presence at major sporting events during his second term, including the Super Bowl, Daytona 500 and Ryder Cup, his appearance at Madison Square Garden carried particular resonance. Long before entering politics, he was a fixture courtside during the Knicks’ 1990s glory years.

Trump’s appearance also placed two of the city’s most prominent political figures under one roof. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani was also in attendance. He told reporters earlier in the day that he bought a standing-room only ticket from Madison Square Garden for about $1,000.

Other prominent names at Madison Square Garden on Monday included Knicks fans Spike Lee, Timothée Chalamet, Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart and Tracy Morgan.

For Tom Meade, 76, who attended Knicks playoff games during the franchise’s championship era and brought his son Tommy to Monday’s game, the fences, checkpoints and presidential motorcade were ultimately secondary to the occasion itself.

“This is amazing,” Meade said as fans streamed toward the Garden. “The only thing close to it was the Willis Reed and Walt Frazier years. Those championship teams [in 1970 and 1973].”

The heightened security was “a nuisance”, he added, “but we’re here to enjoy the game and the Knicks.”

Donald Trump given hostile reception as New York crowd boos and jeers president at NBA finals | NBA finals | The Guardian

Trump ‘inventing fraud’ in California, experts warn as president ramps up baseless claims | US news | The Guardian

2026-06-09T10:22:34.475-04:00

Trump ‘inventing fraud’ in California, experts warn as president ramps up baseless claims

"Critics say president using well-worn playbook – with loyalists in key positions ready to amplify his message

Rachel Leingang

Trump steps off Air Force One in Wisconsin on Friday. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Donald Trump is “inventing fraud” in California’s primary elections, and likely to ramp up unfounded allegations when more races go against him, pro-democracy experts have warned.

While the US president has used this playbook for years – from his loss at the Emmys as a reality TV star to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election – election integrity campaigners fear this time could be different.

“California’s election is not the problem here,” said Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog group. “The problem is that we have a president in the Oval Office who continues to lie and sow doubt over elections instead of facing accountability from voters.”

Trump lost his cool after a journalist pushed back on his latest attempt to sow doubt in election results, storming out of a Meet the Press interview which aired this weekend.

The outburst showcased a feature of Trump’s approach if results don’t go his way: he quickly declares them rigged, rallying his supporters and rightwing media to spread similar messages. California is the latest – and largest – test of this technique in this election cycle.

This year’s midterms will serve as an example of how the president will wield the federal government’s power at cities and states in a crusade to ensure his party maintains power.

In contrast to 2020, when his false claims of voting fraud helped set the stage for an insurrection inside the Capitol in the wake of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, Trump now has an administration stocked with loyalists – and election deniers – who may not stand up to an attempt to undermine election results.

Trump supporters storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

He has few vocal detractors left among the Republicans in Congress to speak out against these efforts. He has a rightwing media ecosystem poised to advance his talking points.

“The president keeps inventing fraud in elections he loses,” said Edgar Lin, Protect Democracy’s deputy impact director. “Now he’s aiming federal power at California’s locally run vote. This is the same playbook he always reaches for, only this time he has the muscle and federal tools to act on it.”

Trump has repeatedly called the California results into question as ballot-counting continued in the country’s most populous state. In the governor’s race, Democrat Xavier Becerra is projected to advance to the general election, and Republican Steve Hilton is poised to advance over Democrat Tom Steyer.

Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra speaks on election night. Photograph: Aude Guerrucci/Reuters

California has a so-called “jungle primary” system, where the top two vote-getters advance to a general election regardless of party affiliation. Because it is a large state that favors voter access, its election results can take weeks to count – leaving a vacuum for misinformation to thrive.

All eligible voters in California receive mail ballots, and most voters vote by mail. The state also allows a grace period for ballots to arrive after election day, and it gives voters 22 days to cure any ballot errors, like mismatched signatures. The system is highly accurate, but can take time.

Trump claimed last week that the state’s elections were “under investigation by the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles”, though provided no details on what was being investigated. The justice department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles late last week. Bill Essayli, Trump’s appointee for first assistant US attorney for the central district of California, claimed there are “multiple election fraud investigations under way”, though did not provide details.

In the LA mayor’s race, Trump said it was “not possible” that former reality TV star Spencer Pratt could have lost. Pratt, a registered Republican, was initially in second place behind Democratic mayor Karen Bass, but as more ballots were counted, Democrat Nithya Raman pulled ahead of him.

“3rd World Nation,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. “Rigged Elections! Now they’ll be working on great guy Steve Hilton. Won’t have results for, possibly, TWO WEEKS, according to officials.”

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton in San Mateo on Friday. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP

California’s elections officials sought to explain the counting process in advance of election day, knowing voters would have questions about the lengthy time period to count.

“California has a large electorate,” the California secretary of state’s office said in a statement on Monday. “With more than 23 million registered voters across 58 counties, ensuring a thorough and accurate count takes time. Votes go through numerous verification steps including signature verification, tabulation, audits, and reporting of results to the Office of the Secretary of State.”

After Meet the Press journalist Kristen Welker pushed back on Trump’s claims about 2020 and the California elections, he said: “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this crap. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged.”

Trump has made election denial a central part of his political movement. After voters elected Biden in 2020, he unsuccessfully sought to overturn results in multiple states and pressured Congress not to certify the results as a crowd rallied at the Capitol on January 6 2021, culminating in the insurrection.

Among election advocates, concern for democracy – and about repeated attempts to undermine election results and voting access – has been persistently high since Trump retook the White House last year. They have “seen the different ways that the administration is trying to throw the kitchen sink at sowing doubt in our elections”, said Noureldin, of Common Cause.

The president who cried wolf

In his second term, Trump has used the power of the federal government in attempts to limit access to voting and to investigate his previous election fixations. The federal government seized 2020 ballots in Fulton county, Georgia. His administration has sought access to millions of voters’ data via the states, resulting in ongoing lawsuits. He has tried to assert federal dominance over election administration, a task largely left to state and local jurisdictions. He has prosecuted his political foes while attempting to create a slush fund for his allies who believe they were persecuted by the federal government under prior administrations. He has pushed for legislation to add barriers to voting and called for mail voting to be banned.

In the past week, in addition to his repeated unfounded claims about California’s elections and his outburst on Meet the Press, Trump suggested Bill Pulte, the newly appointed acting director of national intelligence, could investigate election issues. “You may find out some things about the rigged elections,” he told reporters of Pulte.

Stephen Richer, a former Republican county recorder in Maricopa county, Arizona, faced pressure campaigns from within his party to undermine election results. He lost his primary to retain his office in 2024. He called Trump going after California’s elections “utterly predictable”.

Voters cast their ballots in Fountain Valley, California. Photograph: MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images

“He claimed the recent Virginia redistricting election was fraudulent. He claimed his loss to Ted Cruz in the 2016 Iowa caucus was fraudulent. He complained the Emmy awards were ‘rigged’ when The Apprentice didn’t win,” Richer said via email. “This boy has pathetically cried wolf scores of times. If it was your child, you’d tell him to grow up. But I guess as president of the United States, we tolerate it.”

Noureldin of Common Cause said there are a few ways to fight back against efforts to undermine elections. Republicans in Congress need to begin pushing back on their own party, he said, adding that the courts, and pro-democracy groups who file lawsuits against these attempts, should again serve as a bulwark. People can organize protests and voter education campaigns, he suggested.

And voters can turn out to vote against his agenda, registering their discontent, Noureldin said. While Trump himself is not on the ballot this year, Noureldin said his actions show he doesn’t want his party to lose control of Congress, because he doesn’t want to face accountability.

“Trump is kind of allergic to accountability,” he said. “He’s willing to throw out entire elections in order to make sure that no one can hold them to account.”

Richer, the former Maricopa county recorder, warned the problem could grow during the general election, where control for the US House could come down to a few competitive districts in California, providing ample inroads for misinformation.

“California needs to be prepared, and they need to do everything in their power – without fundamentally changing their voting model – to speed up their tabulation,” he said, adding that it should allocate more resources to election offices so they can have staff counting around the clock.

What Trump could do this year is a “wild card,” Richer said. “Unlike 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024, some key law enforcement positions are now occupied by people with questionable morals, a strong interest in pleasing Trump, and who accordingly indulge this stolen election nonsense.”

Derek Tisler, an election security expert at the Brennan Center’s elections and government program, said Trump’s election lies have not changed, but now his “megaphone for pushing them is bigger and offers a veneer of credibility”.

“Since 2020, election officials have been pushing back on these false claims and educating their voters on how elections work. They know that efforts to claim rigged elections will appear again any time President Trump and his allies see results that they don’t like,” Tisler said.

“It’s the responsibility of all public leaders to put democracy over partisan gain and stand up for the work that election officials do to run secure and accurate elections.”

Trump ‘inventing fraud’ in California, experts warn as president ramps up baseless claims | US news | The Guardian

Health Risks of Alcohol Accelerate After One Drink a Day, Study Finds

2026-06-09T10:11:19.014-04:00

Health Risks of Alcohol Accelerate After One Drink a Day, Study Finds

"The alcohol industry has criticized the research, which found that even light drinking increases the risk of premature death.

June 9, 2026Updated 9:28 a.m. ET

Cedric Angeles for The New York Times

A government alcohol study published on Tuesday concluded that the health risks of alcohol start at a single drink a day. The report was caught up in controversy after drawing the ire of the alcohol industry.

At one drink a day, the researchers found, there was an increased risk of premature death from an illness or injury directly attributable to alcohol, though it was small — one in 1,000 people. But the risk of premature death jumped to one in 25 for those who had two drinks a day, a level long considered safe for men, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

The Alcohol Intake and Health Study was one of two reports commissioned during the Biden administration to inform an update to the U.S. dietary guidelines.

The second report, from a panel appointed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, came to very different conclusions. It suggested that moderate drinking (up to two drinks a day for men and one for women) was healthier than not drinking at all, although it noted that moderate drinking was also linked to a higher breast cancer risk. Some of the panelists behind that report had financial ties to the alcohol industry.

The second report’s finding was more palatable to the alcohol industry, which had called the Alcohol Intake and Health Study ideologically driven and scientifically flawed, and said it had communicated its concerns repeatedly to government officials over a period of several years.

When the Trump administration finally issued the new dietary guidelines in January, they advised Americans to drink less for better health but omitted any recommendation for daily limits, in a departure from previous years.

“The new dietary guidelines say that consuming less is better for your health, but don’t say what consuming less means,” said Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk, one of the authors of the new paper and the deputy scientific director of the alcohol research group at the nonprofit Public Health Institute. “This paper does, and it says that having no more than one drink a day is best for health, and that drinking above that comes with significant risks.”

A standard drink is defined as 12 fluid ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.

In an editorial accompanying the new paper, Robert M. Vincent, the former government official who commissioned the study, said he believed he was fired because the report produced evidence “at odds with commercial interests.” Mr. Vincent lost his job as associate administrator for alcohol prevention and treatment policy at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration during a reduction in force last year.

