The New York Times International - 08.10.2026 — 2026-10-07

The New York Times

INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2026

Two fighters on the frailty of democracy

Thomas L. Friedman

OPINION

I was in Greece last week attending the Athens Democracy Forum — a gathering of democracy experts and activists from around the world — so I have been thinking a lot about the privilege and the responsibility that go with living in a democracy. Every morning I ate breakfast at my hotel's rooftop restaurant, which had a view of the Parthenon — built in the fifth century B.C.E., at the height of Athenian democracy. And every morning the waitress would ask me: "Do you have any allergies?"

Every morning I would bite my tongue to keep from saying: "Well, since you asked, I have two allergies — but they're political, not biological. I have an

Sitting on your hands is not an option when your way of life is at stake.

allergy to lazy, performative online activism, like 'Hey, I tweeted about that,' or 'Hey, I posted my favorite pop star's denunciation of Israel on my Facebook page, so get off my back.' But I also

have an allergy to no activism when your own democracy is on the line, like 'Hey, my law firm does a lot of business with the federal government — we had to cut a deal with Trump.'

What got me thinking hard about my political allergies was talking to two old friends from the Middle East. Both have taken huge personal risks to tell hard truths and fight for the right to vote in a free and fair election. So they are vexed that so many Americans would sit on their hands in the face of the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime — President Trump's willingness to break rules to hold power.

One of these courageous democracy activists is Tawakkol Karman, the first Yemeni and the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. She won it for her nonviolent leadership of Yemen's Arab Spring protests demanding democracy, women's rights and freedom of speech. Karman played a leading role in the peaceful uprising in 2011 that led to the ouster of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the strongman who ruled North Yemen from 1978 and a unified Yemen from 1990 until 2012.

Karman told me over coffee at the Democracy Forum (which is held in association with The New York Times) that she was shocked to see how easily American law firms, universities and FRIEDMAN, PAGE 14

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

Gali, left, and Ziv Berman at home with their parents in the kibbutz in Israel where they moved after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Gali and Ziv were held for two years.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AVISHAG SHAAR-YASHUV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Finding freedom after captivity

Gali, left, said that he and Ziv have grown even closer, their shared experiences ingrained in them forever. "We are alive," Gali said. "We take nothing for granted."

TEL AVIV

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A year since their release, twins held hostage in Gaza rebuild their lives

BY ISABEL KERSHNER

The twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman were abducted by gunmen three years ago, when Hamas led a cross-border assault from Gaza on southern Israel, overrunning army bases and border communities, and hunting down revelers at a music festival.

They spent most of their time in captivity apart, starving and held in underground tunnels. Each lost 45 pounds (20 kilograms) before finally being reunited when they were released a year ago. The brothers were among the last 20 living hostages to be freed. Now, they are trying to rebuild their lives.

On Wednesday, Israelis marked the third anniversary of the deadliest day of violence in the country's history. On the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, a Jewish holiday, gunmen killed about 1,200 people, according to the Israeli authorities, and took about 250 more back to Gaza as hostages. The attacks ignited a devastating war in the Palestinian enclave, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in Israel's counterattack and much of the area has been reduced to rubble.

The hostages were returned to Israel in stages. Dozens of them died in captivity, and their bodies were transported home. Several of those who survived have written memoirs. Some have gotten married or had babies.

Gali and Ziv Berman were 26 when they were captured in Kfar Aza, the kibbutz where they lived. A year after they were released, they are trying to focus on rebuilding their lives. Gali is studying law, governance and diplomacy in college, and Ziv is in a new relationship with a woman who survived the attack on the music festival.

The journey back to something like normality is far from over, and the horrors of Oct. 7 still haunt them and the country.

As Israeli soldiers drove the Bermans out of Gaza on Oct. 13, 2025, after two years of captivity during which they were separated, beaten, deprived of food and mostly kept in dank tunnels underneath the enclave, Ziv said they had “thousands of questions.” They did not know if their family had survived the Oct. 7 attack. They wanted to know the latest about their favorite soccer team, Maccabi Tel Aviv.

The brothers also wondered what had happened to Kfar Aza. They discovered that more than 60 of the kibbutz's roughly 1,000 inhabitants had been killed and some 19 others abducted. "We wanted to go home," Ziv said. "They told us it was gone."

They saw their mother, Talia, for the first time at an army base near the border with Gaza and learned that their close family members were alive. "We were speechless," Gali said. "There were no words."

Their parents had moved to Beit Guvrin, a kibbutz farther away from Gaza. The brothers spent their first week of freedom at a hospital but left one day to visit their father, who suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease and dementia. "He looked at us, it sunk in and he began to cry," Gali recalled.

Soon, they were reunited with Emily GAZA, PAGE 6

Unrest grips France as it confronts fiscal crisis

NEWS ANALYSIS

PARIS

The far right is positioned to capitalize on the turmoil before next year's election

BY MARK LANDLER

Striking public workers. Barricaded high schools. Blocked ports. Budget paralysis. Surging bond rates. Fears of a far-right takeover.

France suddenly finds itself engulfed by crisis — not a single spasm of unrest, but a cascade of disruption that is roiling city streets, trading floors and public offices across the country. France's "rentrée," or "return," as the French call the back-to-school and back-to-work season, has been anything but orderly.

The causes of the chaos may appear disparate, but they can be traced to a common root: France's two-decade-long struggle to fund its state, now exacerbated by high borrowing costs, surging fuel prices and political uncertainty, with jockeying underway to replace President Emmanuel Macron next spring.

French public finances, already fragile, continue to deteriorate, fanning fears in financial markets that France could be the next European country to tumble into a full-blown financial crisis. The fiscal jitters were amplified by recent polls that show the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, would beat all of her rivals in presidential elections that will be held next spring.

On Tuesday, teachers and other public workers rallied against proposed wage freezes as the government labors to pass a budget. They joined thousands of students who have blockaded schools to protest underfunding that has led to crumbling facilities and a shortage of teachers.

With images of young protesters clashing with the police amid clouds of tear gas, the student protests have become the most vivid manifestation of France's unrest and grievances. Hundreds of schools around the country have closed, dozens have been damaged, and many people have been arrested or injured.

The street clashes have rattled financial markets that were already nervous. Traders kept the yield on 10-year French bonds near 5 percent on Tuesday, one of the highest levels of any European Union member and a sign that investors lack confidence in the lame-duck government's ability to manage its mushrooming challenges.

"In France, we say 'fin de règne,' meaning the end of Mr. Macron's decade-long reign over French politics, said Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, a left-leaning think tank in Paris. "The regime is at the end of its term and does not seem to have a plan for the next seven months." FRANCE, PAGE 6

A manuscript thief may be making mischief again

Fishy emails and reviews of unreleased books point to a known scam artist

NEWSSTAND PRICES

BY MIGUEL SALAZAR

The email was not entirely unexpected. Two weeks earlier, Lacey discovered that she had sent her manuscript to a Hotmail account impersonating her literary agent, Jin Auh.

In August, the author Catherine Lacey received an email whose subject line quoted from the beginning of her next novel, "Gemma." The message contained a passage from the unfinished manuscript followed by a wall of 48 middle finger emojis.

"Hey, I'm the Spine Collector and I stole your manuscript!" the message read. "Call the police and put me in jail. You know who I am."

When she first explained what had happened, Auh gave her an exasperated response: Remember the guy who was caught stealing manuscripts years earlier? It seemed he might be back.

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In 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Filippo Bernardini, then a rights coordinator at Simon & Schuster U.K., on counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Over more than five years, Bernardini created some 160 fraudulent internet domains, prosecutors argued, and impersonated hundreds of publishing professionals to obtain more than a thousand unpublished manuscripts.

By his own telling, Bernardini was motivated by factors including compulsive behavior, personal curiosity and professional animus. At his sentencing hearing, his defense lawyer also pointed BOOKS, PAGE 2

"At one level, it's a prank," the presiding judge, Colleen McMahon, said at the time. "It's a prank that's now been inflated into a crime."

Bernardini pleaded guilty to wire fraud in January 2023. He avoided prison time but was deported from the United States and ordered to pay \$88,000 in restitution to Penguin Random House.

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Novelist whose own life rivaled his thrillers

JEFFREY ARCHER 1940-2026

REBECCA NADEN/PA IMAGES, VIA GETTY IMAGES

Mr. Archer in 1991, above, with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His friendships and alliances eventually won him a place in the House of Lords. Below, with his wife, Mary, after winning a libel suit and, bottom, after his release from prison.

PA IMAGES, VIA GETTY IMAGES

JOHN STILLWELL/PA IMAGES, VIA GETTY IMAGES

RICK EGLINTON/TORONTO STAR, VIA GETTY IMAGES

UNITED NEWS/POPPERFOTO, VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY ALAN COWELL

Jeffrey Archer, a best-selling British author, politician, philanthropist, athlete and one-time jailbird whose résumé seesawed between achievement and disgrace and who inspired abiding public fascination with headline-grabbing accounts, both fictional and personal, of ambition, self-promotion, misbehavior and scandal, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 86.

His publisher, HarperCollins, announced his death in a statement. His final novel, "Adam and Eve," about the intertwined destinies of the highborn and the humble, was published on Tuesday.

Mr. Archer's thrillers and sagas of the rich and powerful sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. In his London apartment overlooking the Thames, the walls were adorned with paintings, including works by Monet and Picasso.

As a host there, he became known for annual parties at which celebrity guests were served top-end Krug Champagne and lowly shepherd's pie. He also maintained homes in Mallorca and in the village of Grantchester outside Cambridge, England, where he bought the 17th-century Old Vicarage, once the home of the poet Rupert Brooke. Routinely, he was reported to borrow the overseas homes of wealthy friends and acquaintances to compose the multiple first drafts of his novels.

In his days as a politician — both as a member of Parliament in the elected House of Commons and as deputy head of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party — he displayed a barely veiled hunger for the top job. His friendships and alliances eventually won him a place in the unelected House of Lords with the title Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare — his childhood hometown in southwest England.

A political Houdini, he survived many vicissitudes, including a perjury conviction in 2001, when he was found guilty of creating false diaries and concocting a story to win a trial over whether he had slept with a prostitute to whom he paid hush money.

He once said that politics was his first choice of career, but it was from his 40-plus books that he amassed wealth, starting with a novel titled "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less," published in 1976 after he had been defrauded of his personal fortune and stepped down as a lawmaker. "I was so low I would have sold fake Gucci bags on street corners," he told The Chicago Tribune. "Once you've lost a million dollars, you may as well have lost a hundred million dollars."

A former public relations man, he turned to writing thrillers and found he had an immediate skill for quick action that connected with readers. "Where I come from in the West Country, we say, 'Tell 'em a yarn, m'dear, and make 'em keep turning the pages, and you won't be far wrong,'" he explained.

His first published novel told the story of four men who banded together to defraud a con man who had robbed them of \$1 million each. Like the works that were to follow, the novel drew condescending criticism from some writers boasting more elevated literary credentials and less padded bank accounts. Mr. Archer described himself as a storyteller, a qualification which he depicted as both unusual and the object of resentment.

"Storytellers are very rare, but they create a lot of envy," Mr. Archer said in an interview with a fellow author, Anthony Horowitz, for The Sunday Tele-

Jeffrey Archer's final novel, "Adam and Eve," was published on Tuesday. His thrillers and sagas of the rich and powerful sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide.

graph Magazine in 2011. "The people who survive are storytellers."

Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in London on April 15, 1940, and grew up in Weston-super-Mare. His mother was Lola (Cook) Archer, a journalist with a column in a local newspaper; he described her as largely “penniless.”

Mr. Archer gave conflicting accounts of his father, William, who was 40 years older than his mother. He sometimes called him a “printer,” although by some accounts he was a bigamist and a fraudster. Either way, he was not much of a presence in his son’s life and died when Jeffrey was 11.

Mr. Archer was educated on a scholarship at a school in the county of Somerset and left with limited qualifications to train with the police and the army. He taught physical education at a school in the southeast and went on in 1963 to study for a diploma in education at the University of Oxford, where he was associated with Brasenose College.

At Oxford, he showed a flair for athletics as a sprinter and a hurdler — running both for the university and for his country — and for philanthropy, fundraising on behalf of the nonprofit organization Oxfam. A photograph from the era showed him with the Beatles, whose members he had persuaded to endorse a campaign by visiting Brasenose College. The drummer, Ringo Starr, was widely quoted as describing him as “a nice enough fella, but he’s the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it.”

Mr. Archer went into public relations and fund-raising, and in 1966, he married an Oxford chemistry undergraduate, Mary Weeden. In addition to his wife, who became a chemistry professor at the University of Cambridge, he is survived by two sons, William and James; and five grandchildren.

In his books, Mr. Archer showed a liking for multivolume series of novels revolving around central characters, such as the seven-book Clifton Chronicles charting the life and times of Harry Clifton, the son of a dockworker in southwest England, and an equally ambitious series of books, such as “An Eye for an Eye” (2024), following the career of a Scotland Yard detective named William Warwick. Even in nonfiction, Mr. Archer turned two years spent in prison for perjury into a three-volume memoir called "A Prison Diary."

His jail term had its roots in a case in 1987, when Mr. Archer filed a libel suit against the tabloid Daily Star after it reported that he had slept with a prostitute, Monica Coghlan. The judge, Bernard Caulfield, described Mr. Archer's wife, Mary, as having "elegance" and "fragrance" and asked whether the writer would have needed "cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel room." Mr. Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 in damages.

In 1992, with the support of Conservative backers including former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Prime Minister John Major, he was ennobled as Lord Archer. In 1999, he became the Conservative candidate in elections to choose a mayor of London despite never-proved allegations that he had used insider information in a deal to buy shares in Anglia Television five years earlier.

But before the vote was held, another newspaper, The News of the World, reported allegations that Mr. Archer had committed perjury at the original libel trial in 1987, forcing him to withdraw from the mayoral race.

Those charges came to trial in September 2000, and in July 2001, he was given a four-year jail term for perjury and perverting the course of justice. After two years in a variety of correctional institutions, he was released, resuming his career as a prolific writer. He kept his title and retired from the House of Lords in 2024.

A manuscript thief appears to be making mischief again

BOOKS, FROM PAGE 1

to an autism diagnosis.

"I never leaked these manuscripts. I wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them," he wrote in a letter filed to the judge that year. Having never landed the plum job as a literary agent or scout he so desired, "I still wanted to believe I was part [of] the industry," he wrote, "even though the industry did not seem to want me."

"I know that I will not do it again," he added, "and I have learned my lesson."

Since then, many in the book business have fallen for a scheme of unknown origin that resembles Bernardini's work, but with a few twists.

In interviews with The New York Times, more than a dozen authors, agents and literary scouts have described emails from impersonator accounts seeking manuscripts over the past several months. The messages bear the hallmarks of Bernardini's original scheme: look-alike emails, carefully replicated fonts and signatures, fluency in industry slang and an intimate knowledge of relationships in the book world. Money is never involved.

For at least three years, authors and agents have also been receiving emails from a Gmail address bearing Bernardini's name, with the surname spelled "Bemardini," with an "m" in place of the "rn." The messages often contain excerpts from stolen manuscripts along with taunts and, usually, middle finger or poop emojis.

The Italian novelist Vincenzo Latronico received one such email in May, with an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, "Una splendida rovina" ("A Splendid Ruin"). Latronico had heard from

Bernardini years earlier about another manuscript, and even wrote an article about the scammer for the Italian magazine Internazionale in 2025. Initially, he was amused.

"It was kind of a genius move," Latronico said, referring to the account's Gmail address. "It's like saying, 'You know, anybody could be doing this.'"

Still, Latronico was concerned. How had this person gotten hold of his work? Had it been leaked online? He scoured his inbox for phishing emails — as did his Italian agent and editor — and found none. Then Latronico searched for his novel online and found his manuscript free to download online. He also came across a negative review on a small blog called Literary Scout.

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Some reviews on a books blog refer to characters and plot details from earlier drafts of the unreleased novels in question.

At first glance, the website appears to be a run-of-the-mill books blog with reviews of books ranging from debut literary fiction to thrillers, translated works and Zadie Smith's latest novel. Many of the most recent reviews are of books that have yet to be published.

This alone isn't a red flag — publishers often share early copies of books with potential reviewers months ahead of a book's release date. But in several cases, the reviews were posted just days following the announcement of a book deal, before publishers shared the manuscripts widely.

Some of the reviews refer to plot details and character names that have since changed from previous drafts. One review, of Eli Rallo's debut novel, "I Hope Eden Reads This," explicitly refers to sample chapters from a book proposal.

None of the books reviewed received a higher rating than one out of five stars. (Some of the latest reviews feature poop and vomit emojis near the rating.) "Cash Out," by Nick Hornby, forthcoming in January, is described as "an overextended anecdote narrated in the same lightly ironic voice for far too long." Louise Erdrich's novel "I'm Hungry," publishing in April, is called "overlong, overstuffed and structurally hungry." And "Peculiar Stars," by Rebecca Yarros, due out in November, is dismissed as "an overblown trope machine."

The website's recent activity and the scornful phishing scheme may be related. A review of “Gemma” was posted on July 24, the same day Lacey sent her manuscript to the account impersonating her agent — and only two days after the book industry website Publishers Marketplace announced that Farrar, Straus & Giroux had acquired the book.

Perhaps most alarmingly, some manuscripts of unpublished books reviewed on Literary Scout, including "Cash Out" and "I'm Hungry," have also appeared on Z-Library, a so-called shadow library storing millions of titles, in many cases without permission.

It's unclear who is behind any of these recent schemes, and whether they are the work of Bernardini, a copycat or multiple individuals. Neither Bernardini nor the operator of the Bernardini account responded to requests for comment from The Times.

Soon after this story was published, Literary Scout appeared to take down

Vincenzo Latronico, left, and Catherine Lacey are among the authors who have received emails with excerpts from their unpublished works. Although no money is involved, the emails have still raised concerns over how the manuscripts were accessed.

FEDERICO CIAMEI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

all its reviews, at least temporarily. The updated landing page included language drawing attention to the killings of Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, along with an image of the Palestinian flag and a New York Times logo.

PETER FISHER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

It's difficult to categorize the damage of theft with no obvious financial incentive. Only a handful of unpublished manuscripts that were reviewed on Literary Scout are also on Z-Library. Even so, uncorrected galleys and early copies of anticipated works are often uploaded unlawfully well before a book's release.

The emails are something of an open secret among publishing professionals. Still, many have refrained from speaking publicly out of concern for being targeted, to avoid any reputational damage and to minimize the attention given to the scheme. As for the blog, much of the book business seems unaware of its existence.

"It's probably more of a concern now considering how A.I. has become part of the conversation," said Kent Wolf, a rights director at the agency Neon Literary. "The question is: 'What is this person doing with my novel?'"

In the years since Bernardini's initial arrest, artificial intelligence has infiltrated, and bewildered, the books world. A.I. has powered phishing scams that target writers, chatbots used on the sly in the writing process and detection tools that have led to canceled book releases, and it has prompted lawsuits by publishers against tech companies.

Given the rate of the blog's output, its language — one writer noted most of the descriptions were pulled from online promotional material — and how quickly some of the reviews have been posted after the manuscripts were swindled, some authors are concerned that the thief is feeding the stolen works into A.I. models.

"The business model of all these L.L.M. companies is already based on theft," Lacey said. "So to have somebody that knows how the publishing industry works just aid and abet it? It feels especially bad."

The timing could not be worse, many industry professionals warn. Authors in particular have been plagued by deceptive A.I.-generated emails promising to boost visibility in exchange for payment. Over the past several months, alerts about impersonation attempts have become increasingly commonplace below industry email signatures and on publishing websites.

Agencies have tried to locate such scammers through their I.P. addresses, and even reported impersonator email addresses to the authorities. “The problem is, they shut it down and reopen another one,” said Laurence Laluyaux, the head of RCW International at the RCW Literary Agency.

It can be difficult to keep a lid on drafts once they begin changing hands among agents, film and literary scouts, translators and editors abroad. All it takes for a manuscript to leak is a distracted email response or login information to a book scouting database hastily entered on a phishing site.

Juliana Castro Varón and Aric Toler contributed reporting.

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007

A kamikaze sea drone, the Magura V7, at a lake test site. Ukraine's success in fighting a vastly larger Russian Navy is being studied by military planners all over the world.

MARIA VARENIKOVA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A new form of naval warfare

VLAD SMILIANETS/REUTERS

Members of Ukraine's security service stood guard last October near naval drones, including the latest model of a "Sea Baby" remote-controlled marine drone, right.

POLTAVA REGION, UKRAINE

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Ukrainian sea drones act as tiny aircraft carriers, and other nations want in

BY MARIA VARENIKOVA AND NICHOLAS KULISH

Ukrainian naval drones ply the Black Sea with surface-to-air missiles, ready to shoot down enemy warplanes. They ferry aerial attack drones closer to targets. And last month, a Ukrainian drone was filmed in a drone-on-drone water battle with a Russian counterpart.

When Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine, Moscow dominated the waterways. Kyiv scaled up its drone operations, eventually sinking about a third of Russia's vaunted Black Sea fleet with what amounted to remote-controlled, exploding speedboats.

Now Ukraine is taking it a step further by establishing offshore layers of drone defense and offense, transforming naval warfare along the way.

New technologies arrive monthly. In one instance, a drone boat deposited a four-wheel, remote-controlled ground vehicle with a mounted machine gun on a Russian-occupied peninsula in what Ukraine called the first ever all-robot amphibious assault.

Remotely operated naval vessels are not unique to Ukraine. Yemen's Houthi rebels used a drone boat in an attack on a Saudi frigate almost a decade ago. This summer, the United States used unmanned Corsairs to rescue a downed helicopter crew and to attack a naval installation. But Ukraine's success in fighting a vastly larger Russian Navy is being studied by military planners from Taipei to Tallinn.

“Countries all over the world are looking to Ukraine as an example of how to use them in their own navies,” said Emma Salisbury, a senior fellow at the National Security Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Remote-controlled vessels are not a replacement for a traditional navy, said Sam J. Tangredi, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. "Drones are tools in the tool kit," he said. "They're useful systems. They will be used in wars. They don't change the equation."

Still, the cheap, off-the-shelf nature of

Ukraine's drone flotilla means the barriers to entry are low for would-be defense contractors. Twenty-seven Ukrainian companies are experimenting with new naval platforms and technologies, testing different models and capabilities, which pushes innovation forward, according to Dennis Kanin, director of Ukraine's Unmanned Naval Association, a trade group.

"For the cost of maintaining a single warship, with water drones you could provide security for a small country," Mr. Kanin said.

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INTEREST FROM ABROAD

Ukraine's sea-drone technology has caught the world's attention. UFORCE, a company founded in Ukraine, recently struck a deal for a joint venture to begin production in the United States. The company makes Magura sea drones, the first kamikaze drones used by Ukraine.

The largest Norwegian defense company, Kongsberg, opened an office in Ukraine and started collaborating with Ukraine's producer of Sargan sea drones. Other Nordic countries, Baltic countries and Japan have also proposed collaboration, Ukrainian entrepreneurs say.

"All these years, ever since maritime drones started sinking the Russian fleet, countries have been approaching us seeking to acquire these vessels for themselves or establish domestic production, including countries in the Persian Gulf," said Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's presidential chief of staff.

Unlike Kyiv, which is more than a hundred miles from the Russian border behind layers of air defense, coastal areas such as Odesa — or indeed Abu Dhabi or Dubai — have little warning before an attack with a Shahed, an Iranian-designed exploding drone. Basing air defenses at sea provides more time to detect and shoot down incoming drones.

“Instead of thinking of a B-52 flying for 75 years, you're thinking of something where if you don't use it in conflict year one to five, maybe you break them down to scrap and use them for a new mission,” said Cynthia R. Cook, senior fellow with the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The smaller programs allow for faster refresh.”

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BATTLE-TESTED TECHNOLOGY

This new form of naval power began, like so many inventions, with a multitude of failures.

The first Magura drones were based on a civilian motorboat produced in Odesa. Ukrainians began testing the sea drones in the spring of 2023, and the drones have become more sophisticated over time.

"We would lose the drone, then go after it, tow it back, tinker with it, fix something, and it would happen again and again," a commander with the call sign Thirteen said as his pilots tested sea drones at a secret location. He leads a sea drone unit run by Ukraine's military spy agency, known as HUR.

On a scorching day this summer at a different training ground, another unit commander at the agency, known as Ninth, sat on a child's swing beside a lake in central Ukraine. As the swing rocked gently, he watched the latest version of his technology carve the calm inland waters.

Both Thirteen and Ninth asked to be identified only by their call signs, in keeping with their agency's rules.

The lake near where Ninth sat was a test site for drone boats that launch aerial drones, essentially miniature aircraft carriers, first used last year.

At the time, Ukrainian military planners were preparing an attack on the Russian seaports of Tuapse and Novorossiysk, Ninth said. The Russians had set up radar antennas on offshore oil platforms that were helping to identify incoming drone boats. The Ukrainians needed to take out those antennas in the opening phase of an assault.

Ninth realized that interceptor aerial drones could help. He could fit many on the deck of a three-and-a-half-ton Katran sea drone and use them to bombard coastal targets from sea — or, in this case, to hit an oil platform.

After dark, Ninth ordered the launch of his aircraft carrier drones, he said. They took off from the decks and buzzed toward their targets, guided by operators. The repurposed interceptors destroyed the antennas and killed the Russian soldiers operating them. With the radars taken out, other sea drones slipped through and attacked the Russian ports.

Another new use for the boats came in April this year when Ukraine's 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade shot down two Russian Shaheds using interceptor drones that were launched from a water platform.

Ukrainian commanders see the key to drone warfare not as any particular device but as the teams that are fast to adapt.

“Technology is not what matters most,” said Lt. Col. Yuriy Kochevenko, who commands the sea battalion of the 412th brigade. “People are.”

Maria Varenikova reported from the Poltava region of Ukraine.

City accused of census chicanery in aging Japan

TOKYO

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Officials may have inflated data to avoid budget cuts and appearance of decline

BY HISAKO UENO AND TIFFANY MAY

In Japan, one of the world's most rapidly graying societies, officials often face pressure to stem the tide of demographic decline, which can bring budget cuts and public shame. Now, one city is being accused of inflating its numbers to avoid the appearance of a shrinking population.

Regional police raided the city hall in Toyama, in western Japan, on Saturday after a central government ministry said it had found inconsistencies during a review of census data. Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said last week that it had filed a complaint against city officials involved with the census, accusing them of inflating population numbers by adding empty households to the survey.

Experts say the falsification claims reflect the extremes that some local governments will go through to maintain at least the appearance of stable population levels. Japan's population peaked at 128 million in 2008, and currently stands at 123 million people, roughly the same size it was in 1989.

Mayor Hirohisa Fujii of Toyama apologized in a statement on Saturday and said that city officials would cooperate fully with the police investigation. Falsifying statistics can be punishable by fines or imprisonment of up to six months under Japanese law.

Kenta Tsuji, an official at the population census division of the ministry, said inconsistencies in the data were discovered during the final review stage of census data but declined to offer details about how they were found. There was a discrepancy of nearly 3,000 people between a population estimate released in May and the final census record for Toyama's population published last week.

The largest city in Toyama prefecture, and also its capital, Toyama sits at the edge of the Japanese Alps. Home to around 400,000 residents, it has been held up by the World Bank as a “global role model” of a compact city that has limited urban sprawl and an overreliance on cars.

Japan's national census is conducted every five years. In May, when a separate population count showed that the city's population had dipped below 400,000, Mr. Fujii expressed concern.

"While I view the 400,000 mark as just one milestone, I do believe this carries significant weight," he told reporters at the time. "The fact that we have dropped below this figure has made a strong impression on me."

Population estimates can be financially crucial for local governments. The central government typically allots subsidies to local governments according to their population size.

On Friday, Mr. Fujii said subsidies from the central government could drop by \$380,000 because of lower population as well as a decline in the number of schoolchildren.

Experts say that officials may have sought to keep up with nearby cities like Kanazawa and Niigata in neighboring prefectures, which are home to 450,000 and 750,000 people, respectively.

Nobuo Sasaki, a professor emeritus of economics at Chuo University and expert in urban administration, said that the city may have tried “at all costs” to maintain its status as an equal to the other cities, which have become popular as tourist destinations.

“Another possibility is that staff members, fearing that the city’s reputation as a successful model of compact city development would be tarnished, resorted to misconduct in an attempt to save face,” Professor Sasaki said in an interview.

In May, Mr. Fujii, Toyama's mayor, said that it was an "urgent priority" for the city to increase its birth rate.

"It is crucial that, even as the population declines, we ensure the rate of decline is gradual," he said.

Hisako Ueno reported from Tokyo and Tiffany May from Hong Kong.

In Brazilian election, political resurrection

RIO DE JANEIRO

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The Bolsonaro family is close to a triumphant return to the presidency

BY ANA IONOVA

Flávio Bolsonaro watched last year as his father was sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup after losing Brazil's last presidential election.

His father, the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, was barred from ever returning to politics.

The younger Mr. Bolsonaro took up the mantle. Then scandal threatened to derail his own presidential hopes after he was accused of raising funds for a biopic about his father from a disgraced banker at the center of a huge corruption scheme.

But Mr. Bolsonaro was able to rebound spectacularly, and on Sunday night he celebrated at a raucous election night party, following a surprisingly strong showing that put him on the path to becoming the president of Latin America's biggest country.

“Deep down, people were voting for a legacy,” said Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies the Brazilian right. “Because they believe that if Flávio were to be elected, the one governing would be Jair.”

The younger Mr. Bolsonaro, 45, fell short of the votes needed for an outright victory, but he appeared to be on his way to ousting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a runoff later this month. Mr. Bolsonaro earned more votes than Mr. Lula and is now likely to win many of the ballots cast for other right-wing candidates eliminated in the first round.

