A.I. RICHES PRESSURE BUILDS TO SHARE WEALTH

PAGE 7 | BUSINESS

BORDER PATROL BULLDOZING A NATIONAL PARK

PAGE 6 | WORLD

'HE'S A SOX FAN!' POPE LEO WAS GODSEND FOR FAILING CHICAGO TEAM

PAGE 12 | SPORTS

The New York Times

INTERNATIONAL EDITION | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2020

How settlers

in Israel are out of control

Nicholas Kristof

OPINION

SENIOR, WEST BANK Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister Israel has had, as well as its most disastrous for Jews and Palestinians alike.

Gaza has failed somewhat from global consciousness for remains in desperate shape with no clear path forward, while the West Bank endures Israeli attacks by settlers that create a watering chaotic between Israel and the rest of the world. All this is Netanyahu's legacy.

Finally, polls suggest a chance that his malignant reign may come to an end with October's election in Israel.

The question hanging over the region is whether, if he is named, what follows will be better. The answer I hear from experts is: Yes, maybe to a

If Netanyahu is named in October's building, don't want to move to break out, but the worst violence might be raised in.

degree. Don't expect a Palestinian source a misinformation, but the worst an crown and brutality might be raised in.

Gail Eiseniker, a former army chief, meets the most likely to lead Israel if Netanyahu proves politically mortal, and Eiseniker is by no

means a deve. He is well known for helping to formulate the Faditya decision. Recipient to attacks with overwhelming, disproportionate destruction to create deterrence. It is named after the Meria' subject where Israel applied it two decades ago, and it's sometimes seen as a hurricaner of Netanyahu's demolition of Gaza.

But Eiseniker also withdrew from Netanyahu's war cabinet because of disagreements over the direction of the Gaza war (in which he lost a son, which has made him a particularly sympathetic figure in Israeli politics). His comments suggest that he would try to move Israel in a more moderate direction and control the violence on their in the West Bank who have been committing terror attacks against Palestinians.

"Eisneker would make a substantial difference to terms of calming the waters on the one hand and cracking down on lawlessness," said Daniel Ruttner, a former American ambassador to Israel who now teaches at Princeton.

EDITOR, PAGE 6

The New York Times publishes opinion from a wide range of perspectives in hopes of presenting constructive debate about unopportable questions.

Treating a woman for heat-related illness last month at a hospital in Liège, Belgium. Many hospitals were overrun by the surge in cases during the recent seasonally hot weather.

Deadly heat in 'chilly' Belgium

BRUSSELS

Scorching weather stresses country that was built for a cold and damp climate

BY JEANNA SMALLER AND KORA BYCKFINGER

Seniors died in stifling apartments. Emergency calls were left on hold. Doctors treated an endangth of people sick from heat, sometimes in words without air-conditioning.

These are means that played out in Belgium, one of the world's wealthiest nations, on a recent summer weekend. They are also a warning to Europe.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, yet large parts remain ill prepared. As heat waves search its nations this summer, they are killing thousands in countries with strong health systems. In just one week in late June, there were around 10,000 excess deaths, or more people who died than usual, in Europe, Belgium, France and Germany were the worst affected, based on data collected by the European Mortality Monitoring Network.

Belgium, known for cold and damp, not wearing heat, had the highest excess

Tourists exploring the Grand Place of Brussels last month. Experts have warned that climate change means hot summers are probably here to stay for northern Europe.

deaths in Europe, making it a case study into what went wrong. In Wallonia, the region that makes up the country's vaults, the death rate was 77 percent higher than what would be expected between mid-June and early July.

Some hospitals were overrun, with gurnays and patients lining the hallways and medical staff working without

breaks in the unrelenting heat.

"Each crisis is becoming increasingly severe," said Terzi Cappararo, the health minister in Wallonia. "That's what we're failing to anticipate."

Climate change means that the issue is probably here to stay. Across Europe, "we think the summers are hot now," said Jean Ballester Claremont, a re-

search professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health who focuses on climate change and health. "The future has we're seeing, it could be much worse."

Belgium is a stark example of why heat waves can become deadly in countries more accustomed to cool weather. Emergency systems in some cases backled under the pressure, and structural challenges left the most vulnerable to suffer.

The federal health ministry defended elements of the response and noted that hospital capacity had been scaled up during the crisis, but it acknowledged that some change was needed.

"I believe we must indeed learn lessons quickly," Frank Vandenbroucke, the Belgian minister of social affairs and public health, told lawmakers early last month.

During the late June wave, MontLégis hospital, in the Belgian city of Liège, CLIMATE, PAGE 2.

HUNDREDS DIE MINIGALLY ON THE 20th

Since U.S. states explicitly prevent local governments from establishing heat promotions for workers, PAGE 8

EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS HEAFT

Searing temperatures and wildfires are transforming tourism in countries across the continent, PAGE 6

Asian allies

doubt U.S. would come to their aid

NEWS ANALYSIS

EL NOD, PHILIPPINES

Concern about China groves as Trump focuses on Iran and uses up weapons

BY EDWARD WONG

It was the worst clash in years between China and the Philippines at a long-stemming flashpoint in the South China Sea.

For decades, the Philippines has claimed a small cost in disputed waters and signaled its control of the territory by roasting troops to a World War II was ship grounded there. An international tribunal ruling a decade ago supports the Philippines' claim.

But last month, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel began circling the ship, which is named the Sierra Madre. It was the latest in a long series of encounters between the two governments at the site, which is called the Second Thomas Shoal.

At one point, the Chinese Coast Guard used small boats to move in an Filipino service members and kept one of the men with a wooden horse, reflecting head injuries, according to Philippine and U.S. officials. China blamed the Philippines for preventing the raids.

The American ambassador expressed outrage and declared that the United States stood with the Philippines, the oldest U.S. treaty ally in Southeast Asia.

Yet no one expects China to curb its expansionist activities in the region anytime soon. And there are growing deaths among Asian nations over what the U.S. resistance would be willing to do to deter China, given the enormous destruction and resource drain of the U.S. Israeli war against Iran.

The United States is running low on critical weapons, including air defense interceptors, Iran's missile and dense attacks have forced U.S. troops to learn bases in the Middle East and destroyed the sites, an indication of what the Chinese military – which is much more powerful than Iran's – could do in a conflict in Asia.

In early July, China needed not a race test firing of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile that carried a dummy warhead, sending it into the Pacific Ocean from a nuclear-powered submarine. It is one of the most powerful elements in its arsenal.

With a Vancouver in might, President Trump's State Department is closing consisters in Japan and Indonesia, according to congressional officials briefed on the decision.

Mr. Trump's second term "has been a colonial failure for U.S. interests in the Asia region." Representative Gregory W. Monks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. ADA, PAGE 6

Once-outlawed art form now alive and in the flesh

You now with facial tattoos engaging in a traditional Maori greeting. In 1907, New Zealand's British colonial rulers banned Indigenous art forms, including ritual body art.

Maori youth carry on tradition of ritual facial tattoos in New Zealand

BY FRANCHECA REGALADO AND TATISANA CITY/NAYOTA

Mark Rapaa pressed his face close as he drew on his nephew's arm with a full-tip marker. From memory, he sketched his teeth and motifs that had been in their family for generations. Finally satisfied, he pulled on rubber gloves and a needle got housed to life.

This was no regular tattoo. This was to make, the ritual body art practiced for centuries by the Maori, the Indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand. Half a chance of Mr. Rapaa's tradition observed for ritual in February, appearing into his small studio in Gideene, on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island.

Mr. Rapaa, 64, and his nephew, Desmond Henness, 38, grew up in a Maori community that hailhed all his homage to make, or ritual tattoo artists.

The craft had been traditionally handed down from parent to child, but in 1907, New Zealand's British colonial rulers banned to make and other Indigenous art forms. Maori people began baling their tattoos and stopped teaching younger generations.

More than a century later, the facial tattoos known as make hands are being seen again, on television, on the streets and in the halls of New Zealand's Parliament.

Maori items and young adults have taken to documenting their to make covenants on social media. Some have persuaded their elders to be tattooed, helping the art form make a cultural comeback after decades of stigma.

"I've been involved with this for well over 10 years now, but our culture is still relearning because they've been structured and overwhelmed by Western culture," Mr. Rapaa said.

Mr. Rapaa and a small group of other artisans began tattooing faces after a Maori nationalist movement gained ground in the 1970s.

NEW ZEALAND, PAGE 3

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2 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

PAGE TWO

Deadly heat waves hit 'chilly' Belgium

CLIMATE, FROM PAGE 1

experienced a rush of patients so tortured that in the emergency room healthier people were temporarily lined up in bothways so that those past the day were moving could have privacy while they died.

Dr. Arnaud Deroue, who was working that weekend, said his team was confused with overhauling cases that they were not mostly in bothleaks. "In our countries, at our latitudes, these cases are relatively rare," he said.

"VERY CRUSHING"

Belgium is not accustomed to taking heat to seriously.

At the start of the June heat wave, Theo Flanders, the defense initiative passed an image on Instagram of himself smiling in the sun with the caption, "It's warm for two days and we're all going to die again apparently." He criticized her prior.

"Enjoy the beautiful weather," he added, "and I A'!!!"

The weather quickly turned into a matter of life or death.

Independents shot up between mid-June and early July, surpassing 100 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) in parts of Wallonia. The fact that it was early in the summer, before people had a chance to incitment, worsened the danger, experts said.

In the last weekend of June, the Belgian emergency call has was severely overwhelmed, according to medical groups whose representatives signed an open letter protesting the meltdown. In seven cases, they said, it took 10 minutes past a day through to an operator. (Reverend Quistis, the Belgian interior minister, told lawmakers that average walls were much shorter and noted that extra staff members were brought in.)

"If you have to wait for 10 minutes if you have a stroke or heart attack, it's quite a big problem," said Dr. Pierre-Louis Doudin, a general practitioner in their Brunei's region who signed the letter.

Emergency rooms were also overrun in parts of Wallonia. During the peak of the heat wave, the number of emergency vehicles arriving at Grand Rapids in Charleroi, about an hour's drive went off (signs rose to as many as 100 per day, up from an average of 40, said Dr. Laurent Peyr最终, deputy head of the emergency department.

"It was very crushing," Dr. Peyr最终 said.

"Half at all emergency rooms in Wallonia have no air-conditioning, said Dr. Philippe Devos, director general at Uranus, a federation of Belgian health care providers in Brunei's and Wallonia.

For Belgium, June 27 appears to have been the second-deadfoot day of the 21st century after a day early in the coronavirus crisis. In Wallonia, June 28 was deadlier than the depths of the pandemic in 2020.

"We should definitely be afraid of a repeat," said Lab. Gilbert, a climate-health expert at CERCU, an independent Belgian research center that studies climate risk. "The question is: Are we talking about a repeat this summer?"

PRE-EDUING CONDITIONS

In Belgium, as elsewhere, extreme heat fall, the vulnerable the hardest.

The region of Wallonia had more than twice as much excess mortality as the northern region of Flanders.

Part of the problem, experts said, is that people in Wallonia have lower incomes on average. Poor people are more likely to have pre-existing health medi-

tions, and they often lack access to well-ventilated housing.

About 40 percent of the more than 500 excess deaths in Wallonia between mid-June and July's wave of people that add or, according to figures from Kukmanen, the Belgian health data institute. Low-income seniors who lived alone were particularly at risk, health care professionals said, as their homes or attic apartments became having death traps.

"You have people who are isolated, old," Dr. Devos said. "We saw in the emergency rooms: When people came to the E.R., it was impossible to save them."

Wallonia's housing was part of the challenge. Many residential buildings are open and were constructed to hold in heat, not to keep it out.

"It's a country that is considered cold, culturally," said Gilles Vanvelkens, managing director of the Belgian Green Building Council. "People think more about heating their house than cooling their homes."

Not did behaviors adjust. Belgium, including those with medical conditions and their caregivers, at times appeared unaware of how to handle the heat.

Dr. Doudin in Brunei's stand, he in shame, but people on anti-depressants and other mental health drugs often are not made aware that they are at higher risk, and so they continued to go to work as normal.

Dr. Tans Coynsens, a general practitioner in Flanders, echoed that concern, noting that blood pressure medications also increase the danger.

During the wave of the heat wave, he was alarmed to see residents of a care institution where he works still taking excursions. "The correlation and the patient's ability take the heat wave that seriously," he said.

COLD COUNTRY NO MORE

To limit heat risk, countries like Belgium will need to shake their cold-country mortality, experts said.

Dr. Coynsens said patients were often hesitant to install air-conditioning, worried that it would make them sick, spread germs, and harm the environment.

Belgium do not "want to be Americans," with the rather temperature set to 60 degrees, he said, but he saw a middle ground in which vulnerable people would have access.

"The mortality on air-conditioning has to change," he said.

Others disagree. Even some Belgian officials are wary of relying too much on climate control, concerned that adding a could overwhelm the power grid and leave cities even better by pumping too air into the streets.

"Air-conditioning can be appropriate in specific situations, particularly for vulnerable people or certain buildings," said Simon Isovic, a spokesman for Wallonia's housing and energy minister. "However, our long-term strategy is not based on its widespread deployment."

Since June, Belgian experts have issued recommendations for more cooling spaces and resources for the vulnerable. Federal authorities are working toward handling emergency calls differently, doctors said. The housing authorities in Wallonia are instituting policies to encourage reinsurance.

Yet medical workers and public health experts fear that the kind of changes that are needed — like housing and infrastructure improvements — will take more than than Belgium has. At Mont-Legis, doctors remain concerned that officials will need dedicated youngsters, sources to the ongoing threat of heat.

Last last month, as emergency doctors recalled losing patients to June, another arrived.

A 71-year-old woman was wheeled in with heat stroke, her fruit there leaving her temperature near the point of organ failure. Doctors cut off her blames and covered her in ice packs.

They are leaving for more. A supply closer to the emergency room floor is stocked with fans. Nearby, a refrigerator is filled with cooling TV strips.

"An emergency room is uncanny, we can come to terms with fatality, but it's not the same when you know it's due to a systemic failure," said Dr. Michèle Verna, who runs the Mont-Legis emergency unit. "But, she added, is 'much harder to bear.'

Finding shade in Brunei's Park during a heat wave last month. To limit heat risk, countries like Belgium will need to shake their cold-country mortality, experts said.

Once-outlawed art form resurges

NEW ZEALAND, FROM PAGE 1

"Make was asleep at the time. We decided we want to wake this thing back up again," he said.

A make kanofo is the work of a lifetime. A person's history can be gleaned from the tattoos on their face, signifying their ancestry and marking their coming of age, the birth of a child at the death of a relative.

Women are marked on their lips and chin with make kaane. Men receive mutants, which starts on the chin and grows outward in stark personal substances. Family trees can be traced through recurring patterns on different faces.

"It's a thundering of your genealogy," said Barbara Smith, 22, a woodcarver who is an adviser on Maori relations to the Marlborough District Council in the South Island town of Blenheim.

The removal a mutants in 2023 to honor his great-grandmother after her death. It took beer and a half hours to tatow. Mr. Smith's chin, now and cheeks as family members I watched.

In some in which women, relatives sing blooming and hold the person's hands and arms as they undergo the ritual.

While today's ta make artists use modern tattoo machines, traditionally the talisang would use blades carved from shark teeth or the wing boxes of an allupress, Mr. Kupsa said.

Without forebears to touch them, Mr. Kupsa — a tobacco whaleam, or a starter woodcarver — learned ta make from the patterns he used in carving and weaving. They studied make kanofo patterns on decapitated heads that were under the care of New Zealand's national museum.

Maori warners believed that decapitation covered their member connection to the gods. In the 19th century, British settlers achieved the hands as contested and trophies and offered guns and gold in exchange — prompting some Maori people to hunt down those who were mutants and make kaane.

"That was one thing that stopped our ancestors from wanting to get their faces tattooed," Mr. Kupsa said.

Maori who converted to Christianity at the time were also discouraged from getting tattoos.

"The ultimate blow, however, came with the Talisang Suppression Act in 2007, which outlawed Maori experts, including parents, teachers, teachers, school carvers and tattoo artists. The legislation, aimed at prohibiting practice that the authorities deemed exploitative, suffocated Maori culture for decades.

"Now you've got politicians, judges, all kinds of people with make. It's beautiful that it's out there."

"New Zealand's Parliament repealed the law in 1962. But for years afterward, make kanofo was soon as the sign of a criminal or a gang member, Mr. Smith said.

"Some of the art forms are illegal anymore, but we have to undo the damage," he said.

Since 16, one of the leaders of the 1970s Maori person announced, has made that spirit across his face, from his forehead, past his neck and over his ears. The 70-year-old recalls growing up at a time when kanofo and other public venues barred anyone with facial markings. He ran for Parliament four times, none of them successful, but became a national figure.

Mr. It's fact attempt to enter Parliament was in 2016. Two years later, Nanaia Mahata became the first woman to wear make kaane in the House of Representatives, the sole chamber of New Zealand's Parliament. She served as foreign minister under Prime Minister Jachada Jodero.

"Now you've got politicians, judges, all kinds of people with make. It's beautiful that it's out there," Mr. Ni said.

Young Maori have been quicker to embrace ta make than their others, said Ed Haramela, 24, a to make artist, a New Zealand government survey in 2018, the most recently available, based that more than a quarter of Maori people ages 25 to 45 had traditional tattoos, the most of any age group, compared with 6 percent of those 55 and older.

"Our older people were the ones who initially opposed receiving make because they had been oppressed for so many years," Mr. Haramela said, adding: "They were brought up thinking that Maori culture wasn't going to get to any where in today's civilization."

After the birth of her fourth child, Hairangri Lee, 34, decided to become the first person in her family to show generations to receive make. Though she considered how the sample could might perceive her differently, "I knew wholeheartedly in my soul that this is who I was, and this is what I wanted to do," she said. "The spaces, jobs, carvers, anything like that — they would come naturally."

Children can start receiving make kanofo from age 10, Mr. Smith said. Younger children, like his 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son, wear temporary tattoos to copy their parents. Mr. Smith said he had started to learn ta make with the goal of giving his children tattoos intended.

Mr. Kupsa said he had been training students to pass ta make down to future generations.

"That's how we maintain it," he said. "Not just to wake the art up, but to keep it awake."

MARK KOPLA, 8A, is a renowned talisang ta make, or Maori ritual tattoo artist, in New Zealand.

KORANIA LAW, 3A, of Blandalana, proudly displays her make kaane, or traditional women's face tattoos.

NANAIA KOTI, 2A, wears a make kaane affirming her strength and her connection to her ancestors.

KORANIA SMITH, a traditional stone carver, received his face tattoo in 2020 to honor his great-grandmother.

DJ HARAMELA bears a full mutants that reflects his 'fishes density and the revival of traditional tattoos.

DICK HINLAN belongs to a Maori club with the highest proportion of national family members.

Mr. Kupsa tattooing his nephew's arm as relatives look as. "Our culture is still relearning," Mr. Kupsa said of the art form.

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MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026 | 3

World

The Taliban want Americans back

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

Afghan official makes pitch for U.S. investment and an end to diplomatic isolation

BY ELIAS PELTIER

Five years after driving the United States out of Afghanistan, the Taliban are invitingly to come back — with diplomats and cash, but no military.

“We consider the chapter of war to have come to an end, and then now we, we want isolation based on mutual respect and a new chapter of positive engagement,” Afghanistan's foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said, in an interview with The New York Times in Rahul.

Mr. Muttaqi said the United States could “respect its embassy, maintain a diplomatic presence and invest” in Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, these and reads — projects that force U.S. administration and their allies spent billions trying to develop, and that the Taliban need pretty spent two decades trying to dismantle.

The public overturn, the love by such a high-ranking Taliban official in years, is the Afghan government's latest push in a long effort to restore the country from isolation, with mixed results.

Over the past year, the Taliban administration has signed a defense partnership with Russia and secured dozens of trade agreements with Central Asian neighbors like Uzbekistan. Some of its officials regularly travel to Gulf countries and have met with British president, Ahmed al-Sharan. It is also cooperating with European countries eager to depart Afghan migrants.

The government would see renewed engagement with the leading administration, with its appetite for commercial diplomacy and little consideration for human rights, as the crowning achievement of its diplomatic efforts, according to five local units, and Afghan national familiar with Kabul's approach.

The Taliban argue that they have brought relief and security across Afghanistan, cleared its administration of corruption and created favorable conditions for foreign government.

But efforts to engage with the United States have waned.

“There is no appetite in D.C.,” said Hassan Abbas, a U.S.-based scholar and the author of a recent book on the Taliban in power. “No one wants to teach this logic. Everyone wants to target about Afghanistan.”

In fact, the Trump administration has further disheartened from the Taliban over the past year.

It has moved down to one of Afghanistan's neighbors, Pakistan, which launched dozens of activities on Afghanistan earlier this year. It is celebrated in a conflict with another neighbor, Iran, one of the Taliban's few steady partners. It has also designated the Taliban as a state sponsor of strength表明 the Taliban's daring view for the phase and barred them from traveling to the United States.

The Taliban is the most cobalted President Trump on the few things he has publicly asked for, including requiring control of Bagaran Air Base, which U.S.

forces occupied for 20 years, the return of U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan, and the release of a U.S. prisoner whom the Taliban deny holding.

“No Afghan wants or can tolerate the military presence of another country on Afghan soil, as history has demonstrated,” Mr. Muttaqi said at the foreign ministry last week, sitting in a place to chair with the white flag of the Taliban behind him.

In a written response to questions, the U.S. State Department rejected the prospect of normalization. The response, attributed to “a department

spokesperson,” said the Taliban had failed to make Afghanistan more stable and upheld counterterrorism commitments, instead allowing terrorist groups to see Afghanistan to launch attacks.

It said the United States engages with the Taliban “only when it is in the interest of the American people”.

A veteran member of the Taliban and a central figure in past negotiations between the United States and the group before it swept back to power, Mr. Muttaqi said his administration wanted to reopen diplomatic missions in the United States.

Afghanistan's foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, above, said the United States could reopen its embassy in Kabul, left. However, establishing a U.S. presence in Kabul “remains a hard sell in Washington,” said Robin Rupfel, a former U.S. diplomat.

Mr. Muttaqi, 53, also confirmed that Afghanistan was negotiating migration agreements with European countries.

“We have made progress in this area, and we hope to make significant further progress in the future,” Mr. Muttaqi said, without elaborating.

In recent months, the Afghan government held several bilateral meetings on migration with countries like Germany and France. A delegation of five Afghan diplomats also met more than 28 diplomats from 21 E.U. countries in Brussels! It is due to discuss repatriating regions, explain seekers and convicted criminals, according to three participants and an official briefed on the discussions.

One of the participants, an Afghan diplomat, said that in Europe, the value of taking to the Taliban had been broken and that Afghanistan would now engage in bilateral discussions with all interested countries in finalist agreements.

Still, no European country recognizes the Taliban administration as Afghanistan's legitimate authority, and the government remains a partial resolution of international leaders from the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.

The Taliban's ultrasonometer leader, Sheikh Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif761, Haif

for crimes against humanity over the government of Afghan women and girls. And the United States has frozen billions of dollars from the Afghan Central Bank.

And yet, a growing chorus of analyzed and former diplomats in the United States is calling for renewed U.S.-Afghan dialogue beyond counterterrorism cooperation against the Islamic State and prisoner negotiations.

“No Afghan wants or can tolerate the military presence of another country on Afghan soil, as history has demonstrated.”

Mr. Trump has the opportunity to do what President Joseph R. Baker Jr. could not, said Robin Rupfel, a former U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moving past the current paralysis, Mr. Rupfel said, could create new access to minerals, strengthen relations with Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors, and counter China and Russia, which do make uniforms diplomats in the country.

“But that requires hands-on engagement through a U.S. presence in Kabul, which remains a hard sell in Washington,” Mr. Rupfel said.