“It was going to cost the alcohol industry money,” Mr. Vincent said. “They didn’t like going from two to one for men, and they didn’t like the mention of cancer.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment about Mr. Vincent’s statement.

The new study, which relied exclusively on U.S. health data, assessed relationships between average alcohol consumption and the risk of disease or death from causes that were directly attributed to drinking.

Women who had one drink a day were more likely to die of liver cancer or breast cancer than women who did not drink. And at one drink a day, both men and women were at increased risk of dying from liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancers and injuries, the paper found. The risks continued to climb with higher levels of consumption.

Consuming more than one drink per occasion was associated with progressively higher risks of breast cancer, cardiovascular disease and injury.

The report did find that one drink a day was associated with a lower risk of diabetes for women and a lowered risk of stroke for both men and women. However, occasional heavy drinking nullified the protective effects against stroke.

One reason the studies reached such different conclusions is that while the new study examined deaths from causes directly attributable to alcohol, the NASEM report commissioned by Congress looked at overall death rates of moderate drinkers, including deaths not causally related to alcohol.

Critics of the NASEM report say that people who drink in moderation often have other healthy lifestyle habits that contribute to their longevity. The moderate drinking group also included many people who consumed less than two drinks a day. Both of these factors could make the health effects of moderate drinking look less significant than they might be.

Dr. Ned Calonge, an epidemiologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who led the NASEM study, said he stood by its conclusions.

“Alcohol research is complex and I am not surprised by different methods producing different results,” Dr. Calonge said, adding that modeling studies like the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, which use data to estimate the lifetime risk of diseases and deaths caused by alcohol, also come with potential biases.

At the same time, he added “I don’t believe anyone should start drinking for health reasons.”

Roni Caryn Rabin is a Times health reporter focused on maternal and child health, racial and economic disparities in health care, and the influence of money on medicine."

New College of Florida: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

2026-06-08T15:21:43.994-04:00

‘We will not look away’: Velshi on journalism, citizenship, and his move to prime time

2026-06-08T14:26:53.596-04:00

Opinion | Why Everyone Wants Jon Ossoff to Run for President - The New York Times

2026-06-08T12:28:26.214-04:00

Why Everyone Wants Jon Ossoff to Run for President

June 8, 2026

Opinion Michelle Goldberg

José Ibarra Rizo for The New York Times

"Kicking off his re-election campaign at a rally in Atlanta last week, Senator Jon Ossoff barely mentioned the two Republicans who are in a runoff to oppose him. Instead, speaking to a crowd of more than 1,500 at a downtown concert venue, he blasted the self-dealing of Donald Trump and his “Mar-a-Lago mafia.”

“He’s trying to put his face on the money,” Ossoff said. “Did you see that? He’s building a monument to himself. But see, Atlanta, he’s doing these things now because no one will honor him when he’s gone, because he’s a failed president and a national disgrace.”

The scale and reach of the Trump family’s self-enrichment is so astonishing it can test the limits of human cognition, so when Ossoff talks about it, he usually picks one example to zero in on. In that kickoff speech, he focused on tungsten mining rights in Kazakhstan. Ossoff described how the president of Kazakhstan granted a U.S.-backed company the right to mine the world’s largest known undeveloped deposit of tungsten, an element used in semiconductors, lightbulbs and warheads. Six days after a company backed by Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. took a 20 percent stake in an American mining group, that group’s parent company received $1.6 billion in federal financing. “One-point-six billion of your tax dollars to fund and finance their mining project in Kazakhstan, all the while you pay more for gas, for groceries, for health care,” said Ossoff.

As often happens with Ossoff’s speeches, clips from the one last week went viral online, where people from across the Democratic ideological spectrum have been buzzing about a possible Ossoff presidential candidacy. If Ossoff wins re-election, wrote the progressive journalist Mehdi Hasan, “he immediately becomes one of the favorites for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.” Sarah Longwell, a former Republican strategist who now publishes the anti-Trump Bulwark, posted a photo of Ossoff with the words, “President-maxxing so hard.”

If you were cooking up an ideal 2028 candidate in a lab, he — and let’s face it, it’s probably a he — would look a lot like Ossoff. He’s young and handsome, with a picture-perfect family: a beautiful wife who works as an obstetrician-gynecologist and two small daughters. He’s a Southerner from a reddish state with a history of wooing Black voters. And he’s a Jewish critic of Israel who, as much as anyone in politics today, has the potential to bridge the Democratic Party’s agonizing divide over Zionism.

But the excitement Ossoff is generating is about more than demographics. It stems from his skill in eviscerating Trump’s gluttonous profiteering, his brazen attempts to turn this country into the most squalid sort of kleptocracy. In his bid for re-election in a state Trump won in 2024, some expected Ossoff to tack to the center; last year JD Vance predicted that he’d start praising Trump’s agenda. Instead, Ossoff is excoriating Trump and his systemic corruption in a way that transcends the Democratic Party’s progressive-moderate divide.

He couples that attack with an achingly earnest sort of patriotism. Ossoff’s recent speeches, which he says he writes himself, have two parts. First, he dissects the rot in America’s governing institutions, a rot that, he always notes, predates Trump and helped give rise to him. Then he lays out a liberal, pluralist version of American identity to challenge the Trump administration’s white nationalism.

“We’re bound together by the same great national spirit that passed civil rights laws, defeated fascism, and landed men on the moon,” Ossoff said in his kickoff speech. A bit later, he added, “This is what small men like Donald Trump and JD Vance and Stephen Miller will never understand. That our national greatness flows not through our blood or our genes, but through our ideas.”

Movements that have defeated authoritarianism, most recently in Hungary, usually use precisely this formula: a sweeping denunciation of corruption with a reclamation of national mythology. “Across decades and continents, corruption has been the fatal weakness of authoritarian regimes,” the Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica wrote in an essay last year. Widespread outrage over corruption helped topple Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, Otto Pérez Molina in Guatemala and Najib Razak in Malaysia. “As democratic norms erode and elections become increasingly tilted, anti-corruption movements offer what partisan politics cannot: the moral authority to unite society against a rigged system,” wrote Bonica.

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Though he’s working within the strictures of partisan politics, Ossoff is trying to build that kind of movement. He helped popularize the phrase “the Epstein class” to describe the network of wealthy people — Democrats and Republicans alike — who enabled the sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein. When he talks about Trump’s shameless looting, he radiates righteous indignation, like a millennial Atticus Finch. I was in Hungary in April when Peter Magyar dislodged the strongman Viktor Orban with a deeply patriotic campaign centered on the regime’s gargantuan corruption. Ossoff’s indictment of Trump’s “Mar-a-Lago mafia” echoes Magyar’s condemnation of Viktor Orban’s “mafia state.”

More than any other politician in America, Bonica told me, Ossoff is following the playbook that’s worked against autocrats in other countries. Whether or not he runs for president, the party can learn something from his approach.

I first met Ossoff in 2017, when he was running for Congress in a special election in Georgia’s Sixth District, in the Atlanta suburbs, attempting to flip what had been a solidly Republican seat. It was the first major race of Trump’s first term, and Democrats were desperate to rebuke him. The contest became the most expensive special election in history, prefiguring Ossoff’s later Senate race, which also set spending records. Ossoff lost narrowly, but his race helped catalyze the creation of a new Democratic infrastructure in the district, which the Democrat Lucy McBath won the next year.

Back then, Ossoff was one of several young politicians — others included Josh Shapiro, then running for Pennsylvania attorney general, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey — whose speaking style mimicked Barack Obama’s distinct preacherly cadence. “It almost seemed like he was doing Obama on a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch,” the linguist John McWhorter said of Ossoff’s 2017 concession speech. These days Ossoff sounds less like an Obama imitator, but he still has something of the former president’s vibe, a cerebral cool inflected with the uplift of Southern Black churches.

When Ossoff was 17, he interned for Representative John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement whom he considers a mentor. He’s thought a lot about the way that movement grounded itself in American ideals.

“We have to be reconnecting ourselves and the public with the pluralist tradition in American politics and its roots in our founding documents,” he told me after his speech last week. “I have found that the tradition of civil rights politics rooted here in Georgia and the South — the lessons that I learned from Congressman Lewis — have helped me keep true north in sight in a time when the cynicism is so deep that trying to call us back to our better angels is sometimes dismissed as naïve.”

This high-minded sincerity can feel almost countercultural at a moment of such profound national debasement, when Democrats like Gavin Newsom are leaning into Trump-style trolling. “Obviously, he’s trying to win an election, but he also is trying to make a statement about what this country needs to be,” said Tré Easton, vice president of public affairs at Searchlight, a heterodox Democratic think tank. “And you know, I got to be really honest with you: I’m not seeing that from really any other political leader at that caliber right now.”

Ossoff vehemently insists that he’s not going to run for president in 2028. He’s called all the chatter about it a “curse” that distracts from the only contest he cares about: the midterms. “If we do not restore checks and balances in these midterm elections, I don’t know that we have a free and fair presidential election in 2028,” he told MS NOW’s Jen Psaki in April. “So, let’s keep our eyes on the ball, folks.”

Until recently, Ossoff was considered one of the more vulnerable Democrats, but he’s ahead in the polls. After a vicious primary, two Republican candidates remain locked in a runoff, and many of their voters are demoralized. In focus groups, Longwell told me, Georgia Republicans despair of their chances. Still, it would be malpractice for Ossoff to take anything for granted.

It is standard, of course, for politicians running for Congress or governorships to disavow any interest in the presidency. Obama, remember, brushed off the idea of a presidential bid when he was campaigning for Senate in 2004. Still, there are reasons to believe Ossoff means it.

He appears to be a bit of an introvert, and though he’s often been in the national spotlight, he doesn’t seem to relish it. Since his election in 2020, he’s mostly kept his head down, focusing much more on building his office’s constituent services operation than on his national profile. Though he’s usually happy to appear on local TV in Georgia, his staff has to push him to do cable news.

It’s become conventional wisdom among many Democratic operatives that a successful candidate must dominate the information ecosystem, mastering quick, vertical video updates and long, meandering podcasts. Ossoff shows little interest in either. Though he was only 33 when he took office — the youngest senator since Joe Biden was elected in 1972 — he’s not very online. His TikTok feed mostly consists of excerpts from speeches and snippets of him grilling witnesses in the Senate. On the relatively rare occasions that he appears on podcasts, he avoids talking about himself. In April, Tim Miller of The Bulwark tried to draw him out about his workout routine — Ossoff has noticeably bulked up since his first congressional campaign — but didn’t make much headway. At a time when many politicians are trying to be influencers, Ossoff has an old-fashioned reserve.

When he speaks, he’s slow and deliberative, sometimes pausing in the middle of a sentence to gather his thoughts. “Words matter and have power and are treated too cheaply,” he told me.

Obama, of course, was also an introvert. As David Axelrod, his former chief strategist, told me, Obama meant it back in 2004 when he said he wasn’t planning to run for president. After his blockbuster speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama was the subject of public fascination, and feared his new Senate colleagues wouldn’t take him seriously if they thought he was using the office as a launching pad. “We made a big effort to stay out of the national spotlight,” said Axelrod. “We stayed off the Sunday shows.”