And the presidential hopeful wasn't the only Bolsonaro who had a good Election Day. Four other Bolsonaros also won federal offices, riding a potent right-wing wave sweeping the country.

Their triumphs cement the Bolsonaros as the dominant force within Brazil's right and could make the country the eighth Latin American nation to elect a conservative president in the last 18 months.

President Trump was quick to celebrate Mr. Bolsonaro's performance, although he cautioned that the second round would be tight.

"It's a big victory," he told reporters on Monday. "Close — but a very big victory."

The vote marked an unexpected turnaround for the Bolsonaros after the elder Mr. Bolsonaro tried to subvert democracy and inspired thousands of supporters to storm Brazil's halls of power, in an episode resembling the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The presidency could now grant Mr. Bolsonaro and his family new, sweeping powers to rewrite Brazil's history and reshape its future in profound ways. If elected, Mr. Bolsonaro has promised to seek amnesty for his father and the rioters, and to impeach the Supreme Court justices who jailed them. Mr. Bolsonaro may also try to reverse a decision by the court to convict his brother Eduardo of interfering in their father's coup trial by lobbying Mr. Trump to pressure Brazil to drop the case.

With a deeply conservative legislature stacked with members of his political party, including his relatives, these goals may now be far easier for Mr. Bolsonaro to achieve.

The Bolsonaro family's comeback mirrors the enduring hold of other powerful political dynasties around the world, including the Marcoses in the Philippines, the Sharifs in Pakistan, the Fujimoris in Peru and the Kirchners in Argentina.

When Jair Bolsonaro, 71, waded into presidential politics in 2018, he succeeded in tapping into deep anger among many Brazilians over endemic corruption gripping the nation's political class. Though he had spent nearly three decades as a minor lawmaker, the former army captain succeeded in casting himself as a political outsider.

Modeling himself after Mr. Trump, he railed against “woke” ideology and offended women and minorities. Promising a drastic political overhaul, he vowed to root out graft, crush criminals and restore family values.

In a deeply conservative nation disillusioned with politics, his take-no-prisoners message found an enthusiastic audience.

Brazilians were less keen on Mr. Bolsonaro's family, distrustful of apparent links between his sons and corrupt or criminal groups. Family drama, mostly between Mr. Bolsonaro's sons and Michelle Bolsonaro, his current and third wife, has also sullied their image.

In one episode that transfixed the nation, Ms. Bolsonaro, 44, a popular figure among evangelical women, accused Flávio Bolsonaro of disrespecting her in a biting 27-minute video posted on social media, damaging Mr. Bolsonaro's candidacy. The two eventually made up in an effort to project unity.

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"Deep down, people were voting for a legacy. Because they believe that if Flávio were to be elected, the one governing would be Jair."

Yet on Sunday, millions of Brazilians appeared to set aside those reservations. Besides nearly handing Flávio Bolsonaro a victory, voters also elected two of his brothers, his stepmother and an uncle in races for the nation's legislative branches.

“Yes, it’s this whole family of politicians,” Ms. Rocha said. “But the one who’s in charge, in people’s eyes, is the father. That’s who they trust with their vote.”

With the elder Mr. Bolsonaro out of politics, his supporters transferred to Flávio Bolsonaro their faith that he would continue his father's political agenda. Mr. Bolsonaro has reassured his supporters that he plans to model his government after that of his father.

"Jair Bolsonaro triggered 'bolsonarismo,' said Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and director of the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right. "And he's still the electoral glue."

On Tuesday, Mr. Bolsonaro lamented a court order barring him from visiting his father, claiming it was political interference aimed at keeping him away from his “political mentor.”

Instead of relying on a party's political machine, the Bolsonaros are building their movement through their family brand, Mr. Kaltwasser said.

"They have a long-term ideological project," he said. "And they are ensuring it endures over time."

Isabela Cruz and Thayz Guimarães contributed research.

Above, the Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro in Brasília on Sunday. Below, banners critical of his father, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, reading “Remember that?” in Rio de Janeiro. The election will be decided in a runoff this month.

DIEGO HERCULANO/REUTERS

PILAR OLIVARES/REUTERS

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Above from left: Ziv and Gali Berman attending a memorial for Alon Shimriz, a friend from Kfar Aza, the kibbutz where they lived; visiting Gali's home in the kibbutz; and searching for belongings at the home of Emily Damari, left, another friend from the kibbutz.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AVISHAG SHAARYASHUV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Rebuilding their lives after years in captivity

GAZA, FROM PAGE 1

Damari, a close friend and neighbor from Kfar Aza who was kidnapped with them on Oct. 7. Ms. Damari was freed months before the brothers were and campaigned for their release. In August, Gali and Ziv danced at her wedding to Danielle Amit, an Israeli food influencer.

The brothers have also been finally able to mourn their friends who did not survive.

In December 2023, Israeli forces accidentally killed three hostages who had tried to escape after mistaking them for militants. Two of them were from Kfar Aza, including Alon Shimriz, a childhood friend of the brothers.

Sitting outside a Tel Aviv cafe in the sunshine earlier this year, the brothers said their freedom did not feel complete because the body of the last captive, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, was still in Gaza.

Sergeant Gvili, a member of an elite police counterterrorism unit, had rushed into battle on Oct. 7. He was injured and was dragged into the enclave.

Gali performed his military service in an infantry combat unit and Ziv in the armored corps. They said they could not tolerate leaving a dead or wounded soldier in the field. "He went to fight for us," Gali said.

Less than two weeks later, Israel recovered the remains of Sergeant Gvili. For many Israelis, and for the brothers, it was only then that the hostage saga ended.

---

THE ABDUCTION

Gali and Ziv said they had grown up as part of the so-called Qassam generation, a reference to the crude Qassam rockets that militant groups fired from Gaza at Israel. In Kfar Aza, early warning alerts gave them 15 seconds to take cover, at most. "From a young age," Gali said, "we were running to shelters."

They had never imagined an assault on the scale of Oct. 7. As adults, they had settled into a relatively tranquil and comfortable life, working as technicians at a sound and lighting production company based in the kibbutz.

When the attack began on Oct. 7 and the sound of gunfire grew closer, Ms. Damari was afraid of being alone, so Gali dashed to her home to be with her. Gunmen burst into the bedroom, killed Ms. Damari's dog, Choocha, and shot and wounded her.

Militants set fire to Ziv's home nearby, where he had taken shelter in a safe room. The room soon filled with smoke. The choice, he said, was "to suffocate or to come out. I came out."

Gunmen forced Ms. Damari and the brothers into her car, and they were driven into Gaza. In the chaos of the attack and their abduction, Ziv, who was blindfolded and sitting in the front, had no idea that Gali was in the car, too.

Gali said he would never forget the cheers he heard in the streets of Gaza as they passed. It seemed like everybody was out. "A million people," Ziv remarked.

Above, Ziv on his way to a hospital on Oct. 13, 2025, after being freed from captivity in Gaza. The brothers were among the last 20 living hostages to be freed. Left, Gali and Ziv dancing with their cousin at her wedding in Tel Aviv in December.

On their first day in captivity, Gali was taken away. Ziv and Ms. Damari were held together until Day 40, when they were led down into tunnels and the captors separated the men from the women.

The brothers were reunited for the first time six months into their ordeal, in the ruins of a bombed-out house. Their captors filmed them as they cried out in surprise and embraced for a propaganda video that was never released. They spent two nights together catching up and barely slept, Gali said.

A few weeks later, they spent more days together in a tunnel with other hostages. A third encounter, filmed near the coast of Gaza for another propaganda video, lasted only a few hours.

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THE NEW LIFE

The transition from the harrowing or deal of captivity to freedom is a process. The brothers' year back in Israel has been starkly different from their previously quiet, routine existence.

Ziv has undergone extensive dental treatment, saying he had not cleaned his teeth for about a year when he was held hostage.

The brothers have traveled widely. They met with President Trump in the United States and have spoken to American Jewish communities, determined to "tell the world," they said, about what happened.

Gali said that he and Ziv have grown even closer, their shared experiences ingrained in them forever.

"The wish to be together is stronger," Gali said this week. Even as they try to focus on the future, Gali, Ziv and Emily still talk about "the memories and the traumas" of what happened to them, he said.

---

The brothers' year back in Israel has been starkly different from their previously quiet, routine existence.

The brothers recently returned from a visit to Thailand and, after visiting the graves of friends over the weekend, they left for another short trip abroad. They wanted to be far from the sights and sounds of the Oct. 7 commemorations, Gali said, the first since their return from Gaza.

The brothers' status as returned hostages has brought them a celebrity they never sought. When strangers approached them at the Tel Aviv cafe earlier this year to greet them or offer a kind word, they accepted the attention graciously.

The country also went through two years of war, Gali said. "There were times when people had to choose between funerals," he added.

They seemed at ease but said they were trying not to look back. They joked at one point about how in Gaza, the hostages' empty, rumbling stomachs would "talk to one another." But, Ziv quickly added, "There, it wasn't funny at all."

On the day of their release, they asked the helicopter pilot transporting them to the hospital to fly over Bloomfield Stadium, the home of Maccabi Tel Aviv, their beloved soccer club. They have tried to make up for lost time by watching lots of matches and playing soccer themselves, and by sticking close to the family, Ziv said.

The brothers celebrated their 29th birthdays last month with a jubilant dance party. Hundreds of relatives and friends, including some freed hostages, came to rejoice with them at a club in Tel Aviv.

The future, however, will forever be tinged with anguished memories. "The time in captivity will always be a part of me, for good and for bad," Gali said this week. "But we are alive. We take nothing for granted."

The Berman brothers are trying to embrace life anew.

Crisis grips France as it struggles to fund its social welfare state

DIMITAR DILKOFF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Gathering in the center of the Place de la Republic in Paris. High school students, joined by unions and teachers, have been demanding better learning conditions.

FRANCE, FROM PAGE 1

These deepening anxieties do not mean France is destined to have a Greece-style debt crisis or the kind of market backlash that toppled a British prime minister, Liz Truss, after she proposed budget-busting tax cuts in 2022.

Economists pointed out that other countries, including the United States, face pressure on their public finances because of rising interest rates. France's anchor role in the European Union, they said, means that the bloc's other members would bail it out, should it ever come to that.

“France’s position looks unsustainable and the bond markets are saying that, but they’re not screaming it yet,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University in Massachusetts and a scholar of financial crises. “It’s a slow-motion train wreck.”

France, of course, is no stranger to social unrest, most recently the yellow-vest protests, which raged from 2018 to 2020. Tens of thousands of people, wearing high-visibility safety vests, turned out for weekly demonstrations that began as a protest against rising fuel prices and grew into demands for political and economic justice.

Some analysts note a disquieting similarity between that period and today, with oil and gas prices spiking as a result of the Iran war. Mr. Macron appears mindful of those dangers. Last Thursday, he led a meeting of leaders of Group of 7 wealthy democracies, in which they agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from their stockpiles to ease pressure on fuel prices.

With French fishermen having blocked ports and fuel terminals to protest the cost of diesel, Mr. Macron said he hoped the emergency measure would cause prices to “drop at the pump as quickly as possible.”

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Hundreds of schools around the country have closed, dozens have been damaged, and many people have been arrested or injured.

Still, energy prices are only one piece of France's precarious fiscal picture. The country's public debt stands at roughly \$4 trillion, which is 119 percent of its annual economic output. With rates on French government bonds spiking, the cost of servicing that debt is projected to increase to roughly \$100 billion in 2027.

France also faces higher health care and pension costs because of its aging population, as well as increased military spending driven by the war in Ukraine and the disengagement of the United States.

To pay for all of that and keep France's budget deficit from exploding, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu proposes to raise some taxes and freeze spending on social programs like housing aid and family allowances. Analysts said Mr. Lecornu was likely to get a budget passed, even if it takes months of messy negotiations and requires him to invoke special powers to push it through.

To do that, however, the government will have to rely on Ms. Le Pen's party, the National Rally, not to torpedo the legislation. It has 118 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, the most of any party. Some analysts expect Ms. Le Pen to order her lawmakers to abstain and allow the budget to pass, if only to protect herself from facing fiscal chaos if she wins the presidential election in April.

On Tuesday, Ms. Le Pen delivered a much-anticipated speech on her economic agenda. Analysts will dissect it for evidence that the National Rally has become more realistic about France's fiscal problems since her last run for president, in 2022, when she was widely criticized as lacking credibility on economic policy.

Though some analysts said they expected Ms. Le Pen to try to reassure bond markets about France's deficit, they predicted she would continue to be implacably hostile to the European Union. If she were elected, they said, it would raise hard questions about France's future contribution to the E.U.'s budget.

For that reason, some liken France's election to the Brexit referendum in

Britain, in which voters decided to break away from the European Union. "This is France's 2016 moment," said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst who specializes in Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.

"It's not just a debt crisis or bond-market crisis," Mr. Rahman continued. "The investors I'm talking to are worrying about an existential political and constitutional crisis. It's all of these issues coming together in a deeply unhelpful way for whoever wins the presidential election."

A victory by Ms. Le Pen is far from preordained. She has been convicted of financial corruption, which she denies, and her party president, Jordan Bardella, has been accused of antisemitism, which he also denies. Analysts say that in a runoff against a centrist, Ms. Le Pen might lose.

But in another scenario, analysts said, the double whammy of economic problems and social unrest could play to the advantage of hard-line politicians on the right and the left. That could send Ms. Le Pen into a runoff against a far-left candidate whom she might more easily defeat.

Whoever prevails after this autumn of discontent, the crisis may force a more basic reckoning: France can no longer afford its social-welfare state.

“That is the deepest source of anger in France,” said Michel de Rosen, a French author and businessman. “We’re a country that can no longer do what it wants to do.”

Drones moved to South America to hunt cartels

Left, an MQ-9 Reaper drone, which can cost as much as \$50 million. Above, the site in Baghdad where an MQ-9 Reaper drone strike killed an Iranian military leader in 2020. Below, a pilot in New York State operating a drone flying over Afghanistan in 2012.

SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Transfer of aircraft comes as U.S. ramps up campaign against drug traffickers

BY ANNIE CORREAL AND ERIC SCHMITT

In a sign of the Trump administration's new focus on combating Latin American cartels, the U.S. military has moved a number of MQ-9 Reaper drones from Africa to Colombia and Ecuador, U.S. officials said.

MQ-9 Reaper drones are often used for precision strikes like the lethal operation that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who led the powerful Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in 2020. The aircraft, which can cost up to \$50 million, are in short supply after losses in the Iran war, where at least 45, or about a quarter of the overall U.S. fleet, have been destroyed.

The transfer was described by two U.S. officials familiar with the decision who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly on an operational matter.

The move comes as the administration ramps up its military offensive against Latin American trafficking groups.

The top U.S. military commander for most of Latin America, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, has said that the United States plans to expand operations from strikes on boats to strikes on land.

The redeployment of drones is “a significant signal from the administration that we are getting serious,” said Francisco Palmieri, a former U.S. diplomat

who helped shape U.S. counternarcotics strategy, including during the first Trump administration, and who served as acting ambassador to Colombia under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Palmieri said he could not comment on the significance of the redeployment at the operational level. "But as a political symbol, it's unmistakable," he said. "It's a sign of a commitment to expand both the level and type of cooperation."

Signs of an escalating U.S.-led military campaign against drug traffickers have raised concerns among human rights advocates that attacks could endanger civilians. And experts say killing members of trafficking groups, even top leaders, does little to effectively stem the flow of drugs since those killed can be replaced.

The MQ-9 Reaper, which can stay aloft for longer periods and carry a larger payload of missiles and bombs than its predecessor, the Predator, has been used in airstrikes against groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the Middle East and Al Shabab in Africa.

The drone is capable of carrying thermal cameras as well as equipment that can intercept electronic communications, and it has been called the U.S. military's "hunter-killer."

The Trump administration has made exerting greater influence in Latin America a priority, focusing especially on security. It has built a coalition of regional leaders that has pledged to help dismantle cartels; the group's official slogan is “We do bad things to bad people.”

Washington has previously justified lethal strikes on drug traffickers by claiming that they are enemy combatants.

A range of legal experts say the administration's lethal strikes on alleged drug boats off South America are illegal because those killed, even if they are committing crimes, do not pose a direct threat to the United States.

Colombia and Ecuador — home to trafficking groups designated as terrorist organizations by Washington — are among a handful of nations that have agreed to conduct joint operations with the United States within their borders.

It is not clear how many MQ-9 Reaper drones have been sent to each country, though the U.S. officials said it was a small number, or how many of the aircraft have already arrived.

Last month, CNN first reported that reapers assigned to the Pentagon's Africa Command were likely to be sent to Latin America, but it was not clear exactly where the drones would go.

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"It's a sign of a commitment to expand both the level and type of cooperation."

The Defense Ministries in Colombia and Ecuador did not respond to requests for comment. U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the region, declined to comment, citing operational security reasons.

Defense officials in Colombia and Ecuador have acknowledged plans to receive MQ-9 Reaper drones, according to local news media.

Colombian officials said over the summer that they had agreed to receive three MQ-9 Reaper drones, and that Colombia would consider purchasing one additional craft.

“Two were turned over to Ecuador for cooperation and are already operating in our skies,” Gian Carlo Loffredo, Ecuador’s defense minister, said in a radio interview last Friday.

Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, was the first regional leader to allow joint military operations in his country this year and has recently faced scrutiny over the presence of U.S. troops at one base. Ecuador's Constitution bars foreign military bases in the country, a prohibition voters affirmed in a referendum last year.

Colombia's new right-wing president, Abelardo De La Espriella, has launched an aggressive military effort targeting leaders of several groups said to be involved in cocaine trafficking.

Reaper drones might help track down leaders in mountain and jungle terrain, where they have long managed to hide from the local authorities. But analysts say that moving the drones from Africa to South America could also hinder combating terrorist groups in Africa.

This year alone, the Pentagon's Africa Command has conducted scores of strikes against Al Shabab in Somalia — relying heavily on MQ-9 Reaper drones.

Reporting was contributed by Simón Posada, José María León Cabrera, John Ismay and Christiaan Triebert.

Mexico's governing party has a problem: The last president's son

Left, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, the son of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico's former president. Right, Mr. López Obrador with President Claudia Sheinbaum, his successor.

LUIS ANTONIO ROJAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

CRISTIAN LEYVA/ALAMY

MEXICO CITY

BY PAULINA VILLEGAS,

EMILIANO RODRÍGUEZ MEGA,

JACK NICAS AND STEVE FISHER

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico is facing questions that could define her presidency and test her party's legacy over accusations of corruption, luxury trips and cartel ties against high-profile figures in her party.

How far will she go to confront powerful figures within the leftist movement that brought her to power? And will a movement built on promises to end political privilege, corruption and influence peddling hold its own members to those same standards?

Publicly, Ms. Sheinbaum has made her position clear.

“Let the law be upheld, let law enforcement institutions do their work, let us not allow foreign interference in decisions that belong solely to Mexicans, and let us act with integrity, honesty and decency,” she said at a news conference in August. That, she said, will “distinguish us from the corruption and privilege of the past.”

Still, Ms. Sheinbaum faces what some see as a growing dilemma. It is embodied by Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, a well-known figure in her party and a son of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Mr. López Beltrán has not been charged with any crime, but he has been repeatedly accused of corruption.

He occupies an unusual place in Mexican politics: He is not simply the son of a former president but also someone many see as the heir to a man who transformed the country and its political landscape. His father founded the left-wing movement, Morena, now Mexico's governing party, on the promise to dismantle privilege, root out corruption and break the cozy ties between political and business elites that he said had enriched a few at the expense of millions.

In August, Mr. López Beltrán and one of his brothers appeared on the front page of a national newspaper. Photos showed them dining at a high-end restaurant with business executives and a former top aide to their father.

The images quickly revived public scrutiny of Mr. López Beltrán's taste for expensive restaurants, hotels and travel. But the five-hour dinner also made news because it came just as he faced a cascade of corruption accusations.

Critics and opposition politicians have accused him of using his influence to steer contracts to his inner circle, and news media investigations and leaked files have linked his close associates to the deals. References to Mr. López Beltrán also appeared in case files from Mexico's attorney general's office regarding a giant fuel-smuggling scheme.

Also in August, Mr. López Beltrán, 40, revealed that the United States had revoked his visa, as it has done with other Mexican politicians accused of corruption. American officials have declined to comment on the visa revocation.

Mr. López Beltrán has denied corruption accusations. In response to his visa revocation, he published an angry letter to President Trump, calling the decision "a crude and perverse dirty trick" intended to punish Morena, his party, for refusing to submit to Washington's "authoritarian, divisive ambitions."

Two U.S. law enforcement agencies are looking into accusations of Mr. López Beltrán's supposed ties to organized crime and fuel smuggling, but they have not begun formal investigations, according to five people with direct knowledge of the agencies' inquiries who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

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Critics and opposition politicians have accused him of using his influence to steer business contracts to his inner circle.

Mr. López Beltrán has also reached out to U.S. law enforcement officials via intermediaries multiple times this year, but the two sides have not had formal talks, according to three people familiar with the entreaties.

The string of controversies surrounding Mr. López Beltrán pose a larger predicament for Ms. Sheinbaum.

"He puts Sheinbaum's conduct and her politics to the test," said Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a political analyst. At stake, he said, is Morena's core identity.

"The idea that they are morally re-"

generating the country — the honest ones who are going to put an end to this system of corruption — is now being called into question," he said.

Mr. López Beltrán has long operated at the heart of the governing party, helping organize get-out-the-vote efforts in Mexico City during his father's 2018 presidential campaign. He joined the party leadership as its secretary of organization in 2024, once Ms. Sheinbaum's presidency started.

In this role, he spearheaded a campaign that almost quintupled Morena's official membership to over 11 million — although he then faced scrutiny after the electoral authorities nullified or removed more than two million registrants for widespread anomalies, including duplicates and the registration of 91,000 deceased individuals.

In May, Mr. López Beltrán stepped down from the party leadership and announced his intention to run for Congress representing Tabasco, his father's home state. He has since been campaigning ahead of elections next year.

The campaign has been dogged by scandal. Investigative outlets and leaked files have linked a network of his close associates — most notably, his longtime friend Jorge Amílcar Olán, a businessman — to lucrative government contracts.

References suggesting Mr. López Beltrán's involvement in a fuel-smuggling scheme also appeared in case files from Mexico's attorney general's office. Mexican prosecutors allege that corrupt customs and naval officials helped import U.S. diesel disguised as oil additives, evading billions in Mexican taxes.

A cooperating witness said the seizure last year of smuggled diesel was the result of a political clash between Mexico's top security official and "the president's son," according to federal case files published in Mexican media outlets and reviewed by The New York Times. Defense lawyers for prosecuted naval officers told Mexican reporters that "the president's son" was a reference to Mr. López Beltrán.

Mr. López Beltrán did not respond to requests for comment.

In August, Mexican prosecutors said these mentions alone did not constitute sufficient evidence to open an investigation into him.

"We don't have any evidence linking Andrés Manuel López Beltrán to any crime, none," Ms. Sheinbaum said.

Ms. Sheinbaum is also navigating a delicate relationship with Washington. She has deepened security cooperation while firmly rejecting threats of unilateral U.S. military action against cartels.

But Washington is also pressing her government to act against Mexican officials accused of corruption or criminal ties, sharpening scrutiny of how she handles powerful figures within her own movement.

Ms. Sheinbaum's supporters point to evidence that her government has acted on its promise to break with corruption.

On her watch, security forces have arrested more than 100 officials, including mayors, municipal police chiefs and regional politicians, many of them charged with facilitating cartel operations or institutional corruption. The list includes members of her own party.

But critics say that those vows hit a hard limit when accusations reach the upper ranks of the governing party.

This spring, U.S. prosecutors indicted 10 current and former Mexican officials, including a sitting governor, Rubén Rocha Moya, and a senator, Enrique Inzunza, both Morena members. Prosecutors accused them of a yearslong scheme to protect and help the Sinaloa Cartel and sought their arrest for a subsequent extradition. In response, Mexico's attorney general's office opened its own investigation, but Ms. Sheinbaum maintained that the United States had not provided enough evidence against the accused to detain them.

Ms. Sheinbaum's reluctance to publicly break with “undesirable” figures within her party — including Mr. López Beltrán — may hurt her credibility, said Vanessa Romero Rocha, a political analyst, even if her decisions are meant to protect her predecessor's legacy and preserve party unity.

There may also be a more pragmatic goal: Mr. López Beltrán inevitably represents Mr. López Obrador, said Viri Ríos, another political analyst.

“And the single biggest vote mobilizer in this country,” she said, “is López Obrador.”

Alan Feuer and Miriam Castillo contributed reporting.

Partisans fill Justice Department vacancies

WASHINGTON

Harmeet Dhillon, above, head the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department, has pushed hard to replenish the ranks of a unit that was once a magnet for top legal talent but that she says was filled with “progressive activists.” Among the new recruits are, below from left: Barry Arrington, Khalil H. Quinan and Peter Feaman.

ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES

DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

PEDRO PORTAL/MIAMI HERALD

TORI LYNN SCHNEIDER/TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT, VIA USA TODAY NETWORK — REUTERS

Some recent recruits would not have qualified in the past, analysts say

BY GLENN THRUSH

A former prosecutor forced off a high-profile murder case for peeking at the defense team's strategy documents.

A onetime gambling executive who promoted conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre in 2017.

A Florida activist who once served 20 days in jail for hacking a local elections system.

They are among the 130 lawyers who have recently joined the U.S. Justice Department's short-staffed civil rights division as the Trump administration has struggled to fill the depleted ranks of a unit that was once a magnet for legal talent. Since early last year, upward of 300 nonpolitical career employees, representing decades of experience, have left the division after its leader, Harmeet Dhillon, repurposed it to pursue President Trump's agenda.

As a consequence, the division has opened its doors to recruits, many of them conservatives, some with education and work histories that might have disqualified them from being hired in the past, former officials said. Some have left a trail of hyperpartisan, conspiratorial and, in some instances, bizarre statements, according to an examination of about a dozen recent hires based on court records, social media posts and interviews.

Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said they have rejected nearly as many applicants as they have hired: 126.

Any ideological tilt in the career ranks, they added, reflected the Trumpera applicant pool, which includes conservative activists and recent law school graduates.

Ms. Dhillon praised the quality of the new lawyers and said she was revamping a division that had been dominated by liberals for far too long.

"For years, the civil rights division recruited from a narrow pipeline of progressive activists and called it excellence," she said in a statement.

“We are hiring trial lawyers,” she added. “The attorneys The Times singled out have collectively tried hundreds of cases, prosecuted those who prey on trafficked children, won at the Supreme Court and practiced law for decades. That is the experience this division needs to enforce civil rights laws for every American.”

Among her top hires: The gun rights activist Barry Arrington, the acting chief of a new Second Amendment unit, is a high-profile opponent of the theory of evolution and same-sex marriage. Last year, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court against Colorado's ban on so-called conversion therapy.

The person she appointed to temporarily lead the voting section — the epicenter of the department's aggressive actions ahead of the midterm elections — is Eric Neff, who tried more than 50 criminal cases during a 12-year career as a prosecutor in California. His stint as a prosecutor in Los Angeles County ended in rancor.

In 2022, Mr. Neff was placed on administrative leave after the office withdrew his indictment of an executive at a software company for storing data on poll workers on a Chinese server. His bosses cited irregularities in the case. The county ended up paying the company \$5 million in a settlement.

Mr. Neff was reinstated in 2024 and has filed a whistle-blower claim against the county, which remains unresolved.

Questions for individual prosecutors and officials were routed to the Justice Department's public affairs office, in keeping with longstanding policy. A department spokeswoman, Kiersten Pels, defended Mr. Neff's appointment, citing his experience, "50 jury trials in cases ranging from fraud to multiple homicides" and his earlier career as an investigative reporter.

Critics have raised questions about lawyers assigned to crack down on voter fraud, which includes a thus-far unsuccessful effort to obtain sensitive state voter roll information and the deployment of 1,000 election monitors across the United States.

On the day of Minnesota's primary elections in August, two Justice Department officials approached a polling place in Minneapolis and were reminded by a local election worker to obey a law requiring them to stay outside at a certain distance, a video showed.

One of the department officials, David Michael Levin, a conservative lawyer and businessman, was himself a convicted lawbreaker.

In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Levin twice hacked into the Lee County, Fla., election system as a political stunt. He faced felony charges before pleading to a pair of misdemeanors in September 2016, and served a 20-day jail sentence with two years of probation, according to court records.

His application, like all the others, was reviewed and approved by the department's personnel office. His record alone would not have precluded him from being hired — the department is allowed after seven years to hire people who committed misdemeanors. But critics said it set a dangerous precedent.

"Deploying politically motivated individuals to carry out D.O.J.'s poll-monitoring efforts threatens to undermine Americans' faith in the electoral process ahead," Senator Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee, wrote to Ms. Dhillon last month after seeing the video.

In recent years, Mr. Levin and his wife have been associated with a company that provides customer leads to insur-

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Since early 2025, more than 300 nonpolitical career employees, representing decades of experience, have left the division.

ance companies and have been embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with a client who accused them of providing unusable leads, court records showed.

Judges in the case repeatedly called out the Levins for not turning over documents demanded by the court. In April, a district court judge in Florida cited them for “willful and bad faith disregard” of court orders, rules and discovery procedures, according to court filings.

In August, the court ordered Mr. Levin to pay more than \$200,000 in damages and lawyers fees, finding that he had engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation and civil conspiracy, according to a ruling last month. The docket shows no record yet of the Levins' filing an appeal.

Mr. Levin's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. (None of the prosecutors mentioned in this story, including Mr. Levin, responded to personal requests for comment.)

The Justice Department official accompanying Mr. Levin also had a notable history. He is William Mohrman, a lawyer in Minnesota who represented Minneapolis police officers charged in connection with the murder of George Floyd. He has also represented the civil rights division in voter roll cases.