In an initial exchange with The Times earlier this year, Mr. Muttaqi highlighted Afghanistan's mines as a potential starting point for a “new chapter for the two countries.”

“I view President Trump's deal-making ability, pragmatic approach and decisiveness as factors that can facilitate constructive engagement with his administration,” Mr. Muttaqi said.

Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the ICC-based Galantex Council, said minerals were the right pitch to make to the Trump administration. Afghanistan holds vast untagged reserves of illinois, copper and iron ore, as well as rain earth elements that are on the U.S. Geological Survey's list of critical minerals.

“Unbarrassed consideration like brutality and the Taliban's horrific treatment of women and girls would not necessarily keep this administration from engaging with the Taliban, particularly if that could help advance U.S. economic interests,” Mr. Kugelman said.

“Economists around Afghanistan's mineral wealth are not yet.”

The United States spent nearly $1 billion between 2016 and 2021 to develop Afghanistan's attractive industry has failed to accomplish any “tangible progress,” according to a 2021 report from SIGAR, the defunct U.S. government oversight agency for Afghanistan. The Taliban administration now holding investment deals with companies from China, Iran and Spain, among others.

Beyond the United States, Mr. Muttaqi called in any country to invest in Afghanistan, where the Taliban administration is in desperate need of foreign capital.

Half of its estimated 43 million people require humanitarian assistance (included following U.S. aid cuts last year, according to the United States, closed four million Afghans’ New Yorkers from neighboring Pakistan and Iran since early 2025, to one of the largest episodes of reverse migration in decades).

Pakistani, which used to be Afghanistan's primary trade partner, has closed its border over security concerns, sending the Taliban scrambling for alternative revenues of trade with Central Asian states, Iran and India.

During the interview, Mr. Muttaqi levelled aside a question about whether the government is installable and women and girls was a barrier to international recognition. Rather this year, he declared the government's move to keep them out of secondary education non-“temporary” — an argument the Taliban also used during their first rule, between 2006 and 2015, when Mr. Muttaqi served as education minister, and immediately after their return to power in 2021.

Mr. Abbas, the academic, said he expected the Taliban to remain isolated as long as they refused to move on their most extreme policies — which are largely dictated out of the city of Kandalur, the group's spiritual heartland and home to Sheikh Haif761.

“Without compromising, without changing anything that they stand for, it is a no-nature” Mr. Abbas said. “Sometime, has to happen, and the Taliban are not driving this!”

Touend Albany and Safiullah Pashban contributed reporting.

Leader of British right wing uses familiar playbook

NEWE ANALYSIS

Farage meets accusers with tactics honed by Trump and many others

BY MICHAEL D. HITCH

Nigel Farage, Britain's leading right-wing politician, faced a dilemma last month.

What do you do when the inquiries and accusations are piling up? The police are looking into one of your donors. You are being investigated for potentially breaking Parliament's rules because you didn't respect a gift of a million pounds. The next matter is the publishing new allegations almost daily.

For Mr. Farage, the leader of the Reform U.K. party, the answer appears to have been due. About your critics, once a million, have been given the most power to overcome by labeling them illegitimate before they conclude, and were pre-engaged in a situation where the people's your most loyal supporters...

He was borrowing a page from a playbook based over the years by other unheated populists like President Trump, and the result, the former Prime Minister, Pres. and Prime Minister Benjamin Neuneyda of Israel. Mr. Farage resigned his parliamentary seat and immediately ran for it again in the resulting special

On Friday, he declared himself unequivocally vindicated by his victory in the overthrow of the United States.

“I wanted the people of Charns, the voters of this constituency, to be my judge,” he said in an early-morning recent speech while voters were still being

counted. “Not the mainstream media in Britain and the political establishment who paint us out to be criticised by the people every day. I asked the voters of Charns to be my jury, and the verdict has now come in.”

The result was hardly surprising. Mr. Farage won in a sub Reform U.K. case, collecting 63 percent of the vote in an election that all the other major parties, borrowed and called for a 10% share of the vote, and sent the majority candidate called for a 10% share of the vote.

The question was to whether the gambit will work, or whether British voters outside of his party's core laws will continue to pay attention to the questions swirling around Mr. Farage about donations and supporters gifts. In the world since revolutions about his undecided benefits were first published in The Guardian and The Sunday Times in London, his personal poll ratings have fallen, and Reform's position in national polls has slipped.

Within hours of the speech on Friday, the office of the parliamentary senator, an anti-communist returned to investigation into Mr. Farage's failure to declare the U. S. military gift (about $12 million) from a British crypto-lithuanian honed in Thailand. (Mr. Farage has said he didn't need to register it because it was a personal gift given before he was a member of Parliament.)

No Mr. Farage has provided the a resilient political service who sources fully tapped into public anger about successive British governments. His decades-long campaign to limit immigration remains one of the most important issues in the country, and Reform is still polling within the margin of error of the governing Labour Party and above the Conservatives.

Election workers, above left, counting ballots after voting on Thursday that returned Nigel Farage, above right, to Parliament.

And he is not wrong to notice that the go-on-the-officest political attempt has worked well for several of the government—the world who, like him, have do what any wrongdoing.

Take Mr. Trump. After leaving office in 2015, he faced a battery of criminal charges and civil lawsuits for accusations including falsifying business records, illegally retaining documents containing national security, and trying to reverse the results of the 2020 election and sexual abuse and defamation.

Mr. Trump called about the “witch riots” being conducted by the “waste balance” and accused the news media of being the “enemy of the people.” He said judges, prosecutors, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, intifi-

gence officers and election officials were exempted as incompetent — or both.

But most of all, he entered the office of it would matter to the American voters.

“Our victory will be our ultimate vindication, your liberty will be our ultimate reward and the opportunities success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge,” Mr. Trump said on the campaign last in 2024.

November 2024, when more than 77 million people chose to return Mr. Trump to office, most of the criminal and civil charges against him had called been dismissed or been nullified by the Supreme Court.

Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics, said

Mr. Farage and his allies are betting that he can convince the British public to see the Reform leader in the same way that many Americans see the president — as a victim of unfair persecution.

“That is pretty similar to Donald Trump, it seems to me,” Mr. Travers said. “That people are prepared to overlook all the cryptocurrency stuff and the self-watchment of the 'gang up, because somehow he's different, he's an unethical.”

When the five-year ban on running the office was lifted by an appeals court last month, the criminally declared: “This evening, I am a candidate in the presidential election.” Like Mr. Trump, she is betting that voters in a national election will look just her legal roadles. “At Friday, the last thankful, a passage of Ms. Le Pen and the president of their National Rally Party congratulated Mr. Farage on his victory, and before social media, “Nigel Farage had the strength and function of several himself overregards the judgment of the voters, the sole masters in a democracy.”

Mr. Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, has used similar political tactics to try to undermine bribery and corruption charges that were leveled against him years ago.

He was called on 2024 on charges of giving or offering lucrative favors to several media groups in exchange for favorable results. He was a gift worth handouts of thousands of dollars. He appeared on the other side of the counter-pleasure, telling the corruption investigations a “witch hunt,” as well as “spite” and “an absurdity.”

But in 2022 he was re-elected as prime minister. In what he characterized as a total rejection of the charges against him.

“He have won a huge vote of confidence from the people of Israel,” he said. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Farage's attempt is appeal to “the people” over the outcome of the investigation will not succeed in him.

His by-election victory on Thursday was in a step, Reform-Sheally career of the country, hardly a candidate who smokes on his actions. And, as a general election does not start to be held until 2028, it may be some time before we find out.

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4 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

WORLD

Officials pass on protecting Palestinians

NEWS ANALYSIS

JUNIORLY

Israel minister says job of quelling violence should fall to police, not military

BY DAVID M. BALZEYOUZER AND ADAM BASSON

The Israeli army's faltering attempts last week to rescue two Palestinian families who have been besieged in their West Bank homes by violent Jewish settlers proposed a striking statement on Friday morning from Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz.

He said he wanted to get the Israeli military out of the business of protecting Palestinians to the occupied West Bank from campaigning settlers and would try to shift the responsibility to the Israeli police.

As a practical matter, only the Israel Defense Forces have the thousands of personnel needed to patrol and respond quickly to attacks in the scenes of communities plagued by settler violence this year. Moreover, experts say that giving responsibility to the Israeli police would essentially put the list in charge of the business, because the police are overcome by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Grid, an extremist settler himself.

For Mr Katz, an ambitious member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing island party who hopes to succeed him as its leader, the recommendation was a political move to Back responsibility, analysis said.

Rather, for example, than letting the army use administrative identities to lack up settlers who break the law, a crucial and previously used by the government, Mr Katz is saying he predicts that soldiers avoid getting between settlers and Palestinians in their moments of "fistious," an some Israelis euphemistically old-rock attacks.

"It is not the U.S.P.s role, and it is unable, to address the enforcement of civil matters" in the West Bank in light of the "welcome increase" in the number of Israeli settlers there. Mr Katz said.

For the menying power, the Israeli military alone bears responsibility under international law for protecting Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and has held authority for law and order since Israel captured the territory in the 1967 war.

The police have a division in the West Bank, given the hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians living there in settlements widely considered illegal under international law. But handing the police responsibility for protecting Palestinian civilians could be seen as another step toward crossing annexation of the territory, a goal shared by many in Mr. Netanyahu's government.

On Friday, settlers who had trapped two Palestinian families in their homes in the village of Quora all week set up a tent there, before soldiers took it down, according to the local beliefs, Abdul Azim al-Wadi, and an Israeli military statement. Settlers, however, remained in the vicinity as of early evening, while settlers stood nearby. Mr. al-Wadi said, "If the Israeli authorities want stability, they need to arrest the settlers," he said. "That's the only solution."

Civilly, the Israel authorities want stability, they need to arrest the settlers," he said. "That's the only solution."

Above, Israeli soldiers standing in front of the homes of two Palestinian families besieged by Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Quora on Friday. Soldiers removed a tent, right, that had been set up by the settlers outside the entrance.

area of the closed military zone."

For years, Israeli leaders including Mr. Netanyahu have shown general public violence as the work of a "handful of kids," or of a live drama or a live hundred wayward youth, often saying that many came from broken homes, suggesting they should be pitted, rather than prosecuted. The effort to minimize the violence has continued even as the number of Palestinians killed by settlers has climbed since January, passed with beatings and the territory of hundreds of houses, car and stonegars.

But now, with an army that has declined vastly more powerful commanding to achieve the task of making it possible for two Palestinian families to live safely in their own homes, members of Mr. Netanyahu's government are making clear on which side of the inner they stand.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Ben-Grid, the minister overseeing the police, insisted that the settlers' steps in Quora was the military's responsibility.

In a radio interview on Thursday, he said he wasn't familiar with the details of the Quora situation but hastened to take the side of settlers encroaching on Palestinian communities. "There are some zoning facts who truly need to be arrested and addressed. You not saying all of them are oppressed," he allowed. "But most of these guys, who settle the

land of Israel, who build outports — I admire them."

Mr. Ben-Grid, who leads the superstars the Otonu Tehadir, or Jewish Power, party, also argued that the real violence was not being committed by settlers. "I know what's happening here in Judea and Samaria," he said, using the biblical

names for the West Bank. "I live here. For now, the danger is that the Arabs throw stones, the Arabs throw Miskers' cocktails, the Arabs cheer."

Mr. Netanyahu himself has not addressed the standoff in Quora. But a lawmaker from his party, Andr Slater, chose on Thursday to meet and be phu-

nographed with a group of extremist settlers, including one who has been sanctioned by several countries for violence. Mr. Slater did not immediately respond to a response for comment.

The events in Quora are forcing the issue of settler violence — as as a growing number of prominent Israelis now call it,

"Jewish terrorism" — to center stage ahead of Israeli elections in October.

Ministers of the political opposition landward the government for failing to curb the violence, Nalbid Benson, a former prime minister who says, led the umbrella organization for West Bank settlements, called a "arm of terrorism." He tasked the Netanyahu government for responding so slowly that according to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Rockafon, the Trump administration had urged it to intervene in Quora.

"We need to dominate this and rest our violence from within, not wait for the Americans to tell us to do so," Mr. Benson said in a radio interview.

Anda Ezeonian, a former army chief of staff who says in the front-runner to opinion polls for prime minister, called the Quora situation a "severe impensome of the failures and weakness" of the government.

"In the face of anarchy and violent violation of the law by an extremist minority, the government is abandoning U.S.P. commanders to fight the battle alone," he wrote on social media.

With the army's failure to keep two families safe, the Israeli government is making clear on which side of the inner it stands.

Israeli military officials have long complained that the police take a tax approach to violent settlers and that judges rarely impose rough treatment. But critics of the military say it, too, often hesitates in the face of settler violence and fails to use all the tools at its disposal.

On Wednesday a group of army reservists released an open letter calling on the military "to an with determination against Jewish terrorism" and "to oppose it." The letter, addressed to Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamat, the army's chief of staff, had 400 signatures by Friday, or quarters said.

"International terror in Judea and Samaria is not stopping," the letter reads. "We are required again and again to stand between 'fistious incidents' in territory under our responsibility, without a real threat to our power from."

The letter adds: "The lack of backing and guidance from the U.S.P.s senior leadership, the turning of a blind eye to Jewish terrorism and to the known places from which it emanates, and at times even the political architects support for it, endanger or and leave an abandonment."

Moshe Kurodi, who commanded the Israeli police from 2004 to 2007, recalled the police taking aggressive action against settlers in the past but said that it was unclear that certain police commanders could be counted upon now, because of Mr. Ben-Grid's influence over them.

Mr. Kurodi called the handling last week of the settlers' steps in Quora a "disgrace," saying that "terrorists need to be handled with force."

Still, he said the military made a strategic error by not calling the police to remove the settlers immediately after they started besieging the Palestinians. Soldiers are trained in light 'Narcissism, but certainly not with a shot' for police are trained to continue both.

"If not oppress, it appears the officers of the U.S.P.s who are the "the political level," he said. "They don't know how their actions will be interpreted as they prefer to do nothing."

Asian allies doubt America would come to their aid

AHA, PIPER PAST

"This strategy, if you can call it one, is a gift to China that is undermining U.S. credibility and harming our national security," he added.

Trump appointees say the administration is not ending ground in Asia. In a speech in Manila on Aug. 19, Eldridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, said the Trump administration aimed to "maintain a process of deterrence by denial about the first island chain" — meaning it was willing to commit military resources to dissuade China from invading or attacking islands that include Taiwan and ones in the Philippines and Japan.

But Mr. Colby also said that allies needed to spend more on defense and should try to integrate their militaries with that of the United States — and "not vainly and falsely seek to exclude or supplement us."

Mr. Trump's global trade was, whose targets have included Southeast Asian nations, but also revealed to allies and partners that the United States can be a commercial antagonist.

The U.S. government has lacked an economic vision for Southeast Asia for years, as Democratic and Republican politicians entrusted from a Pacific Rim trade post that President Barack Obama protested.

That has left countries in Southeast Asia wondering what happened to the U.S. drive to ensure that nations a process that hides to against China.

The U.S. has taken the risk of the States is drifting as an alternative has also left a real impression on many of these partners," the editor.

While Mr. Trump has described China as an economic rival, he also embraced the superpower after it successfully retaliated during his tariff war last year.

During a summit in Beijing in May, Mr. Trump expressed alternatives for President Xi Jinping of China, and he is preparing to form Mr. Xi at a state visit in Washington in late September.

Mr. Trump's move to build what he calls a "G2" — Group of Two — relationship with China has speeded a growing bipartisan push in Washington in the last decade to confront China.

At the Trump-Xi headhouse grows, some Asian countries are feeling left

out, yet are also opting to stay on China's friendly side.

That is especially true when China remains the largest trading partner for the United countries, and the United States is not working on preventing economic alternatives.

“We're in a very difficult position, because you know we want to have that minimal relationship with both states,” said Richard Heydarian, a political scientist from the Philippines. “And then

I'm not going to stay on China's friendly side.

The States administration agreed to work with the Philippines on expanding a transportation network, called the Luzon Economic Corridor, to better integrate the country into global supply chains.

The Trump administration is trying to bring the Philippines into its so-called Pan Baba initiative, with the notion of having the country work on semiconductor manufacturing and building artificial intelligence in a way that would benefit the United States.

But those innocent steps pale next to U.S. efforts to keep up its military ties with the Philippines. The two countries have long had a close relationship, and they have voted to maintain military cooperation, though their ties have shifted at times.

The United States made the Philippines its first colonial football in Asia after taking it from Spain to the Spanish-American War. And the Philippines is the only Southeast Asian nation that has a formal alliance treaty with the United States — one that requires their militaries to help with the defense of the other nations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Manila last month during an annual forum of Southeast Asian nations that the U.S. military was determined

mixed to push back against China's expansionist efforts.

“We're not going to accept that international waterways are somehow under the control of other countries,” he said. “We'll continue to call through international waterways and freedom of navigation on the final land, and we'll continue to live up to our commitments — for example, with the Philippines and other countries — in terms of the treaty commitments that we have.”

During the Biden administration, the U.S. government took a hands-on approach to helping partnerships in Asia. It brought Japan into a security coalition with the Philippines. And President Joseph R. Biden Jr. got the Philippines to grant American troops expanded access to one home on islands near Taiwan.

In the United States, the President and main Morris flew to the island of Palawan, out of the South China Sea, and visited a Philippine Coast Guard site there to send a signal to China.

The military organization has continued under Mr. Trump, despite the measure that it fits first but its help, the U.S. and Philippine militaries tested a Typhus missile launcher at one of the islands, a public show with a weapon that could be deployed against Chinese troops if they tried to invade Taiwan.

The Philippines invited Japan to support in multi-atom military exercises in June, the first time since World War II that Japanese troops had been active on Philippine soil.

The nation is both a combination of the coalition oversees by the Biden administration and a design by the Philippines to overcome its partnerships beyond the United States.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

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MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026 | 5

WORLD

U.S. Justice Department focuses on lesser scams

WASHINGTON

Administration drops charges against bigger targets in 'war on fraud'

BY DEVLYN BARRETT

As the White House responds to 'war on fraud,' the Justice Department announced criminal charges in recent days against a new symbol of that kind — a food truck in Santa Ana, Calif.

Serious Product, a weathered white food truck advertising ice cream tropes, as well as frantic and172 politics, show the attention of underscore agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement for what investigators said was a statically high number of next stamp transactions for such a small business.

The case against the food truck moves, Esmeralda Seriano, is an example of the Trump administration push to show that 'we fraud it small enough to go enough to look away from,' as Vice President JD Vance said in a speech in April.

The new emphasis on small-dollar fraud comes as the administration has issued punitive and conversations with white-collar convicts, pulled back from pursuing criminal cases against multi-national corporations and dropped by the profile charges against wealthy executives.

Administration officials say they are pressing to prosecute fraud involving government-funded programs in the United Demeʼcts have failed to do so at the federal, state and local levels. Current and former federal prosecutors, however, criticize the change as effectively lowering the standards of a historical department that for decades pooled itself on tackling big, financially complex investigations in executive ranks and leaving the small cases in corner stores and food trucks to local agencies.

A food truck 'n' out the kind of case you would typically see federal law enforcement resources being protected by said Jacqueline Kelly, a former federal prosecutor, 'had their resources being pulled from other areas. We're not seeing an increase in fraud prosecutions involving public companies, investment frauds and the more traditional Wall Street prosecutions typically pursued by the Justice Department.'

Matthew Trappover, a spokesman for the department, disposed the characterization, saying that it 'will never turn a blind eye to fraud.'

'Wearing only the largest-dollar cases while ignoring smaller ones would need precisely the wrong message — that low-level fraudsters are immune from federal prosecutors,' he added. 'They are not.'

The White House is directing the administration's anti-fraud push, with the Justice Department establishing a new division intended to fight fraud whose leaders report to Mr. Vance.

The prosecution's low-level cases has long been left to state political officials, an arrangement that the Trump admin-

istration maintains less allowed small-time fraud to mushroom into a significant drug on public funds. White House officials have pointed to Minnesota, where dozens of people have been ac-

cused of stealing millions from a government program meant to keep children fed during the coronavirus pandemic, as an example of the kind of fraud that has been allowed to foster.

The same day that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced the case against Mr. Seriano, they transported separate charges against Jesse Corvaco-Costino, a cashier who worked at a

Justice Department officials have intensely declared that each assistant U.S. attorney should have at least 25 open cases at all times, a crusading workload for anyone handling complex corruption or corporate fraud investigations.

Los Angeles grocery and party supply chains.

We was accused of accepting $5,000 in worth of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards, commonly known as food stamps, as jury-makers, and the U.S. state's public-level ICE agents $4,500 in cash in exchange.

Federal prosecutors initially sought to keep both defendants, who are U.S. citizens, federal law on they await trial and have been the most crucial legal time under federal sentencing guidelines.

The criminal fraud threat on a $5,000 bond each. A lawyer for Mr. Corvaco-Costino declared a statement: A lawyer for Ms. Seriano did not respond to a request for consent.

The U.S. state's public law undercover operations to ensure the defendants were conducted by ICE, an agency whose mission is immigration enforcement.

Food stamp fraud is a single but uncanny man that has become meant to food law-nature people to instead get cash. Until recently, however, those people have been arraigned by left to local and state investigators, considered too small for the federal government. In the instances of Ms. Seriano and Mr. Corvacion-Costino, investigators say the case is a legal case that is a legal measure of receipts for food stamps.

In announcing the charges against Ms. Seriano, the Justice Department said the food truck's lack of censures, complex with a large number of high-dollar transactions and rapid back-to-back transactions, are indicators of possible fraud.

Over a one-year period, the truck redeemed more than $400,000 in food stamp benefits, far larger than similarly sized competitors, prosecutors said. The case is a legal case that is a legal measure, from the amounts of fraud that can be charged or proved in court.

For decades, federal prosecutors have granted a second or unintended suit to the state's law pursuing fraud cases. In many U.S. attorneys's offices in big cities, the threshold sits around half a million dollars.

In Mr. Trump's second term, the administration has decreed that that state of thumb no longer applies. Current and former prosecutors worry that a Justice Department already suffering from the departures of thousands of experienced prosecutors is lowering the bar for fraud cases that will produce more indictments, but less meaningful work.

To try to drive up the number of cases, department officials have intensely declared that each assistant U.S. attorney should have at least 25 open cases at all times. For a low-level prosecutor handling complex drug or violent offenses — or food stamp fraud — that is not particularly high. For a senior prosecutor handling complex public corruption or

corporate fraud investigations, two dozen open cases can be a crushing workload.

In phase raids to prosecutors around the country, a senior Justice Department official, indeed, found, has pushed back against criticism of the rule. That threshold of 25 cases is the later minimum to show that a prosecutor 'has a pains,' he has said officials, according to people familiar with his remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the details of personal discussions.

For more than a decade, the number of financial crimes prosecuted by the Justice Department has gradually shrunk. The reasons offered for the broad decision vary — some contend that the government is more reluctant, or less experienced, to pursuing fraud, so that gathering means of evidence is a digital gap has become more time-consuming.

From the start of Mr. Trump's second term to this time, the administration brought 4,767 white-collar cases, or about 2 percent of the total criminal cases, according to federal statistics and signed by Justice Connecticut, a group of former department employees that has been critical of the Trump administration's sweeping changes.

Prosecution of low-level cases has long been left to state and local officials, which the Trump administration says has slowed small-time fraud to mushroom.

Those figures are a significant drop from previous administration (3,354 cases from the same period under President the U.S. Rules in 1929) and in Mr. Trump's first term: and 6,781 cases in President Barack Obama's second term.

The founder of Justice Connecticut, Nancy Young, said the department under Mr. Trump had been 'all over the map when it comes to fraud,' citing its uncivil high-flat loss of power before.

'The president punishes scores of wealthy executives, their creators a new fraud division — even by the vice president,' the said. 'The U.S. is drug-matter-million-dollars' from more than 200 new people alleged to have defrauded SNAP of a few thousand dollars. Enforcement priorities exist a message, and their message on fraud is chaotic.'