But Democrats, including Harry Reid, then leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, kept urging Obama into the race. “That thing was as close to a draft as I have ever witnessed,” Axelrod said. Obama was in demand because of his biography, but also because, unlike most Democrats, he’d had the courage and foresight to oppose the Iraq war.

Here, too, there’s a parallel with Ossoff. In 2024, Ossoff was one of only 19 senators to sign on to Bernie Sanders’s resolution calling for an embargo on certain arms to Israel, bucking pressure from Biden’s White House. In a sober floor speech, he said, “The American people are rightly horrified by the lack of sufficient concern for innocent Palestinian life that has left so many children unnecessarily dead in Gaza, without limbs or riddled with shrapnel.” A few moments later, he added, “We seem to have forgotten that we have the power to influence our ally’s conduct.”

At the time, Ossoff’s stance seemed politically risky. “His chances of getting re-elected in 2026 just became that much harder,” said the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. But today, much of the Democratic Party’s mainstream is where Ossoff was two years ago, with even the ur-centrist Rahm Emanuel, who once volunteered with the Israeli Defense Forces, calling for a cutoff of military aid. The moral position, in retrospect, was also the savvy one. Voters “want to believe that there are leaders out there who are willing to draw lines and who aren’t so obsessed with their own perpetuation in office that they’re willing to sacrifice all principles to get there,” said Axelrod.

Ossoff, who was sworn into office on the Hebrew Bible of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, an ally of Martin Luther King Jr., is not an anti-Zionist. “I want the Israeli people to be safe and secure,” he told me. “I make no apology for opposing the reckless killing of noncombatants.” This position will not satisfy either AIPAC or the Democratic Socialists of America. But it would be hard for Ossoff’s opponents to tar him as either an antisemite or as someone who was complicit in the atrocities that occurred while Biden was president.

By the time Ossoff arrived in Washington, he’d been thinking about the ugliness of unaccountable power for years. Before he was a politician, Ossoff ran a company called Insight TWI that produced documentaries about international corruption and human rights abuses, several of which aired on the BBC. He oversaw an award-winning program about the mass rape of Yazidi women by ISIS and an investigation into an alleged Kenyan death squad. In one of his most high-profile projects, he worked with Ghanaian journalists exposing corruption in international soccer. A slew of officials, including the former president of the Ghana Football Association, were caught on camera taking bribes.

The exposé ran on the BBC in 2018, a few months after Ossoff’s failed congressional campaign. After its release, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, one of the Ghanaian journalists who worked on it, was threatened by some of the men who were implicated, and in 2019, he was assassinated. The police reportedly believed he was killed in retaliation for his work. Speaking at Hussein-Suale’s memorial service in Accra, Ossoff said it wasn’t enough to just arrest the killers. “Those who hold high positions, who threaten journalists, who call for violence against journalists, should also face accountability,” he said.

It’s easy to see the through line between Ossoff’s message then and now. “My belief that corruption is at the core of oppression predates my public life,” he said. Running investigations of “war crimes and human rights abuses in hostile environments, it was so clear how kleptocracy, corruption and authoritarianism so often go hand in hand.”

Today, Ossoff brings elements of his documentary background into his attempts at political persuasion. The first video released by his new campaign is a nearly four-and-a-half-minute spot that dives into Big Pharma lobbying to explain the corporate capture of American lawmaking and the high price of prescription drugs. Almost a mini documentary, it breaks most of the rules of traditional political advertising, getting into the weeds of a fairly wonky subject. “Drawing on my background in journalism, to make something comprehensible, it cannot be discussed merely in the abstract,” he told me. “You’ve got to break down how it really works.”

As much as he lambastes Trump, Ossoff always emphasizes that he’s more a symptom of a broken system than a cause. “Donald Trump is a demagogue who has exploited the underlying rot of systemic corruption, and the widespread disillusionment and cynicism that flows from the experience of life in a society where politics is so corrupted,” he said. “He has exploited that rot with a promise to unrig the system and then proceeded simply to re-rig the system for himself.”

Ossoff attributes much of what’s gone wrong in American politics to Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court decision striking down restrictions on corporate and union spending in American elections. Unlike many liberal Democrats, he’s not calling for expanding the Supreme Court. Instead, he wants to see a national campaign to amend the Constitution to get dark money out of politics, which he thinks could bring people together rather than further polarize them. “We have to be capable of imagining ambitious change,” he said. “Our politics is in such a bad place that I think an effort like that could energize people, inspire people, unify people who otherwise are at odds, and reshuffle the deck.”

He’s right that Americans broadly hate Citizens United, but changing the Constitution is a grueling process with almost endless choke points, and I suspect his position will seem, to many progressives, like a punt. Still, his approach could play well with those parts of the electorate that yearn for an end to American divisions and don’t trust either party to fix things. As Bonica notes, in many polls, Democrats are seen, unfairly, as being as corrupt as Republicans. It might be good politics, then, for Ossoff to champion reforms that aren’t seen as purely partisan.

“In polarized societies, the most effective opposition doesn’t fight on the traditional left-right battlefield where positions are entrenched,” wrote Bonica. “Instead, it creates an entirely new axis of conflict.”

That’s essentially what Ossoff is aiming to do, and it’s why so many are looking to him to lead. If he wins re-election, especially by a comfortable margin, “I’m sure people will come to him and say, you know, dude, we need you,” said Axelrod. Maybe Ossoff will say no. But it can only help him to look like someone who needs to be persuaded.

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment."

Opinion | Why Everyone Wants Jon Ossoff to Run for President - The New York Times

Live Updates: Iran and Israel Move to Wind Down Strikes After Cease-Fire Breaks Down - The New York Times

2026-06-08T12:14:30.562-04:00

Live Updates: Iran and Israel Pull Back After Exchange of Attacks

"Iran signaled that it had concluded its latest strikes against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refrained from another attack under pressure from President Trump, a U.S. and two Israeli officials said."Iran and Israel signaled on Monday that they were ready to wind down an overnight military escalation that briefly shattered a fragile two-month cease-fire and brought the Middle East back to the precipice of full-blown war.

President Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday morning and asked him to back off on new strikes on Iran, according to a senior U.S. and two Israeli officials, who were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the call publicly. In a recorded message issued on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel’s “fire is on hold” against Iran.

In remarks carried by Iranian state television on Monday afternoon, Iran’s military said that it was ceasing its attacks for now. But it warned that if Israel resumed its own strikes, including in southern Lebanon which Israel has been militarily occupying for weeks, “much harsher and more forceful actions than before will follow.”

The rapid escalation in fighting began with Israeli strikes just outside of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Sunday, which the Israeli military said targeted the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah. Iran retaliated by sending waves of ballistic missiles toward Israel. The Israeli military said on Monday morning that it had launched two waves of airstrikes across Iran, including against the country’s largest petrochemical complex, prompting further Iranian missile attacks on central Israel.

In his recorded statement, his first public comment in the 20 hours since Iran began firing missiles at Israel, Mr. Netanyahu said that Iran had tried to “force a new equation” by attacking Israel in retaliation for its attacks in Lebanon. “This equation is unbearable, and unacceptable to me,” he said.

Mr. Trump on Monday publicly called on both countries to “immediately stop” the attacks. He also promised that a final deal to end the war in the Middle East was on the way, although the president’s predictions of an agreement with Iran have frequently failed to materialize.

Here’s what else to know:

Energy markets: The price of oil jumped after Israel and Iran exchanged strikes, but pared back much of those gains. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was almost 2 percent higher to about $95 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. marker, was up around 2 percent to around $92 a barrel. Read more ›
Yemen: The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen fired a ballistic missile at central Israel on Monday and announced a naval blockade against Israel in the Red Sea, although it was unclear what that threat would mean in practice. Earlier Houthi attacks in the Red Sea snarled global shipping and prompted a U.S.-led bombing campaign.
Casualties: The attacks caused no casualties in Israel, according to the local authorities. Iran’s emergency services said that the strikes had injured 15 people, one of whom remained hospitalized, without providing details, according to a statement carried by state media.
Israeli politics: For Mr. Netanyahu, a resumption of fighting with Iran may offer some short-term advantages at home, though it could also further inflame regional tensions.""

Live Updates: Iran and Israel Move to Wind Down Strikes After Cease-Fire Breaks Down - The New York Times

Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’

2026-06-07T12:37:36.397-04:00

Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’

“US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was criticized for linking immigration to the D-day anniversary during a speech in France. Historians and rights campaigners condemned his remarks as “grotesque stupidity” and a desecration of the memory of soldiers who fought in Normandy. Critics argued that Hegseth’s comments were particularly inappropriate given his recent actions and the US’s own immigration policies.

Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy

Ashifa Kassam

Pete Hegseth speaking at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer on Saturday.Photograph: Jeremías González/AP

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores.

Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth told those gathered at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.

“Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” he said.

“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,” added Hegseth, a former Fox News host. “That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary.”

The remarks were swiftly condemned on social media. The English historian, author and television presenter Simon Schama described them as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance”.

Schama added: “As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.”

From Jerusalem, the Israeli human rights lawyer Daniel Seidemann also weighed in. “This is an obscene desecration of the memories of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and especially of those who fell,” he wrote.

Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, contrasted the comments with Hegseth’s later remarks on the US standing alongside its allies. “So much nonsense,” he wrote on social media. “‘We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters.”

Åslund said Hegseth’s comments were particularly “clueless” given his recent decision to skip a key Nato meeting and Donald Trump’s vows to cut the number of troops in Europe. “Doesn’t Hegseth know that the most unreliable ‘ally’ by far is the US?” he said.

Hegseth’s outsized focus on EU migration echoes comments made by other American officials, including Trump, who have consistently sought to criticise the impact of migration on the continent, despite the US having a higher proportion of foreign-born residents than the EU.

Hours before Hegseth’s speech, the US vice-president, JD Vance, also waded into the matter with a social media post that blamed immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed in the UK. Nowak’s killer, a British-born Sikh, was convicted of murder and jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years.

On Sunday, the UK justice secretary and deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said he had had an “agreeable” conversation in which he had sought to set the record straight with Vance. “This has got nothing to do with mass migration. This young man was a Brit,” Lammy told Sky News. “Let’s be clear about that. And I said: ‘Look, Mr Vice-president, you’re wrong about this.’”

In the days before Hegseth’s visit to France, the plans had stirred up controversy, with one residents’ association calling for the trip to be cancelled. “This individual promotes values that go against democracy, human rights and peace,” the Langrune en Commun association, which advocates for environmentalism and solidarity among the village’s residents, said in a press release last week.

Speaking to the broadcaster BFMTV, one member of the association cautioned against acting as though everything was normal. “What’s happening with the Trump administration isn’t business as usual. The fact that Pete Hegseth is challenging all the international organisations that emerged from the second world war isn’t business as usual,” said Chantal Richard.