Another lawyer working on elections litigation is David Vandenberg, who joined as a criminal trial attorney in the civil rights division in August last year.

For several years, Mr. Vandenberg served as a prosecutor in Texas and New Mexico. His 22-month stint as an assistant district attorney in El Paso appears to have been a troubled one: He faced serious complaints about his volatile behavior toward colleagues, his former supervisor said, allegations earlier reported by Bloomberg Law.

In an interview with The New York Times, his former supervisor, Penny Hamilton, recalled intervening after two incidents of yelling. In one, Mr. Vandenberg berated a co-worker during a dispute over a photocopier. In another, a local judge barred Mr. Vandenberg from a courtroom after he chided a court official.

Asked if Mr. Vandenberg should have been hired by the Justice Department, Ms. Hamilton replied, "No," then amended her statement to, "Hell, no."

He is currently facing charges of animal neglect, according to El Paso municipal court records, charges often filed when dogs are found unattended for an extended period in a parked vehicle.

Last year, a cellphone photo of Mr. Vandenberg appeared on a news station after a local mother accused him of intentionally sideswiping her car, with her two young children inside, flashing his district attorney badge and fleeing the scene. He was not charged. The woman is currently suing him over the incident.

Ms. Pels defended Mr. Vandenberg's record. He is "a dedicated prosecutor who spent years in New Mexico and Texas prosecuting cases on behalf of child victims of human trafficking, sexual assault and murder," she said.

An official with knowledge of his hiring who requested anonymity to discuss personnel matters said that he had never been reprimanded by his previous employer and that he had denied wrongdoing.

Khalil H. Quinan was hired in May as a prosecutor in the civil rights division's criminal unit after nearly a decade in the Florida state attorney's office, where he handled a range of gun, gang and violent crime cases.

Last year, Mr. Quinan was forced to step aside as a lead prosecutor in the murder trial of Courtney Clenney, an OnlyFans model accused of killing her boyfriend, after the judge ruled that he viewed and shared iCloud files explicitly marked as privileged communications between Ms. Clenney's parents and defense lawyers.

The judge dismissed Mr. Quinan's claim that the material was permissible because it did not directly involve Ms. Clenney.

In February last year, the judge ordered him to sit for a sworn deposition after finding a second possible violation of attorney-client privilege. He withdrew from the case soon afterward.

Mr. Quinan was not disciplined. Ms. Clenney eventually reached a plea deal to serve six years in prison.

Ms. Pels said the Justice Department stood by the hiring of Mr. Quinan, describing him as a top-flight prosecutor who “acted in full compliance with his supervisors’ directives.”

James Breslo, hired in January, is part of the team suing the University of California, Los Angeles medical school for discriminating against white applicants. He is a former gambling executive and business lawyer who has hosted a podcast called “Hidden Truth.” Episodes included “AA Kills,” a takedown of Alcoholics Anonymous, and a deep dive into the origin of U.F.O.S. In 2018, he hosted the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who promoted her unsubstantiated claim that the man who killed 58 people on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017 was working for either Islamic terrorists or the government.

Mr. Breslo, in an essay posted weeks before the 2024 presidential election, suggested that President Barack Obama had “no love or reverence for the U.S. Constitution.” He claimed that Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, embraced “a political system antithetical” to the country’s founding principles, something he said was “not surprising given her upbringing” by parents who were not U.S. citizens at the time she was born.

Mr. Breslo "brings decades of legal and executive experience" to his job, Ms. Pels said.

Daniel Flickinger, who began working on the division's education cases earlier this year, was forced out of his job at a Birmingham, Ala., law firm in 2020 after suggesting — to the disgust of his bosses — that Mr. Floyd was fortunate to have died in a “fentanyl- and methamphetamine-numbed strangulation” because “it meant being worshiped in a nationwide funeral.”

Mr. Flickinger maintained that his statement, posted to his private Facebook page, was never intended to be publicly disseminated.

Peter Feaman, a veteran lawyer from Florida hired early last year as a senior counsel, has a history of far-right political statements. In a May 2021 post on social media, he accused the “diabolical” Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, of forcing citizens into getting the “mark of the beast” (a coronavirus shot).

Mr. Feaman also suggested that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was a false-flag operation orchestrated by liberals he likened to the Nazis. Trump voters, unlike the German citizens who kept silent in the 1930s, “have guns,” he wrote in a post.

One of his books, "Wake Up, America!," includes a rave review on the dust jacket from The Times that never existed, according to a CNN report in 2021, written when Mr. Feaman was a member of the Republican National Committee.

Ms. Pels said Mr. Feaman's work should be considered separately from his social media profile. "His years-old personal social media posts have nothing to do with his legal work, and resurfacing them is not a serious assessment of his qualifications," she added.

Government chatbot contradicts some of the president's claims

WASHINGTON

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Democrats have sought to promote the answers that undermine Trump

BY CHRIS CAMERON

A new A.I.-powered search tool that President Trump has unveiled to help Americans get information from the federal government provides facts that contradict false claims he has made about topics such as election fraud and immigration.

In an event last week announcing the website's launch, Mr. Trump said the tool was "damn good" and would be "one front door for every single question" someone could ask of the federal government.

"With America.gov, the entire government will fit in the palm of your hand," Mr. Trump said, adding, "everything will be answered easily and quickly."

But the president would not like many answers that America.gov provides. Citing official government sources, the chatbot, which calls itself "America," fact-checks an extensive list of Mr. Trump's most common false claims. They include claims about election fraud, immigration, tariffs, inflation and the president's signature policy bill, which he signed into law last year.

According to America.gov: It is Americans, and not foreign companies, that pay for Mr. Trump's import tariffs; U.S. elections are generally safe and secure and the number of prosecuted cases of voter fraud is "tiny" compared to the hundreds of millions of votes cast; Mr. Trump is wrong when he says that 25 million immigrants illegally crossed the border under his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; and consumer prices are not going down, as Mr. Trump frequently claims.

Largely citing figures from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper, America.gov said that Mr. Trump's signature domestic policy bill, signed into law last year, is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the national debt and cause more than 10 mil-

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A new chatbot calls itself “America” and fact-checks many of President Trump’s most common false claims. They include claims about election fraud, immigration, tariffs, inflation and the president’s signature policy bill.

lion people to lose their health insurance. The chatbot agreed with a statement that the law “on average made the poorest people in America even poorer and the richest people in America even richer.”

The chatbot avoids answering some questions it deems political and in some cases supports Mr. Trump's proclamations, when it can cite an official government source to do so. The chatbot, for example, says that what was called the Gulf of Mexico is the “Gulf of America (formerly the Gulf of Mexico).” The website says on its F.A.Q. page that “America.gov does not provide campaign or party information. Its answers are based on published government sources, and you can review those sources yourself.”

The General Services Administration and the Office of Management and Budget, which jointly operate America.gov, did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House did not address a question about whether Mr. Trump knew that the new government website frequently contradicted him. A statement from the White House said that "America.gov will continue to be updated to provide more features, resources, and information from the federal government."

The statement added, “The president and administration have been clear about issues surrounding the 2020 election, the fact that foreigners will ultimately bear the cost of tariffs, and the economic benefits of the Working Families Tax Cuts.”

Democratic lawmakers quickly promoted many of the chatbot's statements, which supported campaign talking points criticizing Mr. Trump's policies.

“Finally, a straight answer from someone in the Trump administration,” Senator Adam Schiff of California wrote with a screenshot of America.gov saying that Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Schiff had recently asked some of Mr. Trump’s judicial nominees about the 2020 election during a public hearing. Some of the nominees declined to answer.

Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.

They traded words over Trump, then drew guns

BAINBRIDGE TOWNSHIP, OHIO

David Mattai and Bob, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel. An argument in a dog park ended with Mr. Mattai getting shot. He and Bob have not returned to the park.

DANIEL LOZADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Emmanuel Mathews, who goes by Mike, with his corgi, Frankie. His lawyer plans to argue that the shooting was justified under Ohio's "stand your ground" law.

VIA IAN FRIEDMAN

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Two men are grappling with the consequences of violence after a quarrel

BY JESSICA CONTRERA

Before any criminal charges were filed, before any weapons were drawn, before anybody mentioned the president, a dog named Bob wanted to go to the park.

Bob's owner, David Mattai, had the week off from his job as a forklift mechanic. Mr. Mattai, 55, first tried taking Bob on a hiking trail, but the spaniel refused to walk. So Mr. Mattai drove to his favorite dog park in Bainbridge Township, Ohio.

At a picnic table inside the park that April afternoon were Emmanuel Mathews, 80, and his corgi, Frankie.

Mr. Mathews was retired from a career as a meat distributor, and on the days when his back wasn't causing him problems he was a regular at the park. He had brought a copy of The Wall Street Journal with headlines that included "Trump Grapples With Fears on War."

The events that unfolded over the next 20 minutes — pieced together from interviews, records and body camera footage — would be unusual, but hardly unthinkable in a country where political tensions so often combust. Two men, one Black and liberal, one white and conservative, would disagree about President Trump. Their disagreement would become an argument, then a screaming match and then, because both men had guns in their cars, a crime.

What happened at the dog park — and who is to blame — will soon be scrutinized by a judge and a jury, as both men face the possibility of time behind bars and grapple with the lifelong consequences of division turning violent.

Likely to take the stand in both cases is Jamie Jedlinsky, 70, the singular witness to what went down.

Mr. Jedlinsky's mother had taught him that you didn't have to tell people which candidate you voted for, so he never did. If someone brought up politics, he would usually change the subject to birding. But on this day, Mr. Jedlinsky and his pit mix, Willow, had walked into the park and greeted Mr. Mathews, with whom he had become somewhat friendly over the years. When he noticed the newspaper in Mr. Mathews's hands, he decided to gesture to the headline about the Iran war and say, "That sucks, don't it."

Mr. Mathews, who goes by Mike, disagreed. In his cardigan, he began to discuss his support for the president's choices.

Mr. Mattai, who had arrived moments earlier in sweatpants, was listening. He considered himself a democratic socialist before it was trendy. He owned a collection of bumper stickers with messages such as "Trump Is a Felon" and "Hicks Don't Mix With Politics." In his solidly Republican patch of Northeast Ohio, he considered it his moral duty to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Mr. Mattai, who had struggled with alcoholism for most of his life, would later say he had been drinking that day.

He decided to butt in. "Trump is the worst president in history," he said, to which Mr. Mathews replied, "Trump is the best president in history."

The spat quickly grew in intensity and volume. At one point, Mr. Jedlinsky recalled, they were saying, "You shut up!" and "No, you shut up!"

"Just two guys, mad at themselves, mad at the world," Mr. Jedlinsky said. "They both wanted to just yell at someone, and they ran into the perfect storm, where there's somebody yelling back."

Mr. Jedlinsky was relieved when the younger man finally heeded his advice to both of them to let it go. Mr. Mattai leashed Bob, returned to his Hyundai and began to drive toward the park's exit. But then Bob started to whine.

"Man, you did want to stay at the park," Mr. Mattai recalled telling his dog. He turned his car around.

Some of the specifics of what happened next remain in dispute. But Mr. Jedlinsky, Mr. Mattai and a lawyer for Mr. Mathews agree upon a certain set of facts. (Mr. Mathews declined to be interviewed.)

Mr. Mattai entered the park again and told Mr. Mathews that he should be the one to leave. Mr. Mathews began to move toward his Cadillac, which was adorned with a corgi sticker. When he made it to the other side of the fence, he turned around. "Did your mother drop you on your head?" he asked.

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"This country is in a big divide right now. It's, 'You're either with us or against us.' You've got to pick a side."

"It escalated," he told the dispatcher.

Mr. Jedlinsky crouched behind his wheel and called 911.

When a police officer arrived, he found Mr. Mattai splayed on the pavement. There was a hole in his lower back where Mr. Mathews's bullet had entered, and another in his abdomen where it had exited.

The passenger-side door of his Hyundai was open. Bob was in the front seat, unharmed, tongue out.

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"I SHOT HIM"

Mr. Mathews peeled out of the parking lot and drove toward the Bainbridge Township police station. In this area of Northeast Ohio, where the Cleveland suburbs begin to meet rural farmland, Mr. Mathews was familiar with law enforcement. Before he retired, his meat company had provided burgers and cutlets for police events. He had made it about four minutes up the road when he saw a Bainbridge Township police cruiser, siren on, coming toward him. Mr. Mathews stopped his car and flashed his lights. The officer pulled over.

"You going to the shooting?" Mr. Mathews asked. "I was part of it."

The officer, whose body camera was rolling throughout their interaction, confiscated Mr. Mathews's handgun, patted him down and removed a piece of paper from the pocket of his cardigan.

"That was my list for the day," Mr. Mathews told the officer. "This wasn't on it."

He quickly informed the officer of his local connections: the cops he knew, the poker game he used to play with the former police chief, and the fact that he happened to be living with the mother of the county's top prosecutor. Before long, Mr. Mathews was telling his side of the story from the back of the police cruiser.

He lifted his handcuffed wrists to wipe tears from his eyes. There was a small cut on his cheek. He said the other man had not just grabbed his hair, but also head-butted him before they went to their cars.

He did not say who pulled a gun out first.

“I said, ‘I feel my life is in danger.’ I said that ’cause I know that’s what they say,” Mr. Mathews told the officer. “And he went around the side of his car and started coming at me, and I shot him.”

At the police station, he kept talking as the officer confiscated the cross around his neck, the Greek coin ring on his finger and the \$890 in his wallet.

“That’s a bad thing I did, but it really wasn’t,” Mr. Mathews told the officer. “This guy had a gun in his hand.”

In the back of the police car and while being booked, he asked four times about the well-being of his dog, Frankie. He did not ask about the condition of the man he had shot.

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"WE'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE"

At the hospital, Mr. Mattai's wife, Sally, couldn't stop crying. The doctors had explained that her husband was in emergency surgery, and they couldn't say for sure if he would make it through.

When he did, Mr. Mattai learned that the bullet had torn through his intestines and fractured his spine. He had a second surgery the next day.

It didn't surprise his wife to learn how the confrontation at the dog park had started. It was politics, in part, that had brought her and Mr. Mattai together about a decade earlier, in a Facebook group where they shared memes.

Mr. Mattai had told her how he had immigrated from Guyana at 10, become an American citizen and joined the Marines. He worked as a paramedic in California until his alcohol addiction cost him his job. When the two met, Mr. Mattai had moved in with his father in New York and was trying to start over. He went to welding school.

When he moved to Ohio to be with Sally, they lived in a rural area. They flew a Kamala Harris flag in 2024, but took it down the morning after the election. One of their neighbors, they said, kept up a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump showing two middle fingers.

Then Mr. Jedlinsky heard gunshots.

Now, Mr. Mattai's wife felt certain that what happened to him was a result of Mr. Trump's disparaging of minorities.

"We've seen this movie before, the whole, 'I feared for my life because it was a Black guy' crap," she said.

Her husband agreed. He initially told the police, from his hospital bed, that he had not touched Mr. Mathews and did not speak to him after seeing his gun. Mr. Mattai later told The New York Times that he had grabbed Mr. Mathews by the hair, but said that had been the extent of the physical contact.

"I was in the infantry for 10 years," Mr. Mattai said. "If I had head-butted him, he would not have driven off anywhere."

Though Mr. Mattai told The Times that he had served in the Marines for a decade, the Marines said his length of service was less than a year. Asked about the discrepancy, Mr. Mattai apologized, saying he had become accustomed to embellishing his military record because he was embarrassed about his past.

"It's like the facade I made up for the world," he said. "I didn't want to tell them that I just, kind of, had this life of a bum."

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"Mad at themselves, mad at the world. They both wanted to just yell at someone."

Two weeks after the shooting, Mr. Mattai was released from the hospital. He struggled to walk with a walker and had severe pain down the right side of his body. He needed months of rehab. But first, he had plans.

As soon as he got home, he said, he poured all his vodka down the drain. Then he went to his garage, where he kept his collection of political bumper stickers. He threw them in the trash. From then on, he said, he wasn't going to drink and he wasn't going to confront anyone about their political views.

Mr. Mattai concluded that it must have been God who sent Mr. Mathews and his gun to the dog park to teach him a lesson.

"I needed violence done to me to correct the path that I had put myself on," he said.

But he still wanted to see Mr. Mathews sent to prison.

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"MY OWN LIFE SENTENCE"

Mr. Mathews was charged with felonious assault, a second-degree felony. If convicted, he could face up to eight years in prison and would be required to serve at least three. After posting a \$50,000 bond, he was released with a GPS ankle monitor.

His trial is scheduled for February. His lawyer, Ian Friedman, plans to argue that the shooting was justified. Under the “stand your ground law” passed by Ohio Republicans in 2020, someone facing an imminent threat of serious harm does not have to try to escape before using deadly force.

“You talking about my mother?” Mr. Mattai responded. He reached across the fence and grabbed Mr. Mathews by his grayish white hair. Mr. Jedlinsky pushed them apart and told them both to go home. While the three men were putting their dogs in their cars, Mr. Jedlinsky heard Mr. Mattai say: “Oh you’ve got one? I’ve got one, too.”

"This case was never about politics or any other motivation, other than Mike being faced with a life or death situation and acting to save his life," Mr. Friedman said.

In recent years, Mr. Mathews had endured a heart attack, a stroke and two back surgeries. Now at 80, he was reckoning with the possibility of spending what could be his final years in prison.

On the day he was arrested, Mr. Mathews told the police, “I should have been more of a coward, and this wouldn’t have gone this far.”

The local prosecutor — the one whose mother lives with Mr. Mathews — recused himself from the case and brought in the Ohio Attorney General's Office.

That office was not asked to consider potential charges against Mr. Mattai, according to a spokesman.

But in August, four months after the shooting, Mr. Mattai received a call from his lawyer telling him that there was a warrant out for his arrest. He turned himself in.

The next morning, he learned that a prosecutor from another county had been brought in on the case. The prosecutor was charging Mr. Mattai with misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct based on Mr. Mathews's claim that Mr. Mattai had head-butted him. Mr. Mattai faces up to six months in jail.

Mr. Mathews had a .45-caliber handgun in his car. He fired first; when he pulled the trigger a second time, no bullet came out. Mr. Mattai had a 9-millimeter pistol in his car. He fired back at least four rounds. The bullets sprayed across Mr. Mathews's car and into his open window as Mr. Mathews drove away. They pierced his door frame and the driver's seat, missing him by inches.

He said he was willing to plead guilty or no contest when he returned to court in late October, if it meant avoiding jail time. He now walks with a limp and says he can't return to his forklift mechanic job because he is unable to lift heavy objects.

"I got my own life sentence from this," Mr. Mattai said. He has not taken Bob back to the dog park.

Mr. Jedlinsky, the man who tried to break up the fight, spent months away from the park, too. He said he was so shaken up in the aftermath that he didn't sleep.

He didn't remember seeing a head butt. He couldn't say what Mr. Mattai was doing when the bullet entered his back. He wasn't taking sides, in this fight or any other.

"This country is in a big divide right now," Mr. Jedlinsky lamented. "It's, 'You're either with us or against us.' You've got to pick a side and hate the other side."

Mr. Jedlinsky had spent months thinking about that day when his life had been put in danger. After everything it had cost the men involved, he was certain of one thing: Nobody's mind had been changed.

DANIEL LOZADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A bullet from Mr. Mathews's gun tore through Mr. Mattai's intestines and hit his spine. Above right, the park in Bainbridge Township, Ohio, where the shooting took place.

DANIEL LOZADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hollywood prize comes with complications

The tech scion David Ellison has given his combination of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount a new name: Skydance. Now he must make tough decisions about news, movies, streaming, sports and debt.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINCOLN AGNEW

WHAT WILL CNN BE?

At media companies, the old saw about news divisions is that they are a small portion of revenue but a big portion of headaches. CNN is no exception.

The news network is profitable (on track to net \$650 million this year), but it is also a favorite target of President Trump, who for years has accused CNN of bias and last month barred its journalists from the White House pool. Mr. Ellison moved to avoid a public debate about CNN's editorial direction by negotiating to keep its current leader, Mark Thompson, in place.

Still, hurdles remain. CNN's viewership has fallen behind that of MS NOW, and its digital offerings are still in the infancy phase. (Fox News is ahead of both.)

A subscription news service, which Mr. Thompson started, is expanding to Britain and Canada, but the network has shared few details about the number of paying users. Skydance could nurture this subscription model or take a cue from David Zaslav, the former chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, who eliminated CNN+ just three weeks after it started.

Skeptics will also be watching to see if Mr. Ellison — who has hosted a dinner for Mr. Trump and has hobnobbed with the president at Ultimate Fighting Championship matches — puts a thumb on the editorial scale. For now, Mr. Ellison has walled off CNN from Bari Weiss, his pick to oversee CBS News, although that is subject to change. Ms. Weiss, a critic of the mainstream media, has been accused by several “60 Minutes” correspondents of meddling with their reports. CBS has denied those claims.

Skydance has yet to reveal the makeup of an independent editorial oversight board that it agreed to create as part of a settlement with the state attorneys general who had sought to block the merger on antitrust grounds. An independent board was installed by Rupert Murdoch when he bought The Wall Street Journal in 2007 to protect the publication's journalistic integrity; the paper's editor at the time, Marcus Brauchli, left four months after Mr. Murdoch's News Corp took over.

"This kind of structure has limited value," Mr. Brauchli said in an email.

“Much of a modern media company falls into both the editorial and business domains.” MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

QUOTAS VS. QUALITY

Except for news, no part of the combined company will operate within more guardrails than the movie studios. That will make one of Mr. Ellison's hardest jobs — devising a cohesive film strategy and finding savings — even harder.

Hollywood has a familiar playbook for combining movie studios. Two sets of chairmen become one. Marketing and distribution operations combine. Slates shrink by a dramatic degree.

But Mr. Ellison agreed to release at least 30 movies annually — and after two years, 32 — to push the deal through. This year, Warner Bros. and Paramount are each on track to release 13 films in the United States, for a total of 26. If the combined company cannot meet its target number, it must pay a \$30 million penalty for each film below its goal.

Movies take two to three years to reach theaters — and that is if everything goes smoothly. Case in point: In recent months, Warner Bros. pushed "The Batman Part II" and "Gremlins 3" to 2028 from 2027 because filmmakers needed more time. Mr. Ellison's settlement with the state attorneys general also limits his ability to pad the slate with acquisitions.

"As he scrambles to meet the quotas, he's going to have a very hard time maintaining quality — and these days, if you don't have quality, you have almost no chance of getting people into theaters," said Jason Squire, host of "The Movie Business Podcast" and a professor emeritus at the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

Then there is the sheer amount of intellectual property to deploy. The combined company will control top franchises including Batman, Superman, Harry Potter, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, “Game of Thrones,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Top Gun,” “Star Trek,” the Transformers and SpongeBob SquarePants. That is an enviable arsenal but also an almost certain traffic jam — expensive movies competing internally for production resources, marketing dollars and prime release dates.

Mr. Ellison has already moved to win-now the executive suite. Last Friday, Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca, the joined-at-the-hip chief executives and co-chairs of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, learned their services SKYDANCE, PAGE 11

KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

Europe is seeking to reduce its dependence on China for rare-earth metals, which are vital to many major industries. Below, from left: Ursula von der Leyen, of the European Commission, who has warned that trade issues have reached a “tipping point,” and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, who seeks a means to impose restrictions.

PASCAL BASTIEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANNEGRET HILSE/REUTERS

Tension builds over China trade

BEIJING

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E.U. weighs tightening restrictions as negotiators prepare to meet in Beijing

BY KEITH BRADSHER

The European Union and China are heading toward a trade showdown.

Europe's trade negotiators are meeting with Chinese officials on Thursday and Friday in Beijing. A week later, Europe's presidents and prime ministers will gather in Brussels to discuss industrial competitiveness with China, among other agenda items. Their concern is urgent. The region's trade deficit with China is running at 1 billion euros (\$1.1 billion) per day.

European officials blame an undervalued Chinese currency and Beijing's state-controlled banking system, which has supplied vast amounts of cheap credit to build export-focused factories.

Chinese officials offer a different explanation. They say much of the widening imbalance reflects Europe's surging imports of electric cars, solar panels, batteries and battery chemicals. European demand for those products has risen as the continent tries to combat climate change, adjusts to the loss of inexpensive Russian oil and natural gas and copes with the war in the Middle East — developments for which China argues it should not be blamed.

Europe is not alone in its concerns. China's export push has unnerved other trading partners, including the United States, as Beijing's trade surplus reached a record \$1.19 trillion last year.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, warned in an address last month that Europe's trade deficit with China had reached a "tipping point," leading to "deindustrialization in the industrial heartlands of Europe."

Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, added to the pressure on Monday, urging Brussels to expand its arsenal against economic imbalances. In a letter to Ms. von der Leyen, they called for a mechanism that could rapidly restrict access to the European market. European media quickly labeled it a “kill switch.”

Europe already has the right under the World Trade Organization's so-called safeguard rules to impose steep tariffs on broad categories of imports from all countries, but not against a single country. Beijing has opposed safeguard tariffs designed in practice to target Chinese exports and has hinted that it would retaliate if they were imposed.

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Each month adds more than \$30 billion to China's trade surplus with Europe, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs.

“China will not accept any discriminatory measures,” said Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for W.T.O. Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

For now, time favors Beijing. Each passing month adds more than \$30 billion to China's trade surplus with Europe, supporting hundreds of thousands of Chinese industrial jobs. Meanwhile, European manufacturers continue to weaken. Germany alone has been losing at least 10,000 industrial jobs each month, according to analysts.

Yet despite Europe's tougher language, China is seeking a compromise. "Both sides will ultimately seek to tackle those problems on a mutual benefit basis and maintain the overall trade relationship," said He Weiwen, a prominent Chinese trade analyst.

Here are some of the key issues.

CARS

The biggest point of friction — and perhaps the hardest to resolve — is China's rapidly growing automobile exports to Europe.

Two years ago, the European Union imposed tariffs of 7.8 percent to 35.3 percent on battery-electric cars from China, on top of its existing 10 percent tariff on imported cars. But the measure left a significant loophole.

The extra tariffs do not apply to plug-in hybrids that combine an electric drivetrain with a gasoline engine, even a tiny one.

Chinese automakers have already developed many such models. Their popularity began with a practical problem drivers in China faced. After electric-car sales started surging in China in 2020, urban families driving home for Chinese TRADE, PAGE 11

Beloved 3-wheeler caught in tariff web

Tit-for-tat restrictions mystify American fans of the Can-Am Spyder

BY FARAH STOCKMAN

The Can-Am Spyder, a three-wheel roadster popular with riders of a certain age, has inspired festivals and its own national motorcycle club. About 25,000 "Spyder Ryders" flock to events like Spyderquest in Saratoga, N.Y., and the Iron Butt Rally, which covers 11,000 miles in 11 days.

But now this beloved adult trike has become a victim of the Trump administration's trade war with Canada. On Sept. 29, the Trump administration banned all Canadian-made motorcycles, including the Spyder, along with certain alcohol and dairy products.

"It makes no sense to me whatsoever," said Harold Mette, 79, who founded the Spyder Ryders in 2011 after riding traditional motorcycles for about 40 years. A self-described "hot dog"—a term used for riders who like to go fast — Mr. Mette bought a Spyder because its two front tires allowed him to take tight turns without risking a fall.

Mr. Mette said he was mystified about why his favorite vehicle ended up on the list of banned items.

"Quantitatively, in terms of total dollar value of imports and exports, it's nothing," he said.

The price of a 2026 Spyder starts at \$27,999, according to the company's website. Mr. Mette estimated that there are about 100,000 of the vehicles in the United States.

The Spyder is just one example of the many products that have become more expensive, or effectively unavailable, on both sides of the border because of tit-for-tat tariffs and trade restrictions. In the United States, the costs imposed on Canadian imports have threatened damage to the states and industries that rely on cross-border commerce, potentially denting support among voters courted by the Republican Party ahead of the midterm elections.

The Can-Am brand was once a symbol of close ties between the United States and Canada. The first Can-Am bike was built “through a collective effort” of individuals from Canada and the United States, which led to the name, according to a video celebrating the brand’s 50th birthday. Can-Am is owned by Bombardier Recreational Products, a Canadian company that manufactures products in Valcourt, Quebec.

Those close ties have soured since the start of President Trump's second term. He placed a 25 percent tariff on aluminum and steel from Canada in 2025, prompting Canada to retaliate with a 25 percent tariff on certain American products including Harley Davidson motorcycles. Along with Kentucky bourbon, Harleys have repeatedly been the target of retaliatory tariffs.

In July, the Trump administration accused Canada of discrimination and announced a 50 percent tariff on certain Canadian products. Large motorcycles, including the Spyder, made the list. Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs on more than 700 American product categories, increasing the tariff on American motorcycles to 50 percent.

In September, the Trump administration banned large Canadian motorcycles, including Spyders, along with certain dairy products and alcohol. Officials used a long-dormant provision of the Tariff Act of 1930 known as Section 338.

"It's a negotiation tactic used to bring Canada to the table," said Nghi Huynh, practice leader at Armanino, an accounting and consulting firm.

Evan Chuck, an international trade lawyer at Brownstein, a law firm with a prominent lobbying practice, said the move was “a signal that the administration is willing to pull out all the stops.”

"The economic asymmetry in U.S.-Canada trade gives Washington enormous leverage," he added, noting that roughly 72 percent of Canada's merchandise exports go to the United States.

A statement from Bombardier Recreational Products said the immediate impact of the ban was expected to be limited, “as the vast majority of production and shipments for the current season are completed.”

The ban came at the end of the 2026 riding season and before the start of the 2027 season, according to Aaron Stroud, general manager of Freedom Cycle, a motorcycle dealership in Concord, N.H.

"If this had happened back in March and April, that would have really affected us," he said. He holds out hope that the trade dispute will be resolved by the spring, when his customers will be looking for new Spyders. He said the company had taken his order for 13 vehicles recently, despite the ban.