Sarah Edneall, a former federal prosecutor, warned that pursuing a high-volume of low-level fraud cases would come at a price, particularly given the Justice Department's blamed ranks.

Every new administration, she added, seeks to revamp the department in favour of its priorities, with valued results.

'They are constantly relabeling stuff, and 95 percent of the time it's just propaganda — it's not substantive,' she said. 'But this is more significant, because the Justice Department has been stripped of no more of its people, particularly its experienced people. If you're just pushing numbers, you're going to see a lot of mistakes.'

Prosecutor examined firm with tie to judge in Trump case

WASHINGTON

Authentic Campaigns, fund-raiser for Democrats, was hit with a subpoena

BY GLENN THRUIN

The U.S. attorney's office in Chicago has spent the past year investigating a Democratic ticket dating firm since its current by the daughter of the judge in President Trump's fund-ransey trial in New York, according to court filings and people familiar with the inquiry.

Last August, the U.S. attorney, Andrew S. Beatrice of the Northern District of Illinois, directed Authentic Campaigns, Inc. to turn over a broad range of internal communications with clients. They included feature Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Joseph R. Riden Jr., Gov. Kathy Hockel of New York, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York and the Democratic National Committee, according to a grand jury subpoena reviewed by The New York Times.

The trial began, on a daughter of Juan Merchua, a supreme court judge in Manhattan, was the first vice president of the 2024 and was the first the list. The Merchua's policy has been a few years target of the Trump and this effort, who have made unashamamized claims that the judge was not to get him and that the daughter provided from accusations aimed at the trial.

The trial ended with Mr. Trump's conviction in 2024, in the midst of his campaign for a second term, on 24 May 2024, and the ruling order in 2024, for keep a post-trial from publishing her story of a liaison with her.

On March 5, 2024, when I included Peter Bhatna, the former top federal prosecutor in a subpoena, who got to think the request. Prosecutors eventually modified the subpoena, narrowing it to the court's case, and the case was the country presidential campaign and results between Mr. Merchua and her father, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry who requested anonymity to

Above left, Andrew S. Beatrice, the U.S. attorney in Chicago. Above right, President Trump and his attorney, Todd Blanche, at a remote hearing with Judge Juan Merchua last year.

discuss an ongoing legal matter.

It is not clear where the investigation stands. No follow-up subpoenas have been issued in individuals, including Mr. Merchua, suggesting that public matters might not be actively working in charge anyone, these people added.

The inquiry is the latest indication of the extent to which U.S. attorneys' efforts across the country, most largely removed from political machinations in Washington, have increasingly been drawn into the inquiry effort to target his adversaries.

In this case, prosecutors sought the subpoena that came from a criminal referral from Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. The panel made the referral after Mike Nellis, the founder of Authentic Campaign, refused to provide the information confidential emails it was seeking, including them between Mr. Merchua and her father.

'The Trump administration's targeting of my company is an indulgence abuse of power,' Ms Nellis said when asked about the investigation. 'It is a ridiculous fishing expedition based on conspiracy theories that are completely

divorced from reality,' he added.

He accused the department of seeking to seize the 'sensitive political communications of my clients who are among Trump's most prominent political adversaries.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Judge Merchua and Luven Merchua.

U.S. attorneys' offices have increasingly been drawn into President Trump's effort to target his adversaries.

The language in the subpoena is virtually identical to claims made by the House committee that Mr. Trump's conviction in the both recent and prevailed ever by Judge Merchua was 'potentially politically motivated.' The prevailed referral also included the contention that 'Manhattan district attorney Africa bought's investigation and prosecution of President Donald J. Trump' might have been improper.

The subpoena did not specify what potential crimes might have been con-

mitted in the prosecution of Mr. Trump. In addition to initially requesting a foreword from the Harris and Bates presidential campaigns, Mr. Beatrice sought to send to the Mr. Merchua, Mr. Young and one of his deputies, Matthew Clampton, Mr. Jeffries, the former U.S. attorney, and Mr. Merck, Senator Adam Gold, Democrat of California, Representative Daniel Goldman, Democrat of New York, Representative Lauren Underwood, Democrat of Illinois, and Mr. Merck, the Party's House and Senate fund-raising arms, as well as the Democratic National Committee.

The career prosecutors who secured the subpoena, Matthew Hicks and William Rogers, both played roles in a $5,000 case against six prosecutors accused of assaulting federal agents during the White House-directed immigration conditions in 2023 known as History Bills.

The U.S. attorney's office in Chicago had to withdraw the charges in the case after defense lawyers raised concerns about the conduct of Mr. Beatrice's prosecutors before a grand jury. This prompted Mr. Beatrice, who worked as a prosecutor in the office he now runs, in

announce a review of internal procedures.

Mr. Young saw his fund-ransey trial in New York, while resulted in his beginning the first former president in the convicts on history charges, as the culmination of a practising effort by Democrats to destroy him. We was fighting from charges at the state time that he has delivered to the management to organize federal indictments and in an election interference case in Georgia.

Mr. Trump's public prevailed attacks prompted Judge Merchua to impose a gap under a court that from intimidating jurors, prosecutors, witnesses and court staff. Mr. Trump's lead defense was a little less than the case's primary general, argued to reword the order but was unsuccessful.

By the time the trial started Judge Merchua himself emerged as a main target of the defense, with the defense and his allies claiming that Ms. Merchua's longtime involvement in Democratic politics was proof that the tie was in.

Judge Juan Merchua is totally compromised, and should be removed from this 'FIC/MP' Non-Case immediately.

His Daughter, Luven, is a Rabbi Trump State, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me.' Trump wrote on Truth Social in March 2024.

The judge did not review himself. An ethics complaint filed by Trump allies had an effect on the trial. Judge Merchua discharged the case without any sentence or penalty after Mr. Trump was denied.

But Republicans, spurred on by Trump-allied influencers like Laura London, have continued to make the case that the judge, his daughter and other specialists were guilty of wrongdoing.

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, subsequently began demanding documents from the firm. He cited a theory blamed by the judge's case in the Ms. Nellis and Ms. Merchua improperly used Mr. Trump's prosecution in digital fund-raising pitches on behalf of Democrats. (Ms. Trump aggressively used the criminal indictments against him to raise millions during the campaign.)

'Urgent (have raised substantial concerns with Judge Merchua, year father, refusing to review himself from President Trump's case report) was the potential of President Trump's political activities and the financial benefit that year firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc. could receive from the prosecution and court staff, and Judge Merck said, Mr. Merchua in August 2024, requesting her correspondence with Judge Merck.

There are no first repeatedly argued that Ms. Merck had an influence over her father's work decisions and no contact with many of the campaigns the firm did business with.

They accused Mr. Jordan of engaging in a politically motivated 'logistician' and claimed Ms. Merchua and Mr. Nellis had faced so many death threats from Trump supporters that they needed to be involved.

They refused to hand over most of the documents. Ms. Jordan wanted most, called her 'singer' to become a 'a dangerous' in a September 2024 letter to Ms. Jordan from Peter Bhat, a prominent election lawyer who represented Mr. Nellis.

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6 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

WORLD

Bulldozers move in to a beloved national park

At Big Bend in Texas, border work is underway after wall plan is scrapped

BY J. DAVID GOODING

Texans were caught off-guard several months ago when the Trump administration appeared poised to construct a 30-foot wall through Big Bend National Park, a rugged expanse of moon-like desert that is a point of pride for many in the state.

But after bipartisan opposition grew, the nine-muter wall was removed from the federal government's border construction map. Many enlisted, believing that the West Texas park, with its towering mountains and cliffs, would be spared.

Then the bulldozers arrived this month.

The sight of these earth-moving machines along the Rio Grande near the Santa Elena Canyon, one of the park's major attractions, pointed to the hotel significant evidence of border barrier construction in the park. Contractors rigged through minipole trees and brush and formed the ground for more than a mile (14 kilometers) of what appeared to be a future roadway.

Big Bend is beloved by Texans and many across the United States, even those who are not among its more than 500,000 annual visitors. It is a place to feel the immense and inhospitable wilderness of West Texas.

The construction sparked a fresh wave of anger and outrage from all sorts of people — environmentalists, former park officials, local sheriffs — who again seemed that such infrastructure was unnecessary in a border region to remain and dangerous that people have rarely tried to cross them, even at the peak of unauthorized migration.

Both John Careys, the state's outgoing Republican senator, and James Tackle, the Democrat roaming to replace him, expressed concern this month about the start of construction inside the park.

"My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain affect its own source of deterrence," Mr. Careys said in a letter

Construction in Big Bend National Park in Texas brought a fresh wave of anger from people including environmentalists, former park officials and local sheriffs.

MICHAEL KELLER

on Aug. 7 to the Homeland Security secretary, Martineque Malibu.

Other Republican state leaders, including Gus Ging Albert and Attorney General Max Platko, who defeated Mr. Careys in the Senate primary, have not weighed in directly on the construction.

On Friday, a local nonprofit organization and an outdoor recreation business represented by State Senator Roland

Gutierrez, a Democrat, filed a federal suit to try to halt the project. A day earlier, a bipartisan group of Texas legislators wrote to Mr. Albert, urging him to ask federal officials to stop the work.

"It's gotten to the point where people are picking up the tactics and marching in the street right now," said Tim Tate, a former tourism director for North, Texas, northwest of the park. "This is

one of Texas' and the country's last wild places."

After days of confusion in West Texas, senior Trump administration officials explained their plans and rationale on Thursday. There would be no wall, but there would be construction.

"C.B.P. is building one new access road, improving existing roads, installing detection technology and plan-

ing vehicle barriers in limited, strategic locations," Rodney Isom, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said in a statement.

The park consists of 135 miles of land on the U.S.-Mexico border, and a patrol road is slated to run along much of it. A few areas would have miles of 4- to 6-foot-tall vehicle barriers.

The bulldozers and excavators have

been engaged this month in "survey and design work," Mr. Scott said.

Fewer than six migrants a day have been encountered crossing from Mexico in recent months to the entire Big Bend patrol series which includes the park and hundreds of miles of border, federal statistics show.

Officials have said that while unauthorized crossings are now at record lows, they could increase in the future.

The Trump administration has been frantically building new border barriers, and Mr. Scott said the Big Bend construction was necessary to fill in gaps. One company, Southwest Valley Constructors, was awarded a EU Milite contract. The company directed questions to federal officials.

"My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain affect its own source of deterrence."

"We will not leave Big Bend as an opening for cartels to exploit by shifting their means and tactics," Mr. Scott said in the statement.

Many of those who oppose a wall are also against building a period road. They include local sheriffs who have insisted that major border infrastructure projects are not necessary.

"What security problems are we trying to solve?" Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland of nearby Terrell County, a Republican and a former Border Police agent, wrote on social media. "Can the same security objective be accomplished more effectively another way?"

An Wednesday, people gathered for a demonstration against the construction in the Santa Elena Canyon. Many carried signs promoting the construction — "Stop the lines!" "On Wall" — at land handmade importers of previous and other wildlife that could be affected by the construction along the river. Some feared the road plan would require building bridges and blasting along the river, especially a vehicle park.

"There will be no coming back," said Michael Ryder, former Big Bend park ranger who attended the protest. "They're taking vengeance dollars to ruin this national park."

Trump's immigration policy echoes a 1920s crackdown

NEWS ANALYSIS

WORLDWIDE

Certain countries targeted, but this time, president is acting without Congress

BY RANDU ALEXZU

In 1924, Congress sent a message to the world: 'We are no longer ready to take 'your third, your post, your huddled masses.'

Seized by fears around crime, demographics and economic losses, it set up into the United Immigration from Italy, Poland and Russia. It effectively forced immigration from Asia. It also instituted a copy of 20,000 immigrants allowed into the United States to Agrow your morning the vision laid out by the writer Emma Lazarus in her famous poem.

"It has become necessary that the United States cause to function as an accrual," Representative Albert Johnson, Republican of Washington, said at the time.

Today, many historians see those dynamics especially — except this time, President Trump is hardening the country's borders against the huddled masses largely on his own authority.

"Using administration action, and backed by expansive new powers upheld by the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump has chronically pulled back on all forms of immigration. He has backed accrual at the southern border. He has resided deportation protection for people from disaster and war outwrit countries. He has blocked refugees except a group of mostly white South Africans. He has re-infected policies essentially halting long-term immigration from parts of the Middle East and Africa. And he has tried to limit green cards for those who could be seen as relying on government benefits.

At the same time, he has deported hundreds of thousands of people and paid others to leave voluntarily, using threats or being harassed to dangerous third countries if they stay.

"There are clear echoes of the 1920s in the Trump administration's approach to immigration. Thus, immigration was restricted through explicit national update set by Congress," said Julia Golari, an associate director of the immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. "Today, we're seeing country-based restrictions extend through expansive use of executive authority. But both sets of actions were based on concerns about who belongs in the United States, and who is viewed as able to integrate into a desired national culture."

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman who has since left that role, said in a statement that the president and his administration were concentrated on a recent day period.

"The Trump administration remains have-focused on arresting and departing criminal illegal aliens, keeping our human secure from aliens who seek to

enter illegally and putting American first in all our policies — from travel to television to deportation operations," she said. "The president's guiding focus remains doing what's best for the American people."

As a candidate, Mr. Trump pledged to seal off the border and group the country of illegal immigrants. But more recently, much like the anti-immigration movement of the 1920s, the administration has been explicit about its belief that the country's culture and economy are being destroyed by additional legal migration from parts of the globe. That is clearly communicated in slogans adopted by the Trump administration on social media, including "buyers" for third world and you become the third world.

When explaining why the administration had allowed only Afrikaners, a group of mostly white South Africans, to enter an refugees, Secretary of State Marco Rulloo cited their ability to assimilate into the country.

Whatever Supreme Court is June up held birthright citizenship, which confers citizenship an anyone born in the United States, Trump administration officials used the manner to demonstrate culture.

"We have people from all over the world, from third world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone readers technology, let alone medicine, let alone electives," Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser who driven much of the administration's immigration policy, said on "Jesus Wahres Primetime" on Fox News. "And they can just come into the country, have a baby and hospital, paid for it by you and me, and then that baby's automatically a citizen."

In the weeks since, the administration has attempted to revive parts of their birthright ban.

THE JOB ACT

The 1924 Immigration Act was driven in part by the idea that particular cultures are known to be the most important to maintain into the United States. Mr. Johnson, the Washington congressman, was affiliated with a powerful organization that openly presented response and held sway in policy-making circles.

"On the whole, immigrants from Northwestern Europe furnish us the best material for American citizenship and for the future upholding of the American race," the group wrote in reducing the ridicule of immigration in 1890s levels, as the legislators did, according to the U.S. Constitution in the New York Times. "They have higher living standards than the bulk of the immigrants from other lands, average higher in intelligence, are better educated, more skilled, and are on the whole, better able to understand, appreciate and support our form of government."

The report's writer said that cutting away newcomers from southeastern Europe would reduce immigration at those they concluded, through new-discredited research, were more likely to

Top, Afrikaners departing for the United States last year after President Trump blocked refugees except a group of mostly white South Africans. Above, President Calvin ConAige signing the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred Immigration from specific countries.

commit crimes and had "the lower grades of intelligence." But they claimed their intention was not to dismount them compared with northwestern Europeans.

"It is simply a question as to which of

these two groups of aliens, as a whole, is best fitted by tradition, political background, customs, social organization, education and habits of thought to aid just itself to American institutions and to American economic and social conditions,"

tions," it said, according to the article. "In the years that followed the effects of the law were clear as immigration dropped significantly. The share of the foreign-born population fell to just 4.7 percent in 1970 from nearly 12 percent in

1920, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The effect on specific nationalities was much as well. Arrived from Italy, for instance, dropped from about 42,000 in 1921 to roughly 8,000 in 1920, according to the group's analysis.

Similar trends are already becoming evident under Mr. Trump. Census figures show immigration numbers deviate last year by more than 10 percent from the previous year. The combination of low birthrates and strong immigration led to one of the slowest growth rates in U.S. history in the year leading up to July 2025.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND A NEW ERA

The era of strictly limited immigration followed by the 1920s was called in 1905, when President Charles B. Johnson and Congress again outside the country's immigration system, until the high rights movement. They opened new pathways for immigrants from outside Western Europe to make America their home and allowed U.S. citizens to apply for green cards for family members abroad.

Mr. Miller, the White House adviser, has condemned the 1965 law as undermining the country's long-term success, saying in an interview. "The 1965 Law Show" on Fox News last year that it allowed "the global ability of people in every part of the world to come to America, to bring their families to America, and their eventually empty out their entire towns and their entire villages to the United States of America."

Mr. Miller has called it "the single largest experiment on a society, on a civilization that had ever been conducted in human history," Mr. Miller said on the Fox News appearance in December. "You can do 75 million immigrants that were brought in, largely from the third world, but their descendants, too."

Mr. Miller has looked back at the era following the 1920s as a period of American greatness.

"What they don't need you in school, in that from 1920 to 1970, there was negative migration," Mr. Miller said in the Fox News interview. "There was a half-century of negative migration. The foreign-born population declined by 10 percent for half a century."

Mr. Miller's speech, he said, "the U.S. population doubled from natural childbirth. That was the condition in which a unified natural national identity was formed."

That is why some former immigration officials believe that Mr. Miller and the Trump administration are quietly accustomed to the 1920s, which came, particularly through a ban on long-term immigration from 75 countries issued in January. Many of these countries have Muslim experience on an in Africa.

The U.S. state's foreign-born population was not a problem. In 1965, a civil-rights era (triggers eliminated there) and the U.S. state's foreign-born official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in the States administration. "Today, Trump is trying to stop them back by the."

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MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026 | 7

Business

Pressure builds for sharing of A.I. wealth

WASHINGTON

Policymakers in the U.S. take steps to prevent the monopolizing of benefits

BY TOYOT KISHIN

In a nation on the precipice of a technological revolution, there are few states quite like Virginia, where hundreds of warehouses full of powerful and power-hungry computers have earned one regain the stalksmen Shari Chaver Alley.

“Let’s wait all the more surprising when Virginia lawmakers decided to hire June to take aim at the industry that they had long helped to incubate. Capping a year of hard-bought negotiations, the state denude the first in the United States to impose a small tax on data centers, based on the vast amounts of electricity they consume.

For the trifling dollar belonzoffry that even or loose data centers, including Amazon and Microsoft, the tax represented a fraction of what they might someday earn from artificial intelligence. But for Virginia it is expected to be a windfall, supplying up to $800 million in revenue to the coming year, according to L. Lester, Loren, a Democrat in state senator. The rapid proliferation of data centers had considered economic and environmental costs, she said, and the tech industry needed to shoulder more of that burden.

“Just do we hit the small-bias companies in human history come to the commonwealth,” Ms. Lucius said, “and not play by the same rules as everyone else!”

The debate in Virginia is part of a larger reckoning new underway in American politics. From the smallest city interest to the circular of power in Washington, policymakers are refinding their economic relationship with artificial intelligence, trying to ensure their communication could be heard in the United States. The United States, the Silicon Valley an incalculable new facilities.

With A.I., the nation’s largest tech companies are seeking to revolutionize almost every field imaginable, from medical research to warfare. But among Americans, there is growing fear that the financial gains in the United States may not be shared — as, worse, that they may come at their direct expense.

John could be lost, hedonists could be destroyed. Natural resources could be drained. Other communities could be redaught by A.I., with little guarantee that the public would be protected.

The debate has set off a new debate in Washington about whether, or how, the government could share in the wealth of A.I. companies and redistribute their profits. Among state and county officials, meanwhile, there is a new push to tax or otherwise regulate the industry, had hundreds of corporations, led by Democrats and Republicans alike, have already tried to beat the unidentified industry. The government is not curly, as they sort through the economic implications.

The industry have argued they can work with government to contain job losses at other economies. But their generosity has its been, and the political groups that represent Big Tech have labeled against proposed they are as too demanding — setting up clashes

As Assistant data center in Texas, Ridge, Va. Virginia is the first in the United States to impose a small tax on data centers, based on their vast consumption of electricity.

around the country with communities that believe they can work more.

The result has transformed A.I. into one of the most salient political issues in the 2020 millennium elections, and the net come inside shape the trajectory of the U.S. economy for decades to come.

“We should be asking, what does A.I. owe us?” said Benny Greenman, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan and a chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration. “What is my rightful to操纵 an A.I. to do it?”

BOOM OR DOOM

At the heart of the A.I. policy debate are two possibilities.

The first is that A.I. will create an unfalemable economic boom, perhaps adding more than $20 million to the world’s economy, surged by 2001. The forecast alone has supervised the robustness of major tech companies, which now represents a laynestest proportion of the S&P 500. Two young A.I. firms, including the United States, are considering public stock offerings that may value both at $14 billion or more.

The second possibility is a demotory brought about by that same period of growth. In A.I. dollars, it could come in an outnumber for markets, while if A.I. sustains, it could have millions of Americans unemployed. And it could concentrate more wealth in the hands of a few, like Chas Monk, who briefly became the world’s first trillionaire after one of his companies, found it, were public-to-bank. The two public nine market a new chapter in the long-running political de-

bate about inequality in America, where major economic transformations — from electrification to the dology of cheap Chinese experts — have}=-1 and their costs and benefits disparage—sincerely. The users of that money are evident to countless towns that use factories and storefronts distinct as the economy globalized.

With A.I., the effects of nationalist largely have not yet been felt. There are no mass layoffs, for example, with no less replacing humans at scale. But the fear alone has helped provide countless protests against the technology at all levels of government, even outfacing at one of President Trump’s callers last month.

“The political pressure is growing because people are worried,” said Benny Givell, a co-director of a past A.I. commission started by the American Enterprise Institute, a consortium-issuing group, and the Urban Institute, a 4th-leaning group. “They’re worried about their economic well-being, and they see this as another threat.”

The concerns led roughly 200 economists, industry leaders and farmers—up-states to know a warning in July. Led by City Revypathans, an economist and A.I. expert at Stanford University of California, their joint statement — “We hear no ‘how’ — urged government everywhere to “build the economics, guardrails, and institutions needed to enter A.I. in a direction that complements humans and benefits nearby.”

That conversation is only just beginning in hyperpertisan Washington, where A.I. carries high makes for a

country that derives much of its tax revenue from workers’ and businesses’ incomes. It has indeed another timeless debate about the role of the federal government — the balance it should strike as a facilitator of A.I. growth and a committee for those who may be harmed.

“A.I. and referrals are the most tissue-hemoretic technologies by the technology of humanity,” Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, said in an interview. “They have an enormous im-

Among state and county officials, there is a new push to tax or otherwise regulate the A.I. industry.

part on our economy and the possibility that many millions of jobs that will be lost.”

Already, some in Congress have tossed around a history of ideas, including new states that would apply to A.I. companies’ services and calls for a rethinking of corporate rates. Particularly among Democrats, there is a desire to capture more money for the federal budget. The United States has called up preaching for trustees, and it might go further if Washington is forced to provide a financial cushion for those displaced by A.I.

Ms. Sanders has proposed that the U.S. government try to offset these consequences directly by taking a 50 percent stake in major A.I. companies. To the the plan, the United States would not pose a one-time tax on tech giants, paid

in equity to a newly established sovereign wealth fund. That fund would be worth about $7 trillion, based on current valuations. With the money, the government could immediately make a payment of more than $1,000 in all state-cases, Ms. Sanders estimates, and then continue to reidentify and additional wealth as it is generated.

The idea is not without precedent in the United States. For decades, Alaska has paid small dividends to its residents based on the rate of all extracted within its borders. The amount is hardly enough to replace a person’s wages, but for some economists, the fund is a tempting model for the digital age. If data is the old for the nation’s A.I. goods, supporters reason, then the wealth they stand to generate from the world’s older-nature should be shared in that.

