Good morning. There’s news today on the Epstein files, Israeli strikes in Gaza despite the cease-fire and a Japanese bear hunt. We’ll tell you about all of it, and more, below. But first let’s take a look at two local stories that have national implications. One’s about New York City’s police commissioner and the mayor she will serve. The other’s about what happens when wealthy people prop up our cultural institutions — and what happens when they die.
The odd coupleZohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, said yesterday that Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, would stay in that job when he takes office on Jan. 1. It’s an unlikely partnership, my colleagues Maria Cramer and Emma G. Fitzsimmons wrote. “He’s a democratic socialist who wanted to defund the police,” Emma told me. “She’s pretty conservative on policing.” Tisch wants to hire 5,000 new police officers. Mamdani does not. He supports the elimination of bail for most misdemeanors. She has been sharply critical of changes to the bail laws. They come from very different backgrounds, too. Mamdani, 34, is the son of an academic and a filmmaker. Tisch, 44, is a billionaire heiress whose family gave a lot of money to Mamdani’s competition. (They both went to elite colleges, though: Bowdoin for him and Harvard for her.) And they have different views of the outside world. Tisch has marched in the city’s annual Israel Day parade. Mamdani has been a fierce critic of Israel. But they have pledged to work together even if there are genuine areas of disagreement, Emma said. Of course they have. Tisch wants to keep a powerful job that she loves. And Mamdani wants the police — and voters who support them — to see that he’s not the far-left caricature his critics have drawn. They made nice yesterday. “I have admired her work cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department, driving down crime in New York City and standing up for New Yorkers in the face of authoritarianism,” Mamdani said of Tisch. Tisch was no less polite. “It’s clear that we share broad and crucial priorities: the importance of public safety, the need to continue driving down crime and the need to maintain stability and order across the department,” she wrote in an email sent to officers. In an era of partisan rancor across the country, this was refreshing to see. If the partnership holds, it’s a reminder that people who disagree don’t have to be enemies, that the incoming mayor doesn’t have to throw out all the experienced hands, that focusing on consensus instead of division is an art — not fine art, but the art of the possible. They gave and gave
The deaths this year of Leonard Lauder and Agnes Gund have left a canyon-size hole in the cultural firmament of New York, Robin Pogrebin wrote yesterday. For half a century they were among the most important figures in the city’s arts philanthropy — giving institutions lots of money, giving them lots of art. They gave and they gave and they gave. Robin offered examples. “When the economy tanked in 2008, just a year after the Whitney Museum of American Art announced plans for a new building in downtown Manhattan,” she wrote, Lauder “swooped in with a $131 million donation, the largest in the museum’s history.” Gund, for her part, once battled her fellow board members at the Museum of Modern Art to bring living artists into the collection. She didn’t just speak up about it, Robin reported — she showed up with donations: among them, works by Nick Cave, Julie Mehretu and Kara Walker. “There are very few all-in-one philanthropists,” said Adam Weinberg, the former longtime director of the Whitney Museum. “Leonard and Aggie were those all-in-one philanthropists.” And then he told Robin something I think is important: “It takes three different board members to contribute what they could.” In the future it might be five or six because help is getting harder to come by. The federal government has gutted arts funding. Audiences have not returned to prepandemic levels. And private donations to museums and other nonprofit cultural institutions have plunged. (That trend is unlikely to reverse any time soon. Changes to the tax law will soon cap a deduction for high-income donors.) As a result, institutions have deferred construction projects. They’ve reduced or canceled programming. They’ve laid off employees. And there are precious few giants behind Lauder and Gund to help fill the gaps, in New York or elsewhere. “It’s a very scary time for the arts,” said one former administrator. Now, let’s look at what else is happening in the world.
Epstein Files
Comey Case
More on Politics
War in Ukraine
In Gaza
More International News
Business
Orthodoxy is a demanding form of Christianity. Services are long. Churches often don’t have pews. There is a strict and complex fasting schedule. It’s no wonder Orthodoxy is the smallest branch of Christianity in the United States. But recently many parishes have seen a surge in attendance — especially among conservative young men, my colleague Ruth Graham reports. Priests are swapping stories about it. The converts say they are drawn to the faith because its requirements aren’t easy and because meeting the challenge gives them a sense of purpose. The newcomers were often introduced to Orthodoxy by influencers who promote traditional ideas of masculinity. Josh Elkins, a student at North Carolina State University, told The Times, “The Orthodox Church is the only church that really coaches men hard and says, ‘This is what you need to do.’” Related: Our religion reporters talk about how they cover Christianity in the United States.
This question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) Sailors from the Marshall Islands have for millenniums navigated by what technique?
Algorithms should connect you with the best of human creativity — not rot your brain, Jack Conte, the chief executive of Patreon, says in this video. Here is a column by Jamelle Bouie on Trump’s pervasive corruption. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
A hunt: Bears have been attacking people in Japan. Local residents are fighting back. A mystery: An airline pilot from New Jersey died last year after eating a hamburger. Now doctors know why — he had developed a grave meat allergy from a tick bite. Sorry, Kim Kardashian: NASA released photos of a comet and debunked a viral conspiracy theory spread by some celebrities that an alien invasion was imminent. Identical twins: Alice and Ellen Kessler were sisters from Germany whose tightly choreographed song-and-dance routines wowed audiences around the world. They decided to end their lives together at the age of 89.
62,000— That’s how many deaths regular lung cancer screenings could prevent over a five-year period, or four times as many lives as are being saved today.
Soccer: Haiti qualified this week to compete in the men’s World Cup for the first time since 1974, but travel bans imposed by the United States government mean many fans will not be able to travel from home to attend their nation’s games in the U.S. next summer. M.L.B.: The league landed new media deals with NBC, Netflix and ESPN as it restructures its TV future. N.F.L.: The Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders will make his first N.F.L. start on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders.
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