It's unclear how much American manufacturers of three-wheeled motorcycles stand to benefit if the ban on Spyders turns out to be permanent. Polaris, a Minnesota company that makes the Slingshot, has lobbied heavily in Washington for tariff relief on imported components. Polaris hired Ballard Partners, which was founded by a Trump campaign-fund bundler.

In a statement, Polaris said it had not lobbied for a ban: “Our energy and resources are focused on the broader policies that impact significant portions of Polaris’s business.”

Mr. Mette, the Spyder Ryder founder, said that even if the ban on Spyders remained in place next year, he would never buy a Slingshot, which he said felt more like a car than a motorcycle.

He said his fellow riders would probably buy the Ryker, a smaller version of the Spyder that is made in Mexico, if the ban on Canadian motorcycles continued. "But I doubt seriously whether it will last," Mr. Mette said.

The Spyder is one of many products that have become unavailable in the United States.

CEM OZDEL/ANADOLU AGENCY, VIA GETTY IMAGES

Porsche's plan: Pricier cars and fewer hands

STUTTGART, GERMANY

Above, workers building an electric Macan at a Porsche assembly plant in Leipzig, Germany, in 2024. Right, looking at Porsches during the Beijing Auto Show in April. The company's deliveries in China fell by almost a third in the first half of the year.

JENS SCHLUETER/GETTY IMAGES

GILLES SABRIÉ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Automaker aims to cut 25 percent of work force after margins plummet

BY JAMES PATON

For years, Porsche's profits generated glowing headlines and powered its parent company, Volkswagen. But weakening demand in China, President Trump's tariffs and a costly reversal of its electric vehicle strategy have ended the company's hot streak.

Porsche is now trying to reinvent itself as a smaller company with a sharper focus on higher-priced sports cars. The company, famous for the iconic 911, said on Wednesday that it would slash a quarter of its work force and rein in ambitions in China after its profit margin plummeted to 1.1 percent last year from 18 percent two years earlier.

“Without those profits, it’s causing huge headaches in Wolfsburg,” the German city that’s home to Volkswagen, said Matthias Schmidt, a European auto industry analyst.

In fact, reviving Porsche, once regarded as the world's most profitable automaker, is one of the keys to turning around Volkswagen, which owns 75 percent of the company. Porsche, led by Michael Leiters, a former chief at McLaren and an executive at Ferrari, is betting on "value over volume."

Porsche's problems are in many ways the problems of the German auto industry as it struggles to respond to mounting Chinese competition. After a successful decades-long run in China, Porsche and its parent fell behind homegrown rivals amid the transition to electric cars. Porsche once relied on China for more than a third of its sales volume. By 2030, China is expected to account for one in 10 deliveries.

“Competition has intensified, markets have become more volatile and in some regions — especially in China — conditions have changed fundamentally compared with just a few years ago,” Mr. Leiters told reporters at the company’s development hub near Stuttgart. “I don’t expect this environment to become significantly easier over the next few years.”

By about 2030, Porsche plans to slash 25 percent of its work force, or 9,000 jobs. But the cuts, some of which have already been announced, could reach as much as 30 percent. The company also aims to reduce development costs by as much as a fifth, while raising the average price of its top-end models by about 20 percent to 330,000 euros, or about \$370,000.

Unlike its German rival BMW, Porsche can “afford to shrink while leveraging Volkswagen economies of scale,” Stuart Pearson, an analyst at Ox-cap Analytics, wrote in a report.

However, similar efforts at companies such as Mercedes have exposed problems with the strategy, underscoring the risks for Porsche, said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a German auto analyst and former industry executive. Lower sales could diminish Porsche's ability to compete with rapidly-innovating Chinese carmakers like Xiaomi.

“That is part of the future, and part of the future which could be difficult for Porsche if they earn less money that they need for development,” he said.

Just four years ago, Porsche was riding high, valued at about €77 billion, or \$86.5 billion, after being spun off by Volkswagen. Now Porsche is exacerbating its parent's problems, accounting for a €6 billion write-down announced by Volkswagen last month. Volkswagen cut its profit forecast and said it expected an operating margin of no more than 1 percent.

Mr. Trump's tariffs have hammered Porsche, which doesn't produce cars in the United States, imposing a cost of about €700 million last year.

But at the top of Porsche's list of worries is China, where fierce competition in the auto industry and a crunch in consumer spending have dented demand for high-end cars. The company's deliveries in China fell by almost a third in the first half of the year.

In China, “market dynamics have changed significantly,” Mr. Leiters said. “We do not believe it would be realistic or beneficial for the brand to pursue a return to those levels at any cost. Instead our objective is to take a conservative side on the market and build a more resilient business in China.”

Mr. Leiters plans to undergird his turnaround plan on Porsche's brand, which he called one the world's most valuable alongside companies such as Ferrari and Louis Vuitton. The company also said that it plans to develop a supercar platform that will "sit above" the 911 and is betting on a new version of the Macan sport utility vehicle with a combustion engine, expected in 2028.

Porsche is putting an increasing emphasis on trying to market its cars as exclusive, said Mr. Schmidt, the auto analyst. "It's kind of like haute couture, taking what the fashion industry does and adapting it to the passenger car market," he said.

The company, which once aimed to get 80 percent of its sales from electric vehicles by 2030, has scaled back its electric vehicle ambitions amid slower-than-expected demand. Last year, Porsche said it was halting development of several new E.V.s and would spend heavily to add more gasoline-powered models.

In June, Porsche said it expected its return on sales this year to recover to between 5.5 percent and 7.5 percent.

"We have to be honest — none of this will happen overnight," Mr. Leiters said. "What I have described today is our medium-term ambition and achieving it will require a great deal of hard work."

Challenges of a big Hollywood merger

SKYDANCE, FROM PAGE 10

would no longer be needed at the combined company. Mr. Ellison's handpicked Paramount Pictures co-chairs, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, will now oversee both studios.

Since they took over Paramount Pictures last year, Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Greenstein have nearly doubled the number of movies in the studio's pipeline, partly by going on a talent-recruitment spree to land the likes of James Mangold ("Logan") and Jon M. Chu ("Wicked").

Mr. Ellison's cost cutters will have more slashing and burning through the employee ranks to do, Mr. Squire said. And those who remain will be expected to do more with less. "It will be a very sad, even tragic, whittling away at the number of people working at these studios," he said. BROOKS BARNES

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINCOLN AGNEW

EXPANDED STREAMING UNIVERSE

Step 1 was already taken care of before the deal closed on Tuesday: Mr. Ellison elected to prioritize “HBO stability,” as Cindy Holland, Paramount’s streaming chief, put it to colleagues when she announced her abrupt resignation last week.

That cleared the field for Casey Bloys to take the top programming streaming position for a company that will soon control Paramount+, HBO Max, Pluto and Discovery+.

Mr. Bloys will confront a far bigger remit than he has tended to at HBO Max, which is part of the Warner Bros. Discovery universe. He will be in charge of Paramount+ standbys like the Taylor Sheridan universe of series — shows including “Landman,” “Tulsa King” and "Lioness" — as well as the "Star Trek" franchise. Mr. Sheridan is leaving for NBCUniversal in 2029, but Mr. Bloys still has to manage that relationship, as well as tend to the Duffer brothers, the "Stranger Things" creators, who signed a big contract with Paramount last year.

Can it all mesh? Mr. Ellison said this year that “we’re absolutely going to put the services together.” That could take many months or more than a year, though. At a Bloomberg conference last week, Mr. Bloys strongly suggested that HBO Max and Paramount+ would initially be brought together as a bundle, similar to how HBO Max is sold in a bundled package with Disney+ and Hulu.

"That would make a lot of sense," he said.

HBO Max, of course, merged with Discovery+ in 2023, christening the bulked-up streaming service Max. It did not work. Last year, Warner Bros. executives admitted defeat, renamed the app HBO Max yet again and began de-emphasizing Discovery's large swath of unscripted series.

Mr. Bloys said last week that executives had learned that “you have to give subscribers what they want, not what you own.” He suggested that content on Paramount+ was more complementary to HBO Max content. He also recalled that when HBO Max initially debuted in 2020, some people thought network fare from the Warner Bros. library — like “Friends,” “ER” or “The Big Bang Theory”— would never be able to coexist alongside HBO content, a concern that he said was overblown. He said he was now hearing similar skepticism about whether Mr. Sheridan’s suite of shows would fit alongside HBO series. Paramount+ also features a large number of CBS programs, though Mr. Bloys will not oversee that programming (that belongs to George Cheeks, Paramount’s chair of TV media).

Mr. Ellison will also need to confront how to handle his TV studio business. The Paramount chairman will be in control of three television studios with three separate leaders. He already has CBS's studios — which pump out a lot programming for the CBS broadcast network, including popular series like "Fire Country" and "Matlock" — and a smaller Paramount studio.

He will now be inheriting Warner Bros., one of the biggest studios in the business. It has some major producers on its roster — including John Wells (“The Pitt”), Chuck Lorre (“The Big Bang Theory”) and Greg Berlanti (“Riverdale”) — and a veteran leader, Channing Dungey, a former top ABC and Netflix executive who has run the studio since 2021. How Mr. Ellison decides to organize the studios and its leadership will have major implications in what writers and producers he keeps or scares off. JOHN KOBLIN

A MOUNTAIN OF DEBT

Though Mr. Ellison is now a king in Hollywood, his crown did not come cheap.

To win Warner Bros. Discovery, Mr. Ellison made an escalating series of bids to knock out Netflix. By the time it was all over, the price tag was \$111 billion, over \$30 billion more than the initial offer.

For Mr. Ellison, the central challenge will be the same one his predecessor at Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, faced. He will need to replace the profits from cable TV, a still profitable but declining industry, while building a streaming business to rival those of Netflix and Amazon. And he will have to do it while servicing a titanic pile of debt — \$82.5 billion, according to CreditSights.

Mr. Ellison has pledged to find \$6 billion in cost savings over the next three years — which will most likely result in layoffs to the company's combined work force of around 50,000 people. Servicing the debt will cost about \$6 billion annually, according to CreditSights — money the company will not be able to invest in new acquisitions.

"It's like doing maintenance on a moving vehicle," said Jeff Bewkes, who ran Time Warner for a decade before selling it in 2018 to AT&T, where it was renamed WarnerMedia. (In 2022, Mr. Zaslav engineered the merging of his media company, Discovery, with WarnerMedia to create Warner Bros. Discovery.)

Last quarter, Paramount made \$41 million on \$6.9 billion in revenue, while Warner Bros. Discovery earned \$149 million on \$8.7 billion in revenue. For both companies, a major share of that revenue and profit came from traditional TV, a business that is ebbing.

Mr. Ellison needs that cash from the networks to help pay down the company's debt, and Skydance is betting that content from the cable channels can be recycled to bolster the company's streaming services.

Even if Mr. Ellison pulls that off, other challenges loom. Skydance will need to find tens of millions of new subscribers to catch up to Netflix, Amazon and Disney in the streaming wars. Mr. Bewkes likened the competition to the development of the American auto industry. "General Motors, Ford and Chrysler may have been called the Big Three, but it mattered which one of those you were," he said. BENJAMIN MULLIN

KEEPING THE N.F.L. HAPPY

When it comes to attracting viewers, nothing beats live sports, one of the last bastions of appointment viewing. And in the sports world, nothing draws viewers like the National Football League.

That makes maintaining the relationship between CBS Sports and the most popular league one of the most important tasks facing Mr. Ellison. N.F.L. games attract the largest audiences on television, which helps CBS maintain the fees it charges to its affiliates and cable and satellite companies, as well as to advertisers.

"The N.F.L. is core to much of what Paramount-Warner will do going forward, live sports and streaming," said Marc Ganis, a media adviser to sports teams and leagues.

But N.F.L. rights are some of the most expensive in sports. CBS Sports' current deal with the N.F.L., which costs about \$2.1 billion a year, expires at the end of the 2033 season. But because CBS Sports changed control when Mr. Ellison bought Paramount last year, the N.F.L. can reopen negotiations up until August. The N.F.L. could also opt out of their deal at the end of the 2029 season.

The N.F.L. has not exercised its change-of-control option. But some industry analysts say the league could seek \$1 billion more per year from CBS Sports.

In return, the N.F.L. would drop its opt-out option in 2029, giving CBS Sports certainty into the next decade.

Although it is difficult for analysts to precisely determine whether CBS turns a profit on its N.F.L. rights deal, it is clear the network needs the league to help promote its other programming and attract and retain streaming customers.

Mr. Ellison and Skydance also need to figure out how to reshape coverage of the college basketball “March Madness” tournaments. Currently, CBS Sports and Warner share the broadcast rights. The merger will solidify their venture, which runs through 2032.

But the size of the tournament could change if the N.C.A.A. expands the number of play-in games or creates an even larger bracket.

CBS Sports will hang on to many of its marquee rights, including the Masters, PGA Championship and PGA Tour, which offer the company a chance to entertain clients. Paramount has the rights to UEFA Champions League, and it may seek other soccer rights, analysts said. Paramount is in the midst of a seven-year, \$7.7 billion deal to show U.F.C. fights, which has helped boost streaming subscriptions.

Analysts also expect the combined company to expand its portfolio of sports broadcast rights, even at the expense of entertainment programming.

“Sports is a huge driver of the entire ecosystem,” said Robert Fishman, a media analyst at MoffettNathanson, a research firm. KEN BELSON

BUSINESS

Imports put pressure on Europe's industries

TRADE, FROM PAGE 10

New Year often encountered villages with only one charger and long lines. Automakers responded by adding small gasoline engines as backups.

But China has built charging infrastructure at an extraordinary pace, reducing the need for plug-in hybrids. Chinese automakers have increasingly exported them instead.

Exports of plug-in hybrids have soared from fewer than 10,000 a month to almost 200,000 a month in just three years, with many going to Europe.

Beijing strongly opposes widening those E.U. tariffs to include plug-in hybrid cars.

But European officials face growing pressure to respond, particularly after Volkswagen, struggling against Chinese competition, announced on Sept. 3 that it would cut another 50,000 jobs, bringing its total planned reductions to about 100,000.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

The European Union is investigating imports from China's state-controlled Goldwind Science & Technology Company, the world's largest wind-turbine manufacturer.

In February, the bloc issued a preliminary finding that Chinese subsidies were giving Goldwind an unfair advantage in Europe, potentially laying the groundwork for tariffs.

Goldwind has said it complies with all international and local laws and regulations and will cooperate with the investigation.

Wind turbines are among the technologies covered by the European Union's proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, an effort to rebuild the region's manufacturing by requiring key components to be produced in Europe and by restricting some foreign investment. Solar energy, chemicals and other industries are also covered.

China strongly opposes the legislation.

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RARE EARTHS

In her address last month, Ms. von der Leyen said Europe had become dangerously dependent on China for rare-earth metals, which are crucial for automobiles, drones, lasers, semiconductors, jetliners, electronics and other advanced industries. After previously accusing Beijing of restricting rare-earth shipments to Europe, she called for the union to develop its own supplies.

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As European manufacturers weaken, Germany alone has been losing at least 10,000 industrial jobs each month.

China has tightened controls on exports of rare-earth processing equipment and restricted rare-earth technicians from leaving the country.

In July, Beijing also imposed stringent restrictions on rare-earth exports to 14 European companies, including Germany's leading defense manufacturer and several businesses that turn rare earths and other critical minerals, like antimony and tungsten, into the alloys and specialty chemicals that many manufacturers need.

MARKET ACCESS

E.U. officials and business leaders also complain that Beijing continues to limit foreign companies' access to the Chinese market.

In telecommunications, China has steadily replaced imported equipment with domestically manufactured alternatives and curtailed purchases from foreign suppliers. Nokia, the Finnish telecom giant, is closing much of its mainland China operations this autumn.

European makers of hospital equipment, pharmaceuticals and other products have encountered similar obstacles. China's state-owned companies have expanded at the expense of private businesses and have shown a particular reluctance to buy imports.

Yet European enthusiasm for the Chinese market is also fading for reasons beyond government policy. China's prolonged housing market downturn has left many Chinese households and companies with little money to spend, while industrial overcapacity has driven fierce price competition and eroded profits.

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels.

HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES Nokia, the Finnish telecom giant, is closing much of its operations in mainland China this autumn.

Opinion

This is one map Trump can't redraw

Mary Beth Sheridan

Mexico is banking on its competitive advantages and indispensability to the U.S. economy to withstand Trump's tariff campaign.

This essay is part of “The New World Disorder,” a series exploring the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside.

JUÁREZ, MEXICO No one expected the artificial intelligence revolution to appear here, on the edge of the Mexican city of Juárez, across from a patch of tiny homes where Roger Vilchis sells Tostitos and Coca-Cola from a roadside stand. His neighborhood is all dust and heat, with dogs sleeping in the dirt roads and norteño music bouncing through the air. A sign on a chain-link fence warns: "It is prohibited to throw garbage or dead animals here."

So when a long white building started rising a few years ago on a tract of land the size of several football fields, Mr. Vilchis, 25, figured it might be a shopping center. It turned out to be a factory

— and not just any factory. To the astonishment of the neighbors, the plant belonged to Inventec, a Taiwanese giant with over \$20 billion a year in sales that makes servers for artificial intelligence. No A.I. backlash in this blue-collar barrio: “We saw it as good,” Mr. Vilchis told me. “We realized there will be more work.”

The Inventec facility, one of several new server factories in this desert valley bordering Texas, is a looming testament to how Mexico is surviving — and even challenging — the Trump administration's escalating assault on free trade. At a moment when the post-

World War II global trade architecture is teetering, Mexico is testing the notion that the United States can unilaterally decouple from the rest of the world.

While “free trade is no longer the reality we are living,” as Mexico’s economy secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, put it recently, Mexico and other middle powers are banking on their competitive advantages and indispensability to the U.S. economy to withstand the Trump administration’s tariff campaign. As Washington throws its might into dominating the global A.I. market, Mexico has become an increasingly important supplier for America’s artificial intelligence boom, providing more than one-third of the United States’ imported computer servers.

This growth has accelerated despite President Trump's best efforts to replace America's longtime free-trade philosophy with economic nationalism. On July 24, after the Supreme Court struck down the president's “Liberation Day” tariffs, the administration introduced fresh tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries, citing an obscure law against unfair trade practices. A month later, Mr. Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on an array of Canadian exports, which took effect after trade negotiations collapsed.

In all of these moves, Mr. Trump has broken sharply with a U.S. policy consensus dating back to the post-World War II era: that international agreements to cut tariffs promote growth and stability. To Mr. Trump, free trade is not a tide lifting all boats; it is more like a hurricane, crashing into domestic manufacturing and killing jobs. Since he took office, average U.S. tariffs on imported goods have more than quadrupled, from 2.1 percent to almost 10 percent, according to the independent Tax Policy Center.

Mexico has not been exempt, enduring new tariffs on its cars, steel and aluminum — all critical exports. Mr.

Trump has dismissed the trade relationship, claiming that Mexico produces nothing the United States needs: “I mean, hot tamales, tomatoes, a couple of things.”

The numbers, as they often do with this administration, tell a different story. Mexico surpassed Canada as the United States' biggest trade partner in 2024, and its lead over that country and China, ranked third, has only continued to grow. Supercharged by America's data center build-out, Mexico's exports of goods to the United States surged by 16 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of 2026 — to a record of nearly \$359 billion. The burgeoning Mexican server industry has become a symbol of Mr. Trump's competing priorities: to establish U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence, but also to rein in trade deficits.

I TRAVELED TO JUÁREZ in August to understand how Mexico and other middle powers are adapting to this more chaotic and disordered trade environment — and navigating these contradictions. Some governments have won repreveys from harsh U.S. tariffs by increasing investment in the United States — in Taiwan's case, a stunning \$250 billion for semiconductor plants and tech manufacturing — or further opening their markets to American goods. Several have agreed to other U.S. demands in a kind of quid pro quo; Mexico, for example, is subjecting foreign investment to an enhanced national-security review and ramping up cooperation against drug cartels.

But such concessions don't tell the whole story. The president's effort to use tariffs to steer manufacturing back to the United States can only go so far; some economic paradigms are so entrenched that even Mr. Trump will have a hard time reversing them.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Juárez.

Decades ago, Juárez — just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas — was known for its cotton fields and quickie-divorce industry (Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe were among those who untied the knot here). Its transformation into an industrial powerhouse began in the 1960s, when the Mexican government created the "border industrialization" program, a scheme that allowed export-oriented assembly plants, or "maquiladoras," to operate in a free-trade zone stretching along the Mexican border. By the late 1990s, when I began to visit Juárez as a reporter, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, had sparked an explosion of factories. Today the city is a sort of shop floor for American industry.

Mr. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for NAFTA, which he has called "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere." Throughout his first term, he negotiated a successor treaty to NAFTA known as the U.S.M.C.A, which included rules that were more favorable for U.S. automakers, among other things. This term, he has refused to join Mexico and Canada in inking a 16-year renewal of the U.S.M.C.A, opting instead to delay while he seeks even tougher terms.

But the border has an economic logic of all its own. Unwinding U.S.-Mexico supply chains “would have a monumental economic and political cost,” Luis de la Calle, a former Mexican trade negotiator, told me. Many U.S. businesses — from A.I. data centers that get their servers from Juárez to Iowa farms exporting chicken feed — now rely on Mexico, as a supplier or customer. For American consumers, that trade has kept prices in check on strawberries, compact cars, pacemakers and countless other products. With U.S. inflation stuck above 3 percent, and the cost of fuel surging, the president only has so much room to maneuver — whatever his dreams of a fortress economy.

Indeed, Mr. Trump's efforts to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico's and Canada's exports to the U.S. in March 2025 were met with an outcry from U.S. industry and a drop in the stock market. Days later, the White House changed its mind, exempting products that comply with U.S.M.C.A rules — accounting for about four-fifths of Mexico's exports to the United States.

"Reality," as Mr. de la Calle said, "will end up winning."

CÉSAR OCHOA HAS WATCHED Mexico go global. He is one of Juárez's city fathers, a 64-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair and a banker's neat attire. His office is a hushed, wood-paneled sanctuary just off a noisy six-lane highway lined by tire shops, gas stations and burrito stands. Such is Juárez.

Mr. Ochoa arrived in the border city in 1992, a Mexican rancher's son who had made his way to Harvard Law School. A few years earlier, Mexico had joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, a rules-based system promoted by the U.S. government after World War II to lower tariffs and rebuild the global economy. (It would later evolve into the World Trade Organization.)

Since the 1940s, the Mexican government had zealously protected its fledg-

ling industrial sector, walling off im-

ports with high tariffs and limiting

foreign investment. But the result was

inefficient, uncompetitive firms. By the

1990s, Mexico was desperate for eco-

nomic growth and foreign capital.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY INGRID LEYVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

When NAFTA took effect in 1994, “the gates were opened,” Mr. Ochoa recalled. Mexican stores were bursting with cheap TVs and stereos, Levi’s jeans and Snickers bars. American businesses rushed in to do joint ventures. Mr. Ochoa helped OfficeMax set up its Mexican franchises. Home Depot and Costco stores sprouted around the country; Walmart became one of Mexico’s biggest employers.

NAFTA offered U.S. companies access to Mexico's fast-growing consumer market and a vast pool of workers who often earned less than \$2 an hour. If the corporations benefited, many of their employees did not. In the United States, millions of American factory jobs vanished — a drop that many economists attribute more to automation and the China shock than NAFTA, but one that nonetheless caused deep pain in the Rust Belt and ultimately catalyzed support for Mr. Trump. In Mexico, shantytowns sprung up to house laborers pouring into the industrial boom-towns, and Juárez became infamous for the murders of hundreds of women.

The NAFTA border frenzy didn't last. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, offering an even lower-cost work force and drawing tens of thousands of factory jobs away from Mexico.

Then came a bloody drug war starting in the late 2000s. Still, Juárez persisted, developing a complex logistics and manufacturing infrastructure.

And bilateral trade continued to grow. Americans came to rely on the tomatoes, berries and avocados that are the fruits of Mexico's longer growing season, while American grain producers, with their more advanced technology and colossal farms, became the suppliers of half the corn consumed in Mexico. Car parts zipped back and forth from Mexico to America to Canada in a three-country assembly of vehicles. In 2020, a startled Pentagon had to appeal to Mexico to open factories that were closed during the pandemic, and help the U.S. maintain critical supply chains for its defense contractors.

Thousands of white buses now rumble through Juárez each day, delivering workers to factories. Scores of major international firms operate big factories, and smaller manufacturers can now open plants in a matter of weeks, thanks to the system of so-called shelter companies that provide a vast array of services — leasing factory space, hiring employees, handling import-export permits, and even stamping out thousands of tortillas for hungry workers.

“Geography is destiny,” said Mr. Ochoa. The trade momentum, he said, isn’t determined solely by the terms of the next agreement. “It’s driven by the needs of the U.S. market.”

IF JUÁREZ'S RISE WAS POWERED by American corporations, the current boom belongs to the Taiwanese. As trade tensions have mounted between the United States and China, a wave of companies have "near-shored" factories reliant on lower-cost labor from Asia to Mexico. Today, four of Taiwan's manufacturing giants — Foxconn, Inventec, Wistron and Pegatron — have operations in Juárez.

Initially, this so-called Taiwanese cluster pumped out goods like iPhones and Dell computers. But in the last few years, the factories have pivoted, amid exploding demand for technology for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. According to local officials and current and former employees, and confirmed by the state government, the companies now make the servers that fill the data centers of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies, taking advantage of duty-free entry to the U.S. market under the U.S.M.C.A. Last year, computing technology became Mexico's largest export. So far, Mr. Trump has refrained from imposing tariffs on those goods, given the economic and strategic importance of A.I. (Or, as he recently branded it: "superintelligence.") SHERIDAN, PAGE 14

Above, freight containers along the U.S.-Mexico border at Juárez, Mexico; left, entering El Paso, Texas, at the Paso del Norte international bridge in Juárez; below, the recently built Centinela Tower, a hub for A.I.-powered surveillance, in Juárez.

The New York Times

INTERNATIONAL EDITION

A.G. SULZBERGER Publisher

JOSEPH KAHN Executive Editor

MARC LACEY Managing Editor

CAROLYN RYAN Managing Editor

SUZANNE DALEY Associate Editor

KATHLEEN KINGSBURY Opinion Editor

MEREDITH KOPIT LEVIEN Chief Executive Officer

MICHAEL GREENSPON Senior V.P. and General Manager

HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS V.P., International Circulation

HELENA PHUA Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific

SUZANNE YVERNÉS International Chief Financial Officer

A.I. is lying to you. Here's how to fight back.

Anthony Vinci

For months, a foreign agent has been cultivating some of the most powerful figures in the United States in hopes of turning them into unwitting allies. Targeting their weak spots, the foreign agent is feeding them hour after hour of falsehoods. Already the would-be proxies are passing on the foreign propaganda to tens of millions of their followers.

If this sounds like a chapter from another century — think K.G.B. officers swaying unsuspecting fellow travelers in London or New York — it's actually worse. The spy runner is a Russia-backed network called Portal Kombat that operates hundreds of websites to spread disinformation. The powerful figures it's seeking to influence? Artificial intelligence-driven large language models such as ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini.

Portal Kombat's goal is to influence these models so that they will pass along propaganda to trusting users in response to questions. Portal Kombat pushed over 3.6 million stories across hundreds of independent websites in dozens of languages in 2024, according to NewsGuard, an organization that tracks online disinformation. NewsGuard researchers systematically tested A.I. chat systems and found that Portal Kombat propaganda was regu-

larly provided to users.

In the age of disinformation, we all need to use the tools of counter-espionage to find the truth.

Large language model influence operations are just one way that America's adversaries are using A.I. to try to steer its politics. China directs its A.I. platforms to push false claims about

the treatment of Uyghurs and to censor dissent and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. Russia is using A.I. to generate scores of news websites to turn Americans against democracy and Western alliances. Like many, these adversaries use A.I. to create fake written, audio or video content that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

The greatest danger, though, isn't A.I.'s ability to lie. It's the ability to persuade. These new agents of influence are less like a traditional propaganda pamphlet — static and lifeless — and more like a living, breathing case officer, as I used to be. A.I. agents try to manipulate us through sustained engagement. And unlike the K.G.B.'s espionage machinations during the Cold War, which focused on recruiting powerful individuals, today's A.I. influence operators are trying to persuade all of us.

To fight back, people need to learn the counterspy techniques of C.I.A. officers: using multiple sources to check information; testing those sources regularly for reliability; never getting complacent and trusting one source without thinking.

Learning those tools has broader benefits. We are all asking ourselves: How do I believe anything in a world of A.I.? Foreign actors may be in the vanguard of this new era of disinformation, but it's spreading at home, too, and fast. Already, politicians are changing what

A.I. has to say about them by manipulating content to be picked up by A.I. models.

From resisting foreign influence campaigns, to safely navigating our domestic politics, to understanding rapidly developing marketing techniques, we all need to start thinking like spies.

Social media has long-used algorithms to make propaganda more effective. Studies by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University have showed that the amount of time spent on TikTok correlates with more benevolent views of Chinese human rights. What's new about A.I. is its personalization and interactivity. A.I. can identify your online expressions of belief and desire and create content tailored to persuade you, in real time. That used to take teams of well-paid people weeks to do. Now, bad actors can do it in seconds at little cost.

The Chinese company GoLaxy has already advertised such an integrated, A.I.-driven persuasion system. Researchers at Vanderbilt University analyzed leaked documents showing that GoLaxy used A.I. to mine user information from social media, create psychological profiles, develop personalized content and then engage users in conversation to change their political opinions. GoLaxy used this capability in 2020 in Hong Kong and again ahead of Taiwan's 2024 election, likely at the behest of the Chinese government. (GoLaxy denies it has done election-related work, developed psychological profiles or deployed bots.)