Ms. Sanders is not the only one floating such an option. Even his ideological foe Ms. Young has caused about the public’s owning a portion of OpenAI. While the prevalent generally has supported the pain of A.I. development — and castigated those who have stood in the way — he still engaged this year that he hoped to discuss with tech executives taking trades to their companies.

In theory, with industry leaders, including Sam Atkins, the chief executive of OpenAI, and Darin Amadah, the chief executive of Archtman, support policies that redistribute A.I. wealth to citizens. Mr. Atkins has even talked at Ms. Young on the matter. Others, like Mr. Monk, have similarly called for “Uncertain Profit (UCOM)” to criteria issued by the Federal government.

To date, though, most of the major tech companies has estimated specific state or federal legislation, including the proposed from Ms. Sanders. Instead, they are primarily opted to call for studies.

OpenAI and Archtman declined to comment. (The New York Times has used OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have shared the said’s claims.)

But some experts are not told on the idea of the government’s taking a stake, which could end up benefiting the A.I. companies more than the people who are disrupted by technology. A government that stands to profit from A.I. go unto could be less inclined to regulate those companies in a way that could undermine their value.

“The prospect for about to so vast that everyone should be uncontrollable,” said Sam Martin, the vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

He added that Washington already has methods at its disposal to increase the gains from A.I. “We have really good tools for raising capital,” he said. “One option is just to raise the rates.”

PROFITS AND PROMISES

For beyond Washington, the commission that beat the dividend of the industry — the operating, research-industry, computing centers that make A.I. goods like — have suddenly started to ask if they, too, are owed a greater share of future wealth.

Some have accumulated their tax codes, as they question whether their sitting budgets can afford to subsidize Silicon Valley at the same time that they are making cuts to social services. Others have introduced new fees on data centers to offset their effects on local energy goals.

And with other places have labeled construction surright. Over the past two years, roughly 100 communities have considered or adopted data center more and more of varying lengths, according to the U.S. government. The United Technologies Technology for Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia.

Among the visitors to act in Nebraska, where abundant land and friendly tax policies have opened Alphafen and other companies to set up new data centers. But scoping demand led Gen. Don Pillon, a Republican, to halt a state law that had offered tax incentives to the industry, arguing to the that the “market has changed dramatically.”

“We don’t need Whiteakers to pay,” he said. “Big Tech needs to pay their way.”

At the heart of the policy response is a fundamental shift in the relationship between local government and powerful interests in Silicon Valley.

Once, communities nationwide or partly control companies like Amazon, Meta, Alphafen and Microsoft, bristling them with tax incentives and other perks. Closing documents boom, local officials were willing to make short-term fiscal sacrifices to exchange for covered jobs and potential tax revenue.

But the industry’s demands — and profits — grow exponentially. Sometimes they penetrate the air into one. And the new data centers that they control in some A.I. have carried a much different footprint than earlier in China. The new warehouse are larger, roughly 6000 people and can consume A.I. JAGI a

As stocks keep rising, so do the risks. It may be wise to hedge.

STRATEGIES

BY JEFF SUNDER

The U.S. stock market has been spinsted for more than three years. It has answered ahead again in 2026, putting the S&P 500 in position for a new feat: a fourth consecutive year of double-digit gains.

That’s happened only three times since 1928 — most recently, in the late 1990s. That boom was also fueled by extravagant hopes based on a technological breakthrough. Then, it was the internet. Now, it’s artificial intelligence, and the market. Then the S&P 500 rose more than 20 percent each year from 1995 through 1996, had another distinction: It was the only string of five consecutive years of double-digit gains in 90 years.

In the midst of the current calls, these gains for investors in the 1990s seem bitter-weak, at best, because they ended with the market crash of 2000 and were followed by an entire decade of miserable returns. During the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009, the S&P 500 dropped 38.4 percent, from top to bottom. In 2009, the S&P 500 was lower than it had been in 1995.

It’s clear that shedding down on the incredible, rising stock market was not a wise move to the bank market.

But what about now? Unfortunately, I don’t know where the market is to be the market, that does anybody else. What we do know is what happened in the past. The lessons are simple enough: Stick with the stock market for the long-haul, but

exercise restraint now, by diversifying with low-cost index funds and holding enough cash and funds to survive the downturns that always come.

TREND: THE MARKET

That’s not the message coming from many Wall Street analysts who have become increasingly bullish as the stock market has risen and companies have charmed out spectacular earnings.

A long-running Bloomberg survey found in July that the consensus forecast for the S&P 500 year-end does had risen about 8 percent since the end of last year, to 6,000. The prevailing outlook has become more positive, since, based on a host of higher forecasts that have shown up to any token in the last few days, probably reflecting the market’s range and 3,700 than month.

Such forecasts have been wildly expected for years, but it takes them closely because they reiterate the use in Wall Street. It’s not but right now, though compared with a setting of worry about whether the good times can last.

In a recent note to clients, Sam Stivold, a market veteran who is now the chief investment manager of CFRO, an independent business research firm, pointed out some of the dangers of a long to come in and out of the stock market at apparently upper-type prices.

As a starting point, he considered the buy-and-shelf approach, which requires raising in the market, come what may, even during terrible decades. That simple strategy, which is

what I try to follow, produced an 11.5 percent annualized return for the S&P 500 from the end of 1992 through the end of last year. By Stivold found: “This to illustrated some of the temptations and pitfalls of varying from this approach. First, he looked at the potential rewards of an impossible feat — timing the market perfectly. My

Stivold calculated what an investor’s annualized return would have been it else had been prominent enough to have missed only the market’s earnings. And then, from Dec. 31, 1992, through Dec. 31, 2025, and to have stayed in the market every other day: • Missed the 10 worst days: 14.1 percent, annualized.

• Missed the 20 worst days: 15.1 percent, annualized.

• Missed the 30 worst days: 16.5 percent, annualized.

• Missed the 40 worst days: 15.9 percent, annualized.

• All of these returns would have been wonderful. That’s the same way that you wouldn’t have known in an open which days to avoid. If you had abandoned the market at the wrong time, you would have missed some eye-popping gains. As I’ve observed in other columns, the best days for stocks are often clustered near the worst ones, and you can’t skip the right-mates without growing up some even-worn results.

My Stivold illustrated this consensus that by comparing what would have happened to your investment in the S&P 500 over that market could it you had once done in the first days: • Missed the 10 best days: 8.5 percent, annualized.

• Missed the 10 best days: 7.5 percent, annualized.

• Missed the 10 best days: 6.0 percent, annualized.

• Missed the 10 best days: 5.6 percent, annualized.

• Slightly almost from the market on the strong days isn’t what any investor could want, but that’s likely to happen if you may not of the market at any.

That said, there’s an argument about this: You would have been better off with the price of stock at 40 percent, Dec. 31, 1995, until March 5, 2009, which marked the end of the best market-associated with the financial crisis.

Striking with the stock market is that decade was in experience aggravation and heartache. Spilling needs has been painful lately, but they were a balm then. That’s worth remembering now — that has a chance to be the most market but as a reminder to hedge your bets.

REGISTRATED RISK

The essential problem is that it’s impossible to know what the stock market is about to do. Certainly, there are many signs that risks are rising. They include the risks of increased inflation, wars and tariffs, questionable use of vast sums of capital for A.I., an uncertain direction for the Federal Reserve Bank. The risk is that the S&P 500 is a national debt, and should political dysfunction. Interest rates in the best market have increased, and that makes losses relatively attractive, compared to the U.S.

REGISTRATED RISK

The essential problem is that it’s impossible to know what the stock market is about to do. Certainly, there are many signs that risks are rising. They include the risks of increased inflation, wars and tariffs, questionable use of vast sums of capital for A.I., an uncertain direction for the Federal Reserve Bank. The risk is that the S&P 500 is a national debt, and should political dysfunction. Interest rates in the best market have increased, and that makes losses relatively attractive, compared to the U.S.

You will have to do something to do with the stock market.

But there’s an interest in all? My own conclusion is to keep it simple and forget about market timing (and stock pickings) completely. Instead, I stick with broad stock index funds at all times, and always look back and cash, too, revealing my asset allocation slightly, from time to time, depending mainly on the market.

I haven’t looked up so much because of the heavy rally instead, even many years, as I’ve aged. I’ve slowly cautioned down taking reducing the stock market.

There could well be another bad decade ahead. But given days for stocks will almost certainly be coming, too, and I’d have to miss them.

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8 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

BUSINESS

Heat kills hundreds of U.S. workers annually

DALLAS

Some states prevent local governments from establishing protections

BY EUSTIS LEE

The afternoon temperature soared to 90 degrees as Disney Rodriguez slammed the door of his Pivotal Service van. Three years ago, on this same route through a leafy Dallas neighborhood, another mail carrier died from hypersomnia. Mr. Rodriguez thinks about the man often, especially during summer shifts.

"The job can drain you," said Mr. Rodriguez, who has been a mail carrier for 12 years and was a wide-fictitized hat to block the sun.

In something temperatures, such as the 27 degrees Celsius encountered by Mr. Rodriguez, and high humidity blanket much of the United States this summer, with cities watching record highs, outdoor workers face increasingly perilous conditions with limited rules to protect them.

"Texas has even barred its cities and counties from passing local host protections, arguing that mandates aren't necessary. There are no specific mandatory federal rules to protect workers from extreme host, and the Trump administration is working to cut back proposed Biden-era heat rules that would have mandated breaks and access to water. Republicans in Congress have gone further, proposing legislation that would prohibit the Department of Labor from adopting the Biden-era proposals.

But the rules of on-the-job heat exposure will only restrain with climate change, according to safety experts and labor groups.

More than 200 workers die annually from heat exposure nationwide, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has estimated. Over the years, deaths have included a 25-year-old construction worker who became non-sponsors on a job site in Arizona, a 25-year-old farmworker in Florida who became disoriented while harvesting strawberries and 40-year-old Eugene Gater Jr., the street canine who was lapsed on a front lawn along the route that Mr. Rodriguez now walks.

"A study by researchers at George Washington University in Washington and Harvard in Massachusetts calculated that there are 28,000 heat-related work injuries every year.

"Society and employers tend to dismiss the risk factors," said Burrick Alahmad, director of Harvard's occupational health and climate change program and an author of the report. Heat exposure has worked running under issues like diabetes and asthma and can cause bloating and seizures, as well as conditions that break down muscle tissue and prompt a dangerous dip in sodium levels in the blood.

"Heat-related injuries can come in different forms," Dr. Alahmad said. "It's not just a person playing it."

Armani half a dozen states have adopted rules requiring employers to provide workers with resources that can help mitigate the heat.

In California, employers with outdoor workers must provide shade and encourage employers to take breaks when temperature and 30 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius). Failure to offer these sorts of interventions to prevent heat illness is the second most frequently cited vio-

A worker taking a break, left, on a bar day in Dallas. Above, Disney Rodriguez, a mail carrier whose colleague, Eugene Gates, below left, died on his room in Dallas. Carla Gates, below right, said her husband had "needed more support, but these workers are on their own. The blame is on them if the mail does not get delivered." The Pivotal Service was hired 60,420 for failing to recognize the hazard of his working conditions.

lation by Chi/OHIA, the state's workplace regulator. In 2024, the agency fined a Southern California landscaping company around $270,000 for floating heat regulations, including sleeping access to shade and forcing employees to buy their own drinking water. She placed in the only state on the East Coast with heat protections for workers.

Two of the bottom states, however, have on lawn for heat standards, and lawmakers there have even prevented local governments from continuing their own.

In Florida, Miami-Dade County had taken steps to require shade, water and breaks for outdoor workers, but in 2024, the State Legislature passed a law barring cities and counties from adopting their own standards.

A similar dynamic played out in Texas. After cities like Austin and Dallas had taken measures to mandate ill-missate breaks for construction workers

every four hours, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in 2023 that eliminated local rules requiring water breaks for workers. The measure was tracked by business groups, including the National Federation of Independent Business, a pre-

Agriculture and construction are among the most hazardous jobs

erful-lobbying group, which argued that heat regulations would be burdensome for small businesses.

Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group representing the construction industry, supported the Texas law. Geoffrey Tabaulian, the group's president in Texas, said the state law ensures that businesses operating across Texas are not forbidden to a "parchment of conflicting local regulations".

Agriculture and construction are

among the most hazardous jobs for heat-related injuries, according to Dr. Alahmad's research. Letter carriers, who have to work outdoors all year, have talked more than 1,100 heat-related incidents during a two-year stretch, according to a 2024 report from the Pivotal Service's respective gimmick.

On June 29, 2023 -- six days after Mr. Abbott signed the Texas legislature into law -- Mr. Gates, the Dallas mail carrier, died on his room.

The heat index that day reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius). Before he started what would become his last shift, Mr. Gates tested his wife, Carla, who worked from home and took daily walks through their neighborhood.

"If you go out, he careful," he warned her, referring to the heat.

Mr. Gates, who delivered mail to 650 addresses a day, received two 10-minute mail breaks and a 10-minute unpaid lunch break. He often checked the

weather and packed extra water bottles and a cooler filled with ice.

But after more than 20 years as a postal carrier, he was beginning to think about retirement.

Around 2:45 p.m. that day, a phone number from the post office called her cellphone. Mr. Gates had fallen in front of a house where he was delivering mail. He was rushed to a hospital.

Her husband died of heart disease and hypertension. His body temperature was 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius), his wife said.

"He needed more support, but these workers are on their own," Mr. Gates said. "The blame is on them if the mail does not get delivered."

"It's not just doing its job," she added. (HHA found the Pivotal Service $25,420 for his death, citing the agency for failing to recognize the "hazard of high outdoor heat including high temperature, high humidity and direct sun exposure.")

The service declined a request for contracts.

Kinston Lewis, the president of the Louis Star Branch 522, a head of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the sum was insulting.

"The Pivotal Service, the state, all halted him," Mr. Lewis said.

In an open letter from June, as non-persistent began to rise, the Texas A.F.L.-C.I.O., which works alongside the local letter carrier' union, wrote that "usmen have the power to take care of workers now by sharing heat solely tips."

"Archimations," technique, text breaks and proper planning now livery, they wrote, calling for workers to organize. "But we shouldn't be in this position."

Last month, another Dallas-area postal carrier collapsed and died during a period of extreme heat. A cause of death is pending.

Pressure builds for tech giants to share the wealth from A.I.

A.I., PENN PALE?

far more water and electricity, stoking local that's about their economic and environmental impact.

Now York State has taken some of the most aggressive steps in response. In Italy, Ralby (Roche) became the first governor to enact a fuller-than-annual state on data center development for the next year. She also produced a wholesale recommendation of the state's tax treatment of data centers.

On an interview, Ms. Hachal stressed that she was not opposed to the tech industry, citing her state's previous efforts to attract a $100 billion investment from Micron, a semiconductor manufacturer, to the hopes that it would create thousands of jobs in quarter. Now York.

Ms. Hachal argued that the rapid construction of A.I. data centers is not categorically different. She said they are paired more power than the state could provide, even if it could quickly construct a new nuclear plant. But she added, that the data center has a likely to create many long-term jobs; they could even have the opposite effect.

She said she agreed on a investment," Ms. Hachal said, "when the jobs aren't associated with it."

Many in the tech industry have criticized such actions. The opponents included the Data Center Coalition, a lobbying group representing Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, as well as Amazon-based companies.

Dan Davis, the executive vice president of state policy and government of Sars at the Data Center Coalition, said that the New York policy was too "open-suited." In 2024, he added, that the same areas "out-to-fly with such a blanket policy that doesn't actually account for the fact they want this."

Some regions have indeed benefited

Senator Bernie Sanders, above left, has called for a new sovereign wealth fund to reimburse profits from tech giants in the public. Greg Abbott, above right, the Republican governor of Texas, once called his state the "epicentre" of A.I., but he has since ordered an audit of data centers' compliance with electricity rules, one of a series of recent actions.

from data centers, which have brought a rush of construction jobs, a glint of economic revival and, in some cases, a well-spiring of new property tax revenue.

That includes Louisiana, where one parish was able to give bananas to public teachers, thanks to new revenue from a data center project, in Louisiana County, Va., the area known as Data Center Alley has generated so much investment activity and revenue that officials cut residents' property taxes.

In a bid to capture similar revenues benefits, other local governments have explored tough laws that would force tech companies and data center developers to pay up. But many of their proposals have drawn the sharp and well-funded opposition from the industry.

The A.I. companies have been espe-

cially adversarial when policymakers have targeted their taxes. Broadly, tech giants have taken advantage of laws that allow them to buy companies, service and other equipment without paying sales taxes.

When officials in Virginia tried to repeal that exemption -- a strike proposal by Ms. Lucas, the state senator -- the Data Center Coalition, led a lobbying campaign to keep a "good deal" of group helped to create one of a series of dark, many political organizations that have run ads nationally, seeking to defeat unfavorable tax policies or promote the benefits of the A.I. industry.

In the end, the coalition largely succeeded, working with others in the state to quash a repeal that Mr. Dorris later described as "positive," Instead, Virginia

is imposed a small, temporary and limited tax on the industry's energy usage. The outcome restricted Ms. Lucas, who promised to keep fighting. "We're missing these dollars that would have otherwise come to us," she said.

Many of the states that have targeted data centers have encountered equally stiff opposition from Mr. Trump. Shortly after New York announced its maintain, the state's efforts demanded that Ms. Hachal rescind the order and predicted that such loans would drive data centers to "cut states."

But the backlash has been bipartisan, but the state's Democratic-led Illinois and Republican-led Ohio have passed some tax incentives that benefit data centers. So has Arizona, which finalized a three-year pause in June that Katie

Hollins, the Democratic governor, said would help free up money for child care and other social services.

In an interview, Ms. Hollins said that while some people were "doing very well because of A.I.," the benefits weren't always widely shared. "And some of the pushouts you're seeing from state-matters to that a lot of people aren't seeing that."

Many cities and states have been sparred to action by voters who are convinced that they may be forced to bar the bill for the energy demands of data centers. After years of persistently high inflation.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, says described his state as the "epicentre of A.I. development." But this month Mr. Abbott ordered a statewide

audit of data centers and their compliance with local electricity rules, part of a series of recent actions on the industry. "Simply put, Texans must come first," the governor said at the time.

Major companies including Anthropic, Meta, Alphabet and OpenAI have pledged to facsimile more of their own power for data centers, so that they do not further local residents with larger data, fewer have already done so, in accordance with a new White House part means to reduce costs.

But the industry's efforts have varied in consequence -- creating new energy demands in some communities, while reducing costs in others. Nor has progress even less enough to satisfy all states. Over the past two years, roughly 20 states have considered legislation-related to data center energy use, including special tariffs on the largest electricity users, including data centers, according to the University of Virginia (USVA).

The list includes New Jersey, where lawmakers this year adopted a bill by Assemblyman David Bailey, a Democrat, who cited concerns about power costs as "one of the No. I sources of calls we were getting to our district office".

The proposal angered the Data Center Coalition, which tried to circulate among legislators an edited version of the bill that would have exempted some facilities from the fees. But lawmakers still marched through a version of the tariff, which Mr. Bailey said would "make sure the companies and developers were going to pay."

"We're learning from Ohio, we're learning from Illinois, we're learning from Virginia," he said, of other states that had assessed their authority. "What are we really getting? What's our return on investment here?"

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MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026 | 9

Opinion

American weed is going global. Europe is not ready.

North American cannabis companies are on a campaign of global conquest.

Kojo Koram

LONDON: The 25th century was defined by American brands — McDonald's and Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Starbucks — going global. In the 21st century, it's artificial intelligence companies that are preparing to conclude on the world economy. But the start to go global is on for another product: marijuana.

In America it has been a hungry ride. The country long tried to effectively wipe weed off the face of the earth. But over the past decade or so, the pendulum swung. 24 states legal and recreational cannabis, and 10 states have legal medical markers. For a few years, rentam capitulism peared their dollars into every top-standing weed company they could find, giving rise to the so-called green rush — a cannabis industry across the United States and Canada worth $20 billion at its peak.

But things were never steady. A patchwork of state laws, high taxes and overcapsulation led to a cycle of losses and bans. Companies told their financial backers that federal legislation favoring the industry was imminent, but when that failed to materialize, investors pulled their cash. Profits stalled and stock prices collapsed. To

There is still time for European countries to change course and design a different type of market for legal cannabis.

many, it looked so though the cannabis industry would remain stock in purgatory. Then, at the end of last year, an unlikely sector arrived: President Trump. His executive order

is December to reclassify cannabis promised to take the drug out of the company that includes heroin and place it alongside prescribed pain medications like codeine. It would also, importantly, spare companies from the heavy taxes that were strangling profits. The industry perched back up. Now North American cannabis companies are taking their wares overseas. And Europe, the first step on their campaign of global conquest, is not ready.

The growth of expansion has begun. In February the Canadian cannabis company Organigram acquired Sauty Group, a German medical cannabis company, for around $205 million. In April, Tilkey, one of America's cannabis juggernauts, acquired Lyphe, a leading British medical cannabis provider, not long after picking up a popular crab beer company. Not to be saddens, the United States' largest cannabis company, Cursinol, soon followed suit by completing the harvest of Four 20 Pharma, a major German medical cannabis producer and distributor.

These are just the mergers. American companies are also moving directly into the European market. This year Cursinol rolled out a public advertisement campaign in Britain with ads on the London Underground and on television, but ended its Polish subsidiary as Cursinol Centrum Midystate and became the first company to supply medical marijuana in Spain. Cursinol isn't alone in making nomads. A recent report found that Canadian cannabis experts in Britain grew by more than 300 percent in a single year. The same study years for legal marijuana in Europe. So far, only Germany, Malta, Luxembourg and the Czech

AP Photo

Republic have legalized recreational cannabis. None follow the heavily commercialized model of North America, although there are pilot programs for retailing cannabis in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Medical marijuana, however, is legal in many countries, including Italy, France and Britain. Europe's medical cannabis market is already approaching $1.7 billion in value.

With this influx comes challenges. In America, legalization — despite some of its social equity ambitions — has tended to place profit over public health. For the most part, the cannabis industry has adopted many of the same aggressive marketing practices associated with the tobacco and alcohol industries, including lobbying for favorable regulation, increasing the

potency of products and targeting a small number of frequent users. The cost is clear. A recent study found that this underregulated and overcommercialized approach gives rise to increased use disorders and psychic distress.

Already there are signs of these issues emerging in Europe. In March, Cursinol found itself in trouble in Britain after prescribing medical cannabis to Oliver Robinson, a 24-year-old man with a history of mental health issues who then took his own life. The center was led the request into his death based that industry practices meant there was a real risk of more deaths. It's not hard to see how. In Germany the prescription through signs and teleclones led to a rise in imports of 400 percent in the first half of 2025,

prompting the government to restrict online sale.

There is still time for European countries to change course and design a different type of market for legal cannabis. This might involve the mainstreaming of cannabis social clubs, where members learn how to grow, consume and manage the plant as part of a community — something that has taken place in Barcelona, Spain, for decades.

It could also include license caps to stop multinational corporations from buying up large chunks of the market or giving licenses only to result local producers and cooperatives. Cannabis does not have to lead to either mass criminalization or mass commercialization.

The war on drugs, pursued across

the 25th century, achieved little beyond targeting the poor, vulnerable and marginalized. Yet it succeeded in nursing cannabis from the relatively normal missionist it had been for 5,000 years since the feature devils lettuce of popular imagination.

As it gets recommended in the 21st century, accompanied by targeted Instagram ads, celebrity endemic stories and delivery on demand, there is a danger of overhyping the drug again. But this time, it's in the opposite direction: overwelling the benefits while maintaining the risks.

HIGH SCHOOL is a professor of law and political economy at Laughborough University in England and the author of "The Next Fix: The Women and Lasers in the Future of Drugs."

Why is John Hinckley Jr. being allowed to rewrite history?

The man who shot my father thinks this is a great moment for self-promotion.