“The words must be spoken, he must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values,” she added. “Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”

RFK Jr. Appears Disengaged on Many Health Department Matters Beyond Vaccines

2026-06-07T07:48:57.153-04:00

RFK Jr. Appears Disengaged on Many Health Department Matters Beyond Vaccines

“Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly disengaged from managing the Department of Health and Human Services, focusing instead on food and vaccine policies. Critics argue his lack of engagement, coupled with staffing vacancies and a focus on political appointees, could hinder the department’s ability to respond to public health crises. While Kennedy’s allies defend his leadership style, concerns persist about the department’s effectiveness under his tenure.

June 7, 2026

Mr. Kennedy, who is isolated from much of his top staff, leans on a small number of key advisers.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has demonstrated little interest in managing his sprawling department as he focuses on food and vaccine policies, according to colleagues.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again movement.

Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency, a reporter asked Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he was worried about the virus. Six Americans had already been exposed. His response was brief: “Yeah, we’re working on it.”

In the nearly three weeks since, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed travel restrictions to keep the virus from coming to the United States, Mr. Kennedy has made no public comments about the spreading outbreak. He has received very few briefings about the virus from C.D.C. scientists, although he speaks daily to the acting director, according to people familiar with his response.

Mr. Kennedy’s approach to the crisis reflects his broader management of the Department of Health and Human Services, which affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides health care to 40 percent of the population through Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.

He rarely engages with members of Congress, colleagues said, unless he is asked to testify. He has made just one known visit to the C.D.C., after a gunman opened fire on its headquarters and killed a police officer last August.

The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency. Mr. Kennedy has made little comment on the outbreak.Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

This examination of Mr. Kennedy’s leadership style is based on the accounts of a dozen people who have had direct contact with him as secretary, as well as other health department employees, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

Mr. Kennedy and the department did not directly address questions about his leadership style.

The secretary’s detachment from much of the work of the agency, along with the administration’s deep staff cuts and his attacks on career staff, have driven down morale, they say. It’s a dynamic that could threaten the department’s ability to protect Americans in a crisis, according to public health experts and former secretaries.

Critics say one of the most urgent problems is Mr. Kennedy’s failure to act more swiftly to address a leadership vacuum. There is no surgeon general. Around half of the 27 institutes and centers at N.I.H. are run by acting directors. The acting chief of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases was recently fired, as was the nation’s top drug regulator.

The leader of the Food and Drug Administration quit last month under pressure over tobacco policy. Mr. Kennedy fired the C.D.C. director last August; it is now run on an acting basis by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who already has another huge job as director of the National Institutes of Health.

“You would never accept a major corporation operating this way,” said Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who has advised health secretaries of both parties.

“If the C.E.O. lacked deep expertise in the company’s business and the leaders of its most important divisions were missing, investors would revolt,” Dr. Osterholm said. “Here, the stakes are much higher. The mission is protecting the health and safety of the American people, and we’re confronting serious disease threats without permanent leadership in some of our most important public health agencies.”

To address the management gaps, the White House and Mr. Kennedy initiated a shake-up in February, elevating Christopher Klomp, a department official and former health care executive, to serve as the secretary’s chief counselor and smooth out operations. In a statement, Courtney Spencer, who left the Labor Department two weeks ago to become Mr. Kennedy’s top spokeswoman, said the health department was “aggressively recruiting top talent to fill every remaining vacancy,” adding, “Nothing has slowed our ability to execute.”

Mr. Kennedy’s allies say that while his management style may be different from that of his predecessors, he is leading in other ways by taking stands on matters of importance to Americans, including healthy eating and tackling chronic disease.

“You do not come to Washington to challenge powerful interests, disrupt decades of business as usual, and demand accountability to make friends,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a close ally of Mr. Kennedy’s, said in a statement provided by the health department. “You do it to deliver results.”

Other advisers say Mr. Kennedy is also running into the realities of Washington, including a Congress that has refused to confirm some of President Trump’s nominees.

“Very predictably, you get into governing, you get into a toxic political environment, and a situation where there’s trillions of dollars of interest and you have the burden of having to do policy,” Calley Means, a close adviser to Mr. Kennedy, said at a recent forum hosted by Harvard University. “Nobody executes perfectly.”

A Remote Presence

Mr. Kennedy keeps a low profile at the health department’s headquarters, a hulking building that faces the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol.

When he is in town, he exercises at his gym before work, then usually arrives at about 10 a.m. and leaves by 4 p.m., his colleagues say. He spends much of his day in closed-door meetings, according to those who work with him, and has little direct engagement with his staff.

Every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., the chiefs of the department’s 13 operating divisions gather in the secretary’s suite to update leadership on their activities. At the outset of his tenure, Mr. Kennedy was rarely there, either virtually or in person, according to three people familiar with his schedule. Since Mr. Klomp’s elevation, he now shows up once a month. But when he does attend, he often appears disengaged and spends the time scrolling on his phone, according to people in attendance. Several described him as “checked out.”

Once, when he arrived to the meeting 15 minutes late, Mr. Kennedy offered a self-deprecating apology, according to one person in the room: “Thank you for putting up with my dysfunctional self.”

Health department officials did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting or Mr. Kennedy’s remark.

His disinterest in matters that are not high on his priority list has meant that he has not engaged at critical moments, colleagues said.

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When measles killed two children in Texas early last year, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the response but has since left the agency, asked repeatedly to brief Mr. Kennedy but was rebuffed, he said.

Susan Monarez, who briefly served as Mr. Kennedy’s C.D.C. director before she was fired, had little direct interaction with the health secretary until she ran afoul of him on vaccine policy. She later told senators that during a series of tense meetings with the secretary, she was “directed to only work with the political appointees that he had put in place at C.D.C., and not to speak or work with the career scientists.”

In the current Ebola crisis, Mr. Kennedy has left the department’s response to Dr. Bhattacharya, a health economist with no prior experience in public health even though he is leading the C.D.C. Dr. Bhattacharya, who also led the response to a recent outbreak of hantavirus, wrote an opinion essay published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday saying that while the “risk to the American public remains low, Ebola is dangerous.”

A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said the agency’s “rapid and comprehensive response” to the Ebola outbreak proved that “under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, H.H.S. continues to safeguard the health and wellness of the American people.”

Ms. Spencer, the H.H.S. spokeswoman, said the health department had “executed an immediate and coordinated response” under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership.

But key vacancies inside the health department have made the response more challenging, people familiar with situation said.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, responsible for pandemic preparedness and for standing up field hospitals and quarantine facilities in Kenya, is currently run on an acting basis by John Knox, a former Los Angeles firefighter who founded the group Firefighters4Freedom during the pandemic to fight vaccine mandates.

As the outbreak has spread, Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a tacit rebuke of Mr. Kennedy’s move last year to withhold funding from an international vaccine alliance, suggesting the State Department was taking back management of the U.S. relationship with the alliance.

“We are going to re-engage,” Mr. Rubio told lawmakers last week. “We need to drive this to an outcome.”

A Daunting Portfolio

Under any circumstances, the Department of Health and Human Services is difficult to run. It has 13 operating divisions covering a vast array of issues, such as child welfare and pandemic preparedness. Past secretaries from both political parties say there are three main ingredients for success: understanding the work of the divisions, strong crisis communication and muscular coordination with state, local and international health leaders.

Tommy G. Thompson, who as health secretary to President George W. Bush faced complaints about his management of the 2001 anthrax crisis, spent a week at each one of the operating divisions at the outset of his tenure, and made frequent trips to Capitol Hill to advocate for the department. In an interview last year, he said he “would strongly suggest” Mr. Kennedy do the same.

“The department is so vast and so complex,” Mr. Thompson said, “and you have to be prepared.”

Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor who resigned as President Barack Obama’s health secretary after the flawed rollout of the healthcare.gov website, said she met with the division chiefs regularly, likening them to her cabinet.

“My goal was to really be informed by the scientists, to make sure that N.I.H. was at the table, that F.D.A. was at the table, that our global health people were at the table,” Ms. Sebelius said in an interview, adding, “I was really schooled by the people who had been there before and who knew what the hell they were doing.”

Mr. Kennedy, by contrast, has delegated broad authority to Stefanie Spear, a longtime adviser who has been with him since his days as an environmental lawyer and functions as his protector and defender, according to people who know them.

Ms. Spear runs meetings for the secretary, accompanies him on official trips and keeps a list of the secretary’s policy projects on a private spreadsheet to which his policy team has no access; there are more than 50 items on the list, one person who has seen it said.

All of the requests for the secretary’s decisions and meetings go through Ms. Spear. When Mr. Kennedy is asked a question, his frequent response is “just run that by Stefanie.”

Colleagues say that her tight control has slowed down department operations.

After Mr. Kennedy promised Congress that the F.D.A. would investigate the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone, the agency proposed updating a set of sophisticated databases of electronic records it needed for the research. But the project was delayed for months by Mr. Kennedy’s office, according to two people with detailed knowledge.

When a gunman opened fire on the C.D.C. last August, Mr. Kennedy was fishing with Native American leaders in Alaska. Health department officials wanted to get a statement out to the news media. But it was held up for hours, several said, while Ms. Spear sought approval from the White House.

Frustration with Ms. Spear, who served as Mr. Kennedy’s communications director during his campaign and oversees his public comments, has fueled some key departures.

Mr. Kennedy is on his third top spokesman; the first two quit in frustration, according to people familiar with their decisions. The secretary has also run through two chiefs of staff; he fired the first one, and the second was pushed aside in favor of Mr. Klomp.

In a statement, Mr. Kennedy praised Mr. Klomp and Ms. Spear as “two of the most effective leaders in government.” He said Mr. Klomp had ”been instrumental in driving operational excellence, strengthening accountability, and ensuring H.H.S. delivers results for the American people,” and that Ms. Spear “keeps our team focused on results and ensures the president’s and my priorities get across the finish line.”

Mr. Klomp has moved quickly in the search for a new C.D.C. director, with a nominee now awaiting Senate confirmation, as well as for other top leaders for the agency. He also brought in a new team of policy advisers to the secretary and instituted daily meetings between Mr. Kennedy and the leaders of the “Big Four” agencies: F.D.A., C.D.C., N.I.H. and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to three people familiar with the department’s operations.

He has also sought to address low morale by starting a regular newsletter in which Mr. Kennedy addresses employees as “the dedicated professionals of H.H.S.”

The secretary, however, has been out of the loop on some key decisions. When Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the F.D.A.’s top drug regulator, was fired by F.D.A. leaders in May, the secretary did not learn of it until after it happened, according to three people familiar with the events.

There is no question that Mr. Kennedy is changing the national conversation around health in America, especially healthy eating. While his vaccine agenda has so far been stymied by court decisions, he has scored “wins,” as he likes to call them, notably by flipping the food pyramid, persuading medical schools to revamp nutrition education and convincing some food makers to abandon artificial dyes.

He travels often and makes aggressive use of his platform to promote his priorities, including on social media and “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,”which began in April. Last week, he made stops in Wisconsin to spotlight the work of dairy farmers and faith-based groups working in addiction recovery, and New Hampshire to announce an effort to combat Lyme disease.