Further afield, Reporters Without Borders showed that the Chinese A.I. model Qwen advanced the Communist Party line on Uyghur internment camps, calling them “education and vocational training centers” and saying questions about them were “baseless speculation” despite extensive independent reporting showing otherwise.

Another propaganda house, Copy-Cop, uses A.I. to create seemingly real local journalism sites in an effort to persuade Americans to support Moscow's aims. CopyCop publishes its articles on seemingly authentic websites such as The Boston Times and mimics the branding of existing major news sites like The San Francisco Chronicle, according to the cyberresearch firm Recorded Future. The French government has linked Copy-Cop, also known as Storm-1516, and one of its operators, an American who was once a deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County, Fla., John Mark Dougan, who now lives in Moscow, to the Russian intelligence agency G.R.U.

In June, OpenAI presented evidence that their ChatGPT model was likely used by China to create covert propaganda messages about data center construction. The “Data Center Bandwagon” campaign used OpenAI’s models to create social media comments and images on issues like electricity costs, which were then posted to X in an apparent attempt by China to handicap American A.I. ambitions.

It works. A recent study in the scientific journal Nature showed that A.I. dialogue is roughly four times as persuasive as traditional political ads.

Over time, intelligence officers have developed tools and techniques for VINCI, PAGE 14

ILLUSTRATION BY SAM WHITNEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES; SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS BY CONNECT IMAGES AND PHOTOALTO/SIGRID OLSSON/GETTY IMAGES

Israel has changed. Why hasn't AIPAC?

serving of generous American financial, military and diplomatic support.

Eric Alterman

In December 2018, Representative Nancy Pelosi made a pledge to a largely Jewish audience: If the U.S. Capitol "crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid — and I don't even call it aid — our cooperation — with Israel. That's fundamental." That commitment apparently faltered in mid-July, when Ms. Pelosi voted with over a hundred of her colleagues to slash U.S. aid to the Jewish state.

Unconditional support for Israel was once as common in Congress as the flag pin on a senator's lapel, largely thanks to the bipartisan efforts of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Today, in the aftermath of Israel's bloody war on Gaza, launched in reaction to Hamas's brutal attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has reached near-pariah status globally and domestically. "The condemnation of what Bibi Netanyahu is doing is almost universal" within the Democratic Party, California Governor Gavin Newsom told PBS News in September, speaking of Israel's actions in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. Furthermore, he said, these days the party has a "pretty overwhelming opposition to accepting money from AIPAC."

THE AGE OF AIPAC'S unmatched political power and influence is at an end. Rejection may be the most bipartisan act the group inspires. In the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, allies of the Republican candidate Mike Rogers reportedly asked AIPAC not to advertise on his behalf. AIPAC and affiliated groups invested nearly \$30 million in advertising during the summer's Democratic primaries to help Representative Haley Stevens in her bid for the Senate nomination in Michigan. During that race, her opponent Dr. Abdul El-Sayed bragged, "AIPAC has called me the single most dangerous candidate in this race." Dr. El-Sayed, of course, won.

Despite the profound transformation in how the world sees AIPAC's sole client, and its increasing marginalization in American politics, the group not only hasn't acknowledged the change, but it operates as though Israel were as popular as it was in 1991, when the Jewish state enjoyed a nearly 80 percent favorable rating among Americans. According to a 2026 NBC News poll, just 32 percent of American voters now view Israel positively; among Democrats, that number falls to just 13 percent.

What's more, Israel has lost even many American Jews. According to a 2025 Washington Post poll, 61 percent of American Jews said they believe Israel committed war crimes in Gaza and some 40 percent believe Israel has committed genocide. Another recent poll found nearly half of American Jews under the age of 35 believing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved by creating a single, binational state, an idea considered to be fringe since the Palestinian American scholar Edward Said advocated it in 1999.

Support for Israel is now a millstone around the neck of Democratic politicians and a source of profound inner conflict for American Jews who seek to balance their Zionism with their liberalism. Many of the Jews who continue to define their identities via their support for Israel are, today, most likely calculating the cost of nursing homes and retirement communities. Younger Jews, like most young Americans of virtually all religions and ethnicities, increasingly express negative views about the Jewish state.

The question facing AIPAC is not simply whether it can find a way to adjust to this new political world but, more fundamentally, whether it can even see the changes demanded by these new circumstances?

ILLUSTRATION BY ANTHONY GERACE: SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH BY ARMAN ZHENIKEYEV/GETTY IMAGES

AIPAC WAS FOUNDED by L.L. "Si" Kenen, a former lobbyist for the Israeli foreign ministry, in the wake of a 1953 Israeli military massacre of 69 Palestinians in a village called Qibya. Mr. Kenen suggested to friends and colleagues that they create a new organization, initially called the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, to make Israel's case whenever circumstances made it necessary. The U.S. State Department consistently tried to pressure Israel to take a more generous attitude toward the roughly 750,000 Palestinians it had expelled before and during its war of independence — what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”—but were stymied in part by the political opposition AIPAC's predecessor helped engender.

AIPAC's goal in those early years was to promote the interests of an Israel then understood to be a young and scrappy David surrounded by a Goliath of hostile Arab nations. Its message was straightforward and bipartisan: As a democracy in the Middle East, Israel was morally de-

For the United States, that support could be expected to pay strategic dividends, both in the region, where America would gain a reliable ally, and in domestic politics, where Israel was extremely popular with voters, pretty much regardless of religion. By 1963, Senator J. William Fulbright, then the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called AIPAC “the most powerful and efficient foreign policy lobby in American politics.”

In the early 1980s, AIPAC's executive director Thomas Dine, a former aide to Ted Kennedy, set out to expand the lobby into a coast-to-coast operation comparable to the National Rifle Association or the AARP, with a national

membership made up of wealthy funders as well as American Jews who increasingly defined their religious and political identities through support for Israel. Both groups could be relied upon to call, write and, if necessary, threaten senators and representatives. Relying on a mix of the extremely wealthy and the extremely committed, Mr. Dine increased AIPAC's annual budget to \$15 million from some \$1.7 million. By the end of the century, it was \$50 million, with nine regional offices and 10 satellite offices. At the same time, U.S. public spending on military aid to Israel roughly doubled.

AIPAC also began to woo candidates and congressional staff and provided each with language for legislation and talking points. It funded luxury junkets

There remains an opportunity for the group to play a positive and honest role in American politics.

and met frequently with reporters and editors to try to shape the narratives about Israel and the Middle East that reached the public. Rabbis were offered ready-to-use pro-Israel sermons.

Still, for many years, AIPAC did not endorse specific candidates or dis-

pense funds directly to them. Instead, it merely made sure that certain candidates it approved of, from either party, were well-funded, and that those it did not were not.

AIPAC's role started to shift in 1993 with the resignation of Mr. Dine and his replacement by a more conservative set of board members and top executives. When former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin attempted to make peace with the Palestinians in the early 1990s, AIPAC only grudgingly supported the cause. While its leaders did not openly undermine the peace process, they did independently lobby for legislation that complicated the negotiations, such as a bill calling on the Clinton administration to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

After the 1995 assassination of Rabin and the subsequent collapse of the peace process, AIPAC resumed its steady march rightward. The lobby

also began to embrace the support of far-right Christian Zionists. At a public interview in 2021, Ron Dermer, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said “the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States is the evangelical Christians” rather than American Jews, who he said were “disproportionately among [Israel’s] critics.” AIPAC followed suit.

THE SPECIFIC CHALLENGES the organization faces today can be traced to Mr. Netanyahu's decision to appear before Congress in March 2015 at the invitation of Representative John Boehner, then the Republican speaker of the House. In an unusual move for a foreign ally, Mr. Netanyahu publicly

aligned himself with the Republican Party's attempts to undermine President Obama, a Democrat and a leader who happened to be supported by a majority of American Jews. In his address, Mr. Netanyahu denounced the Obama administration's diplomatic efforts toward the nuclear disarmament in Iran, better known as the Iran deal. AIPAC and an affiliate spent nearly \$30 million on a failed campaign to prevent the deal's passage.

AIPAC's increasing identification with both the methods and the goals of the Republican Party has become ever more evident over the past decade. In early 2020, it produced a Facebook ad accusing “radicals in the Democratic Party” of “pushing their antisemitic and anti-Israel policies down the throats of the American people.”

AIPAC'S ANNUAL CONFERENCE was once a way station for all presidential hopefuls, but in 2019 Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as former Representative Beto O'Rourke, among others, all declined to attend, a decision that would have been hard to imagine just four years earlier.

In December 2021, AIPAC created a super PAC that also swung right. The group immediately amassed an enormous war chest and announced endorsements of over a hundred Republicans, many of whom had voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. By 2022, its high-profile donors included conservative Republican billionaires such as the Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus and the hedge fund manager Paul Singer.

Using right-wing Republican money to defeat liberal candidates in Democratic primaries exposed AIPAC to considerable anger on the part of progressives, and further alienated the lobby from the mainstream opinions of American Jews. This was especially true of young American Jews whose views of Israel had been shaped by an ever more oppressive occupation of the West Bank and Gaza well before Oct. 7, and the mass killing of Palestinians that followed in its wake.

As a result, the group's electoral strategy has begun to backfire. In February, AIPAC's super PAC dropped \$2.3 million into a New Jersey special primary election to try to defeat former Representative Tom Malinowski for what it saw as his wobbly support for Israel. Mr. Malinowski lost — but not to the more pro-Israel candidate. He was ousted by a candidate to his left: Analilia Mejia, a former aide to Bernie Sanders who has indicated she believes that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide.

In Illinois, AIPAC-aligned super PACs invested more than \$5 million in an effort to thwart Daniel Biss in his Democratic primary race for Congress in Illinois. Mr. Biss is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and his mother is Israeli — but he supports limiting arms sales to Israel and recognizing a Palestinian state. When Mr. Biss won his

race, he boasted about his willingness to call "AIPAC out clearly and repeatedly."

Even establishment Democrats such as Cory Booker and Ruben Gallego have sworn off AIPAC money, no doubt cognizant that public association with the lobby these days can turn a campaign radioactive. Many Democrats who support Israel feel compelled to resist Mr. Netanyahu and publicly criticize his government's behavior — and to vocally and unequivocally reject the lobby's support. AIPAC's influence in future Democratic Party politics will likely be limited to the role of either boogeyman or secret spoiler.

By sticking to its long-held, inflexible, “Israel right or wrong” line and allying itself with a party whose views on race, immigration, economics — and, these days, democracy — are anathema to most American Jews, AIPAC has effectively forfeited the role it enjoyed in the days when Israel was a genuinely bipartisan cause. As America heads into the midterms, it is clear the lobby has all but lost the Democrats and may be skating on ever thinner ice with Republicans as well.

an opportunity for AIPAC to play a positive and, no less important, honest role in American politics.

While no doubt a traditional flavor of antisemitism occasionally attaches to pro-Palestinian arguments on the left, more recently it has been the right's increasing tolerance of widespread antisemitism among its most influential voices — from Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens to Nick Fuentes — that has morphed into a particularly fervent form of anti-Zionism. MAGA anger over Iran (and Israel's role in the war) has hardened that space.

Were AIPAC to commit itself to the battle against this fusion of old-fashioned right-wing antisemitism with its new, virulent anti-Zionism, it could serve the interests of Israel, American Jews and the United States simultaneously. It might also rescue its own reputation in the process.

ERIC ALTERMAN is a CUNY distinguished professor at Brooklyn College and the author, most recently, of "We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel."

This is one map Trump can't redraw

SHERIDAN, FROM PAGE 12

Taiwanese firms are also investing north of the border, lured by incentives from both the Biden and Trump administrations. TSMC, which makes the majority of the world's advanced semiconductor chips, plans to plot \$265 billion into several massive factories in Arizona. As the United States focused on producing high-end chips, Mexico's well-established infrastructure was ready to build more basic, complementary electronics, like servers. Over the decades, the Juárez factories "enabled us to train these incredible engineers and technicians," Pancho Uranga, a vice president at Foxconn, told me.

Today, more than one-third of college and tech-school students in Chihuahua, the state including Juárez, are studying science, technology, engineering or math. Officials have poured millions of dollars into the construction of two tech centers in the city, which will offer residents training in machine learning, robotics and other skills.

Despite the excitement building at the prospect of an A.I. windfall, so far the boom has been a mixed blessing. Unlike the Mexican vehicle industry, which generates around one million jobs and has given rise to a large domestic auto-parts industry, the server plants employ relatively few people—and a lot of machines. And the expensive servers, which cost anywhere from around half a million dollars to \$7 million apiece, are pumping up the Mexican trade surplus with the United States, as Mr. Trump rails against bilateral trade imbalances. (He sees them as a sign the United States is being “ripped off,” a view most economists reject.) Now, to avoid tariffs on other critical industries, Mexican officials are searching for ways to cool down the red-hot server exports. But any such effort would most likely hurt the A.I. giants currently keeping the U.S. economy afloat.

The Taiwanese keep a low profile in Juárez. My requests for interviews at the factories — via company officials and press offices, Taiwan's official representative in Mexico and state authorities — were met with polite noes. Most U.S. firms that contract the Taiwanese manufacturers to make their laptops, servers and other products impose strict nondisclosure rules. The U.S. companies reportedly buying the servers also declined to confirm they were made by firms in Juárez.

To be sure, Mr. Trump can claim credit for pressuring some manufacturers to move jobs back to the United States

from Juárez and other cities. But the results are modest. Consider the case of Eric Wong, who manages factories in Juárez for two Hong Kong-based companies that produce goods for the U.S. market, including plastic Christmas wreaths, holiday lights and kiddie pools. Mr. Wong shifted some production of extension cables to a plant in the El Paso suburbs this year, after tariffs raised the cost of copper inputs. But that only

---

If Juárez's rise was powered by American corporations, the current boom belongs to the Taiwanese.

created around 100 jobs on the American side. Another 1,500 workers remain in Juárez, doing work that isn't feasible at U.S. wages; clients like Walmart will only pay so much for a Christmas wreath.

Mr. Trump's effort to dismantle free trade with Mexico faces not just economic headwinds, but political ones. So many constituencies benefit from the U.S.M.C.A. that it has generated rare, strong bipartisan support. The 41 U.S. southern border counties in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas collectively generate \$1 trillion a year in gross domestic product, according to recent research. A 30-foot-high steel wall may snake across the edge of Juárez, a powerful sign of Mr. Trump's efforts to cordon off the country. But it cannot obscure just how deeply intertwined the borderlands are.

ON MY TRIP TO JUÁREZ in August, I visited a notorious neighborhood called Anapra, on the western outskirts of the city. When I first reported from there in 1997, it was a dusty hellscape of treeless desert, where factory workers lived in shacks cobbled together from cardboard and wood. The air was thick with eye-watering smoke from brick makers burning tires and old oil to heat their ovens.

Today, the shacks have been replaced by small cinder-block homes with running water. There is an air-conditioned supermarket, as well as a gym, a hardware store and a restaurant called “Pink Sushi.” Living standards have risen, albeit not to the first world standards once predicted by NAFTA enthusiasts.

What's even more striking are the townhouse developments where Juárez's engineers and factory managers live, flanking strip malls with fancy taco joints and hair salons offering \$200 color jobs. I did a double-take at a concrete monument: the Arc de Triomphe, or a copy of it, anyway. Behind it sat a gated community of mini-mansions called Campos Elíseos — Juárez's own Champs-Élysées.

These are “islands of prosperity,” a local economist told me. It seemed an apt metaphor for how free trade has affected Mexico over the past few decades. A number of states in the north and central regions have flourished, but they are surrounded by an informal national economy in which around half of Mexican workers continue to toil in precarious jobs, with lower wages and few benefits. The government has hiked the minimum wage but failed to make the kind of structural reforms, like improving education and infrastructure and encouraging deeper local supply chains, that could allow these other areas to advance. As in the United States, the fruits of globalization have disproportionately benefited better-educated workers. Yet exports are the most vibrant part of Mexico’s economy, and even leftist politicians who once opposed NAFTA — including President Claudia Sheinbaum — are eager to preserve free trade.

Mexico has so far resisted the worst of Mr. Trump's trade war, thanks to its deep commercial ties with the United States and the preferential treatment its exports still receive through the U.S.M.C.A. Ms. Sheinbaum's administration has been actively managing up, too, stressing its bona fides as an ally, and may yet persuade the U.S. president to lower tariffs. Mexican officials have

Above, Juárez's own Arc de Triomphe, the main entrance to the affluent neighborhood of Campos Elíseos; left, near the entrance to Foxconn, one of Taiwan's manufacturing giants (along with Inventec, Wistron and Pegatron) that has operations in Juárez.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY INGRID LEYVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

expressed optimism that a new trade accord is near.

But one of the other core elements of the free trade agreements — certainty

— has taken a beating. In Juárez, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment are on hold, awaiting the results of the U.S.M.C.A. talks. With Mr. Trump using tariffs as an all-purpose weapon

— to press countries to curb drug trafficking, to lower their trade surpluses, to stop buying Russian oil — any agreement is subject to change.

In Juárez, the high-tech industry continues to grow, betting that the demands of the U.S. economy will prove more durable than the whims of one man. On the last day of my trip, a young commercial real estate agent named Juan Alberto Mayorga drove me around southeastern Juárez, pointing out manufacturing plants springing up. His firm had just sold one to Inventec: an airy building of nearly 386,000 square feet, almost as big as New York City's Bryant Park, just down the street from the other Inventec plant.

The newly acquired site had been designed to hold not one but two mega-factories. Already, bulldozers and back-hoes were scooping and pushing the sandy earth outside the building. The agent looked on happily, saying, "They're certainly going to develop more."

MARY BETH SHERIDAN is a journalist specializing in Latin America and a fellow at the Georgetown Americas Institute. She was the Mexico City bureau chief for The Washington Post from 2023 to 2025.

How A.I. is lying to you

VINCI, FROM PAGE 13

finding useful truth amid deception. At heart, those techniques rely on what makes us human: our natural ability to understand people and their lies, to spot patterns and assess trust. Most of all, they train us to remain aware that any piece of information may be purposefully deceptive. These techniques include:

\- Triangulation. If you prefer one source of news — The New York Times, say — also check The Wall Street Journal, Newsmax and The South China Morning Post on any given report. If all say the same thing, the story is more likely right than wrong. The same is true for A.I. systems: if you are a Claude user, then check ChatGPT, or vice versa.

• Operational testing. Ask a question to which you already know the answer. To test an A.I. bot for accuracy about, say, an impending war or civil unrest, first check recent satellite imagery to see if there are actually troops in the area or visit the website of a protest movement. Then see how close the bot's answer is to the primary source.

\- Trust no one. The hardest part of spy craft may be never taking anything as permanently true. A.I. makes it especially easy to go soft. Chat systems are good at providing answers and it's tempting to just accept their answers. But A.I. is optimized to get you to like it and to continue using it, not to give you the truth. Remain skeptical.

Analogues exist already in the world of law enforcement: Apps like Nextdoor and Citizen allow users to share information with each other about crime or other hyperlocal concerns. There are Reddit groups in which users investigate cold case murders like r/coldcases. Bellingcat is a citizen journalism site that provides tools and techniques for anyone to investigate war crimes and other worthy causes.

The challenges of a world in which adversaries try to undermine society by manipulating truth via A.I. are real. But there is hope. We can learn how to spot and confront these agents of influence by using the tools and techniques of the intelligence officer.

ANTHONY VINCI is a founder and the C.E.O. of VICO.io, a venture backed A.I. company, and the author of "The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America."

---

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Two fighters on the frailty of democracy

FRIEDMAN, FROM PAGE 1

even some media companies bent to Trump's political demands without a fight.

“For me,” Karman said, “as someone who opposed dictatorship, who knows how dictatorship works and knows what we needed to free our country from the dictatorship, it all starts when the head of state controls the media, accuses the media of lies and discredits the media — and then does not play by the rule of law, and the institutions work only for the benefit of him and his family.”

The trigger for the democratic revolution in Yemen was when President Saleh “put his son and his family in the most important institutions,” Karman added. “He attacked the judiciary and emptied it of its work. He escaped all accountability through immunity and interfered in the work of Parliament and the legitimate institutions. And now all of this I am seeing in the United States. What is that?”

The most dangerous thing in a democracy, she said, is when you start to ask yourself: “‘If I do this, what will happen to me? What will the leader do to me?’”

WILL MATSUDA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

could never be achieved through democratic or peaceful means," Sinijlawi wrote in a Sept. 18 essay in The Jerusalem Post urging President Trump to support the Palestinian elections. "When ballot boxes are closed, extremists offer other boxes — filled with weapons, funerals and false promises. We must not repeat that mistake."

His party, he said, is drawing the support of registered Palestinian voters

— women and students, professionals, academics, entrepreneurs and people entering political life for the first time, even young Gazans living in tents.

“We support a demilitarized Palestinian state, regional economic integration and a negotiated two-state solution that provides Palestinians with freedom and dignity while ensuring security for Israelis,” Sinijlawi wrote.

Karman hasn't given up hope on America, though. "I gave a speech in North Dakota," she told me. "There were a lot of conservative people there. They were so welcoming. I told them: 'Don't think you are divided because you have the soul of division. It is because someone wants to divide you through hate speech.' People got very emotional."

An East Jerusalem Palestinian, Sini-jlawi speaks both Arabic and Hebrew. He learned his Hebrew largely during five years in Israeli prison after being arrested as a teenager in the First Intifada.

Karman and I first met in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, in 2013, when I went to observe Yemen's broad-based national dialogue. New parties, young people, women, Islamists, tribes, northerners and southerners all took part, with the aim of writing a new constitution and holding presidential elections. The process fell apart when the Houthi movement seized the city in September 2014. The Houthis, a Shiite group based in the north of Yemen, were backed by Iran and allied with forces loyal to Saleh. The Houthi takeover plunged Yemen into a catastrophic civil war from which it still has not escaped.

battle for freedom, democracy and sovereignty, but it is also the world's battle for peace, security and the freedom of global trade."

Karman travels the world now promoting democracy through her foundation, while working every day with followers in Yemen to try to win its democracy back from the long arm of Iran.

“What we need from the world is to stand with the Yemeni people and confront Iran’s project to control Bab al-Mandab through the Houthi militia,” she said, referring to the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. “If Iran, through its Houthi proxy, succeeds in controlling Bab al-Mandab in addition to its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, the consequences for global security could be even more dangerous than Iran possessing a nuclear bomb. This is Yemen’s

While I was in Athens, a Palestinian democracy activist from East Jerusalem, Samer Sinijlawi, reached out to me with a similar alarm bell. Sinijlawi leads Masar Jadid (New Path), one of the many new parties seeking seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections — the first such elections since January 2006.

Yes, folks, there are three big elections coming up that will shape the

The most dangerous thing in a democracy, Tawakkol Karman said, is when you start to ask yourself: "If I do this, what will happen to me? What will the leader do to me?"

Middle East: Israel's on Oct. 27, America's on Nov. 3 and the Palestinian Authority's first legislative elections in two decades, scheduled for Nov. 28. Unfortunately, there are forces around the authority's leadership pressing to have these elections postponed again. Sinijlawi

urged me to tell the world: "Do not let that happen." (At least seven parties have submitted candidate lists for the council's 132 seats.)

It is such a breath of fresh air to talk to someone like Sinijlawi. He understands that no matter how many European or American rallies there are to “Free Palestine,” the only thing that will do so is a freely elected, legitimate Palestinian government and legislature ready and able to be a partner for a two-state solution.

The repeated postponement of Palestinian legislative elections in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem “reinforced Hamas’s argument that change

There is no way to pressure the Israelis, Sinijlawi explained; “the only way is to persuade them.”

"We Palestinians continue denying the historical links of Jews to this land," he continued. "Instead, we must move from a question of who belongs and who does not belong to this land to the question of how we both belong to this land."

This is a point Sinijlawi and I have long had in common: There are seven million-plus Jews and seven million-plus Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — and neither are leaving. The only solution is two states — no matter how long that takes.

And the person who understands the power of that logic best is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Why do you think he made it a top priority for most of his premiership to strengthen Hamas in Gaza? He wanted to keep it divided from moderate Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem who accepted the Oslo peace accords. Netanyahu knows what would happen if a noncorrupt, legitimate, unified Palestinian leadership came together — one that had learned from past mistakes. The whole world would insist that Israel negotiate with it on a two-state solution.

What I admire about Tawakkol Karman and Samer Sinijlawi is that they know how to get off Facebook and into somebody's face — to actually fight for democracy, not just pop off with slogans, which are a substitute for both thought and action. That used to be us in America. We used to model that for the world.

If there was ever a time to get back to that spirit, it's now. It starts with voting on Nov. 3 in the U.S. election and getting others out to vote too — for any candidate who puts loyalty to democratic institutions over loyalty to any single person.

LOUIS VUITTON

Fashion

The state of style, in 2 shows

PARIS

BY VANESSA FRIEDMAN

This is the choice shoppers increasingly face: the grass roots or the grandiose.

Never was the strange, bifurcated and increasingly discombobulating state of fashion been quite as clear as it was on the last day of the last week of the whole ready-to-wear season.

That was when Telfar, the independent New York brand, held an unofficial show in Paris just before the Louis Vuitton extravaganza that traditionally brings the collection circuit to a close. Talk about contrast.

On the one hand, a self-made upstart from outside the fashion system, playing to a committed shopping fan base that hasn't felt recognized by established institutions. On the other, an increasingly majestic mega-brand, flooding the zone with content (if not necessarily clothes) for a voracious world. Sound familiar? Well, fashion's job is to reflect the world around it.

The Telfar invite had come late, and with a message attached. “Let’s recognize the obvious,” it read. “One ‘shows’ in order to be recognized. So we would like to register our recognition that Paris is the capital of fashion — even if by a process of elimination.”

Though the Bushwick-based designer Telfar Clemens had shown in Paris before, in 2019, and been a guest designer at the men's wear trade fair Pitti Uomo in Florence, Italy, in 2020, he hadn't been back in Europe since the pandemic. His most recent show, a 20th anniversary celebratory blowout held in an alleyway behind the Telfar store off Canal Street, took place in June 2025 and also was his first show in almost three years.

For Clemens and his collaborators, shows are held not necessarily according to the fashion schedule, but when they have something to say, just as their store is less like a store than a community center, and their marketing less like advertising than a free-flowing set of inside jokes.

So it was on Tuesday. The show was held in the tiny Théâtre Daunou just off the Place de l'Opéra. A makeshift catwalk jutted out from the proscenium, where a leopard-clad emcee took to the stage. And introduced the audience to a runway show ... happening in New York.

There — in a venue that was also functioning as a Telfar sample sale (filled with racks of clothes) where attendees could trade in old Telfar for credits toward new Telfar — customers who came to shop were also seated on long benches as models began to strut between the rails. Clemens himself played host while the whole thing was streamed to a big screen in the theater in

LOUIS VUITTON

LOU BENOIST/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

FILIPPO FIOR/GORUNWAY.COM

Paris, where Telfar-clad guests whooped in delight.

There were no paparazzi-magnets involved, no gantlet of screaming fans to run. Instead there were what looked like increasingly polished clothes — suit jackets turned inside out, so silk jacquard Telfar-branded linings provided the decorative element; little black dresses trimmed in chains, like the chains that bind; a lot of animal print. Though given they were entirely on-screen, they were also kind of hard to see.

SIMBARASHE CHA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

And there was a point: to assert the cross-border appeal of a brand that was for a long time treated as a niche phenomenon — the poster child for inclusivity of all kinds — and to challenge the hierarchy of the industry. After all, with this show, Clemens and Co. may have been recognizing Paris as the capital of fashion, but they were also putting New York first.

The throwdown was hard to miss, given that only steps away, in the Cour Carrée (a hidden courtyard) of the Louvre, Louis Vuitton, the only brand to show in

France's grandest, most palatial museum, had built an entire sci-fi cityscape featuring what looked like an Formula 1 race-to-come of flying cars, all branded with the LV Damier checkerboard. In case anyone was wondering where their ambitions lie.

Outside, the crowd thronged hundreds deep, jostling to catch a glimpse of celebrities such as Zendaya, Emma Stone, Jaden Smith and Wunmi Mosaku (as well as France's first lady, Brigitte Macron, whose husband had only days before presented the Vuitton women's wear designer Nicolas Ghesquière with the Légion d'honneur).

Inside, after doing their requisite paid-for posing, the said celebs, all dressed in Vuitton, hobnobbed with one another in a special cordoned-off area protected by large, besuited security men, as the rest of the attendees sat watching. And waiting. And waiting.

Then the show finally began: an unexpectedly wearable trip back to the future, featuring ergonomically designed shifts and separates that relied less on the hackneyed (and often Marvel-adjacent) notions of travel that Ghesquière has recently indulged, and more on streamlined geometry. With some of the designer's trademark historical allu

sions thrown in.

Slick pants had pockets sliced into the waistband, so hands could be tucked straight down, rather than forced akimbo at the side. Sequin sweatshirts were worn under ruffled leather frock coats. Train-bedecked jersey tops with cabbage leaf edges were paired with liquid trousers. Oh, and there were a lot of bags. One model, wearing a sand-tone car coat over a loose white crepe shirt and skirt, dangled the gold chains of three little purses from one hand.

It was a reminder that, despite the fact the collection was the best Ghesquière has done in years, the looks and all the hoopla that surround them really exist in service to the bags. They're the engine of the brand.

And that this is the choice shoppers increasingly face: between the grass roots and the grandiose, the personal and the imperial; between brands embedded in the everyday and brands that build their own reality. That may be the biggest trend of the season, more than the ubiquitous bra top, the return of animal print and the rise of the skirt. The problem is, the thing that often seems to get lost in the tug of war over the soul and future of fashion is the mission to make genuinely, thrillingly, new clothes.

The designer Telfar Clemens, at the sample sale and runway show in New York, on the phone to the audience in the tiny Théâtre Daunou in Paris.

