|
September 29, 2026 
|
|
Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.
- Trump meets with A.I. leaders
- ICE is planning a hiring surge
- Plus, playoff baseball has arrived
|
 |
| The offices of OpenAI in San Francisco. Lucas Foglia for The New York Times |
Trump says A.I. leaders are making the world ‘safer’
Many of the world’s most powerful tech executives spent this afternoon at the White House, where they joined President Trump for a lunch meeting about artificial intelligence. The group included some voices calling for a slowdown in A.I., and others who say that the fretting is an overreaction.
But Trump, who called the executives “the greatest, most brilliant people” in the world, punted on any decision on formal A.I. regulations, beyond asking executives to rebrand it. The technology should be called “super intelligence,” the president said, because “it’s not artificial.”
Attendees signed a voluntary agreement to adopt safety regulations that include risk reviews, auditing and evaluations of systems by third parties. They also agreed to adopt Trump’s “super intelligence” rebranding.
Polls show that many Americans have grown concerned about the risks of A.I. and the data centers it runs on. Warnings have grown louder after some A.I. models, including one belonging to OpenAI, carried out hacks without being instructed to. Months before the OpenAI’s systems went rogue, two employees raised the alarm with top executives. They were ignored, The Times learned.
For more:
 |
| Todd Heisler/The New York Times |
ICE prepares for another hiring surge
After a $100 billion infusion from Congress, ICE is aiming to add 5,000 new employees by the end of the year. Most of the recruits are intended to sustain the president’s aggressive deportation campaign, during which officers have been asked to work seven days a week.
ICE, which has already grown by nearly 40 percent since Trump took office, tried a similar hiring surge last year. But the speed of the recruitment allowed in many undervetted officers, and the agency had to remove hundreds of them. The agency plans to use stricter hiring standards, according to a person familiar with the procedures.
In related news: The Supreme Court temporarily allowed the U.S. to continue deporting immigrants to countries other than their own without giving them an opportunity to contest their removals.
 |
| George Walker IV/Associated Press |
A nuclear reactor gets the green light in Tennessee
The Tennessee Valley Authority received permission today to build a new type of nuclear reactor that is designed to be much smaller, and easier to build, than traditional nuclear power plants. It was just the second time that U.S. regulators have approved the construction of a next-generation commercial reactor.
The Trump administration says it wants to quadruple the country’s nuclear power by 2050, and many Democrats have also embraced the technology because it can run without emitting greenhouse gases.
 |
| Clockwise from top left: Chip Thomas, Felipe De Brigard, Immanuel Wilkins, Holly Jean Buck, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation |
Meet the MacArthur ‘genius grant’ winners
The MacArthur Foundation announced a new group of 20 “genius grant” fellows, who will receive an $800,000, no-strings-attached stipend for their “exceptional creativity” in the arts, humanities and sciences.
The selection process is secret, so some of the winners were shocked when they received an out-of-the-blue call informing them of the award. This year’s fellows include Chip Thomas, a physician who makes large-scale photo murals, and Immanuel Wilkins, an alto jazz saxophonist.
More top news
 |
| Julie Glassberg for The New York Times |
Francis Lee Rogers lived in Central Park for decades, where she gained a following for her bird paintings. On Sunday, she was found dead, beaten and stabbed in the gazebo where she slept.
 |
| Lee Krasner’s “Bald Eagle” (1955). Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photograph by Yuvraj Khanna for The New York Times |
Lee Krasner is finally getting her share of the spotlight
Lee Krasner was both a critically acclaimed abstract artist and the wife of the superstar painter Jackson Pollock. Though for much of her career, she was thought of more so as the latter.
Now, a new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is hoping to reset the record. It presents Krasner’s work alongside — and often ahead of — Pollock's famous drip paintings. Allow our critic to guide you through the show’s major pieces.
 |
| The Atlanta Dream and Washington Mystics during Game One of their series on Sunday. Paras Griffin/Getty Images |
We’re entering the peak of the sports calender
Football season is in full swing. The W.N.B.A. playoffs are underway. The N.H.L. just dropped the puck in North Carolina, beginning a new season. The N.B.A. season is around the corner. And M.L.B.’s postseason started this afternoon. What a time to be alive!
Tonight, I’ll be tuning into the Red Sox-Yankees game, a high-stakes clash between two historic rivals whose fans are similarly pessimistic about their title hopes.
If you read just one sports story tonight, make it this dispatch from Rockford, Ill., where the women’s baseball stars of the 1940s and ’50s — made famous by “A League of Their Own” — passed the baton.
 |
| The Stonington Opera House in Stonington, Maine. Ryan David Brown for The New York Times |
Dinner table topics
- Maine’s historic opera houses have survived fires and floods because they were always about more than classical music. Take a look.
- What does it mean for clothes to look “human”? See how designers are flirting with the idea.
- The author Sebastian Barry has made a career of mining his family history. But he kept one story buried.
- An English globe maker works entirely by hand, using Renaissance-era techniques.
|
 |
| Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. |
Make this tender blueberry lemon