Colleagues say he also makes visits to Scottsdale, Ariz., where his son and daughter-in-law live, and Florida, where he stays at the Palm Beach mansion owned by Dr. Oz.

After Memorial Day, the public got a glimpse of him there. Mr. Kennedy posted video of himself, in a suit and tie, capturing two black racer snakes on Dr. Oz’s patio. One of them bit him.

Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a correspondent based in Washington for The Times, covering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump’s health agenda. “

Opinion | Escape From Trumpism - The New York Times

2026-06-06T12:22:16.300-04:00

Escape From Trumpism

June 6, 2026, 11:04 a.m. ET

Christopher Lee for The New York Times

"You’re reading the Jamelle Bouie newsletter. Historical context for present-day events.

I wrote this past week about the need for Democrats to construct a Project 2029 that takes the revolutionary nature of the Trump regime seriously and seeks not to restore what was, but to build something new in the wake of this conjuncture.

In it I refer, as I often do, to the Reconstruction period of American history — the roughly 10 to 15 years following the end of the Civil War — as inspiration for how Democrats might approach that task.

In particular, the Radical Republicans who spearheaded the most far-reaching attempts to reconstruct the South embraced a constitutional vision rooted in the broad authority of Article I of the Constitution. Part of this was by necessity. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, they had to contend with President Andrew Johnson, a vicious white supremacist who opposed Black civil rights and sought a speedy end to Reconstruction so that he might build a new political party on a Jacksonian vision of white supremacy. They also had to contend with a Supreme Court that saw itself as a bulwark for a narrow and restrictive vision of the Constitution.

The leading congressmen of the period had their own conception of the relationship between Congress, the presidency, and the courts — shaped in large part by their battles with the slave power. But Reconstruction Republicans were also determined to secure and consolidate the political settlement of the Civil War against their foes in government. Congressional supremacy then was as much about the moment as it was about a deeper political perspective.

Here I want to highlight two things about the way congressional supremacy worked.

The first is that the Reconstruction Congress rejected the Supreme Court’s authority to invalidate its legislation. It was Congress — representing the entire people — that had the right and authority to say what the Constitution meant and it was the duty of the Supreme Court to enforce that meaning on the states. To stymie the court, this Congress took steps to limit the court’s jurisdiction, to directly repudiate court rulings with its own laws, and to reshape the Supreme Court itself — including preventing President Johnson from appointing new members when old ones died or left the bench.

The second is that the Reconstruction Congress leveraged a long-dormant part of the Constitution, the Guarantee Clause, which says that all states shall be guaranteed a republican form of government. It was under the Guarantee Clause that Republicans pursued their most far-reaching efforts to reconstruct the South.

As I wrote, should Democrats have control of the White House and both branches of Congress in 2029, they will be faced with a project of reconstruction, not restoration. You could do worse in those circumstances than to ask: What would Charles Sumner do? What would Thaddeus Stevens do? What would John Bingham do?

They wouldn’t stand by and allow their project to be destroyed by the hostile forces arrayed against them. They would look to the Constitution which, for all of its flaws, gives Congress the power and authority to make its vision reality.

What I Wrote

My column this week was on the prospect of a Project 2029, and why any effort worthy of the name must have a vision for reconstruction, not restoration.

If this is all true, and it is, then any plausible response to Project 2025 must include a larger vision for the future of the American Republic. A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not for restoration of what was.

I also joined my colleagues David French and Michelle Cottle on an episode of The Opinions.

Now Reading

Robin D.G. Kelley on the war on Black Studies for The New York Review of Books.

Ned Resnikoff on “hyperfascism” for his personal newsletter.

Vittoria Elliott on the retribution campaign against a DOGE whistle-blower for Wired.

Harsha Walia on immigration enforcement for Boston Review.

Nancy Fraser on Israel’s war on Gaza for New Left Review.

Photo of the Week

A Greyhound bus station in San Antonio.

Now Eating: Palak Paneer

I have a few different recipes for palak paneer in my repertoire and of the bunch, this one from NYT Cooking is my favorite. It takes a bit of time, but it is absolutely worth it. If you are watching out for saturated fat, you can substitute extra- or super-firm tofu for the paneer. Either way, you should pan-fry or air fry the tofu or paneer before you add it to the sauce — it makes for a better final product.

Ingredients

2 garlic cloves, peeled
2 green chiles or 1 serrano chile, stemmed
1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium plum tomatoes
Ice, as needed
6 packed cups/8 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves
2 tablespoons ghee
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
1 small Indian bay leaf
1 small yellow onion, diced
½ teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon Kashmiri chile powder
1 teaspoon dried fenugreek leaves
8 ounces paneer, diced into 1-inch cubes
1 tablespoon heavy cream, plus more for serving
Salt

Directions

Place the garlic, chiles and ginger in a food processor with 3 tablespoons of water. Purée until a paste forms, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Set paste aside until ready to use.

Coarsely grate the tomatoes on a box grater set directly on your cutting board. Discard the skins and set the grated tomatoes aside until ready to use.

Fill a medium bowl with ice and cold water. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add the spinach and cook until wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain, then transfer the spinach to the bowl of ice water until cold, about 5 minutes. Drain, discarding the water and ice cubes.

Transfer the spinach to a food processor or blender along with ½ cup of water and purée until smooth. Set aside until ready to use.

Heat the ghee in a medium saucepan over medium-high. Add the cumin seeds and cook until they start to pop, about 30 seconds, then add the bay leaf and onion and cook until the onion is soft and golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the reserved garlic-ginger paste and cook until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the grated tomatoes and cook until soft, 4 to 5 minutes, then stir in the garam masala and chile powder. Cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Stir in the reserved spinach purée, the fenugreek leaves and 1 cup water. Decrease the heat so the mixture is at slow simmer and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the paneer and 1 tablespoon cream and stir until the paneer has warmed through, about 3 minutes. (Take care not to heat the paneer too long in the sauce or it will become chewy.) Season with salt and remove the bay leaf. Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle with more cream. Serve with naan and rice.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va."

Opinion | Escape From Trumpism - The New York Times

'I Am The Son Of Immigrants': Ex-US Navy Seal-Turned-Astronaut Fiery Speech At Harvard Alumni Event - YouTube

2026-06-06T11:42:39.257-04:00

'I Am The Son Of Immigrants': Ex-US Navy Seal-Turned-Astronaut Fiery Speech At Harvard Alumni Event - YouTube

Donald Trump is Getting What He Deserves

2026-06-05T17:21:30.440-04:00

Rubio Grilled on Trump Sleeping; Trump's Reflecting Pool Obsession; Sex Toys in Iowa: A Closer Look

2026-06-05T07:36:51.928-04:00

It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers

2026-06-05T07:29:30.369-04:00

It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers

“Commencement speakers are being booed by graduates for promoting the benefits of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in a job market plagued by automation and a lack of entry-level opportunities. The article argues that A.I. is being used as an excuse for companies to slow hiring and lay off workers, leaving graduates feeling uncertain about their future. The author suggests that graduates should demand regulation of tech companies and organize against data centers to combat the negative impact of A.I. on the workforce.

June 5, 2026

Sam Gulliver for The New York Times

By Molly Jong-Fast

Ms. Jong-Fast is a contributing Opinion writer.

Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.

I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.

Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive who spoke at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities, told graduates that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of the record label Big Machine, told the graduates of Middle Tennessee State University that “A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here.” In each case, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.

When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” Mr. Schmidt told them to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”

Mr. Schmidt’s solution to world-upending technological change is … what? To pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, lazy, avocado-toast-eating snowflakes. All these speakers just don’t get it. The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.

Think of this from the graduates’ perspective: Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by acres and acres of electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers feels dystopian because it is. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.

Young people are facing what M.I.T. Technology Review calls a “looming crisis in entry-level work,” and college, once assumed to be a prerequisite for a secure job, no longer feels worth it. The general gestalt coming from a certain sliver of affluent Americans is that college graduates are more liberal trouble than they’re worth and perhaps could be replaced by bots. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and G.O.P. megadonor, mused to Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.” (It never boos a smug commencement speaker, either.)

According to a recent working paper from researchers at Harvard, hiring for entry-level roles at companies that have adopted generative A.I. has dropped each quarter since 2023. What is not clear is whether A.I. is taking people’s jobs or if companies are using A.I. as an excuse for not hiring. Either way, A.I. is not exactly popular with people entering the work force for the first time.

I’ve spent the past six months obsessing about giving a commencement address to Bennington College, where I earned my M.F.A. It’s a truly bizarre moment to speak at a college, in light of the way technology is changing the work force so rapidly and the way the White House has waged war on colleges, professors and education writ large. Even in the best of times, commencement speeches are uncomfortable: The kids you’re speaking to are basically hostages; they can’t leave without their diplomas.

When I finally gave my speech on Saturday, I didn’t talk about A.I. with the Bennington graduates. I talked about the role their magical little college played in my life. Getting a master’s saved me; it gave me a bit of a foundation, perhaps a little authority in a world where I often felt like an impostor. I told the kids the truth: that I would love to give them advice about how to avoid the messiness of one’s 20s, but the messiness is the point. “That eyebrow pierce will leave a scar,” I said. “You’ll have trouble getting the barbell out and eventually someone will have to use tiny pliers to cut it out of your face.”

(I worried initially that this advice might be too specific, but looking around the tent, I could see that getting a piercing out was something at least 30 percent of the graduating class would have to grapple with sooner or later.)

If I were to tell these graduates the truth about artificial intelligence, it would be this: You are right to be worried. But none of this is as inevitable as it seems. Remember putting everything on the blockchain? Remember NFTs? Hell, some of us are old enough to remember that the world was supposed to end in the year 2000.

Right now, A.I. is in its dark hype period — great for Anthropic’s I.P.O. — but who knows how useful any of this actually will be in the end in creating efficiencies (a.k.a.: replacing the youngs with bots). It’s within young people’s power to stop. Demand regulation of tech companies. Elect people who will legislate that regulation. Organize against data centers in your hometowns.

Don’t just boo — do something.“

America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance

2026-06-03T12:25:53.731-04:00

America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance

June 3, 2026

Meghan Marin/Connected Archives

The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” — popularly known as Project 2025 — was much more than a wish list of conservative policy preferences. It was much more, even, than a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Project 2025 was, above all, a statement of values and a theory of governance. Its authors did not simply want to move national policymaking to the right. They wanted to use the authority of the executive branch to impose a new regime on the United States.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” declared Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, in the summer of 2024. This revolution, he added, “will remain bloodless if the left allows it.” Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget and was, like Roberts, a key architect of Project 2025, also spoke publicly about the need for a “radical constitutionalism” and a tribune-like president who would dismantle the New Deal state, sell the scrap and return the nation to the status quo ante of the 19th century.

