This episode contains strong language.After winning his House seat in the 2018 midterm elections, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican of Texas, seemed to have found a sweet spot between full-blown Trumpism and the anti-Trump wing of the party.But after Jan. 6, and ahead of this year’s midterms, more extreme facti... more
Today we launch Part One in our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 presidential front-runners. In studio with “The Daily,” Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., talks about how his lifelong political ambitions were complicated by the secret he kept for decades.Guests: Pete Buttigieg, mayor of S... more
The story of the Omicron variant began a week ago, when researchers in southern Africa detected a version of the coronavirus that carried 50 mutations. When scientists look at coronavirus mutations, they worry about three things: Is the new variant more contagious? Is it going to cause people to get sicker? And how wil... more
Infection rates broke records across the United States over the holiday weekend, with many of the most severe surges in areas that reopened fastest. One thing that seems to have played a factor: transmission indoors, such as in restaurants and bars. We break down the risk, and look at what else scientists have learned ... more
As President Trump urges states to begin reopening their economies, a debate is raging over when and how to end lockdowns across the country. Our reporter spoke to dozens of public health experts to try to understand our path out of lockdown — and how our world will change in the meantime. Guest: Donald G. McNeil Jr., ... more
Since the riot on Capitol Hill four years ago, President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have set out to sanitize the events of that day, changing it from a day of violence into, in Mr. Trump’s words, a day of love.As he prepares to take office for his second term, Mr. Trump said he plans to issue pardons to some of ... more
How President Biden could transform women’s rights and rescue his legacy with just a ring.Dozens of congressional Democrats have a simple pitch to President Biden: with a single phone call he can revolutionize women’s rights and salvage his damaged legacy. Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent at The New York Time... more
Earlier this summer, few Democrats could have identified Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.But, in a matter of weeks, Mr. Walz has garnered an enthusiastic following in his party, particularly among the liberals who cheer on his progressive policies. On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris named him as her running mate.Ernes... more
In the battle to dismantle gun restrictions, raging in America’s courts even as mass shootings become commonplace, a Times’ investigation has found that one study has been deployed by gun rights activists to notch legal victories with far-reaching consequences.Mike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The Times, dis... more
Officials in the United States say that Russia could invade Ukraine as early as this week, which raises the question: Should an attack come, how will the Ukrainian people respond? The answer may be complicated. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been a real push and pull between Russia and the We... more
As the novel coronavirus spread and much of the world moved toward isolation, dream researchers began rushing to design studies and set up surveys that might allow them to access some of the most isolated places of all, the dreamscapes unfolding inside individual brains. The first thing almost everyone noticed was that... more
The last few days in Afghanistan have been chaotic as the Taliban retake control of the country.The debacle can be traced to a number of assumptions that guided the execution of the U.S. withdrawal from the country after two decades of war.How could those assumptions have proved so wrong, so quickly?Guest: David E. San... more
What does the specter of the 2000 election mean for the upcoming election? The race between George W. Bush and Al Gore that year turned on the result in Florida, where the vote was incredibly close and mired in balloting issues. After initially conceding, Mr. Gore, the Democratic nominee, contested the count.What follo... more
After 11 days of fighting over the skies of Israel and Gaza, a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel was announced last week.The conflict wrought devastation in Gaza. Yet Hamas’s leaders took to television and declared victory.We look at where the organization comes from and their objectives to understand why it has, for... more
With the possibility that millions or tens of millions of American children will not enter a classroom for an entire year, school districts face an agonizing choice: Do the benefits of in-person learning outweigh the risks it poses to public health in a pandemic? Today, we explore how teachers and their unions are resp... more
Warning: This episode contains strong language.As President Trump demolishes the government’s biggest provider of foreign aid, the United States Agency for International Development, he is ending a 60-year bipartisan consensus about the best way to keep America safe from its enemies.Michael Crowley, who covers U.S. for... more
Concerned about the effect on diversity, many colleges have stopped requiring standardized tests. New research suggests that might be a mistake.David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The Times, discusses the future of SATs and why colleges remain reluctant to bring them back.Guest: David Leonhardt, a senior writer for Th... more
About a decade ago, companies began offering pregnant women tests that promised to detect rare genetic disorders in their fetuses.The tests initially looked for Down syndrome and worked well, but later tests for rarer conditions did not. An investigation has found that the grave predictions made by those newer tests ar... more
In July, a group of men stormed the presidential compound in Haiti and assassinated the country’s president, Jovenel Moïse. Months later, the case remains unresolved.Investigating the killing, the Times journalist Maria Abi-Habib found that Mr. Moïse had begun compiling a list of powerful Haitian businessmen and politi... more
This episode contains strong language.A new battleground has emerged in American politics: school boards. In these meetings, parents increasingly engage in heated — sometimes violent — fights over hot-button issues such as mask mandates and critical race theory.Suddenly, the question of who sits on a school board has b... more
One thing I’ve learned from being married to my wife, Jess, who is a couples therapist, is how vast the distance is between the masks people show to the world and the messy realities that live behind them. Every couple knows its own drama, but we still fall prey to the illusion that all other couples have seamlessly sa... more
Jim Tucker could hardly believe what he was hearing. It sounded like fiction, a nightmare too outlandish for an unassuming town like his.It was July 2023, and Tucker was hosting a meeting of the board of Heartland Tri-State Bank, a community-owned business in a small Kansas town called Elkhart. Heartland was a beloved ... more
During his decades-long path to become America’s highest-ranking military officer, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. won the crucial support of President Trump.That all changed when Mr. Brown publicly talked about a subject that is taboo in Mr. Trump’s government.Helene Cooper, who covers national security for The Times, expla... more
On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump and his allies left little doubt that, if they returned to power, federal workers would face layoffs, buyouts and agency closures.Now that President Trump’s plan has become a reality, dozens of federal workers explain what it’s been like to live through it.Background reading: Here... more
Elon Musk and his team have taken a hacksaw to the federal bureaucracy one agency at a time, and the question has become whether he’s on a crusade that will leave the government paralyzed or deliver a shake-up it has needed for years.Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter for The New York Times, takes us inside this hos... more