MASATO ONODA

Sports

Tkachuk brothers are ready to take over the N.H.L.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.

Matthew Tkachuk, left, and Brady Tkachuk are pro teammates for the first time, after the Florida Panthers gave up a handful of draft picks to acquire Brady from the Ottawa Senators.

JAMES GUILLORY/IMAGN IMAGES

A blockbuster trade united them in Florida. They also host a weekly podcast.

BY JULIAN MCKENZIE

THE ATHLETIC

One floor above the Florida Panthers' practice rink, seated in a harvest-gold accent chair next to a microphone stand, Matthew Tkachuk offers a hand for a low-five.

Opposite him, separated by a monitor displaying the name and logo of their co-hosted podcast, Brady Tkachuk reaches out and obliges.

"Thoughts?" Matthew, 28, asks moments later.

"I mean, this is iconic," Brady, 27, replies.

Last fall, when the Tkachuk brothers became the only active National Hockey League players with a talk show, “Wingmen” — a reference to their shared on-ice position — they lived and skated in different cities. One seismic trade later, they are now professional teammates for the first time. Which means that, on top of figuring to fuel arguably the league’s best corps of forwards as Florida pursues a third Stanley Cup title in four years, they can record in person.

After the brothers represented the United States at the 4 Nations Face-Off, earning a silver medal in February 2025, Matthew figured that such moments with his brother would be rare in their careers. In hindsight, it felt like a mini-series teeing up the season-long Tkachuk production to come.

"They're like a constant show," Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. "It's like we've got our own podcast in the room as well."

The Tkachuk brothers have wasted no time building up their media machine, especially after returning from this year's Winter Olympics with gold medals. They have appeared on numerous national podcasts, notably the Kelce brothers "New Heights" and the ESPN-licensed "Pat McAfee Show." They were front and center for the U.F.C. Freedom 250 fight card, held at the White House in June, months after they attended President Trump's State of the Union address after their victory in Milan.

If you have felt fatigue — or a stronger emotion — at the brothers' exposure, you are probably not alone. When photos emerged of Brady training in a New Jersey gym with the Ultimate Fighting Championship legend Khabib Nurmagomedov this summer, some on social media groaned at the sight of his gold medal dangling around his neck. And, of course, Brady did not leave his former team on exactly the best terms: Recently, the Ottawa Senators majority owner Michael Andlauer suggested that Brady, the team's former captain, had been influenced by Matthew and their father, the Hockey Hall of Famer Keith Tkachuk, to request a trade from the only N.H.L. city he had ever known.

For the Panthers, the extra attention from acquiring Brady four years after trading for Matthew — not to mention the three first-round draft picks and a second-rounder that they sent to the Senators — is a price worth paying. After an injury-riddled 2025-26 season led to their first playoff absence in seven years, they will need the Tkachuks to return to the Stanley Cup finals. In a state known more for its basketball and football teams, the Panthers will not complain about the brighter spotlight.

"They're getting us on McAfee," General Manager Bill Zito said last month. "We're winning Stanley Cups and not getting on McAfee, right?"

"It's one of the most dynamic stories in our game. We have to pursue as many of these opportunities as we can, not just for them and for the brand. But for our game, for excitement in the U.S. to just pull more people in."

Zito engineered the Panthers' original deal for a Tkachuk brother in July 2022, after Matthew informed the Calgary Flames that he would not sign a long-term contract with them. Looking back, Zito remembers starting to work on the eventual package — a four-player, two-pick blockbuster, plus an eight-year extension for Matthew annually worth \$9.5 million — only a day or two before it was completed.

With Brady, Zito kept his interest quiet as the trade evolved over several weeks. It began around the N.H.L. draft combine in early June, when Brady followed Matthew's lead and told the Senators that he would not extend his current contract, which carries an \$8.2 million cap hit and expires after the 2027-28 season. But while the Panthers had done their homework on the player, Zito did not know much about Brady as a person, he said, beyond him being “Matthew’s brother.”

Still, when it became clear that Brady, who held leverage over the Senators because of a full no-trade clause, wanted to join his brother in South Florida, Zito did not hesitate. After shipping forward Mackie Samoskevich to the Seattle Kraken in a move to clear cap space, and returning home from fishing in the Florida Keys, Zito agreed to send the haul of picks to Ottawa on Father's Day weekend.

"It's fantastic," Zito said. "They're both individually wonderful people. Brady is a tough, skilled, fast, smart hockey player. And he's a smart, kind, wonderful person."

The Tkachuks were home in St. Louis at the time, celebrating both their gold medal success and the baptism of Matthew's daughter, Camille. But even after their grandfather received the trade notification on his smartwatch, reality didn't quite sink in.

"I think probably, just as shocked as everybody when the trade happened," Matthew said last month, around the start of training camp. "I was like, 'Oh my God, I never thought this was going to be possible.' So we've been enjoying every second since."

Days after the trade, Ellie Tkachuk, Matthew's wife, started helping Emma Tkachuk, Brady's wife, look for houses in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Now the brothers, once Atlantic Division rivals, live as literal neighbors: Matthew often makes the short commute to the Panthers' practice facility via golf cart, with Brady regularly tagging along.

When Brady first flew down to check out his new surroundings, Matthew showed him around the area and introduced him to his new teammates. But Brady took it upon himself to form his own relationships when he returned in August. He had previously met some of Matthew's teammates while watching from the stands during their Stanley Cup runs in 2023-24 and 2024-25, and connected with them further over dinners and rounds of golf.

In Florida, the Tkachuks are following in a long line of hockey-playing brothers who became N.H.L. teammates.

The twins Henrik and Daniel Sedin amassed near-identical Hall of Fame careers with the Vancouver Canucks, often skating on the same line. Maurice and Henri Richard won five straight Stanley Cups for the Montreal Canadiens from 1956 to 1960. Three Staal brothers — Eric, Jordan and Jared — once started a Carolina Hurricanes game together, in April 2013.

---

They aim to fuel arguably the league's best corps of forwards as Florida pursues a third Stanley Cup title in four years.

The historical company does not make their situation any less special.

"Let's face it," Matthew said. "How often do people get to play in the N.H.L. with their brother? That, in itself, is making this . . . just the best experience ever."

"It still doesn't feel real," Brady said. Despite the on-ice union, and despite their now-in-person podcast recordings, the Tkachuks want to carve separate paths in Florida. This was clear from the start of training camp last month.

"Our goal has always been that we don't want to just be attached to the hip and just be us two everywhere," Brady said. "We're still our own individual people."

For Brady, this means accepting less leadership responsibility than he did as the Senators' captain. Additionally, much to the chagrin of fans eager to see the Tkachuks skate together, they will likely spend most of their time on separate lines.

They have come a long way from batting each other as children in their St. Louis driveway. Now, with the Tkachuks beginning their journey as teammates on an early-season Cup favorite, they can continue their mutual ambitions — of growing the sport in their home country, of growing their personal brands — regardless of whether certain viewers enjoy the show.

"I guess it'll be nice that we're going to be on the same side," Brady said. "But at the end of the day, we'll be not just us two. But this whole group's going to be pushing each other to keep improving, keep getting better."

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The Mini Crossword

BY JOEL FAGLIANO

ACROSS

1 Old-fashioned business?

4 Start of a tennis point

6 Basic bagel variety

7 Like the most famous Hollywood celebrities

8 "Hoo-boy!"

1 It's in your head

2 Car rental option

3 Monthly expense

4 Many a call from an unknown number

Two Not Touch

Put two stars in each row, column and region of the grid. No two stars may touch, not even diagonally. Copyright © 2024 www.krazydad.com

---

Cryptogram

5 \_ Langley, singer with the 2026 #1 hit "Choosin' Texas"

GFQ HQUGCQI ZRJQ UCDZIG ETOJFUIQX U EONWUGQ NICURX NR AOQQJQ UI U OQPTAQ POZD GFQNO XQWZGQX DZH.

PUZZLE BY BEN BASS

YESTERDAY'S ANSWER Contradiction, contraception

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KenKen

Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.

Crossword | Edited by Will Shortz

ACROSS

1 One who might use they/them pronouns informally

5 Sensation after getting a tattoo, for some

9 How low can they go?

14 Meteor shower?

16 Stay under the covers all morning, to a Brit

17 Taps

19 Piano exercise

20 "It's never paid to ... against America": Warren Buffett

21 Place-holding letters on a schedule

22 Browbeaten

24 Trams

27 In the way of

28 Drill

29 Time to go fast?

30 Audacious, informally

33 "Midnight Cowboy" con man

36 Paws

40 Take a hankie to, say

41 Nora who wrote "When Harry Met Sally ..."

43 Counterpart of Brahma and Vishnu

46 Expand, as dough

48 Hawaiian fish with a palindromic name

49 Dessert

52 Deciduous tree often found in regions dominated by conifers

54 Just a number, they say

55 Long-lasting birth control option, in brief

56 Turn over

58 Naive regal gnat

63 Creepy

64 It separates China and South Korea

65 Everybody's hands

66 Impudence

67 Stanch

DOWN

1 And so on, in brief

2 Hero famously "red-pilled," in film

3 Perceived Democratic electoral bloc

PUZZLE BY RACHEL GREY AND JOHN KUGELMAN

4 Matchmaker in "Fiddler on the Roof"

5 Like many summertime coffee orders

6 Caped fighter

7 Professional who's busiest in Apr.

8 Tisanes

9 Popeye's rival

10 Making money or becoming famous, maybe

11 Smolder

12 Penalty box in hockey, slangily

13 Unbroken

15 Hoop alternative

18 Neighbor of Switz.

22 Something inside or outside a wine bar?

23 Count of "A Series of Unfortunate Events"

25 Unpredictable

26 Gingham or seersucker

28 Common policy at a neighborhood BBQ

31 Remote sensing technology that uses lasers

32 Eponymous Belgian resort town

34 Cringeily cute

35 Tiny slug?

37 Units of electric charge

38 Spray from a plane

39 Sharpen

42 Start to stick?

43 Under a parasol, say

44 "My feelings exactly"

45 Host Meredith of "25 Words or Less"

47 Cézanne painted a "Pyramid" of them

50 "Oh no!"

51 Clear stuff in a restaurant

52 Prefix often meaning "gas"

53 Flakes out?

57 Thelma and Louise, e.g.

59 Signifier of no value, in many programming languages

60 Grazing area

61 First name signifier?

62 Counterpart of a sire, on a horse farm

Play all of our games plus over 10,000 past puzzles for Wordle, Spelling Bee, The Crossword and more online at http://nytimes.com/games. For puzzle talk, visit http://nytimes.com/wordplay.

LINDA GOESSLING

Amid the action, a message of love

PHOTOGRAPHS BY THEA TRAFF FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Above, Mahershala Ali, left, who plays a hit man in "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother," and the director, Bassam Tariq, right. From far left, John Cho and Ali in the film.

JACLYN MARTINEZ/AMAZON MGM STUDIOS

Family and faith anchor the new film 'Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother'

BY SADIBA HASAN

Fatherhood forces a certain humility: an acknowledgment that in a child's heart, a mother comes first — three times over.

At least, that is the lesson of an Islamic hadith that serves as the thematic backbone of the film "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother," written and directed by Bassam Tariq and starring Mahershala Ali.

In the hadith, a man asks the Prophet Muhammad, "Who deserves the best of me?" The prophet responds, "Your mother." The man asks, twice more, who comes next, and the prophet responds each time, "Your mother." When he asks a fourth time, the prophet responds, "Your father."

It is a simple exchange that opens a central question of the film.

Latif, played by Ali, is a Houston hit man and father of three who is scrambling to find breast milk for his youngest daughter after his wife's death. Struggling to reconcile his Muslim faith and his dedication to his children with his profession, he finds himself in dangerous situations.

"The film crackles with tension," Alissa Wilkinson wrote in her Critic's Pick review for The New York Times, adding that the film "occupies the fertile space created when people show each other love and mercy."

The movie grew out of an unexpected turn in the careers of Tariq, 39, and Ali, 52. Fresh off Oscar wins for his performances in “Moonlight” in 2017 and “Green Book” in 2019, Ali landed the role of Blade for a Marvel movie to be directed by Tariq (“Mogul Mowgli”). But the project ultimately fell apart.

Still, the two developed a creative brotherhood and in 2024 began talking about a different kind of story — one rooted in fatherhood and faith.

“What the movie speaks to, to me in some ways, is how your children take care of you,” said Ali, the father of a 9-year-old daughter.

"It's like they can rescue us sometimes," said Tariq, who has two sons, 12 and 9. "They can piece us back together.

In a joint interview in September, Ali and Tariq discussed their yearslong friendship, the film's delicate portrayal of Muslim faith, and its balance of epic fights and poignant scenes. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Bassam, what happened in your own life to inspire the story?

BASSAM TARIQ It was in New York, 2014. My wife had just given birth, and she was sent to the emergency room in the middle of the night. She had an infection.

We weren't sure if she was going to make it. They wouldn't allow our son to be with her. So I was with my son, and he was not taking any formula. I don't know how he survived. I was calling a few places, trying to get some breast milk, and nobody could help me. Then, finally, my wife was well enough, and he went to nurse with her.

What was really interesting was how even after he fed, he was still really fussy. On the ride home from the hospital, I took him out of the seat, and I held him really close, and he finally calmed down. I was like, "Oh, he just needs me right now."

But you sat on this experience for a "When 'Blade' was happening, it wasn't at all even a question to bring this up. It would just be inappropriate."

while before you started writing a script in 2020?

TARIQ Yeah, because you don't think your story's enough to share. And it took a lot of people that believed in me to be like, "No, what you have to say is important."

That impostor syndrome has been real with me for a long time. Anytime I walk into these spaces, it's like, "Oh, is I.T. here?" It's like, "Nah, I'm the director."

You've said that you had Mahershala in mind while writing this script. Was it a coincidence that you met through a different project?

TARIQ Yes. When “Blade” was happening, it wasn’t at all even a question to bring this up. It would just be inappropriate. I only told him recently that I wrote his name in the script.

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Mahershala, by the time Bassam called you about "Your Mother," you were done with "Blade"?

MAHERSHALA ALI Yeah, I was totally done. Once we got back, and I was reading material again and looking for the right thing, this wonderful question came through in the form of "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother."

Between playing college basketball and undergoing a year of martial arts and sword practice for "Blade," you brought a physical history to this role. How did all that training shape how you moved on set?

ALI I started playing organized sports when I was 4. I was a BMX racer until I was 10, then I transitioned to more traditional sports. Later on, I played

college ball. The training and whatnot that I got to do from 2022 to 2023 also gave me a lot of confidence.

We had about two or three days total to work on all those fights in the film. I was worried that the fights would look stupid. I felt concerned that we weren't going to be able to pull off the fighting the way in which I knew we could do it. We were making this movie with a bag of nickels. And we pulled it off.

Bassam, the film is set in Houston, where you spent your teen years. Why was it a good backdrop for this movie?

TARIQ It's one of the few cities in the country where it's proportionately diverse, where there is no one majority. But then it's very religious. Because it doesn't have many city services — there's no taxes to pay for libraries or whatever — if you want to go play basketball, you go to the mosque, you go to the church.

How does the hadith about mothers resonate with you?

ALI I think this hadith, along with "heaven is at the feet of your mother," has everything to do with why I have the relationship that I have now with my mom.

There was a real fracture and break in our relationship. I left home at 16 and moved in with my father's parents. It wasn't until I converted to Islam when I was 25 and in the time following that and sort of getting educated in the faith where I came across the hadith. I'm seeing the relationship to mothers being emphasized and how important that is.

It's as a result of those things where I began to rebuild my connection and relationship to my mother.

The film is set during Ramadan, a holy month of fasting. Why then? TARIQ I wanted everything to feel very lived in, where we're not having to sit, stopping to explain anything. You would notice that it's Ramadan, but somebody else may not even think about it. But for those that know, it's that added layer that I think adds something exciting.

Yes, there are subtle nods to Muslim faith, from funeral rituals to the way prayer is portrayed.

TARIQ I want to give a shout out to Kate Arizmendi, our D.P. [director of photography], who is not Muslim. She went to prayer with us one day for jummah. She ended up being a part of the prayer and was shook by the experience. I think she was more worried about trying to add reverence to those moments of prayer in the film more than I was.

ALI I feel like Kate loved us. I've been on shows and in films where I just felt like I was in silhouette. I can name them, I won't, but I didn't feel cared for. [Kate] wanted to make sure that everything was seen, felt and textured in a way that respected who she was filming. It was one of the rare times where I felt deeply loved.

At over 50, man learns he's the son of a rock star

Left, Michael McDonald onstage with the Doobie Brothers in New York last year. Above, Mr. McDonald with his newfound son, Michael Goessling.

EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Michael Goessling heard from his biological father, of the Doobie Brothers

BY JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

The first time Michael Goessling, who was adopted as an infant, spoke to his biological father he asked him what he did for a living.

Musician, said the man, who called himself "Mike."

Still on the phone, and sitting in his car in his driveway, Mr. Goessling had already begun scouring the internet when Mike mentioned he was on tour and would be performing in St. Louis, where Mr. Goessling lives.

"And I'm looking, and the voice, and it all starts coming together," Mr. Goessling recalled during a phone interview last week. "I just spit it out: 'Are you Michael McDonald?' He chuckled and he said, 'Yeah, I'm afraid so.'"

That initial conversation between father and son took place in May 2025. Mr. Goessling, 59, has had some time to get used to the idea that his father rose to fame as a soulful lead vocalist of the Doobie Brothers.

Mr. McDonald, 74, wrote in a memoir that he was in eighth grade when his girlfriend got pregnant with Mr. Goessling, and the couple was pressured to give him away. After the birth,

Mr. McDonald dropped out of school to play music, moving through a series of bands, including a stint with Steely Dan, before joining the Doobie Brothers.

Mr. McDonald has also had a substantial career as a solo artist, including the 1982 hit "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)."

For Mr. Goessling, the discovery still feels surreal. During a lifetime of wondering about his biological parents, he mostly longed to be able to tell them he had a good life thanks to the kind and loving couple who adopted him.

"I was always very, very grateful to my birth parents for the choices they made on my behalf and giving me a shot in this world," he added.

But questions still lingered about his birth parents.

"I was certainly more prepared for perhaps, you know, Mike the retired schoolteacher or accountant or truck driver," he said. "But certainly not Mike the five-time-Grammy-Award-winning Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer."

For more than a year, the unexpected twist to Mr. Goessling's adoption tale stayed mostly under the radar, until a friend of Mr. Goessling's cousin reached out to a reporter he knew at KMOV, the St. Louis TV channel. It aired a news report last week.

Mr. McDonald did not respond to messages seeking comment last week.

Mr. Goessling was born in St. Louis, near where Mr. McDonald grew up. It turned out Mr. McDonald and his former girlfriend, who remained friends over the years, had spent some 30 years looking for their son.

Mr. McDonald's younger son took an ancestry test, which showed he had a brother named Michael Goessling in St. Louis.

On May 6, 2025, Mr. Goessling received a letter in the mail from a lawyer representing his birth parents, asking if he would like to be put in touch with them.

Later that day, he spoke with his birth mother, who revealed little about Mr. McDonald, saying it was his story to share.

Father and son — who share the same first name by coincidence — spoke after Mr. Goessling and his birth mother got a chance to meet in person.

"He took a back seat until we had that opportunity," Mr. Goessling said of Mr. McDonald.

Mr. Goessling, who supplies windows and doors for construction projects, calls his birth father “Mike,” and they meet when the musician is in St. Louis, he said. Mr. McDonald has been a doting grandfather to Mr. Goessling’s son, 16, and daughter, 13.

Mr. Goessling has long been an advocate for adoption. "What might come from this story and the attention it's getting all of a sudden is that the adoption narrative gets elevated in this country a little bit more and gets celebrated," he said.

When Mr. Goessling grew out his beard and hair during the Covid pandemic, people would tell him, "I love the whole Michael McDonald thing you got going on there," he said. Despite the resemblance, he never imagined they were related.

Growing up, Mr. Goessling was “a music nut,” he said, and eventually wrote his own songs. Around age 12, he began to play acoustic guitar, and still occasionally strums. He never performed for an audience, but does sing his tunes for family.

"I never sought performing as a path, but I've always enjoyed it," Mr. Goessling said. He added that his own music does not resemble Mr. McDonald's polished, soft-rock approach.

"He's on a level I could never aspire to," he said. "I put him in, obviously as the rest of the world does, a whole other bracket."

He was also a big Doobie Brothers fan, and said he had seen Mr. McDonald in concert at least twice before learning he was his biological father.

"I remember distinctly the first time somebody pointed out a new Doobie Brothers song; it was ‘Takin’ It to the Streets,' he recalled. Mr. McDonald had just been recruited by the band.

"I was an instant fan," Mr. Goessling said.

Emmett Lindner contributed reporting and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

With no recoil, he plunged into gun culture

AUSTIN, TEXAS

A U.S. sociologist attended dozens of firearms classes to learn about a way of life

BY SASHA VON OLDERSHAUSEN

On a Saturday morning in August, a group of students — including a high school teacher, a truck driver and a woman who works as a nanny — gathered in the conference room of a Wyndham Garden hotel here to learn about their Second Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Their instructor was Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works, a firearms academy in the bluest county in the state. The students were there for a course that would earn them the certificate needed to apply for a license to carry.

Among them was Harel Shapira, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, who, over four years, attended 42 firearms training classes like this one as research for his new book, “Basic Pistol: Living and Dying by the Gun in America.”

Shapira wanted to understand gun culture not through the usual debates over regulation and death tolls, but by immersing himself in the everyday world of the people who carry a weapon. "I find the conversation about guns to be incredibly limiting," he said. "I wanted to know about people, their lives, their experiences."

He bought a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. He began to spend time among gun owners, for whom carrying firearms was a way of life. Though the bulk of his ethnographic research took place in Texas, he argues that the worldview he encountered there is not uniquely Texan, and increasingly cuts across demographic lines.

"This is an American story," said Shapira. "I see understanding guns as a window into America."

That much was clear minutes into the class, which drew a strikingly diverse group and culminated in a field trip to a gun range.

In Texas, you don't need a license to carry a gun, but having one comes with certain privileges, including exemptions from federal restrictions around schools and government meetings. License holders can also carry after consuming alcohol, provided they are not legally intoxicated.

For many in the room, who shared their reasons for being there, the possibility of shooting in self-defense seemed less remote than real.

"As a lesbian, I just want to exercise my rights before somebody's coming for them," said Elizabeth Sabatier, the nanny, who had been considering buying a gun since Donald Trump's first presidential run in 2016.

Another student, a white man named Cody who had grown up around guns in the Midwest and more closely fit the profile of a typical American gun owner, said he was thinking about what might happen after he “put someone down” in self-defense: “I don’t want to be in the court of law and then some lawyers say, ‘Hey, this guy didn’t have any training.’”

The high school teacher feared that his mentally unstable ex-spouse might try to harm him. The truck driver worried about his safety on the road.

"You hear about it almost every day," Michael Jimenez, a city worker, said. "People that are angry, shooting at whoever and taking their anger out on the world."

Above, Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Left, Shapira on a gun range, and bottom left, with Michael Cargill, who runs Central Texas Gun Works, a firearms academy. Below, Shapira's new book.

He added that it's naïve to think society can eliminate all guns. "As long as there's one gun, someone who has bad intent can grab that gun," he said. "So we have to be able to protect ourselves from those people."

Shapira's interest in gun culture grew out of research for his 2017 book, "Waiting for José: The Minutemen's Pursuit of America," a study of a volunteer militia group that patrolled the U.S. border, intent on keeping out illegal immigrants from Mexico.

A member of that group who was also a National Rifle Association instructor took him shooting. The encounter revealed what Shapira describes as an “experiential gap” between his own unease with firearms and the instructor’s comfort and enthusiasm.

How, he wondered, could two people in the same world experience the same object — a gun — in such profoundly different ways? The question would come to undergird his research.

Shapira uses statistics sparingly in his new book, letting qualitative research carry much of the argument. But he points to one striking shift. In 1999, only about a quarter of American gun owners said self-defense was their primary reason for owning a firearm; hunting ranked first. Today, 72 percent cite self-defense, while hunters, he writes, are a “stark minority.”

In Shapira's telling, firearms training operates as a feedback loop. Fear brings people to the classroom, and the course gives them new reasons to be afraid.

After hours of class, and ten thousand rounds of ammunition, even Shapira — who grew up with Israeli parents in a politically liberal household where owning a gun was almost inconceivable — wasn't immune. “I had started to feel more vulnerable out in the world,” he writes. “I was constantly concerned about my and my family’s safety.”

In a New York Times guest essay, Shapira suggested that this sort of thinking teaches individuals to be “suspicious and atomized,” undermining a viable democracy.

But David Yamane, a sociologist at Wake Forest University, whose research overlaps with Shapira's, disputes that assertion, arguing that academic gun studies lean on a "master narrative" linking fear and right-wing politics as corrosive to democracy.

"There's a common tendency for sociologists — I'd say also liberals — to view fear negatively," said Yamane, who describes himself as a gun-owning liberal. He maintains that contemporary gun culture is rooted in ordinary people converting fear into information to manage uncertainty and protect themselves, often in restrained and socially acceptable ways.

A perception that the world had become increasingly unpredictable and violent seemed to pervade the firearms academy class.

Cargill, the instructor, defies the stereotype of the typical gun owner — he's Black, gay and was at one point a registered Democrat. But he committed to self-defense in his 20s, after his 70-year-old grandmother was mugged and raped while waiting for a bus. "I decided to turn that anger into action," he said.

Since then, Cargill has played an out-size role in challenging gun regulations, taking one fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A staffer at U.S. Law Shield, a membership-based legal defense service, was on hand in Cargill's classroom to promote its offerings. For \$25 a month, members are promised immediate access to a Second Amendment attorney. Those who signed up during the class also received a gunshot kit — a small, zippered case containing a tourniquet, chest seals and an airway tube used to keep an unconscious person breathing.

After four hours of coursework, Cargill told the students they would be taking a multiple-choice exam as part of the licensing requirements. Shapira leaned over and whispered, "You'll find that everyone passes the test." Even if they failed, he added, they can take it again and again.

For the final hour of class, the students were shuttled to a gun range at a ranch on the outskirts of town. There, they would shoot 50 rounds at varying distances. The shots they missed would be deducted from their final score.

Shapira took his place at the right end of the line — a position that, as he notes in his book, is statistically safer for avoiding errant bullets. Like a drill sergeant, Cargill paced up and down the line instructing students to chamber their rounds, then load their magazine. Before them, the deep blue outline of a target took the form of the head and torso of a human being.

Cargill told them to aim for the middle, the chest.

Soulful vs. self-serious

BOOK REVIEW

Ply

By Hernan Diaz. Riverhead. 452 pp. \$32.

BY DWIGHT GARNER

Hernan Diaz's new novel, “Ply,” set centuries from now, depicts a dystopian future in which civilization dangles by a thread. The state has been dismantled, the Great Lakes region of America has seceded, and the Pacific Coast has crumbled. In a bombed-out, Ballardian New York City, most of the inhabitants seem to have wandered out of an early-aughts cyberpunk novel.

An evil monopoly, Tensor, controls what's left of the energy supply. Noble bandits known as "pinchers" siphon off the volts needed to power events like underground rock shows. Private security henchmen in (what else?) black uniforms, black masks and black goggles pluck dissidents from the street and disappear them. "What were lawyers?" one character asks.

These details are straight from an Acme kit for dystopian novels. Diaz does allude to some weirdness at the margins — there's a place called “the island of the grunters,” for example, and a reference to “misanthropic communities of surfers” — but little more information is provided. I kept thinking about what Thomas Pynchon, or Neal Stephenson, might have done with the grunters and the surfers.

"Ply" is Diaz's third novel, after "In the Distance" (2017) and "Trust" (2022), the latter a co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize, alongside Barbara Kingsolver's "Demon Copperhead." One of the best things about Diaz is his determination to experiment: He pushes in a different direction each time out.

"In the Distance," set in the middle of the 19th century, was about Swedish brothers who intend to go to New York by ship but get separated. One boards the wrong boat and ends up penniless in San Francisco. The novel strips away the romantic veneer of the American frontier and subverts the archetypes of the western by having its lonely protagonist walk east on foot instead of west.

“Trust” was largely about financiers and old-money marriages in early-20th-century New York. The novel borrows some of the high realism of Henry James and Edith Wharton, but it includes immigrant perspectives, modernist in tone, that cut against the finery. The book fires cannonball after cannonball into the flanks of capitalism, dreary old white men and the historical erasure of women.

After those backward-facing novels, "Ply" pitches forward, into the realm of science fiction, to vastly lesser effect. This would-be bullet train barely exits the station. It gets caught between diverging tracks — potboiler and literary novel — and runs into the gravel in between. It's polished but lifeless.

On the potboiler side, there's little suspense — despite one female scientist's intention to rig up a machine that will “alter the fabric of reality itself” (a lot of tin foil is involved) and possibly spawn a quantum black hole, one she argues will be “perfectly safe.” On the literary side, Diaz’s characters lack interiority. They’re action figures, posed into series of cinematic stances.

“Ply” is as humorless as a James Blunt song. Little interest is taken in the messy, earthy life that humans make do with. Diaz doesn’t do close-up work. No meals are taken, and there’s no sex, except in the briefest and most notional of ways. He has a greater predilection for the soul, and when soulfulness runs up against self-seriousness, as it does here, there is no remedy.

The dialogue tends to be flatly transactional in a B-movie kind of way (“Let’s go to the control room. No more delays”) or seemingly made to be sung to the accompaniment of woodwinds: “There’s nothing lonelier than a goodbye without an answer”; “It can be a beautiful thing to share, silence”; “We are nothing but a constant becoming.” Monologues about science and ideology extend for pages at a time.

The plot, put simply, is this: A nameless young woman — she's an orphan and a skillful pincher — develops a novel method to steal and store large amounts of power in portable "bricks." Others covet this technology. Tensor's goons, and other rivals, are at her heels as she bicycles through a blasted city of abandoned apartment blocks.