Much of the disruption and destruction of the past year and change is downstream of the revolutionary orientation of Roberts, Vought and the other alumni of Project 2025 who have taken up places in and around the Trump administration. To observe the aggrandizement of power in the executive, the decimation of the federal bureaucracy, the destruction of much of the nation’s medical, scientific and public health infrastructure and the broad attack on racial and gender equality is to see the many faces of a furious effort to restructure the existing nation to match the one envisioned by these far-right ideologues.

If this is all true, and it is, then any plausible response to Project 2025 must include a larger vision for the future of the American Republic. A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not for restoration of what was.

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As it happens, several Democratic groups are drafting the equivalent of a Project 2029. And so far, unfortunately, it is not the reconstruction agenda the country needs. It is, instead, just another Democratic Party policy document: a grab bag of ideas stitched together with the usual slogans and gestures toward economic populism.

It is not that these policies are bad. Most of them, from what has been revealed, are good: worthwhile plans to break up utility monopolies, support child-rearing, regulate social media and artificial intelligence, and curtail corporate abuse.

But none of this reflects or represents a far-reaching or comprehensive idea of what the nation might be. There is no coherent worldview at work, nor does there seem to be any inkling or awareness of the obstacles — structural, political and institutional — that will confront, and likely stymie, all but the most threadbare and ineffectual Democratic agendas for governing.

What difference will specific policy items make if there are profound obstacles to simply governing at all? A Project 2029 that has nothing to say about either the Senate filibuster, or an ideologically captured Supreme Court, or extreme partisan gerrymandering — among other concerns — is not a Project 2029 worth the time or effort.

The same is true for a Project 2029 that fails to speak to questions of constitutional authority. Democrats need a theory of constitutional power: a sense of what the Constitution is and how it both authorizes and legitimizes the kind of government they hope to build. For Trump-aligned conservatives, the Constitution is an unlimited grant of executive authority, where sovereignty lies with a president who is more Bonapartist tribune than Madisonian chief magistrate. Their American Republic is not one led by and for self-governing individuals but one directed from above by an executive who claims to stand as the living embodiment of the national spirit. The entire country, in the words of the White House, must meet “the president’s priorities.”

By contrast, it is not clear that Democrats have any sense of what they want the American Republic to be, versus a sense of the kinds of policies they hope to institute. This is important because their constitutional vision, or lack thereof, will shape how they attempt to rebuild American democracy.

During Reconstruction, after the Civil War, Republicans worked to refound the nation as a democratic and egalitarian republic that embodied the values of the Declaration of Independence. “By the Constitution it is stipulated that ‘the United States shall guaranty to every state a republican form of government,’” said Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in his eulogy for Abraham Lincoln, “but the meaning of this guaranty must be found in the birthday Declaration of the Republic, which is the controlling preamble of the Constitution. Beyond all question, the United States, when called to enforce the guaranty, must insist on the equality of all before the law, and the consent of the governed.” Such, he continued, “is the true idea of republican government according to American institutions.”

It was this view that led Republicans, radical and otherwise, to write their aspirations toward freedom and political equality into the Constitution through the 14th and 15th Amendments. It also shaped how they responded to President Andrew Johnson and hostile Supreme Court justices, who tried to trim and curtail their vision. They did not just override Johnson’s vetoes; they also impeached him. And they did not just criticize the court; they took steps to tie its hands, limit its power and strip its jurisdiction. The extent to which Republicans in this era operated as an imperial Congress was the closest this country has ever come to congressional supremacy, the result of their expansive conception of American democracy.

As they look ahead to 2029 and beyond, Democrats need that kind of vision. They need, in particular, a commitment to a constitutional order centered on the power and prerogatives of Congress. And they need to begin to work through the details of what this will mean in policy and in law. It is this work that will shape how Democrats approach the major concerns of the post-Trump moment: the state of the federal bureaucracy, the scope of executive power and the problem of judicial supremacy over the political system. It is ambitious, yes. But so was Project 2025.

“Broken eggs cannot be mended,” Lincoln observed in a reply to August Belmont, a leading Democratic Party organizer and financier in New York, who had forwarded to the president the comments of an angry Louisiana slaveholder who wanted restoration of the Union “as it was.” Not much later, Lincoln repurposed the quip in different form. “Broken eggs can never be mended,” he wrote in reference to the fate of slavery as the war carried on, “and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.”

Fort Sumter broke the Union and with it, slavery. Whatever the nation was or would be in the aftermath of the war, neither the nation nor its Constitution would protect, support or sanction human bondage.

You can think of this Trump administration as a similar state of affairs. The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter.

Broken eggs cannot be mended. To try to do so, to try to return to some notion of normality, is to court failure. Worse, it is to play a repeat of the last Democratic administration when, in pursuit of the familiar, the Democratic Party all but passed the baton back to reactionaries working toward something revolutionary.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va."

A Trump Endorsement Falls Flat: 4 Election Takeaways From Iowa and Beyond

2026-06-03T12:18:11.109-04:00

A Trump Endorsement Falls Flat: 4 Election Takeaways From Iowa and Beyond

"The president’s pick for governor of Iowa lost his primary, while Democrats in the state chose their nominee in what they hope will be a competitive Senate race.

June 3, 2026Updated 5:59 a.m. ET

Representative Randy Feenstra, a Republican, lost his primary bid for governor of Iowa despite a late endorsement from President Trump.Scott Olson/Getty Images

Republican voters in Iowa dealt a shock defeat to President Trump on Tuesday, narrowly rejecting his chosen candidate for governor in favor of another conservative contender who ran as a political outsider.

The primary loss for Representative Randy Feenstra, whom the president endorsed on Friday afternoon, came at a time of mixed signals of Mr. Trump’s power over the Republican Party. He has won a series of dominant primary victories over Republican opponents, but has faced rising pushback from his party in Congress.

Here are four takeaways from a busy primary night in Iowa and several other states. (You can follow California’s high-stakes primaries here.)

Trump had a rare high-profile primary loss.

In modern Republican primary politics, Mr. Trump’s endorsement is the gold standard. In the last month, it has ousted sitting senators, a congressman and state legislators whom the president deemed insufficiently loyal.

So when Mr. Feenstra won Mr. Trump’s endorsement for governor last week, it felt like the push he needed to get past four candidates in the primary.

Yet Mr. Feenstra was toppled on Tuesday by Zach Lahn, a conservative political operative and farmer who ran an insurgent campaign. Mr. Feenstra was seen as having run a lackluster campaign, and also faced the wrath of former Representative Steve King, who lost to Mr. Feenstra in a 2020 primary and backed Mr. Lahn.

Mr. Feenstra’s defeat makes him the highest-profile candidate endorsed by Mr. Trump to lose a Republican primary race in years — perhaps since Luther Strange, an appointed senator in Alabama, fell to Roy Moore in a 2017 special election primary. Mr. Moore went on to lose the general election to Doug Jones, a Democrat.

Mr. Feenstra was widely seen as having run a lackluster campaign that failed to win over the state’s conservative base. Mr. Trump’s endorsement was most likely just too late — there was no time to produce television ads highlighting it in the final days before the primary.

The result sets up a general election that Democrats believe is their best chance to flip a governorship. The Democrat in the race is Rob Sand, the state auditor, who is mounting a well-funded campaign to succeed Gov. Kim Reynolds, who did not seek re-election. No Democrat has won election as Iowa governor since 2006.

A Democrat seen as Schumer’s pick won in Iowa.

Josh Turek, a Paralympic gold medalist who was backed by $10 million from a group allied with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, coasted to victoryin Iowa’s Democratic primary for Senate. He defeated Zach Wahls, a progressive state senator who ran a campaign aimed at upending the party establishment.

Mr. Turek gives Democrats a Senate nominee with experience winning state legislative races on Republican turf. He will face Representative Ashley Hinson, a Republican, in the general election to succeed Senator Joni Ernst, a retiring two-term Republican.

Democrats need to hold their own Senate seats and flip at least four G.O.P.-held seats to take a majority in the chamber.

Mr. Turek’s primary triumph demonstrated that despite Democratic voters’ anger toward their leaders in Washington, it remains difficult for an insurgent candidate to overcome a big financial disadvantage.

Mr. Wahls, a former State Senate minority leader, ran as a political outsider who aimed to upend the Washington establishment, pledging to vote against Mr. Schumer as Senate Democratic leader.

In the end, the $10 million from VoteVets, a Schumer-aligned Democratic veterans organization, was too much for Mr. Wahls to overcome.

A progressive prevailed in a crowded New Jersey primary.

Dr. Adam Hamawy, who was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, won a crowded Democratic primary for a deep-blue House district in central New Jersey.

A retired Army surgeon, Dr. Hamawy is best known for helping to save the life of Tammy Duckworth, now a senator from Illinois. He is running to succeed Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, who did not seek re-election.

Dr. Hamawy is the second progressive to win a contested New Jersey primary this year. In a February primary, Analilia Mejia, a political organizer who was also endorsed by Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, surprised political observers in the state by winning a special-election primary. Ms. Mejia coasted to a primary victory on Tuesday.

A Biden alumna cruised in New Mexico.

Deb Haaland, who served as interior secretary during the Biden administration, won an easy victory in the Democratic primary for governor of New Mexico without an endorsement from the former president.

Ms. Haaland dispatched Sam Bregman, a local prosecutor who tried to run an anti-establishment campaign. Mr. Bregman is the father of the Chicago Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman.

Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington."

Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’

2026-06-03T00:13:56.916-04:00

Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’

“During a staff meeting, Scott Pelley, a longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent, accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” the program. Pelley criticized the appointment of Nick Bilton, a tech journalist with limited broadcast news experience, as executive producer, questioning his qualifications and the network’s commitment to the show’s future. The meeting, intended to introduce Bilton, became tense as Pelley expressed concerns about recent staff firings and the direction of the program.

In an explosive staff meeting, Mr. Pelley, a correspondent for the long-running Sunday news show, blasted Bari Weiss, the CBS editor in chief, and Nick Bilton, the show’s new executive producer.

June 1, 2026

Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, and the show’s longtime correspondent Scott Pelley.

Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press; Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated Press

CBS News faced a fresh wave of turmoil on Monday after Scott Pelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, laced into the show’s newly hired executive producer during a staff meeting and accused Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, of “murdering” the longstanding Sunday news program.

In an extraordinary exchange, Mr. Pelley, his newscaster’s baritone sometimes shaking in anger, told Nick Bilton, the new executive producer, that he had “slender” qualifications for his new job and questioned the network’s commitment to the future of the program, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.

The 10 a.m. gathering, held at the program’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, was intended as a formal introduction to Mr. Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker who was appointed last week as part of a major shake-up at “60 Minutes.” CBS fired Tanya Simon, the previous executive producer, and her deputy, along with Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, two of the show’s correspondents — an event that Mr. Pelley referred to as “Black Thursday.”

The meeting quickly turned tense — not a surprise after months of strain between veteran journalists at “60 Minutes” and Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist who was a longtime critic of legacy media institutions before she became the head of one last year. She was appointed by David Ellison, a tech scion who took control of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, in a multibillion-dollar merger.

