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October 23, 2025

Matias Delacroix/Associated Press

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Notable

The secretive office approving Trump’s boat strikes. “We should not have to guess how the Justice Department concluded that these strikes on civilians were lawful. The public should be able to read the government’s legal justifications for itself.”

— Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

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What happened in Gaza might be even worse than you think. “Today there is a chance, if we want it, to begin to discover the true cost of this war.”

— Lydia Polgreen, Opinion columnist

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Trump wants the American people to pay him $230 million. “The president’s conflict of interest in this situation is so broad as to have no parallel in American history. One ethics expert called it a ‘travesty.’ ”

— The Editorial Board

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Spotlight

Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez/The New York Times Are Democrats Too Wealthy to Win? Read more

ICYMI

Women are the losers in so many of Trump’s changes to the economy. “The Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration policy is making child care and elder care — jobs overwhelmingly performed by women, either for pay or unpaid and performed in addition to paid work — even more inaccessible than it had been.”

— Jessica Grose, Opinion writer

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Watch (or Listen)

Interesting Times

We Can Survive an A.I. Bust

Jason Furman, an economist from the Harvard Kennedy School and a contributing Opinion writer, says we can look to past bubbles for answers.

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Listen (or Watch)

The Opinions Trump Has a Religion. What Do Democrats Have? Mamdani might be working in Democrats’ favor. But what about “No Kings”? 30 MIN LISTEN

More in Opinion

How Women Destroyed the West The new right pines for a story that would vindicate its reactionary rage. By David French

‘A House of Dynamite’: Could That Really Happen? The Kathryn Bigelow film presents a terrifying glimpse of the modern nuclear risk. By Kathleen Kingsbury and W.J. Hennigan

Nicholas Kristof Trump Revives Foreign Aid, Helping Needy Billionaires As children die for want of cheap medicines, the U.S. spends billions on Argentina — thus rescuing rich investors who made bad bets. By Nicholas Kristof

David Wallace-Wells The Connection Between the Fort Bragg Cartel and the ‘Department of War’ The adventurism and impunity of the Cold War live on in the modern military. By David Wallace-Wells

In Your Words

Re: “There’s a Reason Trump Fears No Kings”

A ruler who must divide a nation to control it is already losing it. Trump’s politics of domination betrays his weakness: he cannot govern a whole people, only pit one half against the other. But America isn’t two countries. We rise and fall together — or not at all. — A comment posted by Robert Stewart from Chantilly, Va.

Read more comments on the story here and check out our Letters to the Editor.

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