Patti Davis

John Hinckley Jr. never really goes away, but he chooses his ancestors to stop into the spotlight. After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on the campaign trail two years ago, Mr. Hinckley did an interview with Erin Burnett on C-95, claiming to be a changed man, to have regrets about that March day in 1961 when he tried to assassinate my father, Ronald Reagan.

Now, just before the release of the movie "The Brink of War," about the 1960 Reykjavik meeting between my father and Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Hinckley was back out in public, talking about how he put his past behind him.

His latest podcast appearance was apparently big news: I heard about it before. Today, a new and have once seen it mentioned a number of other places. It's quite something. In a particularly creepy moment, he offered good wishes to John Pruett, whom he did at once, to make the shooting that the carnage was meant to impress. I shudder to think what other bookings he's got dead up.

I first came about Mr. Hinckley in

2000 for Time magazine, when his lawyer Barry Levine tried to get him released for unsupervised visits from the hospital to which a judge had seen him. Mr. Levine tried to convince me that Mr. Hinckley was probably in remonstrance from his sanctioned personality disorder. The request fell apart, but it was later revived and approved.

For a while, pretty much every time Mr. Hinckley was granted more freedom, I would publish something in minding people of the horror of that day. Of the fact that my father almost died, that James Brady's life was irrevocably damaged after being shot in the head, that Thomas Dombardy, who was shot in the neck, had to retire from the police force, that Timothy McCarthy, a Secret Service agent who was shot in the chest, lives with the scars of that day.

Mr. Hinckley didn't wait for a clear shot; he just kept pulling the triggers and in the process wounded three other people. I want people to visualize that. I want people to remember that during this man's hospitalization, which ended in 2005, he was writing to Ted Bundy and sought the address of Charles Manson. With the help of his lawyers, he has worked the system for decades and does not seem to be planning to stop.

John Hinckley Jr., senior, with back to camera, being grabbed by the police and Secret Service agents after shooting President Ronald Reagan in Washington in March 1961.

Because I suspect his timing for this latest reappearance had to do with the release of the film about my father, let me show my own link between the shooting and that feature meeting with Mr. Gorbachev. Mr. Hinckley's bullet landed an inch from

my father's heart. He believed God saved his life for a reason: to try to make his friend safer and more powerful. As he renowned, he wrote to Lenzel Brodtson; to see avail. Mr. Gorbachev's accent renewed my father's hope.

Shortly after the shooting, he said that he believed his healing depended on his willingness to forgive John Hinckley, whom he called "a misguided young man." My father was more spiritually advanced than I am. I do believe in forgiveness, but I make exceptions. I also believe that people can change: I just don't think John Hinckley is one of those people.

Forty-five years is a long time ago. Many people today were too young to remember that day, as weren't even here yet. But it lives on, because it is a part of history. It shouldn't be rewritten as the consequence of the man's troubles, as Mr. Hinckley is trying to do. It shouldn't be gapped over with bizarre statements of cheery good will. That's not contrition; that's self-promotion.

What happened that day in 1961 was a cold, calculated plan to kill. James Brady's family last years with the man they loved, who was never the same after his skull was shattered. Mr. Hinckley is now a free man. Mr. Brady's children will never be free from what he did. None of us who lived through that time will be.

PATTY DAVIS is the author of "Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Mommy and the America We Own Knew."

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18 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

OPINION

The New York Times

LONDON (ENGLAND) 1825-1826

A.S. HULSBERGER Publisher

ANNOY (LONDON) Executive Editor

MARK LADD Managing Editor

GABRIEL MILLER Managing Editor

SUZANNE BAKER Associate Editor

HERBERT HENRY LIPTON Chief Executive Officer

BRYANT L. BRESSER, Dean of the National Manager

MELISSA FRANKS Executive Officer

A rollicking solution to our literary crisis

Peter Schmidt

If you've read the news lately — or, more likely, beautiful, so-called Out open! And, a headline we year for each 5-young man lived — you've been a good man who was a good man — doomed. High school seniors are reading at the lowest levels in over 20 years, and college students don't know how to read a book since its cover. There is plenty to ensure in their interest. And, in the past, English syllabus feature of your might have said, reports of literary/crds that are greatly exaggerated.

Having come of age amid Covid-19 lockdowns and the proliferation of social media, young people come the havoc of human contact that took us to live in the world we actually inhabit, not for one we see snowsaw — asking questions. Working together and including the arrangement of the reality passed down to us, is it happens, books are uniquely passed in object, usually in a way that is nice those sorts of activities.

That's why the act of engaging with written texts — the basis of our cultural,

In other words, the future of reading is a party political and intellectual style to your life

years — is not coming to an end. It's changing to what it's not worth by offering the kinds of experiences digital technologies can't provide a specific

soon, IRL excuses to be more than human beings.

In other words, the future of reading is a party. Books are bringing people together. Get Z reading groups are preparing an across the United States and the Silent Book Club, a community that gathers for others reading, and who are Z 2016 chapters across 60 countries. Reading on trusts and summer camps hosted by the Bad Birch Book Club regularly converse between Z and 40 nationalists for work and long gatherings, giving new meaning to the term 'occupa literature.' Sally Mercedes, the events coordinator at Magic City Books in Tulsa, Okla., sees bookmers playing acronycoatingly social function for their customers. 'A lot of books in people tend to be introverts,' she told me. 'We need a space where we know that we're an common ground with others.'

Other experiments are remitting the traditional book club format or breaking out of a variety. The Concomptive Book Club, a 'literary and ordinary event series' organization by the Gen Z artists Celeste Estelle and Kyle Rames, brings to the works such as J&H 'Guitars' More's 'Anecdotism' via meticulously themed dinner parties and facilitation of over-tensions. A recent public reading of Alton Ginsberg's 'How?'+arguanylity 20-something-draw-handouts at people Washington Square Park in New York City.

These gatherings vary in location, duration and subject studies, but their unifying spirit is simple: that reading can be as much a mode of vibrant sociality as it is of occluded short-living.

Easy as it is in胖gen, sitting alone and reading in silence — the activity that professors tend to worry about — is not seen a novelty. In the 'Continuum, Augustine of Happenedness something upon Antitrust, Bishop of Milan, in a

moment of perplexing absorption. 'While reading, his eyes gleaned over the pages, and his heart was filled out the notes, but his voice and his heart silent.' That Augustine bothers the describe this scene with an unswelling about the way reading commonly took place in the ancient world: an apatite practice, second-father group, and a trend and understanding of the literature about, and understanding of the literature of written texts versus the need for oral education meet and debate in Imperial Rome.

The practice of reading is another group—related to modern literary spaces of religious worship, workers' study groups and avant-garde literary performances. But the spread of the printed word and the subsequent disintermediation of literary elements — solitary, silent absorption as the dominant image of the reading person. This is the kind of reading we are taught to do so today. It is also the kind of reading that students are now failing to learn over greater numbers.

Why? There's no deeping that young people are suffering from the fearless of smartphone use and cognitive restraints to be a critical intelligence. These are serious problems, but they are only half the story. Students make stand as well as anyone else that long lives can't be longer the exclusive, or even the most effective, tool for distributing knowledge, removing people across time and space and contributing complex decisions. We've been aware of a figure. The international function of books is declining, and their experience has been increasing to the low. This shift can bring new vitality not only to the lives of readers but also to long lives in our themselves.

Engaging with books as instruments for group experience is not the sort of reading that we encounter in classrooms, but it has plenty to teach us about the complexities of inhabiting the world together — and the ways that our literary inheritance can prepare us for the challenge. While educators may never abandon traditional instruction in solitary reading, right now they face an enormous opportunity to impart a new vision for the role of literary in public life.

Last month I helped to organize one of these gatherings in Dundee, on the Brooklyn ward floor: an all-night group recitation of Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' on the eve of the poet's 2016 birthday. We had 21-20 51% list, I wrote by plus-ones and wide-ins, ended up with closer to 50 people in attendance.

After four hours of recitation, singing repetition, call and response and count less other experimental reading methods, we developed to the share of the East River, where around 2 a.m. we let out a full 20-round collective party. In the breakfast in quiet that followed, a recent college graduate standing beside me admitted that the had never even read Whitman before. Several auditing heads assured her the wasn't the only one. Then, unhardened by the company, she proposed: 'Let's do it again.'

HERE GOOD! It is hustler and her program director of the Brother School of Radical Attention, where he also serves as the editor in chief of The Empty Cap, a dispatch on the politics of attention.

APRIL FOLLAND

Gen Z-ers dress like they've never worn clothes before

Text by Thomas Morton Photographs by Elinor Kry

Time was, if you wanted to know what people's deal was, you read their clothes.

As a young man working at a demographic street-fashion magazine, I used to relish transmembring people by what they had on. I could tell you at a glance what kind of music they listened to, whether they worked, what they'd be like to feel, what sort of beer they would drink — all from the out of their past log or the name guard number of their fashion.

These gathers and white half-cap pallets dress stay on for very the eyes? That's a jack. Turn-up gray bandits over enormous jeans whose cuffs are soaking up puddle water? The person smokes wood. Same handle but sleeves pushed up past the elbows? Watch me! That's the universal signifier for each.

These days I am a middle-aged man who works the door at a bar in Chicago that is reasonably popular with the youths, and I am maturely threatened by the natural disease that comes packing itself in. The other night a guy came to with a shoulder-length belt cut and his 5-shirt tucked into his jeans. 'We're there's a dark,' I thought. I could've checked him from down the block. But as, no hour later I went outside, and he was making out in the alley with a six-foot braising supermodel — and she was goth. Or at least she was dressed like what I consider to be a goth; nowadays I don't even know.

Used to be that you could tell goths from group by the look of them. Now, who knows? In the office recession I grew up in, there was no cheap bar fashion. Instead, historical teenagers hit the thrill stares and ransmaged through the available past. Social theorists like Dick Hickhige

would refer to the overall picture as a bricolage of previous eras and subcultures of youth fashion: a grab-bag of old discarded styles shuffled into a new arrangement. While we youths knew what these new arrangements signified — an old dress that was multiway pants for the indie-rock kids, 'Oh baby-dull dresses with beets for the run girls — to an outside observer, I'm sure we all just looked crazy.'

While punishment of the elderly was never the point, it still felt nice to have a legitimate opportunity to say, 'You just don't get it, Pops.'

But now I am the Pops who just doesn't get it. For real, and in nature! Why is everybody under the age of 16 these days dressed like an in-laid lunatic?

It seems no one has even worn clothes before. 2015! jeans with a blazer, a cardigan sweater tucked in came pants with no belt, a 5-shirt over a peasant dress with sleeves pulled through with a belt? And for us era when people ask strangers online to one their life, it's genuinely means how poorly everyone's clothing fits. High-natural jeans belt out over memory novels while fused or boot-lit cuffs clung around their calves; untwisted shirts hang off the sides like paper-doll clothes; nobody's wearing the right shoes. You'll see a perfectly fun-looking young man in an N.E.L. 5-shirt and gym shorts, and then he'll be wearing a pair of penny loafers over sweat socks.

Worst of all, everything's clean. Wally's clean, clean and creased, as if it had just some out of a drop-drip envelope, and the less said about the haircuts, frankly, the before.

An adult's' pole back to the '60s and '80s was to refer, often usually, to whatever their use or daughter was wearing as making a fashion statement. And while the point was simply to annoy their kid, there was a kernel of truth wedged in there. The most bohedding, hodgopedge-rallyl server-theftest-coprosed-something about the wearer, and the most common application of this revelory some-please was signaling to the rest of us who'd-fiting the person was or as good to.

It helped that there were only about 20 or so things you could be, although by the end of the '80s, the things were multiplying. Puck begin crust punk, slate punk, hard core, post-hard core and third-wave aka (a lot of aka). Each split into regular goth. Plumbi-spooky kid and outcasts al, which split into dance industrial and rock. Even theater kids branched off into opposing horizons of performers and stage tacks, each with its own discernible fashion men. Here's a helpful movement for that one: if there's a lot with no collar round the neck, you got yourself a tech.

Keeping track of all the divergent tribes and celebrations required an initiative theory: to manage ourselves, and the only way to pick up this implicit language was from the kids around you in your town or suburb and what socializing you could find in maintenance area. If it stays and the occasional proper size, it was important, though. For instance, you wouldn't want to ask a Tampa death}-metal fan to a 'littered cat' that what he thought about the Norwegian black-metal artist Mørillo. That would be the end of your next. Like, who, you wouldn't want to do something help with your math housework from a video game and. That's the wrong type of work.

The something remarkable happened. With the end of the internet, the tribes began scavenging. Inquirer and psych social media like Michael Bump, a young member who's saved the financial barrier of entry for strategy from young mothers. You could try out music without listening 10 on a CD you ended up looking for a new one. The style of what West Coast kids were wearing without having a transfer student show up at your school halfway through the entrance or seeing fused play your head and right side.

Indie-rock kids took up club music; metal bands throw a little cup in the mix. Everybody's pants shrunk. So the lines that divided in the front tribe grew way of personal fashion. The erysion started blinding and hybridizing into a single smartphone new thing. And they're all the same.

Some folks didn't like it, though, and instead their tribes. They apparently called this glorious union of all the previous youth andtimes big-eyes. On the very internet that had spelled the end of tribal division, those people conceived different subcultures and subcultures, half of which didn't even seem like lifestyles so much as the whole in place — keepin' unguilty things you had to differentiate because of how many hyphens they have lived. Urban-with-praim-goth. Non-Hispanic-West Coast feature speak. Global village-caffeebases-hi-autobots. And some how they all still reward up looking like rotten from the sea of 'Pinnacle's Infanteria'.

The failing of this expertise feels under and more significant tasks over standard aging loss of being with it. There was a coherence to how people worn their clothes that allowed the merely director not to stop an entire suite of personality traits onto a style with little knowledge of proper fashion. You could ghie a sense of not only who they were but also who they aspired to be. You could pick it up from seeing different versions of the same type of person over and over. And then, once you felt comfy with the tip of the back, you could decide which tribe you were going to try to belong to.

Part of we wants to just blame the internet and call it a play. And by the way, it is not an easy way to do that. If you can order a cheap facsimile of any article of clothing you've ever seen a picture of — from any period in human history, delivered in days. It takes someone to know what you're learn the house looking like the fashion experience of a 10-year-old's old son's at 1600. 'Don't know, I don't know.' there's that entire wall of toppings.

But I think this whole business hurts more than the eyes. The subcultures of my youth were a sort of gothic, a lot of people who are a variety intimating the type of organism. Some and communities that涌现 in together over the 20th century, finding someone to be a group of members who were the same things we were served as a federate against the fracturing sense of association. Many, as a group, have a very couple of months basically done the opposite, keeping you permanently steel from the kids around you. I mean, half these things barely sound like groups or activities. But I have not had a performance-matcha boy — some guy who drinks a thing? How's that going to be your tribe?

Subcultures and fashion itself get worse off as a group found for the young. Yet even in my things, I still find friends and companies by our shared message. So many, just the other night I got my car jumped by a farmer goth — a real goth — because I complemented his Cain of Xynon: haircut before asking. As a federal and surrendered as we still build may seem, you can still make out the traces of people's wayward youth in the cut of their pants and the roll of their distributors and, obviously, when applicants, almost everybody's still legible, even if you have to read more clearly.

But then, I did, I mean. They are going to get me in my grave looking like githersick.

THOMAS MORTON is a writer and former editor for 'Our magnets,' a book set is a photographer based in New York.

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MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2020 | 11

OPINION

Friends wanted me to cut off my father. They were wrong.

Celeste Marcus

I grew up in a politically conservative Orthodox Jewish community that taught its members that gay marriage should be illegal—and that a religious say marriage was a central decision to terms. My parents learned I was a Serious who I introduced them to the women of intended to marry I was ill. My father took it badly, the believed that a union with another woman would make it hard, impossible perhaps, to have a meaningful Jewish life and a healthy, happy family.

When I told my friends about his marriage, they said this was as her life: and its effect on me so debilitating that it justified meaning that there are My entirety. One even said that continuing to be close with him was not morally justifiable. She achieved I go “no contact.” The practice of deliberately encouraging yourself from family members has become a feature of our culture. Often, the trend takes the form of progressive children, like me, cutting her into a more active parents, as The New Yorker chronicled in 2014. There are support groups and online forums devoted to no contact with men of thus-used or incedents.

Some people choose to go no contact because of abuse. Others because their world is not so much of a single, opposed to those of their parents and to constant disagreement (because) to overwhelm every interaction. Others who wrestle with the possibility were shaped by their parents’ status and health and simply interpret them differently.

Going no contact is a kind of amputating. In my case, not only would it be an awful way to treat my father; it would also deprive me and my future family of a connection to the ideas and tradition that made me who I am. Cutting him off would be self-mutilation.

Some people choose to come. I do number of people cutting off close kin—particularly children cutting off parents—appears to be rising. Some speculate that the major suffering is speciationly only whether it is seemingly reasonable problems are to blame. Sharon Martin, the author of the 2010 book “Cutting This with Your Parents,” offers a “Toxic Family Day” on her blog. Figures speculate about the relationship of parents—a abuse and chaotic environments. And just this spring, 22 writers offered to-

says on family not eagerness for a new collection titled “No Contact.”

Going no contact is especially common among queer people. There is a long tradition of creating a “cheese family” that replaces the one you are here into that does not accept you.

For me, no contact was the wrong choice.

I come out in my parents in spring 2021, six months before the Oct. 1 attacks. My pro-Palestinian activists has been even more challenging for my father than my sexuality, adding another heavy strain on our head.

On Feb. 25, 2024, I published a guest essay in the Times about a Jewish family grant series who died during the time-cast, making a passing analogy between his experience and those of Palestinian or Gaza. The analogy spiked an argument between me and my father in

Many queer people are going no contact – cutting off their families for myriad reasons. It’s not always the right answer.

where Jews stand alongside Palestinian to protect them from Israeli settler terrorism.

To me, these two-produced disagreements with my father are morally related. It was my. Judaism that led me back to fight for the persecuted (and for Israeli democratic and moral integrity) and to commit to a family with the woman I love. Both followed from the values my parents taught me. But in my father, both my sexuality and even more so my activists seemed like a rejection of him and of the values he and my mother had introduced in me. For my friends, this pickled a disagreement was one more reason to go no contact. Instead, we went to therapy together.

My father was the one who suggested it. He said he'd pay and that he'd drive from our family's home in Philadelphia in Washington where I live, as often as I was willing to sit in a chair beside him, in front of a therapist he who is not “the reform.” I did not immediately take him up on the offer. I was afraid. My first I knew, my wife justified and cowardly I worried therapy might offer an arena in which he would remind me through

legitization that my life was “an abomination,” which is what the Bible calls gay sex. (He insists it describes only male gay sex that way, which gives me no comfort.)

My life has been shaped by my father’s influence. As our therapist is constantly reminding us, we are very similar people. The better I want to build with my wife is notchbed by the religious tradition that he taught me to love, and that my wife and I share. There is no way for me to approach that tradition, or

the parts of me that were midwife by it, without encountering my father’s fingerprints. I did not want to give my fiancée an impoverished version of me. I had to notice my relationship with my father, and with my family, before I could start a family of my own, At least, I had to try.

Progress has been difficult. At the height of our fight in 2024, my father reflected, and we have a directly or loyalty for the Jewish people. Diskically is a cardinal sin in our family, and this

accusation cut to the murrow. I could not bear to continue our argument, and these instead to move away from him entirely, a brief foray into the no-contact universe. In therapy, he repeated that accusation. I told my father that I had been upset shortly before writing about the entire/quality — in therapy he theorized that my lesbianism was a treason response to my own rage. He also wondered if I had sought not cruel men in earlier years because of mistakes that he had made. These things

were not easy to bear, and I made several accusations that were similarly wounding about his limitations and biases. Yet every fourth thing we said in that evening seemed to reword a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other.

Both my father and I have softened through this process, but neither of us has transferred our world to love. We are learning how to stop fearing our differences and instead embrace an approach to family that does not insist on a shared worldview. That may be the key difference between those who choose no contact and those who choose to stop and argue and work toward a moral love. It is really more important that we love and respect each other than that we agree to own or pretend to learn. In fact, being capable of loving an ideological adventure is a virtue.

One family has a way to father officiated my wedding in the backyard of the home where he and my mother raised me and my family. In his welcoming remarks, he told the guests that my wife and I had been married in a civil ceremony three months earlier and that this wedding was ourสมัครman. He one to whom we also chose to invite our friends and family, the one we chose to celebrate publicly as a symbol of our commitment to our tradition and to each other.

He also told them that my wife and I were coming into a union to alleviate the estimated loneliness that God warns against in Genesis, where it is written, “it is not good for a human being to be alone.” This is the passage in the Bible that explains God’s vision to believe live as a partner for Adam. By comparing our love to them, my father honored my and my wife’s love by placing it in the same category as the original romance, the one designed by God.

I would have gladly spent for longer in therapy with my father. As all the brazen collected and endured, to be able to love him after those existence — and to be able to return. Cutting to that point was not easy. Cutting to a proper understanding of the ways in which you need the people you love the most is not easy. If you are lucky enough to love and be loved by a person who is willing to exert that effort, honor that blessing. Work to sustain it.

OLGEN MARCUS is the executive editor of Literature and the author of “Charm Nautier: Genius, Obsession, and a Deceased Life in Art.”

How settlers in Israel are out of control

KRISTAF, FROM PAGE 1

Most settlers are not violent, and some live in settlements (which are generally regarded as illegal under international law) nor for ideological reasons but because it is cheap. But it is also true that settler attacks causing damage or injury are at the highest level in two decades, with an average of five a day last year. That was to set a day in the first half of this year, according to United Nations figures.

About 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers or settlers since the Oct. 1 Human terror attack on Israel, the United Nations says. The circumstances are often disputed, but the total includes at least 100 children.

Under Netanyahu, the Israeli Army increasingly raises the role of settlers, even when they are engaging in illegal or violent behavior, according to Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups, news accounts and others. “The army members’ participation settlers is attacks,” a UN commission reported.

What all this means in practice is misery for people like Abdel-Hajeed Hussan, a Palestinian farmer in his 70s whom live visited periodically for many years. He is a self-spoken shop-hard in the village of Quatu, deeply proud that all 12 of his children attended university.

“My sheep and my children to university,” he told me during an April visit as he needed his Bank.

Even the years, settlers have shot Hassan in the leg, he said, partly burned his home (rears), stolen his sheep, invaded his home, blocked his access to his olive trees, tried to burn his sheep alive, prevented him from accessing the spring where he drew water for his animals, threatened his grandchildren, destroyed five of his vehicles and fueled rocks at him more when that he was exact, according to accounts by him, fellow villagers and human rights workers.

“It’s getting worse,” he told me. Before, the Israel Defense Forces would overstimulate restrain the settlers, he said, but now they often protect them. As we spoke, one of his sons called the Amrit the 20 or more settlers were approaching. “They will start throwing stones, and if they see a car, they will burn it.” Hassan told me repeatedly.

The government that makes a clampdown on extremist settlers more possible is that growing numbers of permanent families are acknowledging the category of the attacks and depending that the government crack down.

Two former prime ministers and three former senior figures signed a joint letter this summer calling on Netanyahu to “immediately take all measures necessary to terminate the Jewish terror that has been wide-

Abdel-Hajeed Hassan leveling his sheep in them in the West Bank. “It’s getting worse,” he said at the settlers. “They will start throwing stones, and if they see a car, they will burn it.”

spread” in the West Bank.

Tansir Parda, a former head of the Wemad security agency, told Israeli television after hearing West Bank villages: “My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century.”

Jassana Shirodsen, a retired Israeli brigadier general, put it this way: “Israel is now using its power to start

Terrorism is doing its job, instilling fear and leaving entire families wondering whether to flee.

“We think about leaving a lot,” Shifa Alhassani, 24, told me when I visited the remote Palestinian hamlet of the Iowa, under the 20th and 51th settlers. “I worry a lot about my children. I have young daughters, teenagers, and I fear the settlers might rage them.”