Mr. Bilton, who had never worked in traditional broadcast news, opened Monday’s meeting by trying to assuage the anxieties of staff members who believed he might fundamentally change the decades-old DNA of the country’s top-rated news program.

“For me, the journalism is the journalism,” Mr. Bilton said, according to the recording. “That is why I am here. That is why we are all here.” He added: “The rumors people are spreading, that I’m going to turn the show into 60 one-minute episodes, that it’s going to be like TikTok, that is not changing. The show is going to stay exactly like it is for now.”

Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker, was appointed executive producer of “60 Minutes” last week.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

He also warned that the broadcast television industry that incubated “60 Minutes” would soon be obsolete. “Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting, OK?” Mr. Bilton said, saying the show had to adapt. “Bari loves this institution,” he added. “She loves ’60 Minutes.’”

At that, Mr. Pelley interrupted.

“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” the correspondent said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”

Mr. Pelley added: “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”

Mr. Bilton responded: “Well, I will show you. That’s what I have to say. That is my plan over the next two weeks. I’ll be meeting with everyone. I’m very excited to meet with everyone, yourself included.”

CBS News did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Weiss did not attend the gathering. A CBS executive at the meeting said that Ms. Weiss had been “prepared to come, and we asked her not to,” citing the staff’s ill feelings surrounding the firings.

Ms. Weiss and Mr. Bilton had reached out to Mr. Pelley several times in recent days for a private discussion, but Mr. Pelley did not respond, according to two people familiar with their exchanges.

In the meeting on Monday, Mr. Pelley pressed Mr. Bilton repeatedly on why CBS had fired Ms. Alfonsi and Ms. Vega. Mr. Bilton said those decisions predated his hiring. Mr. Pelley asked Mr. Bilton why he had accepted a position at a program “knowing that you will never be welcome here.”

“I have no problem taking a job in a place that I am not welcome in,” Mr. Bilton said. “I don’t think that will be the case.” He added: “I have been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I’ve sat across from incredibly powerful people like you have, and none of it intimidates me. OK? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people. I want that to be clear.”

Mr. Bilton said that he wanted to help “60 Minutes” avoid the fate of old-media stalwarts that had failed to adapt, citing Time magazine.

“I care so deeply about this institution,” Mr. Bilton said, to which Mr. Pelley interrupted: “Oh, please.”

At one point, Charles Forelle, a top deputy to Ms. Weiss, urged Mr. Pelley not to act “rude” toward Mr. Bilton.

“I’m not being rude,” Mr. Pelley responded. “You know what was rude? Black Thursday was rude.”

Ms. Weiss’s handling of “60 Minutes” has generated internal turmoil for months.

In December, she pulled a segment reported by Ms. Alfonsi, about the brutal treatment of migrants in a Salvadoran prison, saying that it needed more reporting. The segment was critical of the Trump administration, and Ms. Alfonsi said the decision was “political.” The piece ultimately aired with some additional comments from the Trump administration.

On Monday, Mr. Bilton moved to conclude the meeting after roughly 15 minutes. He encouraged the assembled staff members to partake in the food that had been laid out.

“I just want to thank everyone for graciously being so welcoming,” Mr. Bilton said. “I look forward to talking to you in a one-on-one setting as these meetings are scheduled. And enjoy the bagels.”

The “60 Minutes” staff applauded Mr. Pelley after Mr. Bilton departed.

Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.“

Trump Administration Live Updates: President Names Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence

2026-06-02T09:57:01.815-04:00

Trump Administration Live Updates: President Names Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence

“President Trump named Bill Pulte, a home-building heir, as acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. This appointment is expected to face criticism due to Pulte’s lack of national security experience.

Updated

2 minutes ago

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, at a hearing in Washington last year.Eric Lee/The New York Times

What We’re Covering Today

National Intelligence: President Trump announced on Tuesday that he was naming Bill Pulte, a home-building heir who runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to be the acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. The move is almost certain to draw criticism as Mr. Pulte has no known experience for a national security role. Read more ›
State Department: Secretary of State Marco Rubio will testify before the U.S. Senate on Tuesday morning in a budget session that is also sure to cover pressing national security issues, such as President Trump’s negotiations to end the war with Iran and an intensifying U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba’s government.”

Aipac affiliate has funded lavish trips to Israel for dozens of Congress members since 7 October, filings reveal

2026-06-02T09:52:57.242-04:00

Aipac affiliate has funded lavish trips to Israel for dozens of Congress members since 7 October, filings reveal

“The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a charitable affiliate of the pro-Israel lobby Aipac, has funded lavish trips to Israel for dozens of Congress members and their staff since October 7, 2023. Despite declining support for Israel among American voters, these trips, which include briefings from Israeli officials and visits to settlements, continue to be a fixture of foreign policy education for lawmakers. The Guardian’s analysis reveals that AIEF spent over $4.2 million on these trips, with some members, like Steny Hoyer and Brad Schneider, attending multiple times.

Revealed: AIEF, a charitable affiliate of pro-Israel lobby Aipac, has spent millions on travel for lawmakers from both parties, even as voters’ support for Israel plummets

Jason Wilson

Since 7 October 2023, at least 26 Democratic and 52 Republican representatives have attended AIEF trips in at least 15 delegations for members of Congress and their staff. Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

Dozens of members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers have enjoyed lavish gifted travel to Israel funded by an Aipac affiliate since 7 October 2023, amid Israel’s expanding wars on its neighbors and despite plummeting levels of support among Americans for the country’s policies, a Guardian analysis has found.

Congressional ethics filings and other public records show the trips, led by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), revolved around one-sided briefings on Middle East politics and Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Lawmakers and their staffers from both parties met Israeli officials, military contractors and civil society figures, including Benjamin Netanyahu and advocates for the annexation of the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and other pro-Israel groups have sponsored such trips for years, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have joined. But the continued participation of Democratic lawmakers and their staff on recent trips is particularly noteworthy given how much sympathy for Israel has ebbed among Democratic voters, and the pains that some Democratic politicians have recently taken to distance themselves from the lobby group.

A recent poll found that eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel, along with six in 10 Americans broadly.

The congressional ethics filings show that members of Congress and their staffers were hosted at luxurious hotels, dined at top-tier restaurants and received briefings in at least one West Bank settlement. While one of the trips referenced in this story has previously been reported in broad terms, the Guardian is revealing details relating to itineraries, costs and other trips for the first time.

Since 7 October 2023, at least 26 Democratic and 52 Republican representatives have attended AIEF trips in at least 15 delegations for members of Congress and their staff. The Guardian analysis found that the group paid more than $4.2m for those delegations – an average of over $26,600 per member. A few members – including Democrats Steny Hoyer, Greg Landsman and Brad Schneider – took multiple AIEF-funded trips during this period.

“These trips have been a standard tool for building support for Israel on Capitol Hill,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School who has written widely about the pro-Israel lobby. “Agreeing to go on one of these trips is also a litmus test for politicians who want to signal a pro-Israel position to Aipac and to important donors.”

US representative Steny Hoyer speaks during the Aipac policy conference in Washington DC in 2019.Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

AIEF is a charitable affiliate of Aipac, and enjoys non-profit status that allows Aipac to skirt federal prohibitions on lobbying organizations funding overseas travel for US officials. AIEF, incorporated in 1988, is the vehicle through which Aipac funds the week-long Israel trips that have become a fixture of foreign policy education for new members of Congress and their senior aides.

Though legally distinct, AIEF relies on Aipac infrastructure, including office space. In 2019 alone, the Intercept reported, the foundation sponsored 129 trips totalling $2.32m, bankrolled by a small number of Jewish philanthropic foundations including those of Paul Singer, a Republican mega-donor.

No members of Congress or their staffers responded to requests for comment on this reporting.

The AIEF, however, via spokesperson Deryn Sousa, replied in an email: “AIEF missions are designed to educate participants about the US-Israel relationship, the security concerns confronting our closest ally in the Middle East, and the geo-strategic challenges and opportunities in the region.”

Sousa added: “Participants visit historical and religious sites throughout the country and meet with Israeli officials and civilians from across the political spectrum who offer a diverse range of perspectives and opinions, offering well-rounded insights and full transparency into the complex culture, geography, politics and prospects for peace.”

‘Continuity more than change’

AIEF-funded congressional travel to Israel paused for several months following the 7 October attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, before resuming again in March 2024 when eight Democratic members and one staff member traveled on an itinerary that included a visit to military installations on the Lebanese border and an Israeli military cemetery.

Travel costs for members varied: as in other delegations, members were able to bring family members, and the attendance of Schneider’s wife meant that his travel costs came to over $44,200, according to the filings.

AIEF is not the only group sponsoring lawmakers’ travel to Israel, with liberal Zionist organization J Street funding trips mostly for Democrats, and other groups – such as the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and the Atlantic Council national security thinktank – funding trips for members of both parties. But AIEF stands out for its generosity in funding Israel travel. The pace of trips since 2024 has largely held steady, even amid a broadening consensus among human rights workers, international organizations and scholars that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide.

The documents show that an AIEF trip from 6-14 August 2025 brought at least 15 Democrats to Israel, including Wesley Bell (Missouri), George Latimer (New York), Eugene Vindman (Virginia) and Gil Cisneros (California). Earlier the same month, 20 GOP House members, including Randy Fine, the vociferous pro-Israel representative from Florida, enjoyed an AIEF-sponsored trip with a similar itinerary.

Bell and Latimer were both elected with the help of millions of dollars from Aipac’s Super Pac, deployed to defeat incumbents Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

Bell has defended Aipac’s role in US politics, including at a St Louis town hall in December, where he faced down protesters who demanded that Missouri politicians stop taking contributions from the organization. Latimer, meanwhile, has faced criticism from progressive groups and his former primary opponent Bowman in recent weeks over chummy public appearanceswith Mike Lawler, the pro-Israel New York Republican whose seat is in Democrats’ firing line in November.

Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mike Lawler, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Michael McCaul on 26 May 2025. Photograph: Michael McCaul’s 0ffice

The August 2025 trip’s opening keynote, titled Overcoming Obstacles to Peace, was scheduled to be delivered by Tal Becker, a former senior legal adviser to Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs. Becker is the lead legal counselrepresenting Israel at the international court of justice in the genocide casebrought by South Africa.

Members were also scheduled for a late-night visit to the City of David archeological site in occupied East Jerusalem, which is operated by the Elad Foundation, a settler organization that has acquired Palestinian properties in the adjacent neighbourhood of Silwan and uses biblical-period archaeology as a vehicle for Jewish settlement expansion in East Jerusalem.

They also visited a Rafael Advanced Defense Systems facility in Haifa for a session billed as “US-Israel Defense Cooperation” and had meetings with Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and US ambassador Mike Huckabee. They stayed at the luxurious King David hotel in Jerusalem and the upscale Magdala hotel in Galilee.

On the delegation’s third day in Israel, the country’s security cabinet approveda full military reoccupation of Gaza City. The trip ended eight days before the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system confirmed famine in Gaza for the first time.