This orphan falls in with an older woman, who's also been following her. This woman is a scientist, world-class tinkerer and possessor of communist-anarchist politics. She needs the bricks to power her plan to rip a revolutionary hole in the space-time continuum. She says things like, “We will work the loom of the universe.”

MATT DORFMAN

The two are joined by another, younger orphan. The three resemble one another in a manner that puts you in mind of Edward Albee's play "Three

Tall Women," about the same woman at different periods of her life. Essentially, they're gleaners who make up a groovy, ragtag all-female commune.

“Ply” wears its politics, gender and otherwise, very heavily. As in “Trust,” nearly all the men are acquisitive creeps, or worse, and the women are idealized. Here they are bold, sensitive, plucky, attractive in a bohemian, loosely sketched manner (green eyes, prominent collarbones, gaunt frames, aristocratic postures), routinely smarter than everyone else in whatever room they are in, almost too good for this world.

This kind of enormous deference toward female characters has slowly come to seem, I think, like a form of disrespect — nearly as fraudulent as Norman Mailer's boisterous chauvinism (and the old, winking flattery and chivalry) that it replaced. Each is a form of not paying attention. Extremes have begun to meet.

They meet, too, in this novel's socio-political content. It's as clunky and didactic, in a progressive-anarchist direction, as anything in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." For readers of nearly any politics, it's suffocating, as if someone has thrown a tarp over your head.

The graves of commerce, liberal democracy, “patriarchal” families and “guardians of tradition” are danced upon, repeatedly, in favor of “spontaneous forms of cooperation,” “collective closeness,” “freedom in dissolution, joy in disorder” and “wild beauty.” Board games are scorned by an influential character because "gamers love rules."

The book's heroes pointedly give their work away for free and the put-downs are on the dollar-book Marxist level of: You are "a friend of surplus." The words "collective" and "we" appear as often as "love" does in a pop song, and the pronoun "I" is deeply suspect.

Extremes meet, too, in this novel's view of knowledge and learning. When the scientist brags that she doesn't do "normal research that necessarily expands and builds on previously acquired knowledge," she sounds like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., scornful of painfully accumulated expertise.

When it comes to reading fiction, I find myself in sync with D.H. Lawrence, who put it bluntly: "We have to choose between the quick and the dead." By quick novels he meant ones that, no matter what else is on their minds, are vital, surprising and zoom low over common lived experience. His off-the-top-of-his-head list of examples of such lived experience included snow, bedbugs, sunshine, trains, silk hats, sorrow, people, food, diphtheria, fuchsias, the sex organs, stars, ideas, God, toothpaste, lightning and toilet paper.

For Lawrence, “unquick” was a synonym for “dead,” and “Ply” is as unquick as they come. “The ordinary unquick novel, even if it’s a best seller,” Lawrence continued, “disappears into absolute nothingness, the dead burying their dead with surprising speed. For even the dead like to be tickled.”

Savoring fall's pastoral and cultural bounty

OMNI MOUNT WASHINGTON RESORT & SPA

TRINCHERA RESERVE & LODGE

Clockwise from top: Omni Mount Washington Resort & Spa; Zetter Bloomsbury; Kimpton Ashbel New York-Park Avenue; and Trinchera Reserve & Lodge.

MARTIN MORRELL

5 new or renovated stays include a Rockies lodge and a Florentine convent

BY STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

The arrival of autumn brings pastoral traditions like leaf-peeping and pumpkin picking. It also heralds a new season of events in cities around the world.

Whether you're longing for a hike in the woods or a night at the symphony, these five new and renovated hotels show that there's more than one way to savor fall's pleasures, from a lodge in the Colorado mountains to a boutique stay in the heart of London.

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FORT GARLAND, COLO. TRINCHERA RESERVE & LODGE

Visit this new getaway surrounded by breathtaking wilderness in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in early fall, and the aspen trees are likely to be a golden yellow. It will be rutting season for elk. And you will have plenty of land to explore.

This portion of Southern Colorado was previously a more-than-170,000-acre (690,000-hectare) ranch owned by the Forbes family before being purchased in 2007 by Louis Bacon, founder of the New York-based Moore Capital Management. In June, the 16-room lodge opened, with itineraries that may include guided hikes, mountain biking excursions, fishing and stargazing.

Designed by Los Griegos Studio, the lodge's rooms are warm and inviting, with Southwestern textiles and Western art. In the communal great room you'll find a three-sided stone fireplace, along with places to kick back and read a book, a game-playing area with a pool table, and a bar. Meals might take place in the lodge dining room overlooking the mountains, or outdoors. There's also a wellness area with a fitness center, sauna, cold plunge and hot tub. Families and groups seeking more privacy may choose one of two houses, known as the Reserve Residences. Starting rates — which are all-inclusive, with transportation from the San Luis Valley Regional Airport, food and beverages, and experiences — are from \$2,500 a night, double occupancy.

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LONDON

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ZETTER BLOOMSBURY

This 68-room-and-suite boutique hotel near Bloomsbury Square spans six Georgian townhouses. It is steps from the British Museum, where the blockbuster Bayeux Tapestry exhibition is drawing massive crowds to see the 11th-century embroidery that depicts events leading up to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England.

The city's fall calendar is brimming with other events, including theater, the BFI London Film Festival and the National Gallery's upcoming exhibition, "Renoir and Love." Then there are the Royal Parks, which will be alive with autumnal colors and activities.

Zetter Bloomsbury is meant to feel as if you've stepped into a private home. The London-based interior designer James Thurstan Waterworth spent years collecting items for the hotel from auctions, markets and antique dealers, including African textiles, European antiques and 20th-century artworks.

The rooms feature rich, earthy colors, just right for autumn. Some are snug; others are spacious suites with outdoor space.

The Terrace suite, for instance, has a claw-foot bath and a wraparound terrace. Head to the Parlour for coffee or a cocktail, and visit the Orangery for afternoon tea with views of the garden designed by Harry and David Rich, former presenters on the BBC series "Garden

Rescue." Prices from £400, or about \$530, a night.

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BRETTON WOODS, N.H.

OMNI MOUNT WASHINGTON

RESORT & SPA

Completed at the end of the Gilded Age, this storied hotel (Thomas Edison designed its electrical system) at the base of Mount Washington is fresh from an extensive renovation that included all 200 rooms of the historic section and introduced a new cafe.

KIMPTON ASHBEL NEW YORK-PARK AVENUE

The resort, with its grand Spanish Renaissance Revival facade, is in the state's major ski area. Yet autumn has its own charms. Ride the Bretton Woods Skyway Gondola from a base lodge to the top of Mount Rosebrook, taking in the foliage and views of the Presidential Range. Play golf at one of the resort's two courses. Or immerse yourself in the area's natural features. The 269-room-and-suite property is surrounded by the White Mountain National Forest, making the resort an appealing base from which to hike, go fly fishing or ride horses. A new cafe, Labrador Tea & Coffee, offers light bites and sweets.

The sprawling spa has also been refurbished. Enjoy a cocktail with mountain views at Rosebrook Bar. Pull up a chair at Stickney's Restaurant, a pub and steakhouse. Or get cozy in the Cave, an atmospheric stone-and-brick watering hole that was a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Should you book one of the renovated rooms, you'll find a serene space with blue-and-green hues inspired by the mountains. Prices from around \$550 a night during peak foliage; starting from around \$300 in November.

FIESOLE, ITALY

VILLA SAN MICHELE,

A BELMOND HOTEL, FLORENCE

After a year and a half of renovations, this former 15th-century convent — known for its Renaissance architecture and details such as frescoes, loggias and a cloister — has reopened in the hills above Florence with terraced gardens and 39 luxurious rooms and suites. Restored portraits of friars line the corridors, and rooms feature terra-cotta floors, stonework and tapestries. A number of them have terraces or balconies, like the cozy Chapel room. The two-story Limonaia suite is in what was once an orangery and has views of Florence and the villa gardens. The Grand Tour suite was once Napoleon Bonaparte's headquarters.

Designed by the Florence-based Luigi Fragola Architects, Villa San Michele is just beyond the hustle and bustle of the city, surrounded by trees and the Parco Monumentale di Monte Ce-

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In London, the Zetter Bloomsbury is steps from the British Museum, where the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition is drawing crowds.

ceri, where you can walk the trails, delighting in autumn's colors. The hotel provides free shuttle vans to Florence.

Find more bird's eye views at the hotel's Antesi restaurant, which offers eight tables in a Renaissance loggia and tasting menus with dishes such as Costoluto (homemade pasta, tomato, raw milk pecorino and lemon). For pizzas and meats from a charcoal grill near the heated pool, try San Michele Grill. There's also Ristorante San Michele, where you can order pastas and seafood.

The hotel is offering a fall aperitivo series featuring local food and wine producers, as well as experiences spotlighting local craftsmanship, including visits to an art restorer's studio and an artisanal perfumery. The property has also added a spa. Prices from €1,700, or about \$1,900, excluding taxes. The hotel is open through Jan. 3.

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NEW YORK CITY KIMPTON ASHBEL

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NEW YORK-PARK AVENUE

New York in autumn is abuzz with cultural offerings, including the kickoff of the New York City Ballet and New York Philharmonic seasons, the annual New York City Wine & Food Festival, exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and events like the Village Halloween Parade and the 100th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And if you want to experience it all with your furry best friend, this 205-room-and-suite hotel is among the city's newest places to curl up together. Pets stay free, with no restrictions on size or weight.

Built in 1928 as the Beaux-Arts Doral Park Avenue Hotel, it's less than a five-minute walk to Grand Central Terminal. The Morgan Library & Museum is essentially around the corner, and Bryant Park is a short stroll away. Beyond the hotel's limestone-clad facade, the rooms are contemporary, with soft colors. Some have balconies, and a number have views of Park Avenue and the Empire State Building. There's free morning coffee and an afternoon wine hour in the lobby. And the Park & Bel Cafe has baked goods, fruit and sandwiches in the morning and small plates in the evening.

Prices from \$350 a night; see the website for specials, including the "Sit, Stay, Sleepover" package for dogs and their humans.

How to get a refund on that value-added tax abroad

BY ELAINE GLUSAC

Travelers abroad often pay taxes that are bundled into the prices of goods and services. They are widespread among European Union countries and even charged on hotel rates and restaurant meals.

On consumer goods that visitors to Europe plan to take home, the taxes are refundable upon departure. Unlike retail taxes charged at the state and local level in the United States, value-added taxes — or VAT — in Europe are charged at the national level and accumulate at each phase of production, marketing and distribution, so a shopper may not be aware they've been added.

VAT tax rates and minimum thresholds for qualifying purchases vary by country.

Across Europe, VAT rates range from 8.1 percent to 27 percent and average 21.9 percent. Many countries impose a minimum purchase value from a single vendor to be eligible for a VAT refund.

Spain, where there is no minimum to apply for a refund, is an exception. The guidelines in France are more typical; there, consumers must spend 100 euros (about \$114) at a participating retailer, where the purchase can be a single item or several rung up together.

Because the process is not synchronized by the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union that oversees national tax rules, procedures vary and can be confusing.

While travelers should check with the retailer for specific instructions, here are the steps to take in order to get a VAT refund in Europe.

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KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS

According to a spokeswoman at the European Commission, VAT refunds are available for certain goods, “namely those that can be carried in personal luggage.”

Big-ticket items like cars and yachts are excluded and individual countries may also exclude specific items.

When shopping in Europe, keep your sales receipts. Shops that participate in

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On consumer goods that visitors to Europe plan to take home, some taxes are refundable upon departure.

tax-refund programs usually have an identifying sign in the window or at the register.

The goods must be new, so don't expect a tax refund on a vintage vase; and unused, so if you buy a ski jacket in Cortina d'Ampezzo and use it while skiing there, it's ineligible.

A vendor may even wrap and seal your purchase, preventing you from using it while you are traveling in order to qualify for a refund.

In addition to the receipt, make sure you get a VAT refund form from the shopkeeper, showing the transaction date.

Refunds are only available to non-E.U. citizens on personal purchases that are not for resale. Retailers must verify citizenship using the buyer's passport, so make sure you have it with you when shopping.

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BE TIMELY

Tax refunds are only available on items taken out of the European Union within three months of purchase.

PHILIP LINDEMAN

You may move between member countries within that window, but can only apply for a refund when you are leaving the European Union.

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FILE AT DEPARTURE

Foreign travelers can apply for a tax refund at their point of departure from the European Union. This may be the Eurostar train station in Paris for an England-bound express train.

For most Americans, the point of departure will be an international airport where they can expect to find VAT refund desks near customs or currency exchanges.

Travelers must have their refund applications stamped by a customs agent who may ask to see the item you purchased. Be prepared to pack anything you've purchased and hope to get a refund on in your carry on bag.

Sometimes customs offices handle the refund. At other times, travelers must use services such as Global Blue and Planet to expedite their refund filings, for a fee. (Shops or services that offer automatic tax refunds at the point of sale usually require travelers to send their stamped customs forms in, or risk having the refund rescinded.)

Refunds are usually offered in the currency of the country you are departing. They can be made in cash or to the credit card used for the purchase.

Because of the many steps involved in applying for a refund — and the lines at refund desks — travelers should allow extra time at the airport or train station.

---

DECLARE YOUR PURCHASES

Depending on what you've purchased, you may have to declare the value of the items you are bringing home to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and pay any associated fees.

In the United States, individual travelers can bring back up to \$800 in duty-free goods every 30 days.

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LOOK FOR REFUNDS

Europe isn't the only place to look for value-added taxes and their refunds. More than 170 countries charge value-added taxes or their equivalent.

Not all of these are refundable to American travelers, but many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America offer refunds.

Alexander Smith, an associate professor of economics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, said he recently applied for and received refunds for purchases in Japan, which was seamless, and in South Africa, where he nearly missed his flight trying to complete the paperwork.

Elegance is an attitude

LONGINES

ATHENS DEMOCRACY FORUM

Leaders paint a picture of the past that they see as preferable to the present

The fuel for Europe's far right

On the rise

A rally for the far-right Alternative for Germany party last month in Schwerin, Germany. It did well in two state elections that followed.

LISI NIESNER/REUTERS

NEWS ANALYSIS

BERLIN

Voters who feel adrift respond to appeals to nostalgia and pride

BY STEVEN ERLANGER

The rise of a far-right party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany, represents a skewing of history, fueled by its own, sometimes imaginary vision of the past. It feeds, analysts say, on widespread alienation from a liberal, multicultural, united Germany committed to the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes.

The AfD is now the most popular party nationwide, polls say, close to governing a German state for the first time. The party has benefited from economic and industrial decline and a sense of insecurity, which it blames on the extensive migration of young Muslims in the last decade.

The party has also thrived on a key element that ties most populist parties together, especially those of the far right: nostalgia for a society and nation lost to time, even if they exist only in gilded memory or fantasy.

"We live in a world today of fragmentation and growing inequality, no longer with unifying themes or a unifying narrative," said Mohamed A. El-Erian, an economist at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

That sense of insecurity, analysts say, is driving many people to yearn for the narratives they do know, especially in the past, when life is remembered as simpler, family structures seemed more defined, and Western nations were largely Christian and less diverse.

Across Europe, far-right leaders have painted that idea of the past as preferable to the present.

They have played down or dismissed inconvenient facts, such as Mussolini in Italy, collaboration with the Nazis, Soviet occupation or the inequalities of Margaret Thatcher's Britain.

France's far-right party, the National Rally, ahead in the polls for next year's crucial presidential election, has made French identity central to its ideology, which includes praising heroes like Joan of Arc and playing down the Vichy regime.

Its emphasis on national values, assimilation and state preferences for citizens is largely shared by other far-right parties, including the Party of Freedom of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the Sweden Democrats and the Reform U.K. party of Nigel Farage.

Behind tough positions on restricting immigration — and the deportation, or “remigration,” of illegal immigrants and criminals — these parties envision a threat to their culture and identity. They see national or even European culture as largely white and Christian, threatened by globalization, Islam and the dilution of nationalism in institutions like the European Union.

Leaders of the American MAGA movement have expressed similar fears.

Vice President JD Vance worries about “civilizational death,” both in Europe and the United States, and argues that ancestry means more than adherence to a national creed.

"I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say" anyone who does not agree with "progressive liberalism" does not belong in the country, he said last year.

The yearning for a proud identity is particularly strong in the former East Germany, which was essentially annexed in a peaceful takeover in 1989. As the country unified, West Germans arrived as a new elite to run businesses, or shut them down, and as much as a quarter of the population moved west, including many young women.

In a conversation in Weimar, in Thu-GERMANY, PAGE S4

Debating the risks posed by A.I.

ATHENS

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Technology and its threats were central themes of the Athens Democracy Forum

BY FARAH NAYERI

Lorena Austin, a U.S. Democrat elected to Arizona's House of Representatives in 2022, fights for issues such as housing and homelessness, education and climate.

Yet for a brief moment in September, voters were left with a completely different impression of her.

In a social-media campaign ad (posted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action), a smiling Ms. Austin was pictured alongside a group of Democrats supporting the other side: the conservative Republican candidate Andy Biggs, who is running for governor of Arizona in November.

The image was pure fabrication.

Technology and its threats to democracy were the central theme of last week's Athens Democracy Forum, an annual gathering of policymakers, business leaders, academics and activists held in association with The New York Times.

Tech's threats

At the Athens Democracy Forum, one panel after another warned of the potential risks that social media, deepfakes, cyberattacks and A.I. posed to humanity.

The case of Ms. Austin's fake photo came up in a presentation by William Gates, executive director of the Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory at Arizona State University, who gave it as an example of the mounting dangers to democracy from disinformation created by artificial intelligence.

He was hardly alone. At the Athens gathering, one panel after another warned of the potential risks that social media, deepfakes, cyberattacks and the rapid advances of A.I. posed to society, democracy and humanity as a whole.

Other key topics at this year's forum: the United States' ongoing war with Iran, and the aftermath of the Nov. 3 U.S. congressional elections.

HILARY SWIFT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

In an interview after his presentation, Mr. Gates acknowledged that lying about your opponent has been going on for as long as we've had politics.

But what has changed, he said, was how fast troublesome fakes could be created. He pointed out that in the past, creating a fake photograph was a time-consuming job requiring a graphic designer and a good deal of expertise. Not today, he said. All it took today was asking A.I. to do it for you.

But the damage can be extensive. In a fake video, for example, an election official might declare that an election has been canceled, urging voters to stay home, Mr. Gates said; or announce that 50 polling stations have closed, sending voters to nonexistent locations.

As in previous years, the forum gave voice to the young — university students as well as teenagers — to ensure that the discussions were of relevance to their generation.

One youth-related panel focused on teen access to social media, following Australia's decision last December to ban children under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms.

Speaking in favor of controls was Peter G. Kirchschläger, a professor of ethics at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland and a visiting professor at ETH Zurich. He said young people, now “addicted” to social media, needed “rehab measures.”

“We would never distribute cigarettes to 10-year-olds and say, ‘Look: find a responsible way to deal with tobacco,’” he said.

He called for “preventive measures” and social-media education to ensure that young people would “use these technologies in a responsible way.”

But Alexia Kadoglou, a teenage student, said she was against social media bans, because she used social media every day to communicate with her friends, keep up with the news and express herself.

"We should have access to social media without any restrictions, but we should learn how to be digitally responsible," she said. "Young people should have a say."

Besides their harmful impact on adolescents, the internet and social media have also done demonstrable damage to journalism: Readers have migrated online, and revenues from advertising and print subscriptions have dwindled. Now, A.I. is throwing up a whole new set of challenges, said speakers in a panel on rethinking journalism.

"It's an enormous threat to our industry," said Martin Baron, a former executive editor at The Washington Post. He said many people got their news from chatbots, which they trusted more than news organizations because they assumed the news was gathered from all FORUM, PAGE S8

Dignity, freedom, and opportunity for all.

OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS

Scandals are losing their power in politics

TRAVELING PROTEST A truck in Madrid with an image of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain and his wife, Begoña Gómez, who was accused of corruption.

Shamelessness is part of it. But polarized support is also tempering voter backlash.

BY AMANDA TAUB

Scandal was the political theme of the summer.

In the United States, Max Miller, a Republican member of Congress, was accused by his ex-wife of physically assaulting her and their toddler daughter. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican candidate for Senate, had previously been indicted on felony charges of securities fraud and impeached for a list of allegations including bribery, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice and abuse of the public trust. Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, was dogged for months by an escalating series of accusations of past misconduct, culminating in a former girlfriend's coming forward to say he raped her several years ago. (All have denied the allegations against them. Mr. Paxton's impeachment trial ended in acquittal, and he struck a deal to avoid criminal trial in which he paid \$300,000 without admitting wrongdoing.)

Of these politicians, Mr. Platner stands out. He is the only one who suffered significant political consequences: abandoning his campaign. Mr. Miller continues his campaign for re-election. Mr. Paxton won his primary, unseating John Cornyn, a longtime senator who is decidedly less scandal-plagued.

Scandals, it seems, are losing their power. Looking at this litany of outrages, you might be tempted to wring your hands over the death of shame in American life. In 2015, Ezra Klein called Donald Trump's shamelessness his "superpower," because he refused to give an inch when confronted with examples of his politically incorrect statements. Although Mr. Trump has not tested his stated theory that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" without losing any voters, his political fortunes have remained buoyant even after he was impeached twice, was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and enriched himself by billions of dollars in office.

But while plenty of ink has been spilled on the subject of shamelessness during the Trump era, this is a global phenomenon. It's difficult to see how American shamelessness could be responsible for, say, Spain's Socialist prime minister's continuation in office despite a wave of scandals that has hit his administration and his family.

In fact, political science research suggests that the problem isn't the death of shame, nor anything unique to America. Around the world, studies show partisan polarization is causing a breakdown in the chain reaction by which misconduct used to lead to consequences.

The political scientist Theodore Lowi defines scandal as “corruption revealed” — a breach of moral or legal codes, exposed for public condemnation. In the past, scandals always carried the threat that the revelation of the misconduct would lead to a public backlash, which in turn would generate some kind of punishment. But now the link between revelation and reaction often seems to have been severed.

---

THE NEW PLAYBOOK

Typically, the expectation is that news of scandalous wrongdoing will create outrage among voters. That, in turn, incentivizes political elites: The opposition will try to weaponize the scandal to win an advantage, while the wrongdoer's party will try to distance itself from the scandal and its perpetrator. If public interest in the scandal stays high, both parties have an incentive to push for the wrongdoer to resign and perhaps to impose other punishments as well.

Today's landscape looks very different. "There's a playbook now that didn't exist before," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston who studies U.S. political scandals. "The reason politicians hang on instead of resigning is that increasingly that's working in a polarized system."

In many countries, the ideological — and, in many cases, cultural — distance between left and right has grown. Numerous studies have found that political beliefs are becoming the basis for a complete personal identity, with everything from what you wear to what you eat associated with your political positions. And “affective polarization,” where people feel warmly toward members of their own camp but intense hostility toward their opponents, can turn disagreements into deep emotional divides.

That polarization, experts say, is undoing the power of scandal. Today, voters are less likely to become outraged by what politicians on their own side do, and less likely to abandon them if doing so might hand an advantage to their enemies. Without the threat of voter backlash, political elites have little incentive to force resignations, impeachments or other consequences. Although scandals do sometimes lead to punishments, that has become rarer, and the threshold much higher.

One reason is that when politics is polarized, the media tends to be, too, researchers say. Partisan media outlets often downplay allegations of misconduct about ideologically aligned politicians and may treat them as conspiracies by the opposition.

“In a parallel media system with propaganda-like partisan outlets, it becomes very unlikely that voters receive clear and credible information about either their own side's politicians (where nonreporting is the most likely pattern) or the other side (where overinterpretation of small incidents, and sometimes unfounded charges, become possible),” Veronika Patkos, a senior researcher at the Center for Social Sciences in Budapest who studies polarization in Europe, said via email.

Spain has a multiparty political system, but polarization between the left and the right rose sharply over recent decades, said Mariano Torcal, a Spanish political scientist and the author of “From Voters to Hooligans: Political Polarization in Spain.” Today, he said, voters behave like hardcore sports fans, supporting their side through thick and thin. “They tend to exonerate the responsibility of the leaders and say, ‘This is a campaign of manipulation, orchestrated by the media,’” Mr. Torcal said.

There is often a grain of truth in that, he noted. Partisan outlets have an incentive to treat even minor misbehavior by the other side as a major scandal, which can create a "cry wolf" effect as voters assume that all scandals are just partisan media narratives.

In fact, in highly polarized media environments, scandals can even help politicians. “It gives them eyeballs,” Mr. Rottinghaus said. “It gives them a chance to be able to push back against the ‘powers that be’ and say that they’re the ones who are under fire from these mystery opponents.”

He pointed to Mr. Paxton's successful primary campaign in Texas. "He's used these scandals that have been leveled against him, or that have resulted from his ethical issues, by saying this is just this partisan witch hunt, and that every attack on him is an attack on what he stands for."

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain has similarly seized on a corruption case against his wife, Begoña Gómez. Mr. Sánchez has portrayed the accusations as a right-wing witch hunt, and his supporters hope the perceived overreach by a politically motivated judge will mobilize left-wing voters whose enthusiasm has been dampened by damaging scandals connected to top officials in his Socialist party. He has branded media outlets that cover his wife's scandals as “enemies of democracy” and implied that they are part of a conspiracy.

Far-right populists, who base their careers on appealing to one extreme of a polarized electorate, have been particularly adept at using that playbook. The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who was convicted of embezzlement and barred from running for office for five years, called the charges against her a “witch hunt” and claimed that a “system” of deep-state judges and politicians were plotting against her and her followers. Recent opinion polls suggest that she could win the next presidential election despite the conviction.

And Nigel Farage, the leader of the British right-wing populist party Reform U.K., has claimed that allegations of financial wrongdoing against him and his party are an “establishment plot” designed to prevent him from becoming prime minister. The defense seems to have resonated with voters: A poll last month showed his party likely to win the next election.

When a nation is deeply split, it is easier for voters to forgive the transgressions of individual politicians for the sake of maintaining political supremacy, said Tamar Hermann, a public opinion researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. Even if voters “are very angry about this scandal or that scandal,” that can pale in comparison with their concerns about allowing the other side to take power, she said.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been on trial for over five years on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He has argued that the criminal case against him was politically motivated and that he alone can take on Israel's enemies and prevent a Palestinian state. As polarization deepened the distance — and distrust — between political camps, voters became convinced that the political stakes were too high to oust Mr. Netanyahu, said Iddo Porat, a professor at the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, Israel, who studies partisan polarization.

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A DOWNWARD SPIRAL

When the link between scandals and consequences starts to break down, the implications for democracy can be serious.

Under normal circumstances, scandals are an essential lever of accountability, and even renewal.

But when the logic of polarization takes over, that lever no longer works. A study on which Ms. Patkos was a co-author found that in 28 European countries, democratic accountability weakened as polarization grew. The effect seems to be particularly strong when it comes to incidents that seem minor or somewhat ambiguous, she said.

"One partisan camp starts to feel 'I have always known these people aren't trustworthy,' while the other thinks, 'Come on, this is nothing, no reason to withdraw trust,'" she said.

Allowing wrongdoers to keep power encourages more misconduct, which further erodes voter trust and widens polarization, as a partisan news media draws attention to the opposing party's getting away with scandalous behavior.

That widening polarization makes it even more difficult to impose consequences for new scandals. It's a devastating feedback cycle. And with every round, the system grows weaker.

The Democracy & Culture Foundation was founded in 2019. We aim to become the leading global platform for dialogue and solution-oriented activities concerning the evolution of democracy and culture.

Two of our major events, the Athens Democracy Forum in association with The New York Times, and Art for Tomorrow, are held annually and designed to convene, connect and foster collaboration between prominent and emerging voices for both democracy and culture. Our impact-driven programs focus on Education & Leadership, Policy work, and Citizen Participation initiatives.

Learn more at

@demcultfoundation

democracyculturefoundation

in The Democracy & Culture Foundation

Staying power Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, had previously been indicted on felony charges of securities fraud and impeached for a list of allegations including bribery, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice. That didn't stop him from winning the primary race in May to become the Republicans' candidate for the Senate in Texas.

KENNY HOLSTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

South Korea confronts its violent past

SOUTH KOREA DISPATCH

SEOUL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY WOOHAE CHO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Museum in Seoul tells history of suppression that still echoes today

BY JIN YU YOUNG

The matte black brick building has stood in the heart of Seoul for 50 years. It is also unusual for the slit-like windows that run across its fifth floor. Each looked out of small cells, some of which were painted blood red to evoke fear.

There, in 1981, South Korea's military dictatorship tortured Yoo Dong-woo, a former factory worker, for organizing labor protests. His ribs were broken, some of his teeth were knocked out, and blood constantly pooled in his mouth.

"So, this is how a person dies," he recalled thinking at the time.

Mr. Yoo and his cause survived. South Korea is now a raucous democracy. And, as of last summer, the site where he was beaten mercilessly, as were hundreds of others, is part of the National Museum of Korean Democracy. The exhibits — one describing the torture meted out to detainees is so gruesome that it is off-limits to young children — remind visitors of a past that must not be repeated.

But six months before the museum opened, South Koreans got a shocking echo of that period: President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law. The crisis was quickly averted, and Mr. Yoon is serving a life sentence in prison for insurrection. The museum is still deciding on how to acknowledge that episode, but in recent months South Koreans have gotten alarming reminders of the country's dark history.

In May, a Starbucks promotion appeared to mock a massacre in the city of Gwangju in 1980, when the dictator Chun Doo-hwan deployed tanks and paratroopers to crush pro-democracy protesters. Shortly after, a high school baseball team from Seoul made headlines for taunting its opponents from Gwangju by chanting “Let’s go to Starbucks!” and “Tank Day!” Both episodes struck a nerve.