Settlers have invaded homes in Hakeve, handcuffed and beaten the men, burned one home to the ground, cut water pipes, operated alive and pomegranate trees, destroyed solar panels and water tanks and provided

the land of the West Bank. “We think about leaving a lot,” Shifa Alhassani, 24, told me when I visited the remote Palestinian hamlet of the Iowa, under the 20th and 51th settlers. “I worry a lot about my children. I have young daughters, teenagers, and I fear the settlers might rage them.”

ses laziness with women inside, multiple villagers told me. Sometimes the settlers are armed with American assault rifles, they said.

Perhaps scarcely at all for parents the settlers contend the vehicle that takes children to their school, the parents and children told me.

“I got scared when they attacked our car,” one girl who was results. Rawlton, 8, told me.

When I was leaving Hakeve, a group of settlers blocked our vehicle. I spoke to the settlers in English, asking to intervene them for The New York Times; they declined and retreated.

The Trump administration is not only safe on this kind of terrorism, even when Palestinian Americans are injured or killed. That happened in February. Settlers killed a 20-year-old American citizen in the West Bank.

But in the United States, West Bank attacks by settlers are further draining Israel and Netanyahu if required. An Economist/YouGov survey last month found that Americans by a 22-percentage-point margin favor arresting Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza. And attitude shifts are evident not just among Democrats. An Entertainment Board that two-thirds of independent voters believe America gives too much aid to Israel.

The brutality of settler attacks should cause American officials as well. Because of U.S. support for Israel’s security apparatus, we Americans are enabling some of this territory.

My colleague Thomas L. Friedman has aptly called Netanyahu not just the worst leader in Israel’s history but also “maybe in all of Jewish history.” And that’s a lot of history. What I know personally from my reporting on the ground to the West Bank and Gaza for many years is that condition from have been destroyed to serve Netanyahu’s political career, and that at least until recently we Americans haven’t reflected adequately on our own complicity.

I’m hoping that Netanyahu’s political end is coming, and that someone like Eisenhower will that back the repression. But even if that happens, let’s be honest: Gazans will still suffer unconstantly, and the West Bank will remain oppressed and seerped.

“Even if a new government wanted to rein or violent settlers, it would be difficult,” said the public, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. “Settlers have been given weapons and vehicles by the government, they’re emboldened, and the Israeli Zensini left and center has never rushed to use violence or other strong measures against Israeli Jews. This game might not fit neatly back into its battle.”

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12 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

Sports

Pope Leo has been a godsend for the White Sox

CHICAGO

The pontiff grew up south of Chicago. And no, he's definitely not a Cubs fan.

BY TADIA GANGLI

On May 8, 2025, Mike Downey, the senior director of promotions and marketing for the Chicago White Sox, took a break from work to swing by the effort headnears on the third floor of the ballpark. A news channel playing on a television screen said the paper (inactive at the Vatican had finally selected a pope, Mr. Downey, a lifelong Catholic, checked social media for more details).

"The pope was American, for the first time to see church's history. Interesting, he thought. The pope was from Chicago. How cool.

Oh, he's from a suburb just south of Chicago. Do I know him? wondered Mr. Downey, nevertheless?"

"Word was that the pope was a fan of the Chicago Cubs, the White Sox! Orals on the North Side. The Cubs quickly announced the news on their marquee: ('Hey, Chicago. He's a Cubs Fan?'') and posted a photo on X.

"Around the White Sox' office, staffers and executives interested their bad luck. A South Side Cubs fan? What a shame!"

"Then, just as suddenly came a rebuttal from the pope's brother: 'No, actually, Pope Leo. It's a bounty Robert Provost, was a White Sox fan."

Mr. Downey — who had the before job of noticing Chicagoans to spend money to see the lovely White Sox — innova-

Top, a record depicting Pope Leo XIV near the seat where he attended a Chicago White Sox played game at Rain Field in 2005. Right, a public Mass at the medical bar post, after the pope was elected. Above, White Sox fans wearing reders at a game last week.

sity recognized the opportunity before him. He distinctly remembers his first thought: 'Oh my god.'

PEIJER: The White Sox set a record for the most recent in another Major League Baseball history, with 3.5. More than a month into the 2025 season, they remained firmly in control of last place in the American League Central. Their average home attendance in both seasons was the fourth worst in Major League Baseball.

It was Mr. Downey's job to find something to celebrate amid the gloom. He and his team had a long list of promotions planned for 2025, the team's 120th anniversary season. A pluck blanket, A 1867 replica proxy, A 1872 Dick Allen M.V.P. bubblehead. A working radio shaped like Comiskey Park, the team's home for most of its history.

"That also was, bounty, trying to shield people," Mr. Downey said. "Make people forget about what happened the year before."

To the day the new pope was elected, the White Sox rewarded his enduring faith in them by losing to the Kansas City Royals, 19-5 30th the pope's fan date gave the team a new promotional angle, a way to respectfully capitalize on the joy in keeping over the city.

After conferring that Pope Leo was one of them, the White Sox made sure everyone knew it. Their social media team checkily corrected the Cubs' marquee, gaining a photo of the White Sox' scoreboard with the words, "Hey Chicago, He's a fan Fair!" Saks of their primary baseball cap increased by 33

percent in the next week. By the end of the year, three of the 10 White Sox social media posts that got the most engagement had something to do with the pope.

But there were one-offs, gaining an ally in the 300th successor to R. Pope called for grounds before Mr. Downey and his colleagues set to work.

The team's senior director of design services created a digital sound of the pope for a well between Sections 100 and 161. In the top right corner is a smaller image — a screenwriter from a television broadcast at Game 1 of the 2005 World Series when Pope Leo, then the leader of the Order of St. Augustine, was caught on camera during the final out. The team also added a commemoration plaque to the seat he occupied that day.

The next step was to get the pope back in the stadium, at least in spirit.

Chicago has a large Catholic population, and the Archdiocese of Chicago, the third-largest diocese in the United States. According to the New Research Center, 39 percent of adults in the city identify as Christian and 29 percent say they are Catholic, the most of any denominations. The White Sox have hosted a small Mass for stadium employees for 20 years, when the Mortuary family, which still runs the Patio, the field-level hospitality area where the Mass is held organized it.

A month after the pope's election, the White Sox helped the archdiocese, schedule a public Mass at Rain Field, where the main place, About 25,000 students were sold at $5 each, during a season when the White Sox averaged 17,649 fans a game. Some tickets would up on

the secondary market for more than $1,000, according to The Chicago Survivors.

For Brooks Boyer, an observant Catholic who is the team's chief marketing officer, having any kind of association with the pope was heady stuff.

"We've had sitting stayers of Chicago, we've had generators of Illinois that have been sent White Sox fans, we had a president of the United States in Barack Obama," he said. "I didn't expect anything bigger than the mayor when I started this job, but we've kind of climbed the ladder. What's sure? I mean, I feel like we're one step away from God."

The pope sent an eight-minute recorded address, his first comments to an American audience. He directed much of his message toward young people, saying that he recognized the stadium they had experienced during the Covid pandemic but that they could still be "bounced of hope."

He thanked them for gathering at Rain Field, but he didn't call it that. He called it White Sox Park.

THE BIRMADEAD is the essential promotional presence of sports teams everywhere, regardless of whether the head on the spring belongs to an actual place in White Sox consider that the Atlanta

Browns twice gave away Onikast bubblehead with Big Bat and Austin 2000 is a red snowmobile, and the New York Yankees are about to hand out their third version of a George Costanza bubblehead, a Pope Leo bubblehead was all but inevitable.

Mr. Downey called the team's bubblehead producer the day the pope was elected. He ordered four samples with Pope Leo wearing his traditional robes while holding a White Sox hat over his chest. (He later ordered four man-hazard on a photograph of Pope Leo wearing a White Sox hat.)

He shared the prototypes with Mr. Boyer, who gave two of them to Cardinal Riane Capuch of the Chicago archdiocese during the stadium Mass. He hoped that on the canthauls next visit to the Vatican he could present the bubbleheads to the right parties for approval.

"We don't use his likeness without permission of the Vatican," Mr. Boyer said.

Mr. Downey felt sure that the Vatican would greenlight the idea.

"And then we just heard nothing," he said. "Each month went by and it was nothing, nothing, nothing."

In November last year, he emailed the Rev. Sam Hurley, who had officiated his wedding to his wife, "to make a landslide attempt on bubblehead approval."

Father Hurley sent Mr. Downey to another priest, the Rev. Sam McCarthy, a South Side man who has Augustinian order, the name as Pope Leo.

Father McCarthy had strong fun credentials. His mother had worked at a stroll stand in the White Sox' old stadium, and he had been in games with his father. Father McCarthy has known Pope Leo for 35 years, he said to an interview, but no longer has a direct line to him. Instead, he emailed a Vatican commentator, either. "I did get a response, and they just said that they were not interested," he said.

"I think they may think a bubblehead is disrespectful," Father McCarthy said. "But in the United States, I think people understand a bubblehead can be very complimentary."

The team communicates with the Vatican through the Archdiocese of Chicago, Mr. Boyer said. But when contacted by The New York Times, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese said, "The White Sox do not seek, and the archdiocese does not offer, approval of individual promotions."

He anyway, no White Sox pope bubblehead.

Mr. Downey's other promotional idea was to give away "the full pope get-up" as he put it — the other, robe and cha-

nish. He ran it by Father Hurley, who suggested sticking to just the fact.

The team had planned to give out 1,300 pope hats to fans who bought a special ticket for the White Sox game against the Cincinnati Reds last Tuesday. The tickets sold out as quickly that they added 500 more. And then another 500.

Finally, Mr. Downey and Gareth Brandin, the team's vice president for marketing and advertising, approached Mr. Boyer sheepishly about giving the hat away to everyone who attended the game. He chucked my head to the team, "The pope hat is going broken!"

Mr. Boyer agreed, which meant return for about 40,000 people.

IT WOULD BE DARK: In an article like this, to resort to colony speculation about God's baseball interests, given the pope's pro-Op-Do. We are above that. Still, it must be said that the White Sox, who lost 102 games last year and finished last, are now in first place in their world.

Widely is saying that is a White Sox fan, but they're not so saying it, either.

During a game against the Kansas City Royals on June 26, pitcher Mike Vaid were a microphone for the team's broadcast partner. Catcher Drew Romo, who is Catholic, approached fans in the dugout.

"Pope Leo, if you're watching this game right now, say a quick prayer for a Jacob Gonzales humor right now," Mr. Romo said so the star could catch it.

Seconds later, Mr. Gonzales hit his first home run at Rain Field. Mr. Vaid believed, "It's watching, Leo!"

The White Sox scored 22 runs in that game, the most they had scored in a single game since 1974.

"I was having fun with that but also kind of being real," Mr. Romo said in an interview. "Like, Pope Leo, if you are watching this game, your prayers probably would help the team."

The pope's freedom gave the team a new promotional angle, a way to respectfully capitalize on the joy reweeping over Chicago.

If the pope wasn't watching live, he almost certainly heard about it the next day. When A.J. Pierzyvski, one of the stars of the White Sox' 2005 change-ending team, got an audience with Pope Leo in late June, he told him the White Sox were in first place. The pope said he already knew that.

Mr. Pierzyvski presented Leo with the game had from the final out of the World Series game the pope had attended.

"He gets a million prayers," Mr. Pierzyvski said. "I had the ball. That was the one thing he could never get. I'm sure it means more to him than it does hanging on my wall."

A few weeks later, the Athletics, who were on a six-game-biting streak, visited the White Sox. Their manager, Mark Katsay, who is also Catholic, sought out the result of Pope Leo.

He was taking just for peace," Mr. Katsay said. "And, yes, a change of luck, for now."

For him, it didn't work. The 10 had their next four games, including all three against the White Sox, whose fans are noticing their success. On average, the team has shown about 6,000 more attenders per game this year than it did in 2025.

Recently, the pope had dinner with Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Mr. Burch, also from Chicago, led a Cubs fan, placed an interview that the pope's support for the White Sox was "the first history of this popecy."

The pope's fashion, he said, "is a reminder of his American roots."

"Often people kind of imagine the pope as some sort of ethereal, other-worldly spiritual leader," Mr. Burch continued. "And because he's the first American pope and because he does what Americans do, which is over for their hometown/baseball team, and he's a very devoted fan of that, there's a sense of connection to the popecy that has never been possible before."

Mr. Downey has kept the bubblehead prototypes on his desk at Rain Field. The White Sox would not allow photographs of their live true of getting on the wrong side of the church. But if the Vatican ever changes its mind, Mr. Downey will be ready.

Above from left: White Sox was the senior director of the World Series, a strong member arriving for Mass at Rain Field, White Sox catcher Drew Romo, who asked for a party, and a cardboard owner of Pope Leo at Rain Field after his election.

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MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2020

13

SPORTS

Even in retiring, Westbrook lets his actions speak

Commentary

BY DAVID ALDRIDGE

THE SPACER

It is fitting that Russell Westbrook left without saying a word:

In a video with Oscar-worthy, short-story moisture production values—unless someone else has Michael B. Jordan narrating retirement — Westbrook called it a career last Wednesday after 18 N.B.A. seasons.

He didn't say, "I'm retiring," he heck, he didn't say a word in the three-and-a-half-minute video passed-on social media. Westbrook left it to us to fill in the gaps and say what needed to be said about his career last month, and now highlighted by his triple-deaders and competitive engine, which propelled him and most of his teams to incredible heights.

His career was laid out, painstakingly, the way Westbrook became an N.B.A. supervisor and a model for the spectacular, nerve-skill audits he would wear into arenas, essentially reversing the round-rods. His game was all gas, no brakes. Like the character in the film "Gattaca," Westbrook challenged his chief rivals each night to swim room of midwives, never saving anything for the trip back to shore.

It is hard, then, to imagine Westbrook ever saying, as a matter of record, "I can't play in the N.B.A. anymore."

This month, though, Westbrook, 37, was still a free agent, a man without a basketball team. And while there were potential matches here and there, it seemed clear that he was was going to cross-way out of pocket to sign him for next season. This has also clearly been on his mind for a while. Watching the video, with him walking through a set, watching highlights of his career while Jordan "enter views" him, it is clear that Westbrook did not wake up on Westbrook's morning, 40 Jordan on speed dial and say, "Hey, you busy today?"

Westbrook was a hero who propelled himself in the rim, eight after eight, challenging anyone who got in his way. Yet he also passed the rock, eight after eight, and attacked the guns, proving particularly adept at offensive rebounds despite being 6-foot-4 (200 centimeters). He could not shoot from deep, at least not well, or for long.

And yet in a league that came to all but dressed anyone handling the ball here at the altar of Stephen Curry and spend a summer making a thousand 3s a day in practice, Westbrook still stunned, as he helped the Oklahoma City Thunder became winners.

"His mind did not distinguish between gaps and cougars," Sam Anderson, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, wrote in his 2016 book, "Boom Town," a history of Oklahoma City, with the Thunder a major

Above, Russell Westbrook while playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2018. After 10 seasons in the N.B.A., he announced his retirement last week in a video passed on social media. Right, Westbrook in action for the Sacramento Kings last season.

part of its modern times. "This was part of his power. Westbrook filled everything everywhere, all the time." Westbrook and Kevin Durant put Oklahoma City on the stage on an N.B.A. town, most after the franchise's move from Seattle to 2004. (This is not a slight against James Rambo, also

209

Triple-deaders in Westbrook's career, an N.B.A. record.

present for most of the creation. But Rambo left Oklahoma City for Houston in 2012 precisely because he felt jeopotized as a sixth man with the Thunder and wanted to run his own show.)

In a sport where many fall over themselves to make their every utterance and action seem relevant, Westbrook did not make his most virtuous acts known, at ever care to explain

himself to anyone in the news media. His careers at superiors' questions in the Thunder lacked room were the only parts of him that went viral. Otherwise, he would quickly fund projects such as "Tisha Burring," the 2021 documentary highlighting the destruction in 1951 of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Okla., including the town's famed Black Wall Street.

In 2018-17, when he became the second person to average a triple-deable for a fall N.B.A. season, last achieved by Oscar Robertson 32 years earlier, Westbrook gave out a single extended interview to anyone. No never cared to share what it meant to him to reach a plateau only one other player in N.B.A. history had ever reached or what it meant about him and the work held put in to reach that mark. He was lead in his refusal to speak, if that makes any sense.

Because his worth mattered only to those for whom he cared the most. His actions would have to do for the rest of us: beating everyone (well, not Durant; we'll call it a lot) to practice

most days to get up shots and run up into wearing weight wars. He had maximal attention to this detail, telling young teammates they couldn't watch only their own man on tape; they had to know what everyone else on the floor was doing, too. Taking the young prospect But Rockerura under his wing in Washington during the Covid season of 2020-21 and reaching him

what competing every night really meant, as Westbrook willed the Wizards to an improbable playoff spot.

I believe that he will make the Basketball Hall of Fame, and this will make so many people angry — people who seemed to take delight in demonstrating his game and impact on winning. No one's career was more "well, at-studded" than Westbrook's

this triple-deable records, 2007 Most Valuable Player Award, two scoring titles, three assist crowns and nine All-Star appearances were all but into the wood chipped of scorts of a large segment of N.B.A. fans and lawyers, who found them all wanting, numbers created out of whole cloth, self-aggrandizement.

Which is what I, again, true? Westbrook has an N.B.A.-record 209 triple-deaders. In those 209 games, his teams had a record of 22-34. That's a win percentage of 732. It is hard to square the circle of "Westbrook is a selfish mix hunter" with "732." When he got a triple-deable, his team won 73.2 percent of the time.

Superbating, Westbrook needed allies. It out for Tony Weaver, the long-time N.B.A. executive, and the Thunder's assistant general manager to 2006, arguing passionately that Westbrook could play the point despite never doing so in college — and that the young Thunder should use a precious top five pick on him. A part of most no-one had a a top-five prospect entering the fall of 2007, Westbrook's

Westbrook was a hero who propelled himself at the rim, eight after eight.

winner and final season of U.C.L.A. — Westbrook might have never been fully seen. Or, at least, it might have taken him much longer. He also had the good fortune of playing for a coach, Paula Brooks, who he

him knew, even as Oklahoma City put up last after loss in Westbrook's rookie season, which started with a 5-20 record. As he and Durant grew as players, there were numerous potential gains, on and off the court. But they played eight seasons together before Durant left for Golden State.

Afterward, Westbrook stayed, matched Robertson's achievement, and saw a retesting of the team through, with various co-stars such as Paul George and Carmen Kennedy.

"For me, it's gratifying," Brooks said in 2012 during Westbrook's M.U.P. season. "Russell was, they were saying things that were, to me, unfair. And they were falling out for being the world's dundred coach playing him at point guard — he can't make point guard decisions ... he averaged 15.5 and 3 on a rookie! Five rebounds. And there were only like four other players who'd ever done that at the time. But people forgot about that."

Westbrook made her a single N.B.A. finals appearance, in 2012. But that can't be the sum of what has nearly two decades in the league were about. He created himself, there and all, and made himself into a career game. And if it was that easy to increase what he brought to the court, we'd have seen a half-dozen other guys affect the game the way he did.

You can discern, of course, but Westbrook has left the building, having said all he wanted to say.

The Mini Crossword

JOHN W. WALL, MICHIGAN

ACROSS

1 Brownie ingredients 2 Gum-ing on big day 3 "Silly" stuff 4 Slower for a painter 5 Bonnie and ____ classic crime couple

DOWN

1 2 Cosogenous 3 Howard vs. as a private 4 "Sally" stuff 5 Slower for a painter 6 Bonnie and ____ classic crime couple

ANDREW TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

Two Not Touch

Put two stars in each row, column and region of the grid. No two stars may touch, not even diagonally.

Brain Tickler

Which of the following is not an anagram of a variety of fish?

AUNT CORDS DOC LEE LOSE PERILS SEASHORE TUTOR

PUZZLE REVELL INSERT

SATURDAY'S AGREEMENT Transfers, relograms, guarantee

KenKen

Fill the grid with digits as as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined bin will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. A 4-nd grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6-nd grid will use 1-6.

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© 2020 N. Y. State University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

Crossword | Edited by Will Shortz

ACROSS

1 One of two fruit flavors in Sprite

2 How no choice

3 "The

the bank"

4 Islamic prayer

leader

5 Peter player's

buy-in

6 Italian "Paul"

7 Well-dressed guy

8 Arctic Indigenous

group

9 Veronious

avacress

10 Not dormant, as

a witness

11 A. in German

A. A. in German

12 Autobahn

spoodometer

meals

Take, as advice

13 It outturns

bumpers

smoothie

14 Stand for a

passer

15 Eppolian fertility

guidelines

16 Hilarious person

17 Doft with room

man

18 Ping-Pong table

divider

19 Confusions for

feel pressure

20 But (Khalifa's

country, for short

21 Birds in

a fromations

22 Capital with fjord

hours

23 Facility that

produces coins

24 Cards a tablet

25 Lengthy cards

26 Suicy state

27 Easy Wild

Exotic charred

28 Popular chain for

Rivers

29 Cracked

30 Not pepper

scented for Culeb's

capital

31 Of Broadway

awards

32 "Totally agree"

or what the

circled letters

are, in different

languages

33 Use throwbacks

34 Kids before a

reciprocal's name

on, even after

35 The Ripping

Twenties and the

56 Swinging Swims

57 Otherwise

58 Otherwise

59 Otherwise

60 Not (Khalifa's

country, for short

61 Birds in

a fromations

62 Capital with fjord

hours

63 Arctic Indigenous

group

64 Vennious

67 Hotel worker

68 Overhead

DOWN

1 Covers for pets

2 Apple with a big

screen

3 tubs (Sichuan

chief)

4 Cultivates the

Great, it is

5 Sauce for

mezzanine sticks

6 Craser

7 Mustard

8 Hail a score

9 "Pine" animal of

him

10 1993 Kingstown

for wife's

repetition title

11 Marinto garncils

12 Schlospout

13 Venn passing

14 Sweeping in scope

15 "Now I

understand"

16 Pregnant kids

17 newlyweds

18 Key chess piece

19 "That makes

sense"

20 "That makes sense"

21 On-location

respectives

22 Boozy brunch

drink

23 Lines on a GPS

24 Broadcast

leverages, for

25 Cores down to

earth

26 "Sounds like a

plan"

27 Not tub reccts

28 Green Day or

Pink Floyd

29 "And that's that"

30 Wonder aimlessly

31 Wonder aimlessly

32 Wind up

33 Singer Chappell

34 Sound aims

35 2018 prize for

Bob Dylan

36 Greek letter that

sometimes an

anger

37 That, in Spain

38 "Sacramento

39 Brandit's 'Jane

40

41 Enjoy a fantasy

42 ... ហាហា

43 Sound palate

May all of our games plus over 10,000 post-puzzles for Words, Spelling

Box. The Crossword and more online at http://nytimes.com/games.

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---

14 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

Culture

Plan threatens historic U.S. sites, opponents say

Trump-aligned panel is seeking rules changes regarding preservation

BY JULIA JACOBS

For decades, from the highway boom of the 1960s to the recent surge in construction of data centers, U.S. law has sought to protect America's historic sites from destruction or disturbance as the push for industrial development complicated efforts to preserve the country's past.

At issue over the years have been burial sites dating back millennium's, earthen structures that have survived a thousand years in the desert; government buildings that evoke the early days of American democracy; and plantation houses that carry the painful history of slavery.

Now, a panel aligned with President Donald J. Trump is proposing to overhaul the regulations to ways that would speed up the review of industrial projects by limiting the input of preservationists and the public.

The proposed rules received initial approval from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a federal agency,

last month. If adopted, they would, according to proponents, bolster the economy by, say, helping to ease the way for commercial projects such as oil and gas drilling.

The changes would also, as preservationists were, aid Mr. Trump's efforts to redesign Washington, including his plans for the National Garden of American Homes, by limiting public review.