AIEF declared per-traveller costs ranging from roughly $16,000 for single members to more than $37,000 for those travelling with a sponsored family member. The total declared value of the trip’s gifted travel to Democratic members alone reached about $400,000.

An earlier AIEF “senior congressional staff” trip, in February 2025, was slated to bring 13 senior House aides to Israel – five Democratic staffers and eight Republicans.

On that trip, the delegation met at the Knesset with Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionism party. Rothman is the legislative architect of Netanyahu’s 2023 judicial overhaul, the constitutional crisis sparking the nationwide protests that paralysed Israel in the months before 7 October.

On the trip’s final full day, the delegation received a briefing at Alfei Menashe in the occupied West Bank. Alfei Menashe is an illegal Israeli settlement east of the green line, around which Israel’s separation barrier was diverted to enclose the settlement and a number of Palestinian villages on the Israeli side.

AIEF hospitality continued into 2026, up to the eve of Israel and the US’s war on Iran.

An AIEF trip scheduled for February this year – which concluded less than a week before the initial attacks – included five Democratic staffers and seven Republicans.

On that trip, travelers heard from Ohad Tal, an MK with the Religious Zionist party, which is chaired by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister. Tal has publicly argued for the full annexation of the occupied territories, in alignment with Smotrich’s settlement-expansion and Palestinian-displacement programme.

AIEF paid just under $17,000 for each staffer, according to the filings; they stayed at four-and-a-half-star hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Tiberias.

Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, met with delegations from Republicans and Democrats from US Congress who came to Israel with Aipac on 11 August 2025. Photograph: President of Israel Office

An AIEF trip from 16-24 August 2025 brought staffers for House Democrats to Israel as Israeli forces were carrying out ground operations in Gaza City. The offices represented were those of John Larson (Connecticut), Kathy Castor (Florida), Luz Rivas (California), Cleo Fields (Louisiana), Yassamin Ansari (Arizona), former member Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (Florida) and the late David Scott (Georgia).

While Aipac and its big-spending allies were credited this month with tipping the balance against Republican Thomas Massie in Kentucky, recent Democratic primary results suggest that its influence is diminishing in the party, with many Democrats now seeking to distance themselves as the standing of Israel and its US advocates continues to erode.

“I think these recent trips represent continuity more than change,” said Walt, the international relations professor, in an email. However, he added: “Winning people over is getting harder to do given the situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the rightward shift within Israeli politics itself.”

High-Wire Negotiations With Iran? Trump Finds It ‘Very Boring.’

2026-06-02T09:42:19.989-04:00

High-Wire Negotiations With Iran? Trump Finds It ‘Very Boring.’

“President Trump, despite being deeply engaged in the Iran conflict for three months, now finds the negotiations “very boring” and claims indifference to their outcome. This is surprising given the potential political consequences, including rising gasoline prices and unpopularity with constituents. Trump’s recent actions, such as toughening requirements for a preliminary accord, suggest he is still invested in the negotiations.

President Trump told CNBC that he “couldn’t care less” if the negotiations with Iran break down.

Published June 1, 2026Updated June 2, 2026, 12:35 a.m. ET

President Trump at the White House in Washington in May.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

For three months, President Trump has been deeply engaged in the Iran conflict, planning the 38 days of attack, struggling to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and proclaiming “a whole civilization will die tonight,” then backing away to declare a cease-fire and a naval blockage of Iranian ports.

But on Monday, after days of haggling with Iranian officials through intermediaries on a preliminary agreement, Mr. Trump declared it was starting “to get very boring.”

“I don’t care if they’re over, honestly,” he told Eamon Javers of CNBC when asked about reports that the Iranians, angry at continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon and low-level conflict with the United States in the Persian Gulf, were threatening to stop negotiating. “I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less. If they’re over, they’re over.”

There are reasons to doubt that Mr. Trump is truly so unconcerned: Gasoline prices have soared since the war began, with a senior Exxon-Mobil official predicting recently that prices could go far higher, and Republicans are taking note of how deeply unpopular the war with Iran is with their constituents. In recent weeks he has professed indifference about a range of issues that carry deep political consequences for him, including the midterm elections and the financial situation that Americans are facing.

But even for Mr. Trump, who has veered from threatening the Iranians with annihilation to declaring that they had already agreed to American terms to fuming that they have not, it seemed strange that he thought the whole conflict was becoming a bore.

After all, just hours before he had written in a social media post that negotiations were “continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.” There were widespread reports that on Friday he toughened the requirements on a preliminary accord with Iran — one that would just set up another, deeper negotiation — because he was concerned about provisions for returning frozen funds to the Iranian government and over who would handle the recovery of Iran’s highly-enriched uranium.

These were details, but vitally important.

Back in March, Mr. Trump confidently predicted the conflict would be over in a few weeks, saying it was not possible to suffer from boredom while facing off against a longtime American adversary: “Somebody said today, they said, ‘oh, well, the president wants to do it really quickly. After that, he’ll get bored.’”

“There’s nothing boring about this,” he added.

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.“

Hospitals See Diseases Resurge as Vaccinations Decline

2026-06-02T09:31:35.858-04:00

Hospitals See Diseases Resurge as Vaccinations Decline

“Doctors nationwide are seeing a resurgence of serious, vaccine-preventable illnesses like whooping cough, bacterial infections, and rotavirus. This increase is attributed to declining vaccination rates, fueled by distrust during the Covid-19 pandemic and amplified by public figures. The situation is overwhelming for doctors, who are facing more cases of preventable illnesses and navigating increasing medical misinformation from patients.

Doctors nationwide are encountering more children with whooping cough, bacterial infections and other serious illnesses, as well as more adults refusing tetanus shots.

June 2, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET

Deanna Donegan/The New York Times; Photographs by Getty

Doctors around the country say they are seeing more cases of serious, sometimes life-threatening illnesses that vaccines have long kept at bay, including whooping cough and bacterial infections that can cause pneumonia or meningitis.

The concern among doctors comes on the heels of a resurgence of measles nationwide, fueled by distrust in vaccines that grew during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump have amplified. Public health experts have long seen measles as a harbinger: Because it is so exceptionally contagious, it can be the first disease to spike as vaccination rates broadly decline, and a sign of more to come.

For some of these diseases, national data show clear and substantial increases in recent years; for others, the increases are small, or there are anecdotal indications from doctors on the ground of increases that public statistics don’t currently confirm.

While most children recover, these diseases aren’t benign. Many children endure extended hospitalizations. Some infections can be fatal.

Dr. Meghan Hofto, a pediatric hospitalist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is one of the doctors who said she is seeing more illnesses that she used to encounter only rarely. This year, she and her colleagues have treated more children than usual with persistent diarrhea. A child with a run-of-the-mill stomach virus might need a day or so of IV fluids, but these patients were being hospitalized for three or four days.

The culprit: Rotavirus, which once caused tens of thousands of hospitalizations a year in the United States but was largely swept away by vaccines introduced 20 years ago. These vaccines were so effective that Dr. Hofto could recall treating only four or five children with rotavirus in the past decade. Now, she said she had treated about that many already this year, and none of them were vaccinated.

Dr. Jessica Kirk, a pediatric hospitalist in Fairhope, Ala., recently treated an unvaccinated toddler who was hospitalized with pneumonia from two simultaneous infections, Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Routine childhood vaccines can protect against both S. pneumoniae and a common form of H. influenzae, but vaccinations against both illnesses have declined in recent years.

The child that Dr. Kirk treated for both infections needed antibiotics and oxygen to get through the illness.

Some of these conditions can lead to serious complications. H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae infections can cause sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia. Dr. Hofto said she had treated 4- to 6-week-old infants with whooping cough, or pertussis, who seemed fine at times but then stopped breathing after a coughing fit. “It’s hard to know when they’re safe to go home,” she said.

Many children with whooping cough don’t have anti-vaccine parents, she said. They are just too young to have been vaccinated yet, and the disease has been circulating more in recent years as overall vaccination rates have declined. There were more than 28,000 cases reported last year, compared with around 7,000 in 2023.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement, “We reject the premise that providing Americans with transparent information about the benefits and risks of medical products undermines public health.”

Even when the worst doesn’t happen, emergency room doctors are having to subject some unvaccinated children with high fevers to more invasive testing, including spinal taps, to rule out life-threatening infections that vaccinated children are protected from. Infections like H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae can be hard to recognize because they can resemble less serious illnesses before rapidly leading to complications. And because near-universal vaccination prevented them for so long, many doctors have little experience diagnosing them.

The alternative to invasive testing, in some cases, is to start unvaccinated children on stronger antibiotics than doctors might otherwise use, which can have more side effects, said Dr. Robin Harrison and Dr. Taylor Rosenbaum, pediatric hospitalists in Miami.

Several doctors also said they had seen a growing number of adults refuse tetanus shots for themselves, and parents refuse them for their children, after injuries such as dog bites or lacerations from dirty objects. Roughly 1 in 10people infected with tetanus die; a full course of vaccination is very effective at preventing infection.

Dr. Sonali Meyer, an emergency medicine physician in Minnesota, said she had treated a patient last year who refused a tetanus shot after slicing his hand open.

“Big pharma doesn’t need my money,” she recalled the patient telling her. She said another patient refused a tetanus shot by saying, “I know you get paid more the more shots you give, but no thanks.”

With each passing year, doctors said, the hesitation around vaccines seems to expand to new frontiers.

Two anesthesiologists said that, starting around 2022 or 2023, they had occasionally seen patients who refused to consent to blood transfusions before surgery because they didn’t want blood from vaccinated donors. And a growing number of parents are refusing to allow their newborns to receive vitamin K injections, which help prevent bleeding. Until recently, neonatologists said, these shots were accepted even by many families that rejected vaccines.

Five doctors said they had seen brain or abdominal hemorrhages in infants whose parents had turned down vitamin K, including one who died and another who was partly paralyzed.

The onslaught of preventable illness and other health risks can feel overwhelming, doctors said. So can navigating the medical misinformationsome patients recite.

“It just feels like you’re a tiny little boat with a giant tidal wave coming at you,” said Dr. Erin Charles, a regional pediatric hospitalist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “And you might convince one family here and there.”

Many parents continue to refuse vaccines even after their child has been hospitalized with a vaccine-preventable illness, doctors said. Dr. Kirk said she had never had a parent in that situation tell her they had changed their mind and would have their child vaccinated on the standard schedule. Dr. Hofto said she could sometimes persuade families, but often not.

Some “may view the illness as an isolated experience, especially if their child ultimately recovers,” Dr. Hofto said.

Doctors said they feared that, as vaccination rates decline more, illnesses now popping up sporadically would become more common.

Dr. Rosenbaum said she had been telling the medical residents training under her that they might have to learn together how to treat illnesses she’d never encountered during her own training because of vaccines.

For many such illnesses, “it’s going to be probably a low uptick,” she said. “Until it’s very fast.”

Share your experience for future coverage

Maggie Astor covers women’s health and the health effects of government policies for The Times.

Dani Blum is a health reporter for The Times.“