"I can't help but feel that our past is still unfolding," said Na Ji-hyun, who was visiting the museum in July. She had been detained at the building, known as the Namyeong-dong Anti-Communist Interrogation Office (dong means neighborhood in Korean) for more than a week in 1983.

Then 22, she got caught in the dictatorship's dragnet because she was part of a group that gave night classes on literacy, math and social sciences to factory workers and housekeepers, and was seen by officials as a possible breeding ground of dissent. Interrogators coerced her cooperation by pointing to officers who were notorious for torture and recounting stories of past detainees who had died in their hands.

She heard the screams of other prisoners who were being tortured down the hall.

"I didn't know what was happening, and I couldn't dare to ask," Ms. Na said.

While she was not beaten, she was questioned for hours on end and forced to write statements about her political ideology, education and social circle.

Even today on the fifth floor, sunlight seeps in thin slivers through windows that are barely a foot wide. They were designed to prevent inmates from jumping to their deaths or escaping. A circular staircase winds up, built in a way to disorient blindfolded detainees as they were marched to interrogation rooms.

One cell has been preserved as a tribute to one of its former occupants, Park Jong-cheol, a student activist who died after being waterboarded at the building in 1987. His killing, which the authorities tried to cover up, helped catalyze mass protests that forced the government to agree to a free and direct presidential election.

The Starbucks promotion, for a tumbler, included a phrase — “Thump it on the desk” — that some critics said evoked Mr. Park's death. The authorities had initially claimed that Mr. Park gasped and died after an interrogator slammed a desk in his cell. The company apologized and fired its chief executive in South Korea. In the other episode, the high school apologized and its baseball team was barred from nationwide competition for a month.

“They are not matters that can simply be apologized away,” said Kim Chanho, a manager at the Korea Democracy Foundation, which operates the museum.

Many in South Korea have blamed the episodes on a lack of understanding of the country's history. The museum can help fill this void, Mr. Kim said, but added that he believed society as a whole had not fulfilled its duty in making sure that history is not forgotten.

"It's great that we have a space like this to educate people and raise awareness," Ms. Na said. "But doesn't it feel like only people who already care or are experts come here? Shouldn't people who don't care also come?"

When Mr. Yoo was hauled in, guards demanded to know whether he was a communist or a socialist. He said he was neither, drawing their wrath. "They punched my face from both sides and kicked me so hard in the ribs I collapsed," he said. "They hit me without mercy." Accused of being a communist and anti-state agitator, he faced a trial for organizing democratic workers and was released on probation after more than a month in detention at Namyeong and several more in another prison.

The trauma haunted him for years. He said that he suffered hallucinations and nightmares of being arrested again. Being at home induced panic, and he often wandered the streets and slept in public spaces for long stretches of time.

After military rule ended in 1987, the building was still used in secret by the police for interrogations targeting labor and left-leaning organizations, according to the museum. It was officially shut down in 2004 and renamed the National Police Agency Human Rights Center in 2005. In 2018, President Moon Jae-in approved its conversion into a museum, and the grounds were handed over to the Democracy Foundation.

Prison memories

Yoo Dong-woo, far left, was detained and tortured at the Namyong-dong Anti-Communist Interrogation Office, now the National Museum of Korean Democracy in Seoul, for organizing labor protests in 1981. Above left, the interrogation room where the student activist Park Jong-cheol died after being tortured, and below left, Mr. Park's "postmortem examination report" on display at the museum.

Still, many South Koreans across the political spectrum hold conflicting views on their country's turbulent modern history, with some far-right conservatives baselessly claiming that the Gwangju uprising was instigated by North Korean Communist agents.

“In such a polarized society like Korea how do you build an edifice that’s supposed to memorialize democracy when, in fact, a lot of the stuff hasn’t even been resolved by historians?” said Theodore Jun Yoo, a professor of cultural studies and history at Yonsei University in Seoul. “The public hasn’t agreed on all these issues,” he said.

Mr. Yoo, who is now in his late 70s, has worked as a docent at the museum, showing visitors where he was tortured.

"At first, even catching a glimpse of this building would make me shiver with dread," he said. "But one day a thought struck me: Why should I be the one to be scared? It's the perpetrators who should be scared."

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The fuel for Europe's far right

GERMANY, FROM PAGE SI

The far right

Leaders of the

Alternative for

Germany party

during a campaign

event last month.

The party has

benefited from

economic and

industrial decline

and a sense of

insecurity, which it

blames on the

extensive migration

of young Muslims in

the last decade.

LISI NIESNER/REUTERS

ringia, and where German democracy collapsed before the Nazis, Anna Wenske, 69, spoke of the East German identity as something lost.

"It was more German," she said. "Not little America, like the West."

Key AfD figures like Björn Höcke have played into that persistent division, suggesting that West Germans are not even German anymore, just colonized Americans, said Steffen Mau, a sociologist who was born in East Germany.

"They give people with an inferiority complex the feeling that they were better Germans, and that they are authentic, they are the future," he said.

Many East Germans felt that they resisted their Soviet occupiers more than West Germans resisted the culture of their occupiers, especially the Americans. Communist East Germany cast itself as the inheritor of the resistance to Hitler, historians have said, and hence did not embrace the culture of guilt that dominated the West after the war.

For many young people in Germany, who are voting in large numbers for the far left or the far right, the war was not their responsibility, and the AfD's appeal to highlight national accomplishment, not collective crime, is attractive.

Germany is having “a psychodrama over its own history,” said Yascha Mounk, a German-American political scientist. “The debate over right-wing populism is in part what to make of German history,” he said.

The AfD, he said, wants to abandon the dominant “Erinnerungskultur,” or Culture of Remembrance, about the crimes of the Nazis, for a different, prouder future.

What the shift from memory culture really represents, said Ivan Krastev, a political scientist and analyst, “is the end of the long political 20th century.” Responsibility for the Nazis, he said, “cannot be used to stabilize Germany’s political system any longer.”

In Eastern Germany especially, he said, the nostalgia is not for Communism or the Nazi regime. Instead, the yearning is for the huge numbers of people who left the East, and the quiet life remembered by those who stayed.

"They are nostalgic for the world that they believe they understood, and now they're living in a world that they do not understand," Mr. Krastev said. "The pride people felt in their own lives was not honored, and people deprived of their pride are very easily tempted by political parties that start to talk about pride, grandeur and greatness."

The far-right speakers were far from unopposed: Centrists at the annual economic forum attacked them, accusing them of tilting toward fascism, and cited François Mitterrand's last speech as French president, when he said that in Europe, "nationalism is war."

Where voters stand between these competing forces will be put to the test with key elections next year in France, Italy, Poland and Spain, all of which have strong far-right parties trying to push politics in their direction.

To a large extent, what is happening in Germany is an international phenomenon, noted John Kampfner, a British analyst of Germany, where he is also a citizen.

“Each of these populist movements have their specificities but follow similar tramlines,” he said.

“A population that feels insecure,” he said, “that equates globalization and transnational identity with insecurity, is very open to this kind of identitarian politics from the nationalist conservative point of view.”

Why popular opinion matters to Putin

Landslide wins

Watching President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia give an address in Moscow's Red Square after his victory in presidential elections in 2004. In last month's parliamentary elections, Mr. Putin's United Russia party won 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY NANNA HEITMANN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Polls can give legitimacy to autocrats and help to prolong regime's survival

BY PAUL SONNE

Surprising as it may be, the Kremlin cares a great deal about what Russians think.

The Federal Protective Service, or F.S.O., the Secret Service-like guard that protects President Vladimir V. Putin's life, operates its own sociology division that polls Russians and delivers clandestine results to the Kremlin.

The sociologist at the helm of VTsIOM, the main state-run pollster, is so important in Mr. Putin's system that on social media his wife shows off a collection of 24 Hermès bags, worth a total of \$630,000, according to a recent report by an anti-corruption foundation.

And Sergei V. Kiriyenko, the Kremlin's chief "political technologist," meticulously gathered and analyzed what people were saying online in towns and cities across the country.

They worked overtime ahead of last month's parliamentary election, the first since Mr. Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Putin's United Russia party ended up winning 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma and claimed about 58 percent of the vote, more than pollsters had projected.

That controlled exercise in political theater had occupied the waking hours of thousands of Russian bureaucrats. Campaign teams agitated for “opposition” parties that all conveniently support the war. Regional officials organized the nuts and bolts of ballots and turnout. Milquetoast candidates populated the airwaves of state television.

But hanging over the entire endeavor, from the government polling to the Potemkin politicking, was a gaping question: What is the point?

What do polling and public opinion matter to an autocrat? Whether in Russia or China, Egypt or Cameroon, they can jail their opponents, write their own rules and then bend them as they please. Why hold an election at all?

Gauging popular opinion and holding elections in autocratic nations like Russia may seem irrelevant, but political scientists have largely found the opposite to be true. For leaders like Mr. Putin, mastering public opinion and election mobilization does more than confer a patina of legitimacy. It can also prolong a regime's survival by lending the appearance of popular support and by helping to identify new internal threats. Autocrats, then, ignore public opinion at their own risk.

During the summer, for instance, the Russian authorities saw how the old-school liberal party Yabloko, long seen as irrelevant, began to gain ground in public opinion polls as the only group running on a platform opposing the war in Ukraine. In August, amid a pressure campaign against the party, Russia's Supreme Court took Yabloko off the ballot, and though some of its candidates still ran, none won. It was a move that followed the oft-repeated maxim of political scientists that only amateurs rig

elections on Election Day.

Even as Mr. Putin chooses from what the political scientist Andreas Schedler calls the “menu of manipulation,” elections can still carry risks for autocratic governments. The basic purpose of the ritual may be to project long-term legitimacy, but offering a ballot can also invite instability and doubt in the short term, particularly if the orchestration slips up.

"They face this general autocratic dilemma: If you cheat too much you reveal weakness, and if you don't cheat enough you risk a result that could threaten your hold on power," said Timothy Frye, a political science professor at Columbia University in New York.

The aim, Mr. Frye said, is to craft “a result that is sufficiently large that you win, but not so large that the masses just don’t believe it.”

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THE DICTATOR'S DILEMMA

In his 1998 treatise “The Political Economy of Dictatorship,” the economist Ronald Wintrobe called it the “dictator’s dilemma”: Because dictators rule through fear, they struggle to understand what their subjects really think and to assess their own popularity accurately. Misreading reality can lead them to lose power.

That doesn't necessarily come in the form of a popular uprising. Political science studies have found that autocrats in the post-World War II era were far more likely to have been ousted in elite coups than in popular uprisings, though such revolts have increased in recent years.

The problem autocrats face in divining public opinion is what the political scientist Timur Kuran called “preference falsification,” or the tendency of people in repressive societies to avoid sharing their true views.

“Falsification increases as repression increases,” said Mr. Kuran, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina. That leaves seemingly stable autocratic regimes vulnerable to shocks that suddenly make them look shaky, with cascading effects once weakness is exposed.

The character of Mr. Putin's autocratic rule has shifted considerably in his more than 25 years in power. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has morphed from a "spin dictatorship," in which the government won and held power primarily by manipulating information, institutions and elections, into more of a "fear dictatorship" as Mr. Putin has begun turning increasingly to the hard tools of repression, according to a recent book by the academics Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman.

"He kind of shifted to open censorship, to open repression," said Mr. Guriev, the dean of the London Business School, who is also involved in Russian opposition politics in exile. "Yet you have the remnants of the previous system."

But the hard methods of maintaining control can be onerous. Tapping into popular opinion to cultivate genuine support reduces the security state's load.

"There is oppression in autocracies, but they cannot govern solely by repressing the population," said Martin Dimitrov, a political science professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. "Any autocrat would want to have some support from the population, because that means they have to use less of the cruder tool of repression."

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THE POPULAR AUTOCRAT

In the 1950s, the psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a series of famous experiments about conformity. He showed participants a card with a line on it and a second card with three lines on it, and asked which of the lines on the second card was the same as the one on the first. It wasn't a trick question; the answer was abundantly clear.

But Mr. Asch asked people to give their answers only after they had heard actors, whom they believed to be fellow participants, give deliberately incorrect answers. The results were remarkable. Influenced by those responses, 75 percent of participants gave the wrong answer at least once.

The experiments underscored why perceived popularity is critical for autocrats. If people believe everyone else supports an autocratic leader, they are much more likely to fall in line. If elites believe a ruler is popular, they think twice about trying to seize power themselves.

“Putin, at this stage, as long as he can produce polls that show he is popular, it gives him additional power versus his subordinates and his colleagues,” Mr. Guriev said. “He can say, ‘You need to support me because, if I am gone, there is nobody like me who actually has an external source of popularity from the Russian public.’”

For decades, the Russian state media, bureaucracy and security apparatus have systematically prevented any alternatives to Mr. Putin from gaining traction.

“Popularity is a tricky thing, because you don't know how durable it is,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “People can profess support for Putin, because who else are you going to support?”

ELECTORAL AUTOCRACY

Having shifted toward a more brutal form of rule, Mr. Putin increasingly faces the problems associated with the dictator's dilemma.

The wartime chill on open debate and free media has probably made it more difficult for the Kremlin to figure out what Russians really think. The erasure of even a modicum of unpredictability in the political sphere risks rendering elections meaningless to the broader public.

But the show of the elections must go on.

Research has found that autocracies are more durable when they hold elections. Without them, the Russian political elite wouldn't be tested in its ability to mobilize and deliver for Mr. Putin, allowing the ruling party to organize a pecking order within its ranks.

And because Mr. Putin's government grew out of the democracy introduced in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, elections still underpin his claim to legitimacy.

Whereas monarchs might claim legitimacy through a hereditary line, or Marxist-Leninist leaders through an ideological struggle, Mr. Putin's standing still comes from "the idea that Russians chose Putin and he is Russia's choice," said Ora John Reuter, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

"One of the main reasons they are still holding elections is they don't have an alternative source of legitimacy," Mr. Reuter said.

Mr. Putin himself cast the vote in those terms, too.

"The source of power is the people," Mr. Putin told the congress of the United Russia party in August, five days after Yabloko was removed from the ballot. "Even under the most difficult conditions we aren't retreating from the principle of the rule of the people."

'Fear dictatorship'

The character of Mr. Putin's autocratic rule has shifted considerably in his more than 25 years in power. Since the invasion of Ukraine, he has begun turning increasingly to the hard tools of repression, some experts said.

Old-fashioned colonialism in a new guise

FROM THE MAGAZINE

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHANTAL JAHCHAN

U.S. role in Venezuela shows how the definition of sovereignty has evolved

BY LINDA KINSTLER

Since U.S. Special Forces captured President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in January, a steady stream of American officials and oil executives has visited Caracas. They flew there to do what generations of colonial administrators and businesspeople have done before them, effectively running another country.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio directs the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, via text message and controls her government's access to its own oil revenues. She tells him whom she wants to hire, and he tells her which Maduro apparatchiks to purge. Under Rubio's tutelage, Rodriguez opened the nation to U.S. companies. According to the Trump administration, it's too soon to talk about democratic elections; that has to wait until Venezuela's energy sector is stable and its economy has recovered.

This asymmetrical relationship has led observers to reach for familiar yet somehow anachronistic terms: Venezuela has been described as President Trump's "puppet regime," as his "colony," as an American protectorate and client state. The economist Carlos Mendoza Potellá, a former adviser to the Venezuelan central bank, argues that the country has ceded its national sovereignty. We are not a nation anymore," he said. "We are a territory with some delegate administrators implementing decisions made abroad. Who decides? Emperor Trump, who has his proconsul Marco Rubio."

Yet none of these descriptors fully capture Venezuela's odd status. On paper, it still has its own government, a defined territory, a stable population and some ability to enter into relations with other nations — the four criteria for statehood enshrined in the 1933 Montevideo Convention. There is no U.S. occupying military force (although some 900 American troops are assisting with earthquake recovery). At the same time, the Rodriguez government is not exactly autonomous, either. “This is not an occupied nation,” said Javier Corrales, a political scientist at Amherst College in Massachusetts, “but it is a nation that has essentially surrendered a lot of its economic assets to the United States.”

So what exactly is Venezuela now? Is it a sovereign nation? Is it a new territory of the U.S. government? Is it something in between? The U.S. takeover of Venezuela reflects the mechanics of the new age of empire, in which it has become increasingly unnecessary, inconvenient, expensive and illegal for great powers to declare formal occupations of small states. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, “the costs of occupation have gone up dramatically,” said Tom Long, a professor of international relations at the University of Warwick in England. As a result, powerful nations have found ways to establish control over other countries without explicitly laying claim to them.

It was once thought that state sovereignty was an indivisible, immutable possession. A nation either had it or it

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"This is not an occupied nation, but it is a nation that has essentially surrendered a lot of its economic assets."

didn't. Today, sovereignty is more like "a bundle of rights," as Long put it, that can be disaggregated, delegated, bought, seized and sold. Small states increasingly contract out elements of governance to foreign powers and international entities: A British company oversaw customs in Angola and Mozambique. Many nations have asked the U.N. or the I.M.F. to supervise state security, taxation and electoral functions when the home government is too weak to manage them. China's Belt and Road Initiative gives Beijing leverage to boss around many nations. European countries gave up elements of their national sovereignty when they joined the European Union.

These trade-offs have been seen as both a potential boon to small states and a threat to their independence. In Vene-

zuela, the United States has shown how great a risk they can be. The disaggregation of sovereignty has helped revive old-fashioned colonialism in a new guise.

EMPIRES OF THE PAST were built upon the idea that conquest was the divine right of great powers. There was no legal distinction between the acquisition, occupation and takeover of foreign territory.

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Wielding control

Top, a Chinese surveillance vessel arriving in Sri Lanka in 2022. Bottom, Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela.

The Portuguese did as they wished in Angola, and the British did as they wished in India. The Spanish viceroy's sent to rule imperial possessions in the 16th century were thought to possess control over those lands and their people. They executed Indigenous rulers and imprisoned those who opposed the colonial regime. When Americans seized the Philippines from Spain, the role of the first governor-general there was modeled after his imperial predecessor, with few limits to his power.

In the late 19th century, as liberal and pacifist movements drove states to formalize international law, European powers sought to eliminate war by rendering conquest illegal. To do so, they defined national sovereignty as an inalienable possession. Occupation came to be understood as a temporary phenomenon, distinct from permanent annexation.

At first, the United States bucked this trend, sticking with the colonial idea that the acquisition of foreign territory also represented the transfer of sovereign rights. It expanded its empire through armed invasions of Cuba, Mexico, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, even as it promised to deliver liberty and freedom in those places. Only once Washington had solidified its international holdings did it subscribe to the new laws of war. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Regulations restricted the rights of occupying powers, marking the purported end to millennium of open conquest.

But that didn't spell the end of hostile takeovers, as the awful history of the 20th century shows. Instead, as the legal scholar Sharon Korman argues, powerful nations came up with “functional equivalents of the right to conquest”—things like puppet regimes (think of the shah in Iran), covert military operations culminating in coups (Guatemala in 1954), false narratives to justify the “recovery” of lost territory (Russia's invasion of Ukraine) and a whole vernacular of supposed impermanence, describing occupations as “interim” or “acting” powers.

In the early 20th century, the Roosevelt administration styled its interventions in Latin America as "fiscal receiverships." Americans ran the customs houses in eight nations, giving them effective control over economic affairs. While the local government remained in place, Americans held the purse strings. But U.S. officials found that they could not fully control local bureaucracies or break through domestic corruption networks.

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union pursued varied forms of covert occupation and control, providing secret backing to loy-

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It has become increasingly unnecessary, inconvenient, expensive and illegal for great powers to declare formal occupations of small states.

al foreign allies. Around the same time, the idea that sovereignty is a singular possession — either you have it or you don't — began to fall out of favor.

SHORTLY AFTER MANUEL ZELAYA was elected president of Honduras in 2005, he says, the U.S. ambassador, Charles Ford, invited him to lunch. In a 2017 oral-history interview with the political scientist Oliver Stuenkel, Zelaya claimed that Ford handed him a list of nine individuals he could consider for government positions: three names per ministry, so that he could choose.

Ford describes this claim as “totally false.” He says the point of the meal was to see if Zelaya wanted “to expand our existing cooperation or to end some current programs.” Ford and Zelaya agree that the president named his own cabinet. But whatever occurred between the men, the United States was giving hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance each year, and that sum paid in part for influence.

At the time, Western scholars and officials were debating when and whether foreign intervention could be warranted. The United States in recent years had sent troops to East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq because, as one State Department official put it, sovereignty was not “a blank check” for atrocities. Political theorists also wrote of “shared sovereignty” as a method for strong states and multilaterals to help weak ones by shoring up their economy, politics or judiciary without necessitating the use of force. In 2004, the political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter argued that “disaggregated sovereignty” would bolster the rights of all states.

This logic inspired a whole host of states to contract out elements of domestic governance. There were often practical reasons to do this: Maybe a country was too weak to secure its own borders and elections, unable to fight corruption. (French troops helped Mali re-establish security in 2013, for instance.) Maybe it would benefit from international trade protections.

Yet if disaggregated sovereignty seemed for a time like a good idea, its perils are now clear. Late last year, for example, Morocco secured U.N. approval for its plan to control the Western Sahara by setting up an “autonomous region” in the contested territory. China is practicing “debt-trap diplomacy,” in which it lends billions of dollars to developing nations like Kenya and Indonesia to build ports and dams and railroads. Then it owns a share of those projects and conditions future investment on obedience.

The unbundling of sovereignty has also enabled the creation of special economic zones, charter cities and freeports — territorial carve-outs from national laws through which much of the world's wealth now flows. The Trump administration seems particularly fond of these loopholes: It has proposed establishing special economic zones in both eastern Ukraine and Gaza.

Whatever we call it, the U.S. role in Venezuela is a result of this evolution. Caracas is at once sovereign and not, occupied and not. Delcy Rodriguez appears to have entered into a “pact of coexistence” with the Americans, Corrales said. She has conceded a significant degree of national autonomy in exchange for the preservation of power — or at least the appearance of it. This is, for now, an opaque and mutually beneficial arrangement for the two governments, if not for the Venezuelans deprived of self-determination.

ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

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The leader that Thailand could have had

LAUREN DECICCA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pita Limjaroenrat's party won an election, but he was blocked from power

BY FARAH NAYERI

Pita Limjaroenrat would have become Thailand's prime minister at age 42 had his country been a parliamentary democracy such as Britain.

Mr. Pita led his Move Forward party to a surprise first-place finish in the May 2023 elections after campaigning to upend the status quo. His platform included legalizing same-sex marriage, setting a \$13 minimum wage and slashing the army's budget. Having won the backing of more than 14 million voters, he declared, "A new day for the people has arrived," and formed an eight-party coalition that would allow him to govern. Yet under Thailand's constitutional system, Move Forward failed to get enough support in the military-backed Senate to take power. By August 2024, the party had been disbanded, and Mr. Pita had been banned from politics for 10 years.

Today, Mr. Pita is back on a campus he knows well: Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where he completed a Master in Public Administration in 2011. This time he is teaching. He was a speaker last week at the Athens Democracy Forum, an annual gathering of policymakers, business leaders, academics and activists held in association with The New York Times. In a video interview before the forum, he discussed the future of democracy in Thailand, and how he is grooming his students to run for office in their own developing nations. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

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You came very close to becoming Thailand's prime minister three years ago. How do you feel, looking back on things today?

I'm very worried, because this could happen again in the future. Thailand is a competitive autocracy, where autocrats allow you to have elections once in a while. But they can always overturn the people's choice in various ways.

Until two decades ago, autocrats were not very smart. They had to put tanks on the street, have warfare and violence on the street to seize power. In the last two decades, they have become much smarter, and mastered discreet ways of suspending people, banning politicians, dissolving political parties. So there's no need for them to put tanks on the street.

In Thailand, we've been democratic for about 100 years. And yet we have had 13 military coups in that time. Every seven years [on average], a military coup will intervene and pause democracy.

Thailand is a country that is punching below its weight. We are the second-largest country in ASEAN [Association of South East Asian Nations]. Yet we're among the slowest growing.

Are you living between the U.S. and Thailand at the moment?

I spend most of my time in Boston now, at the Harvard Kennedy School, where it all began. I've come full circle: from turning textbooks into reality, I have gone to turning reality into textbooks. I teach how to run for public office in developing countries.

What would be an ideal future in Thailand from your perspective?

I want to be able to compete in a free and fair election once again, and win again, with the support of the majority of the people — including the younger generation.

The platform we ran on in 2023 was a 3D platform: It called for a demilitarized, demonopolized and decentralized Thailand. We campaigned for a country with no more coups, a country where the big conglomerates don't have power over markets, and a country where Bangkok is not Thailand, and Thailand is not Bangkok.

What are you doing at Harvard? I am grooming next-generation leaders, and spending time with young people from ASEAN countries. They're 18, 19 or 20, and I have office hours for whoever wants to run for public office.

That's the power bank that keeps me energized. We have a younger generation emerging, and new voters at every election cycle.

Can you be more specific about what you teach at Harvard, and what feedback the students give?

The class is called “How to run for public office in developing countries” — becoming a politician. I took the class when I was a student at the Kennedy School, and the man who taught it was Steve Jarding, a cam-

paign manager for Bill Clinton. I used it to run for office in Thailand in 2023.

What did Steve Jarding teach you? How to run for public office and articulate why you want to run in the first place. You learned the whole upstream, midstream, and downstream of running for office: what your campaign structure is, how you do route management, how you knock on doors, how you fund-raise. We practiced organizing campaign rallies, delivering stump speeches.

Today, I'm returning to teach based on the reality in developing countries. This is democracy in hard places. It's not American-style democracy.

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How have you adapted what you learned at Harvard two decades ago, and what are you bringing to the table that's different?

The framework is quite similar, but it has obviously been updated because of technology and social media: fake news, deepfakes and misinformation — as well as the use of artificial intelligence in campaigns, slogan design, or fund-raising.

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So you teach students about the ugly side of technology — fake news, deepfakes, misinformation — but also its positive side?

Yes. Artificial intelligence can be used in slogan design, fund-raising plans, route optimization: how you spend the day and meet as many people as you can. It can be used in segmentation, in running data-driven campaigns, in precision politics. For example, you separate people into red, yellow, and green groups. If it's green, they meet me one time. If it's red, I don't show up. If it's yellow, they meet me three times.

Who are your students, and what's their reaction to what you teach? They're from countries such as Colombia, Chile, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. And there's a verbal MOU whereby they promise me that they will run for office after graduation — within five years.

I grill them: Do you know what office you want to run for? Do you want to be a mayor, a governor or a member of parliament? If they show up not knowing what they want to do, then I give more attention to the students who have a concrete plan and a very concrete idea.

So far, so good. I think they have a good, solid plan crafted for them for free, so that when they finish working for Boston Consulting Group or J.P. Morgan or the like, and they finally have enough money to run, then they have this plan that they can go forward with. I'm trying to inject fresh blood into the system all around the world — as much as I can.

Debating the dangers presented by rapidly advancing technologies

rise together, or we're going to fall together."

FORUM, FROM PAGE SI

Sources and was not biased in any way. And yet, he said, "A.I. can often produce really inaccurate results."

Eliza Anyangwe, former editor in chief of Fuller, a global nonprofit news organization reporting on women and gender-diverse people, said that when reporting on A.I., journalists often gave ample voice to the heads of the big tech companies and ended up “amplifying the same tropes” and messages that the technology bosses were putting out.

"The challenge of dealing with A.I. is: How do we maintain some distance of it, where we are critical of it, where we take a breath to think and where we are engaging audiences" and asking if they understand what A.I. is, she said.

The powers and perils of A.I. were spelled out in detail by The Times's columnist Thomas Friedman, who is writing a book about the technology.

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"The first challenge for democracies is going to be to collaborate globally."

In an opening-night address, he described it as “the second Big Bang” that had been “set off by us: We have become godlike as a species.”

He said humankind had, through the advances of science and technology, created an artificial brain, changed the climate, generated an entirely new interconnected galaxy called cyberspace, produced weapons that could destroy the planet, and allowed the convergence of quantum computing, fusion energy and A.I.

"We now have the power to part the Red Sea. Just one problem: without the Ten Commandments," said Mr. Friedman in an address held inside the neoclassical headquarters of the Academy of Athens.

"The first challenge for democracies is going to be to collaborate globally" and "collectively write these together," he said. It was, Mr. Friedman added, a do-or-die necessity: "We are going to\*

That prognosis was echoed by Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis of Greece, who in a subsequent conversation urged the world's governments to get together to regulate A.I.

No country in the world is big enough to govern A.I. alone, not even the U.S. or China, said Mr. Pierrakakis, a graduate of Harvard University and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We need global governance.” Governments are “not yet fully up to speed with the change that is happening,” and with the velocity of that change. What previously took years or decades now happens in months or even weeks, said Mr. Pierrakakis, who previously served as Greece’s Minister for Digital Governance.

He said institutions are “the software of our democracy” and concluded that “the software needs to change to adapt to the A.I. era.”

As ever at the forum, geopolitics and international conflicts were in the spotlight. This year's focus was Iran — which the United States and Israel attacked on Feb. 28, decapitating its leadership. Since then, Iran has led missile and drone attacks on countries and ships in the region, pushing up oil prices.

Speaking on the Iran panel, Mr. Friedman from The Times predicted that the conflict would end in a U.S.-Iran negotiation, but “given the weak position the Americans have now, the negotiation will end in Iran’s favor. We cannot end this war, we the United States, without giving a new lease on life to the Islamic Republic in the near term.”

Nazenin Ansari — managing editor of the digital publications Kayhan London and Kayhan Life, read by the global Iranian community — said: “The survival of the Islamic Republic and the well-being of the Iranian people are profoundly different things.”

She said that while international attention is focused on the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people, “whose voices are so often missed,” are enduring economic hardship and severe repression.