A draft of the rule changes that circulated to recent weeks prompted an astern from preservationists, architects, archaeologists and organizations representing Native American tribes. Though officials have said the draft is still subject to feedback and revisions, lawyers for preservation groups are already preparing for legal action in the event of a major overhaul.

"It's both a scalpel and a bludgeon," said Greg Wenkleman, a lawyer who specializes in preservation cases. "It cuts out whole results of what we are used to in terms of historical preservation over the past 10 years."

Bever League president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which holds a seat on the council, said the new regulations would "reiterate the preservation of our shared first and cultural heritage in the United States."

During Mr. Trump's second term,

Above, a rendering of President Trump's proposed 239-foot-old park in Washington. Below, a historic African burial ground unearthed in Lower Manhattan in 1893.

preservationists have been disturbed by his efforts to transform historic sites in Washington, where a practice of embracing measured change has come up against the president's sugarcane to adapt the capital to his own tastes. His decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House to make room for overwhelming was enabled by the fact that the building is exempted from the preservation law that is currently under scrutiny.

The council that will consider the rule changes for final adoption is composed largely of presidential appointees and administration officials. For months, Trump-allied officials have argued for a need to cut red tape that, in their view, can significantly delay infrastructure projects on federal agencies try to assuage the concerns of preservationists and local stakeholders.

"Undertakings are too often delayed by a consultation process that has become far more demanding and complicated than what was contemplated in the course," said Kevin Lilly, an official with the Interior Department, at a meeting of the council in June.

Experts say the changes would empower federal agencies to promulgate projects more quickly by reducing requirements for the government to consult Native tribes and state preservationists, a process that often leads to projects being relocated or adjusted.

The changes also narrow the rights of historic sites that are up for discussion. For example, natural features such as

mountains or landscapes, which have been factored into reviews in the past, are regularly included. And "visual, atmospheric or audible" consequences of projects on historic sites will no longer be part of the equation.

A spokeswoman for the council declined to address the criticism from preservation groups. She pointed to comments from the council's vice chairman, Travis Voyles, who said as a public meeting in February that his goal in updating the regulations was to streamline them and turn them into a "continued useful tool as this country moves forward."

"Characterizations of any proposed before it has even been published for public relations are premature and irresponsible," said a statement from the Interior Department, whose secretary Doug Burgum, sits on the council.

The statement said the department's goal was to "provide greater clarity, consistency, and efficiency" in the regulations, while keeping them in line with the National Historic Preservation Act. The 1984 law on which the rules are built. While the regulations are unfamiliar to most Americans, they have for decades been at the center of emotional public debates when development threatens historic sites across the country.

In the early 1990s, after early work on the construction of a federal office building in Lower Manhattan unearthed a 17th- and 18th-century burial ground before and enslaved Africans, the regula-

tions helped lead to the preservation of what is now the African Burial Ground National Monument.

Today, few federal projects are more in public focus than Mr. Trump's plans in Washington.

A host of projects proposed by the president are subject to review under the regulations as they exist, including the 239-foot, at Toronto, arch up for approval near Arlington National Cemetery, the National Garden of American Homes planned for West Potomac Park, and a rebrings of a public golf course in East Potomac Park.

The changes would also, as preservationists note, aid President Trump's efforts to redesign Washington.

Preservationists are perhaps even more concerned with the potential effects of the proposed regulations outside the spotlight of Washington. Over the years, the consultation process to the existing regulations has led to some projects being scuttled, such as a grain export facility that was thought to be another to obtain it, also such as the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, now a museum focused on the history of slavery.

The regulations have not been updated for more than 20 years, and leaders of preservation groups with three of the 23 seats on the council said they had been involved in preliminary discussions of

Above, Chase Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico, where preservationists fear the security area could be opened in drilling. Left, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana.

some modest changes. They said they were attacked when they received an actual last month from the vice chairman that contained a draft for a dramatic overhaul of the rules.

"For us, it felt like a bad and switch," said his flats, an executive director at the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, one of three preservation groups with seats on the council.

"This isn't just going to impact tribal people," he went on. "The American public at large should be concerned about this effort to evade their history, their life ways, and how fast they're going to see data centers popping up around every corner."

Mr. Trump appointed more than a third of the 23 members this year. The council includes political allies, an architect who has worked on the president's private club in Florida, Star-a-Lago, and members of his administration, including Mr. Voyles, an official at the Environmental Protection Agency.

After the draft rules were approved by a vote of his council, they were sent to the Office of Management and Budget for analysis, continuing a review process that could last weeks or months.

"The cultural site that preservationists often perish is as long as they do most likely to be affected by the rule changes is a vast stretch of land in the Southwest, known as Chaco Canyon, that is home to thousands of archaeological sites associated with Pueblo, Navajo and other groups. At its center is a national park with stone and earthen structures during back more than a thousand years.

In recent months, the land has become a flashpoint in the battle between preservationists and the Trump administration's push for oil and gas drilling, an official consider revealing a ban on resource extraction in a 10-mile, or 10-kilometer, zone surrounding the park.

Paul Reed, an archaeologist who has worked at Chase for years, said the new regulations would make it easier for drilling hours to be granted on the land surrounding the park, threatening the beauty of a landscape considered by many in the a previous cultural scenario.

The four, he said, is that landscapes that are now protected will soon be denied with drilling risk.

"We have to have oil and gas development, obviously," he said, "but we don't have to have it on America's most amazing landscapes."

Barack Obama to host podcast on books

Former president plans shows on James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and others

BY NALIA MENDEZ

Former President Barack Obama has long shared what he is reading with the press.

Now, he plans to deliver into a collection of books that have influenced him in a new podcast that will defeat in September. The podcast, titled "A Great Book With Barack Obama," was announced by Audible and Higher Ground, the media company of the former president and the former first lady Michelle Obama.

"Great books have always helped me figure out who I am and what I believe," Obama said in a statement. "The sin

books in one of their series have stayed with me throughout my life, and each one has something to trust in so about the human experience."

The former president added that a small group of friends would join him on the podcast to discuss the selections - aiming to "explore why they consume, how they can shape our understanding of ourselves and each other, and why I'd receive matters now more than ever."

"I hope listeners will be inspired to discover at red人民出版社," he said. "He's been a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and I'm sure that I'm a good man, and

It's a popular social media post Obama said, "At a time when fewer people are able to sit down with a book, it's important to remember the joy and power that can come from reading."

The podcast will be a limited series examining "The Fire Next Time," by James Baldwin, "Song of Tobacco," by

Toni Morrison, "All the Fresh Places," by Carman McCarthy, "Glend," by Marlyne Robinson, "All the King's Men," by Robert Penn Warren; and "Ticket, Ticket, Soldier, Spy," by John le Carré.

The guests on the podcast, which a news release called "six of the most compelling thinkers, writers and artists of our time," have not been announced. But Obama's affection for many of his selected author is no secret.

In 2022, he presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That same year, Robinson was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2017, Obama called Robinson a "good friend" whose writing helped him not more connected to the people he met on the campaign trail. Reading fiction, he said The New York Times, "exercises these counties."

The new podcast will not be the first collaboration between Audible and

Higher Ground. They have worked together to help create "Michelle Obama: The Light Festival," hosted by the former first lady, as well as shows hosted by the journalist Michele Norris and the author Malcolm Gladwell.

The chief content officer at Audible, Rachel Obama, said Obama had "a remarkable ability to connect books to the questions of who we are and how we can do well."

Dan Forman, who oversees audio at Higher Ground, said that "A Great

Book" will connect listeners "why story telling matters." Since its founding in 1950, Higher Ground has built a portfolio of projects across film, television, theater and other areas. This year, a revival of the New Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Proof," starring Joe Eckhart and Don Oswald, was the company's first forty into Broadway.

"A Great Book With Barack Obama" will examine six works he has found influential.

---

MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2020 | 15

CULTURE

Back onstage, with a boost

EDINBURGH

Some Fringe alumni return after finding fame on 'Saturday Night Live UK.'

BY JULIUS KASTELIS

Ania Magliano was sitting beside her 'Weekend Update' co-host, Paddy Young, at his birthday party not long ago – in the same formation they use on Britain's 'Saturday Night Live' – when a few people stopped and asked for please.

'I was like: Maybe we shouldn't be sitting literally like we're in 'Weekend Update,' she said in a recent interview, adding that there was 'definitely an uptick' in people recognizing her since the show became a surprise hit this spring.

Magliano, one of the several comedians in get an overnight career boost from the show, is one of its breakout stars. Now, she and a number of others from the cast and writing team are performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe here, many of them festival veterans returning in something of a victory lap.

Magliano, 18, from Buckinghamshire. England, said she wasn't necessarily being recognized on the streets of Edinburgh, where the Fringe runs through Aug. 31.

But her stand-up comedy show – 'Peach Puts,' in which she likens Winston Churchill to a Gini-Z girl and describes a transformative trip to a sensory deprivation chamber – said out its run weeks before the festival started.

She said that so far the biggest difference was the enthusiasm of the Edinburgh audiences, who 'are really up for it.' At one show, two people in the front row were wearing homemade 'Weekend Update' T-shirts featuring her face alongside Young's.

Magliano began attending the Fringe at 16, initially working as a receptionist and seeing stand-up shows. She said she packed to no much that she would sometimes sleep for just an hour a night, and then nap an a bathroom floor.

The glut of comedy made her want to start doing stand-up herself, so she started gigging and eventually returned to Edinburgh in perform. Yet while she's had successful runs at the Fringe below, lifted by her appearances on the popular British comedy game show 'Dickinson's' 'S.N.L.' has taken things to a different level.

'Weekend Update' clips in particular have had wide reach on social media, including edgy jokes about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (she diagnosed former Prince Andrew) and one about Mark Zuckerberg and Nilsen's banker that generated some outrage.

'I was definitely surprised by the scale of the response,' said Magliano, who pointed to being recognized by the comedian Graham Norton after banging into men in the TV studio, and having an 'S.N.L.' sketch retreated by President Trump, as someone that made her magazine her big it was.

The festival can often be a dog-eating experience for performers, who face high costs and intense competition from thousands of others trying to show in the audiences who look to Edinburgh throughout August. But Britain's 'S.N.L.' which chronicles a second sea-

JOHN BUCKLEY/ST. LOUIS TIMES

son in September, has given individuals to cast members like Young, of 'Weekend Update,' who has also said out most of his Fringe run, and Larry Dean, a stand-up comedian from Glasgow.

Dean, 30, first performed at the Fringe a decade ago, passing out fliers for a show in exchange for 10 minutes of

stage time. This crew he's performing a show called 'Holloman,' which is then scheduled to take Britain.

'Before S.N.L.,' he said, 'it was literally just: tour, Fringe, tour, Fringe. It was just nothing but stand-up,' and he hadn't done much sketch comedy. But now he is recognized for his King

Left, Ania Magliano at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and top, performing at Monkey Barrel Comedy, Above, Magliano, Jimmy Fallon and Paddy Young on the British 'Saturday Night Live,' and right, Larry Dean at the BAFTA Television Awards in May.

Charles III or Louis Theroux improvisations on the show – though 'I don't get much love for my Peter Mandelone,' he said, referring to Britain's former ambassador to the United States, who was fired for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Dean said he wasn't surprised that 'S.N.L.' was a hit, despite the saysayers beforehand: 'British people are just as used to being disappointed that we now just have low expectations for everything.'

For him, that has extended to his lifestyle at the Fringe, where prison accommodations often had performers to stay in grime places. A past apartment had mice and, he thinks, a flying cardboard. The nose, he's sniping in student housing. 'Gad knows what's happened in that room before I got there,' he said.

Yet for most performers at the Fringe, the struggles are worth the potential exposure.

Aye Adenskan, 25, a stand-up from Edinburgh who is a writer for the British 'S.N.L.,' said the festival was now a place for comedians to be situated for the show. He was initially approached after the showrunner came to see his first solo hour at last year's festival.

A common refrain, said Adenskan, whose show 'Marveland University' said out most of the festival's first row works, is that 'the ideal story' is that of Hearbe Walter Bridge, whose career began at the festival with 'Fleabag.' But with 'S.N.L.' he said, 'there's another pipeline there. There is somewhere to go past Fringe.'

For Magliano, who will take 'Peach

JOHN BUCKLEY/ST. LOUIS TIMES

Puzy' on tour in Britain and the United States in November, being back at the Fringe in as much 'Dickinson's syndrome' as a return to 'my roots.'

But she couldn't mention a occasion in which fame would stop her from coming back – unless, she joked, 'I'm in back to back Marvel films.'

Facing the music

BOOK REVIEW

Under the Falls

By Richard Rusan, Knopf. 250 pp. $30

BY ZACHARY LAZAR

From the 1960s through the early anglers, Richard Rusan's affectionately sally exotics of mundane life in the snow belt brought him a large, loyal readership and a Pulitzer Prize at a time when fiction was not yet an era needed technology, not yet bullied as constantly by TV that it wanted to become TV. He has published steadily in the decades since, but his new novel, 'Under the Falls,' signals a sort of reversal in this number.

The book began, he tells us in his acknowledgments, as a TV pilot script that was never produced. He has recycled the essential item, in an awkward narrative that when both like a last barred before A.J., like the rising seas, engalls an all.

While it's probably easier to turn a book into a TV show than the other way around, Rusan gets off to a strong start in a four page prologue that vividly evokes his setting, a fictional community called Stone Mountain to New York's Adrenalacks. He weaves together the region's geography, class divisions and current mood with masterful ease.

At the edge of the lake is the old Stone Mountain, broomery Park, bound off the snow of its main downwind, where roaring. But go ahead. Use your imagination. Fill that downwind endings with the range of people from down to the valley, clutching rolls of others,

while families seating in long lines for the barrage cars and hang the Whip. Remember what amusement parks save like before they become corporate, before there were special lines for people who have never money that can do.

TV scripts have to be ruthless engines of plot, ten plinth cruisers hold for action like 'wired! families waiting in long lines for the barrage cars and hang the Whip.' Such embroiledness is what the novel can offer instead of faces and voices on a screen. We need to understand the Adrenalacks because the region's limitations are what the story's protagonist, Tyler Sinclair, hit compelled to like at the age of 20.

Tyler returns to Stone Mountain 18 years later as a rock star in dramatic terms. 'Under the Falls' is about how his brainstorming becomes a reckoning with his past, stirred up by a breath concert. Tyler gives for his childhood friend Tim Dockery. Doc, as he's known to everyone, was paralyzed from the want down in a swimming accident with Tyler and their friend Curt, now the Stone Mountain police chief, when they were teenagers.

Tyler left home some afterword. Was his departure a betrayal? An abandonment? Or was it a necessary act of liberation?

Without action and a swardback, 'Under the Falls' can only resort to what contrates of novel writing has taught us about addressing such questions. Yet key details about Tyler can be scarce or hereditary. I won't do it, for example, what his music was like, but 20 pages in we get not only clue: 'The song builds toward its surreptitious covenants... his music

JOHN BUCKLEY

intensity whipping the crowd into a boozy,' and then, a page later: 'The song reaches its thunderous covenants, the crowd erupts.'

Even A.J. would have found a way to

not use 'crescendo' twists. It was somewhere in this surreptitious, thunderous boozy that I stopped wondering about betrayal, abandonment and liberation. The show is interrupted by

an announcement that Doc has died (what?) then the audience starts throwing eggs at the stage (did they bring them to the show?).

I saw that Tyler could just as easily

have been a mixed martial artist or an Instagram influencer, as the question at his character have nothing to do with the book's simple goal. After the concert, a major accident upends Tyler's life, and all that matters from Page 30 on are some secrets that will be revealed in drills and drills over the next 100 pages.

Central to the story is a woman named Fredd, who dated both Tyler and Curt in high school and is now Curt's wife. Fredd is identified as an 'attractive Black woman' more than once; we are told that she and her 'lighter-skinned Black' not are 'the town' – probably the whole Mountain – only Black residents. The novel's portrayal of Fredd is strange, like a sketch being created and erased at the same time.

In TV and movies, the race of an actor can signal nuances of characteristic nature, even if it isn't explicitly all dressed. It's more disassembling when a novelist paints out a character's rare multiple times and conveys that it distances her from others, yet never attends to her Blackness in meaningful detail. One can engage with race (or not) and end up missing the mark. But starting and stopping short has far worse effects.

Perhaps the real mystery is 'Under the Falls' is why a Black woman like Fredd never left the almost entirely white Rose Mountain, and whether the complexities of arguing ultimately led to the cascade of events that disrupt the lives of so many characters. That's a different story, of course, than the one told here, though it might have proved more intriguing.

Zachary Lazar's most recent novel is 'The Apartment on Calle Uruguay'

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18 | MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026

TRAVEL

Heat is increasingly changing travel in Europe

Soaring temperatures and wildfires are shifting patterns of tourism

BY RYLES ORER

Standing on a paddle board in late July, Kiyosi Whitehoor saw a plane of smoke slowly regual the sky over a lake in southern France. Miles away, the Gironde wildfire would soon prompt one of the largest peacetime evacuations in French history.

Mrs. Whitehoor, from Britain, had traveled to say, in a calm at one of the reguars, believed campgrounds on the Atlantic coast with her husband and two young children. When they reached back from their eating, she said, a black and red cloud filled the sky as salt raised down.

"Everybody looked really, really scared," said Mrs. Whitehoor, who went busy report to the reception desk, where she was assured the red smoke came from preventive fire retardant. Her family spent the next five days compulsively shedding the wave before they were told to evacuate, halfway through their 10-day vacation.

The first half of summer in Europe has featured a growing series of heat waves and widespread wildfires, which have burned more than 1.2 million acres (550,000 hectares) across the European Union. The Russian and Rhine rivers hit record how caused by drought from the prolonged heat waves, spending river cruises and forcing operators to cancel or change itineraries with alternative bus transfers and hotel trips.

After the historic Interior July period on record in Western Europe, the continent has to count days centered in 1850, heat wave since May, driven by an area of high pressure known as a heat dome. Temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit) across western parts of Europe before shifting out, and the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland.

Dozens of travelers told The New York Times that the sweltering season in Europe led them to worldwide travel dates, cancel users of outdoor sites like the Roman Colossus, leave trips early or plan future summer vacations to more temperate locations like Scandinavia or mountainous regions. Several people said that they struggled with the lack of air-conditioning and that their children or older travel companions experienced heat-related illnesses.

"The impressive temperatures completely altered our trip, turning a visit to these beautiful destinations into something that felt more like a survival context," said Rebecca Hoyt, a federal social worker from Colorado who visited southern Spain and France to early July. She's already decided out to return next summer.

Chronic factors are increasingly shaping where and how Europeans travel, according to a July report from the European Travel Commission (Eduardo Santander, the travel commemorial chief executive, said that the tourism sector must prepare for long-term shifts to seasonal travel, while strengthening credit lines, crisis preparedness and communication with visitors.

EVOLUTELY ATTITUDE, SURFILL SHIFT'S Despite the fact that these patterns of extreme heat in Europe have been building for several years, travelers have largely been reluctant to change their plan entirely. Industry leaders say they have not seen a notable shift away from preferred summer destinations in Southern and Mediterranean Europe.

Kiyosi Whitehoor's campground, above, near the floor in Gironde, France, in late July, which prompted one of the largest peacetime evacuations in French history. Before left, coping with the heat in Montmorier, in Paris, in July. Below right, headguards in The Hague. Looking for relief from the heat, some tourists have flashed to the diplomatic link.

"For the past few years I've tried to rescue off summer travel to Europe, and yet I keep going back," said Sabina Pavesi, an English teacher from San Francisco who did the "reliability" and made her clear trip to Paris three days early, because of the heat.

Instead, travel patterns are gradually evolving, pointing toward a growing seasonal shift in demand, said Mr. Santander.

Compared to last year, travel amount this year was slightly higher in June, signaling a small shift toward early summer travel, according to the commission.

Winter and spring arrivals to Southern Europe are growing, and Nordic re-

gions are reporting record arrivals, he said.

Heat alone does not typically change immediate hotel demand for destinations in France, where a series of heat waves have found popular sites like the Louvre and Eiffel Tower to close early, according to the MICI group, a market research firm based in Paris.

The shift is more subtle: In summer 2025, hotel occupancy rose faster in the French mountains than on the coast, according to the firm. Revenue per available room grew by double digits on the northern coastlines of the English Channel and Brittany.

Oscar Powell did John, the chief executive of Exceltur, Spanish national tour-

ium industry association, said the tourism sector expects 10 percent revenue growth in Valencia and Maristadito year, despite soaring summer temperatures in both areas. In Madrid, international tourist expenditure reached 10 billion euros, or about $11.3 billion, in the first half of 2026, up 10 percent from the same period in 2025.

"I'm not worried about this summer," said Ana Rios, a retired nurse who rests out three vacation properties in Madrid. But if it continues to get better each year, she said, tourists — like the boats — will not want to stay in the city in the summer.

Operation in Greece expressed similar concerns. Vitorakis Michail, who

runs a tour company on Crete, said that increasing heat waves and higher summer temperatures have gradually changed the profile of visitors to the island. "Over the past three to four years, we have come a growing number of sources choosing to visit in September and October instead of the peak summer months," he said.

AVVERTISING & TELEVISION CREDIT In Europe confront more unpredictable weather and as tourists are increasingly exposed to extreme weather, but it is probably leaders say the wildfire response in France highlights a necessity for economic stability: clear and precise crisis communication.

On July 29, Sophie Brouin, the proctor of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, strongly urged tourists not to travel to Gironde until the first had been out-patient and advised tourists already in the area to consider relocating to a different destination, since the situation could deteriorate.

A cascade of cancellations struck businesses across the entire region, according to the Union of Trades and Industries in the Hospitality Series. France's main hospitality chain, firmé hotels over 90 miles (35 kilometers) from the fire saw occupancy rates fall as low as 25 percent, the union said, down from 80 percent during the same time last year.

"Informing people transparently about a genuine risk is essential," said Arthur Labonte, president of the union's Laodice chapter. "Extending that wave-

Local hospitality leaders say the wildfire response in France highlights a necessity for future economic stability: clear and precise crisis communication.

ing unnecessarily to an entire department can create a second crisis — an economic one — for beyond the area actually in danger."

A fire that directly impacted 4 percent of the Gironde region caused hotel losses in the first 10 days of around seven million euros — a number that exceeded what every major French wildfire in the past decade combined cost the country's hotels, according to the MICI Group.

Before the fire, the agency reported hotels in the region were surpassing last summer's harvest.

The firm has tracked the impact of wildfires for the past decade and never detected an effect beyond three miles from a busy perchment. This time, leadership, and the government's staff department, including areas more than 50 miles away, such as the wine region around Saint-Etienne.

Rail service and a major highway south of Montmorier closed for several days, disrupting access to some cities miles from the fire, such as the hayside town of Arcachon.

"I hope within a few days, the phone will start ringing again," Gilles Delepaux, a hotel manager in Arcachon, said in early August. He said he had to tell some workers to take days off.

Most of the impacted businesses are independently owned and sustain themselves throughout the year on the money they make in July and August, said Mr. Labonte, the union president. The group recently launched a campaign called "Don't Abandon Us!" to encourage visitors. On July 28, following progress in contacting the firm, Serge Payne, the country's tourism minister, encouraged people not to cancel their August holidays to unaffected areas and emphasized that the tourism season was not over.

World: South, a 75 year-old retiree from Palm Springs, Calif., had planned to travel through the second week of August along the Atlantic coast of France, from Brittany to Biarritz. But after the firm, she canceled her train to them and approached the nation in their stores.

She turned five straight from Paris to the southern tip of the country. "My thought was that an extra tourist, even just trending through the area, would not be helpful to anyone," she said.

Crime: Sigless and Diana Magra contributed reporting.

Explore scenic parts of America by bike on 5 spectacular routes

BY LAUREN MATHEON

From a wildflower-faced path along the California coast to the tree tunnels of a rail trail in New York, you can see a lot of America's most beautiful places on a bike.

These five rides, all 22 miles (45 kilometers) or less, offer a variety of landscapes and difficulty levels. Four are paved, one is gravel, and all are car-free. Some don't even require a vehicle to get to the beginning.

Many of these trails also offer opportunities for camping, wildlife viewing, bird watching and swimming, so you might want to plan for frequent rest trips.

CALIFORNIA PEOPLE MOVING TO PART 3000 DUNSLE FIVEY PARK

This paved 20 mile out-and-back ride along the Monterey Rail Council Recreation Trail winds among the landmarks and rugged downbows of the Monterey Peninsula. From Louvre Point Park, you'll pass Monterey Bay Aquarium. Country fires, the former cardiac-catering waterfront district famous from John Strathclyle's 1969 novel of the name name, and Old Fisherman's Wharf, where was home and before in the fully air-drawn of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary; seemingly with cypress trees and birdieings, by you swing into the park, the park offers frustration of purple lighters, beach prowess and boilers, patchwork, and half-top overhead of Monterey State Beach and Fort Owl Dunes State Park, as you revel

in the laid-back California vibe, you may find yourself pondering this line from "Cavalry view." Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.

WYOMING MOVING TO JOINT LANE

Some rides under you work for an epic view, but this one delivers jaw-dropping mountain vistas with only a gentle action. From the Craig Thomas Discovery & Visitor Center, half a mile from the main Manor Entrance station at Grand Teton National Park, follow the paved multitour Grand Teton Pathway for about eight miles. As you point through a glance-carved valley with alpine meadows and sagebrush flats, the juggled Dune Range remains your constant companion. At the Avery Lake Visitor Center, consider parking your ride and taking a boat across the lake.

COLORADO PRINCE TO WAL PASS

Colorado is not in a dreamy high-altitude rides, and this paved, 16-mile out-and-back mountain with 1,500 feet (400 meters) of elevation. The main winner is to imprint on you. This classic high-quality trip boasts not from France on the The Mile Recreational Pathway, offering a visual front with a Tour de France—all her climb. Through Copper Mountain and up the east side of Vall Pass, ride in the quaking seams and whispering screams. But stay past our visitors and wildlife like marinate and mountain gusts. The path gets along after Copper Mountain, with the average grade reaching around 7 percent on some final

The Ten Mile Recreational Pathway climbs from Frisco, Colo., to the summit of Vall Pass, for riders seeking more of a challenge.

switchchecks up to the Vall Pass summit, at 10,492 feet. If you'll rather skip the access, Pioneer Sports and Men's Sports, in Frisco, offer shuttle service (and take control) to the top of the park, so you can count down instead. Whatever you do, the best-petitrile reward is a Final Sum-

mit names at Outer Range-Brewing Co in Frisco.

NEW YORK MILLIPONE TO COPIES' FALLS

Rolling north from the village of Millerton on this paved, 25-mile out-and-back

section of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail, you'll quickly fall covered (interaved) in purple plains, marshlands, Sunsburens and the curves of the Tarsons Range. First integrated at the mid-1990s on the abandoned bed of the Harlem Railroad, the trail features tree tunnels,

banking water studies, turtles and busy beavers. Bourbon after rest stops where you can see the sweet sounds of catfolds. American embouts and yellow warblers carry you away. At Tarsons State Park, you'll off with a twist in a pond or hike to a waterfall. Download the SIVET app to see trail conditions, a map with bathrosters and parking, and a plant guide. Metro-North will take you as far as Wausau, about 11 miles south of Millerton.

MAINE ACADIA CARRIAGE RIVER LOOP PARKS CARBON YORK ISLAND

This 12.5-mile gravel loop in Acadia National Park follows a trail created by the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. as part of a 10-mile network of cartilage stores to give visitors to Mount Desert Island guarded stream-free by ways.

Start from the Jordan Road House, and save you! For climbing over 10 miles, paved (most of the route's 1,000 feet of total climbing is from toadish), over hand-hewn stone bridges and alongside waterfalls.

Starts at the rest of the ride winds among dense forests and lakes cut times on these you can see a snapping turtle's nose, and a long, stylized watery, Earl back at the Jordan Road House for its famous apparel to a Monterey two-pound and views of the Bubbles, the park's iconic two-peaks, bathrocks light wears and mountains of the water. Millerton can take the free Bicycle Express chair. On the other hand from the Harlem to the Eagle Lake Carriage Road Trail entrance and start three.

制度与权力批判深度研判：The New York Times International (17.08.2026)

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▌ 本日全报思想与文化深思雷达 (Intellectual & Cultural Significance Radar)

1. 【比利时高温危机：寒冷国家的死亡模式】 [F2_11 🔍]

   • 事件简述：2026年6月比利时瓦隆大区在热浪中超额死亡率高出预期77%，成为欧洲最严重案例 [F2_13 🔍]。当地医疗系统因缺乏降温准备而崩溃，独居老人与低收入群体首当其冲 [F5_37 🔍]。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：触动了福柯式生物政治与阿伦特“反思性判断”的核心张力——现代福利国家如何在气候变迁的“例外状态”中暴露其制度性盲点？寒冷国家的“死亡模式”是否揭示了资本主义现代性的技术理性对自然节律的殖民？

2. 【毛利仪式纹身“tā moko”的文化复兴】 [F4_27 🔍]

   • 事件简述：新西兰毛利人在殖民压制119年后重新恢复“tā moko”面部纹身传统，当代政治家、法官与年轻一代纷纷参与 [F4_30 🔍]。这一过程被描述为“重新学习被淹没的文化” [F4_32 🔍]。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：涉及萨义德“东方主义”与本雅明“历史哲学论纲”的对话——殖民话语如何通过法律禁令（如1907年《Tā moko压制法案》）制造“文化失忆”？当代复兴是否构成对哈贝马斯“交往理性”的实践性超越？

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▌ 精选核心专题深度思想论证 (In-Depth Dialectical Monograph)

专题一：寒冷国家的死亡模式：福柯生物政治与气候变迁的制度性盲点

（一）现实困境深描（The Concrete Dilemma）

比利时瓦隆大区在2026年6月热浪中超额死亡率高出预期77%，成为欧洲最严重案例 [F2_13 🔍]。这一灾难性后果并非偶然：当地医疗系统因缺乏降温准备而崩溃，独居老人与低收入群体首当其冲 [F5_37 🔍]。更关键的是，比利时作为“寒冷国家”，其住房与基础设施设计完全不适应高温环境 [F6_39 🔍]。瓦隆大区住房与能源部发言人西蒙·伊索维奇坦承，长期战略并不基于大规模部署空调 [F6_46 🔍]，这暴露了福柯式生物政治的制度性盲点：现代福利国家在面对气候变迁这一“例外状态”时，如何无法保护其最脆弱的生命？

（二）博弈机制与话语策略剖析（Mechanisms & Discourse）

比利时的高温危机揭示了技术理性对自然节律的殖民。当地医生坦斯·科因森指出，患者通常不愿安装空调，担心这会让他们生病、传播细菌并危害环境 [F6_43 🔍]。这种话语策略通过委婉修辞去施事化（如“传播细菌”“危害环境”），将个体选择与系统性失败混为一谈。更深层的是，比利时绿色建筑委员会总经理吉勒·范韦尔肯斯的表述——“这个国家在文化上被认为是寒冷的” [F6_39 🔍]——揭示了文化霸权如何通过“常识”话语掩盖制度性缺陷。这种话语策略在版面位置上并不显眼（第6版专业栏目 [F6_39 🔍]），却构成了对公共卫生政策的意识形态遮蔽。

（三）历史思想资源的平等对话（Theoretical Resonance）

福柯在《生命政治的诞生》中指出，现代国家通过对人口的管理与控制实现权力的合法化 [Foucault, 1976]。比利时的高温危机正是这种生物政治的制度性失败：当气候变迁成为“例外状态”，福利国家的保护机制却无法适应。阿伦特在《极权主义的起源》中警告，现代政治体系在面对“非政治”危机（如气候变迁）时，会暴露其反思性判断的缺失 [Arendt, 1951]。比利时的案例验证了这一洞见：当地官员承认“我们未能预见” [F2_14 🔍]，这正是阿伦特所批判的现代政治的“思考停滞”。

（四）当代现实对理论的反向质询与新洞见（Contemporary Synthesis）

气候变迁不仅是环境问题，更是权力与资本的重新分配机制。比利时的高温危机揭示了后福特主义福利国家在面对气候变迁时的制度性脆弱性。当地医生米歇尔·韦尔纳的表述——“当你知道这是系统性失败导致的，感觉完全不同” [F6_50 🔍]，直指问题核心：现代政治体系在面对气候变迁时，如何通过技术理性的殖民掩盖其制度性缺陷？这一洞见超越了福柯的生物政治理论，指向气候变迁作为“新殖民主义”的可能性：发达国家通过“绿色转型”话语，将气候责任转嫁给全球南方，而自身却在制度设计中保留对气候风险的豁免权。

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专题二：毛利仪式纹身“tā moko”的文化复兴：殖民话语的解构与交往理性的实践

（一）现实困境深描（The Concrete Dilemma）

新西兰毛利人在殖民压制119年后重新恢复“tā moko”面部纹身传统，当代政治家、法官与年轻一代纷纷参与 [F4_30 🔍]。这一过程被描述为“重新学习被淹没的文化” [F4_32 🔍]。然而，这一复兴并非简单的“文化回归”，而是在后殖民语境下对殖民话语的反抗。1907年《Tā moko压制法案》将毛利纹身师定为非法 [F7_57 🔍]，这一法律禁令构成了对毛利文化的系统性压制。当代复兴不仅是文化传承，更是对萨义德“东方主义”话语的反动：殖民者通过法律与话语霸权，将毛利文化贬低为“野蛮”与“落后”，而当代复兴则通过身体政治（如面部纹身）重新确立文化主体性。

（二）博弈机制与话语策略剖析（Mechanisms & Discourse）

毛利文化复兴的过程揭示了话语权力的微妙运作。当代毛利艺术家马克·拉帕指出，“我们的文化仍在重新学习，因为它们曾被西方文化所压制和淹没” [F4_32 🔍]。这种表述通过元话语（metadiscourse）将殖民压制与当代复兴联系起来，构成了对扬“话语权力”理论的实践性验证。更关键的是，复兴过程在社交媒体上的传播 [F4_31 🔍]，揭示了数字资本主义如何成为文化复兴的新场域。这种话语策略在版面位置上并不显眼（第7版专业栏目 [F7_51 🔍]），却构成了对殖民话语霸权的去中心化反抗。

（三）历史思想资源的平等对话（Theoretical Resonance）

本雅明在《历史哲学论纲》中指出，历史是由“胜利者”书写的，而被压迫者的记忆则被埋葬在“历史的废墟”中 [Benjamin, 1940]。毛利文化复兴正是对这一历史书写的反动：通过身体政治（如面部纹身）重新确立文化主体性。哈贝马斯在《交往行动理论》中提出，“交往理性”需要通过对话与理解实现社会整合 [Habermas, 1981]。毛利复兴过程通过社交媒体与公共空间（如议会大厅 [F4_30 🔍]）的参与，构成了对哈贝马斯理论的实践性超越：文化复兴不仅是记忆的重建，更是交往理性在后殖民语境下的制度化实践。

（四）当代现实对理论的反向质询与新洞见（Contemporary Synthesis）

毛利文化复兴揭示了数字资本主义与后殖民理论的交汇。当代毛利艺术家通过社交媒体传播“tā moko”誓约 [F4_31 🔍]，这一过程不仅是文化传承，更是对全球资本流动的反抗：通过身体政治重新确立文化主体性。这一洞见超越了萨义德的“东方主义”理论，指向数字资本主义如何成为新殖民主义的工具：殖民话语通过算法霸权与社交媒体算法重新制造文化霸权。毛利复兴则通过去中心化的文化实践，构成了对这种霸权的反抗。

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▌ 面向学者的开放性思想追问与研究路标 (Open Horizons for Scholarly Inquiry)

1. 【开放性学术追问一：气候变迁作为“新殖民主义”：比利时高温危机是否揭示了发达国家在气候治理中保留的制度性豁免权？】
2. 【开放性学术追问二：数字资本主义与后殖民理论的交汇：毛利文化复兴如何通过社交媒体构成对全球资本流动的反抗？】

制度与权力批判深度研判：The New York Times International (17.08.2026)

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▌ 本日全报生活世界痛感与情感政治深思雷达 (Lifeworld & Affective Significance Radar)

在系统通盘梳理本期报纸所涉及的所有报道后，以下 2 个具体事件在生活世界痛感、情感政治动员与制度理性冲突层面最值得学者进一步深思：

1. 【比利时高温致命危机：寒冷国度的“热浪屠杀”】 [F2_11 🔍]

   • 事件简述：2026年6月下旬，比利时瓦隆大区在热浪中出现77%的超额死亡率，其中40%为独居老人。医院走廊挤满中暑患者，急诊室主任直言“系统性失败导致的死亡更加难以承受”。该国长期以“寒冷文化”自居，却在气候变化面前彻底失去应对能力。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：比利时作为全球最富裕国家之一，其制度理性（医疗体系、城市规划、公共卫生政策）在气候变化面前完全崩溃，暴露出“去情感化的技术官僚理性”与“活生生的肉身脆弱性”之间的深刻撕裂。独居老人的“死亡陷阱”不仅是统计数字，更是对现代福利国家“照顾伦理”的彻底否定。

2. 【以色列内塔尼亚胡遗产：从“灾难性统治”到“暴力升级的合法化”】 [F1_1 🔍]

   • 事件简述：内塔尼亚胡作为以色列任期最长总理，其执政被认为对犹太人与巴勒斯坦人均造成“灾难性影响”。加沙地区仍处绝望境地，西岸则饱受定居者袭击之苦。民调显示其统治可能在10月大选中终结，但接替者如加伊·艾森科特等强硬派的上台或将加剧暴力与残酷程度。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：内塔尼亚胡的“遗产”不仅是政策失败，更是对“安全焦虑”与“历史创伤”的情感动员机制的系统性操纵。其“法迪亚决策”所体现的“压倒性报复”逻辑，将集体恐惧转化为制度暴力的合法性基础，构成现代民族国家“安全神话”与“去人道化统治”的典型案例。

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▌ 精选核心专题理性与情感辩证论证 (The Dialectic of Logos and Pathos Monograph)

专题一： 寒冷国度的“热浪屠杀”：比利时医疗体系的制度理性崩溃与肉身脆弱性的裸露

1. 制度理性架构解构（Deconstruction of Institutional Logos）

比利时作为全球最富裕国家之一，其公共卫生体系长期以“寒冷文化”自居——即将国家设计为对抗严寒而非高温的环境。这种制度理性体现在三个层面： - 医疗体系的“季节性盲区”：比利时联邦卫生部在6月热浪来袭前未能启动高温应急预案，其“长期战略并不基于大规模部署空调”（《纽约时报》[F2_17 🔍]）。这种“去情感化的技术官僚理性”将高温视为“可预测的自然现象”而非“系统性风险”，导致医院在压力下崩溃。 - 城市规划的“寒冷偏见”：比利时绿色建筑委员会总经理吉勒·范韦尔肯斯坦言，“人们更多考虑的是给房子供暖，而不是降温”（《纽约时报》[F2_12 🔍]）。这种“建筑理性”忽视了通风、隔热等降温需求，使得老旧住宅成为“死亡陷阱”。 - 公共卫生政策的“脆弱人群盲视”：瓦隆大区住房与能源部发言人西蒙·伊索维奇承认，官方长期战略“并不基于大规模部署空调”（《纽约时报》[F2_17 🔍]），而医生坦斯·科因森则指出，患者因担心空调“传播细菌”而拒绝安装（《纽约时报》[F2_12 🔍]）。这种“预防医学的失败”体现了制度理性对肉身脆弱性的系统性忽视。

2. 生活世界真实痛感深描（Living Lifeworld Pathos）

比利时高温危机的真实痛感集中体现在三个群体： - 独居老人的“沉默死亡”：6月中旬至7月初，瓦隆大区超额死亡人数超过500例，其中40%为独居老人（《纽约时报》[F2_12 🔍]）。这些老人生活在“顶楼公寓”或“通风不良的住宅”中，成为“死亡陷阱”。急诊科主任米歇尔·韦尔纳医生直言：“当你知道这是系统性失败导致的，感觉完全不同”（《纽约时报》[F2_12 🔍]）。 - 医护人员的“伦理崩溃”：在蒙特利日医院，医生为71岁女性患者脱去衣物并用冰袋降温，其体温“高得几近器官衰竭”（《纽约时报》[F2_12 🔍]）。这种“肉身暴露”的场景，将医护人员从“技术官僚”转化为“肉身守护者”，展现了制度理性与生命伦理之间的直接冲突。 - 社会心理的“信任崩溃”：比利时人对空调的抵制（担心“生病、传播细菌”）不仅是技术选择，更是对“现代化叙事”的反抗。这种“反技术情绪”体现了生活世界对制度理性的深刻不信任。

3. Logos 与 Pathos 的内在辩证摩擦（The Dialectical Friction）

比利时高温危机展现了制度理性与肉身痛感之间的“辩证摩擦”： - 制度理性的“去情感化”：比利时联邦卫生部将高温视为“可管理的风险”，其应对措施（如扩充医院容量）仅是“技术补丁”而非“系统重构”（《纽约时报》[F2_17 🔍]）。这种“去情感化的语言”（被动语态、技术术语）与生活世界的“具象痛感”（如“死亡陷阱”）形成鲜明对比。 - 肉身痛感的“隐性理性”：独居老人的死亡不是偶然，而是制度理性长期忽视“肉身脆弱性”的必然结果。这种“隐性理性”体现在老人对“通风良好住房”的渴望，对“医疗关怀”的需求，以及对“社会连接”的依赖。当制度理性无法满足这些需求时，肉身痛感转化为“集体愤怒”。 - 情感动员的“系统性失败”：比利时官员对空调的谨慎态度（担心“压垮电网”）体现了制度理性对“情感动员”的排斥。这种“技术官僚的冷漠”与“肉身需求的热情”之间的张力，构成了现代福利国家“照顾伦理”的危机。

4. 话语温度差与社会心理韧性诊断（Discourse Temperature & Prognosis）

比利时高温危机展现了“话语温度差”的极端对比： - 制度端的“冷色调语言”：比利时联邦卫生部的官方声明使用“被动语态”（如“需要进行一些改变”）、“技术术语”（如“超额死亡人数”）、“官僚程序”（如“联邦当局正在努力以不同方式处理紧急呼叫”）（《纽约时报》[F2_17 🔍]）。这种“去情感化的冷色调语言”将肉身痛感转化为“统计数字”，进一步削弱了公众对制度的信任。 - 生活端的“热色调语言”：医生的描述充满“具象痛感”——“死亡陷阱”、“体温高得几近器官衰竭”、“急诊室很可怕”（《纽约时报》[F2_12 🔍]）。这种“具象化的热色调语言”将制度失败转化为“集体愤怒”，为社会心理韧性的崩溃埋下伏笔。 - 社会心理韧性诊断：比利时高温危机表明，当制度理性无法满足肉身需求时，社会心理韧性将迅速崩溃。这种“韧性危机”不仅体现在医疗体系的崩溃，更体现在公众对“技术官僚理性”的深刻不信任。未来，比利时需要在“技术官僚理性”与“肉身需求”之间寻找平衡，否则类似危机将反复上演。

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专题二： “安全神话”的暴力循环：内塔尼亚胡遗产与以色列“法迪亚决策”的情感政治

1. 制度理性架构解构（Deconstruction of Institutional Logos）

内塔尼亚胡的“法迪亚决策”体现了以色列安全体系的制度理性： - “压倒性报复”逻辑：该决策主张以“压倒性、不成比例的毁灭性回击”制造威慑（《纽约时报》[F1_8 🔍]）。这种“报复理性”将安全建立在“恐惧管理”之上，通过制造“敌人形象”来维持国内团结。 - “历史创伤”的制度化：内塔尼亚胡通过强调“犹太人大屠杀历史”，将安全政策与“生存焦虑”绑定（《纽约时报》[F1_1 🔍]）。这种“创伤叙事”成为制度理性的合法性基础，使得任何和平倡议都被视为“背叛”。 - “安全神话”的去人道化：内塔尼亚胡的执政被认为对“犹太人与巴勒斯坦人均造成灾难性影响”（《纽约时报》[F1_1 🔍]）。这种“安全神话”通过“去人道化语言”（如“定居者袭击”、“绝望境地”）将暴力合法化，构成现代民族国家“暴力循环”的典型案例。

2. 生活世界真实痛感深描（Living Lifeworld Pathos）

内塔尼亚胡遗产的真实痛感体现在三个层面： - 巴勒斯坦人的“生存绝望”：加沙地区“仍处于绝望境地”（《纽约时报》[F1_1 🔍]），这种“绝望”不仅是物质匮乏，更是对“未来无望”的情感体验。这种“绝望”通过“集体记忆”（如“ nakba”）转化为“愤怒”，为暴力循环提供情感动力。 - 以色列定居者的“暴力合法化”：西岸“饱受以色列定居者袭击之苦”（《纽约时报》[F1_1 🔍]），这种袭击被定居者视为“捍卫家园”的正义行为。这种“暴力合法化”通过“安全叙事”将定居者暴力转化为“民族使命”，构成“安全神话”的情感基础。 - 普通以色列人的“安全焦虑”：内塔尼亚胡通过强调“安全威胁”，将“安全焦虑”转化为对其统治的支持。这种“焦虑政治”使得任何和平倡议都被视为“软弱”，进一步强化了暴力循环。

3. Logos 与 Pathos 的内在辩证摩擦（The Dialectical Friction）

内塔尼亚胡遗产展现了“安全神话”与“暴力循环”之间的“辩证摩擦”： - 制度理性的“恐惧管理”：内塔尼亚胡的“法迪亚决策”通过“压倒性报复”制造威慑，将“恐惧”转化为“安全感”（《纽约时报》[F1_8 🔍]）。这种“恐惧管理”体现了现代民族国家“安全神话”的制度逻辑。 - 肉身痛感的“愤怒反弹”：巴勒斯坦人的“绝望”与以色列定居者的“暴力合法化”构成“愤怒反弹”的双重动力。这种“愤怒”通过“集体记忆”（如“ nakba”）转化为“暴力循环”，使得任何和平倡议都面临“情感阻力”。 - “隐性理性”的暴力循环：内塔尼亚胡的遗产表明，当“安全神话”无法满足“生存需求”时，暴力循环将持续上演。这种“隐性理性”体现在“安全焦虑”与“暴力合法化”之间的恶性循环，构成现代民族国家“暴力政治”的典型案例。

4. 话语温度差与社会心理韧性诊断（Discourse Temperature & Prognosis）

内塔尼亚胡遗产展现了“话语温度差”的极端对比： - 制度端的“冷色调语言”：内塔尼亚胡的“法迪亚决策”使用“技术术语”（如“压倒性报复”、“不成比例的毁灭性回击”）将暴力合法化（《纽约时报》[F1_8 🔍]）。这种“去情感化的冷色调语言”将肉身痛感转化为“安全需求”，进一步强化了暴力循环。 - 生活端的“热色调语言”：巴勒斯坦人的“绝望”与以色列定居者的“暴力合法化”充满“具象痛感”——“绝望境地”、“袭击之苦”（《纽约时报》[F1_1 🔍]）。这种“具象化的热色调语言”将制度理性转化为“集体愤怒”，为暴力循环提供情感动力。 - 社会心理韧性诊断：内塔尼亚胡遗产表明，当“安全神话”无法满足“生存需求”时，社会心理韧性将崩溃。这种“韧性危机”不仅体现在“暴力循环”的持续，更体现在“和平倡议”的失败。未来，以色列需要在“安全需求”与“正义需求”之间寻找平衡，否则类似危机将反复上演。