New York Times - 9.10.26

0:00Welcome to the reading of The New York Times for Thursday, September 10, 2026. As a reminder, radio I as a reading service intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material, your reader for today is Scott Johnson. We'll begin with the Merriam Webster Word of the Day. Today's word is loath. Loath. A person who is loath to do something is unwilling or reluctant to do that thing. Proud of the company he had built, Henry was loath to admit that it was time to think about retiring. Today's front page headlines from the National Print Edition of The New York Times opposing orders on Missouri map create disarray pivotal for midterms. US court tells state to use a district layout denied by a justice.

1:06Trump posts stream of AI and pure ego, digital fantasy of self grows ever wilder. GOP's honest, Canada, Iran and the economy. T-Sipping nation warms up to growing it too. UK farmers try new crops adapting to climate crisis. A refugees detention by ice set a clock ticking. And as notes to 9-11 victims fade, so does a path toward justice. We'll begin with a story headline, Do-ling court rulings leave Missouri's congressional races in chaos. It's by Anne E. Marimo and Mitch Smith. Anne E. Marimo covers the Supreme Court, Mitch Smith covers the Midwest and Great Plains. Conflicting court orders issued on the same day through the congressional elections in

2:09Missouri into chaos on Tuesday, two months before an election in which a handful of races could decide control of the House. First, justice Brent M. Kavanaugh denied a request from Missouri officials to use a congressional map in November that was redrawn to give Republicans an edge in the midterm elections. Soon after, a district court judge in Missouri ruled the other way, ordering the state to rely on that map, which had been used in last month's primary election. We can together, the Do-ling court orders left Missouri where it began, with no agreement about which congressional map should be in effect in November and no immediate route to resolving that question. Missouri's Republican Attorney General and Governor quickly said that the state intended to use the redrawn map that favors Republicans. Their opponents immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit and

3:12said they would also appeal to Justice Kavanaugh, meaning the issue will be resolved only after additional legal twists. Early Tuesday evening, it seemed Missouri Democrats had prevailed in a year-long fight to preserve a house seat they hold in the Kansas City area. Justice Kavanaugh deferred to Missouri's Supreme Court, which last week blocked the use of the new map. The state court had found that voters should first have an opportunity to vote on the new district boundaries in a statewide referendum. Justice Kavanaugh oversees emergency requests from Missouri and acted on his own without referring the matter to the full court. He did not provide any reasoning, as is often the case when the court responds to emergency filings. But soon after Justice Kavanaugh acted, words spread that Stephen R. Clark, the chief federal judge in St. Louis, had separately ordered the state to use the map that Missouri Republicans

4:13drew last year at President Trump's request in an attempt to flip a seat in Kansas City. That ruling came in a different legal case, brought by a Republican congressman who's running for re-election, and a GOP candidate who won the primary under the new district lines. The Secretary of State, Danny Hoskins, a Republican said the federal district court ruling, quote, halts a full-on constitutional crisis. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, a Democrat whose seat was targeted in the remapping, praised Justice Kavanaugh's orders in a statement and said he was, quote, confident that the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court will prevail. I believe Missourians will reject this politically motivated attempt to redraw congressional districts in the middle of the decade, said Mr. Cleaver, a former mayor of Kansas City, who is seeking

5:14a 12th term in Congress. What happens next still seemed unclear on Tuesday night. The decision from Judge Clark, who, like Justice Kavanaugh, was appointed to the bench by Mr. Trump, was based in part on concerns that using a different map for the general election would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of the congressional election. He wrote that he was concerned a new map would lead to widespread voter confusion. The state's emergency request had thrust the Supreme Court in the middle of another election year legal battle in the heated campaign season, where control of the house could come down to a handful of seats. But Justice Kavanaugh refused to intervene on Tuesday, leaving in place a unanimous ruling from Missouri's highest court on state law, suggesting he did not think there was a federal issue that warranted Supreme Court action.

6:15Missouri's Attorney General Catherine Hanoi, a Republican, had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to act quickly and allow use of the new map, given a state imposed September 8 deadline for altering its general election ballot. She noted that 1.2 million Missouri residents had voted in the August primary using the new map. The state court threw those votes into the dustbin, she said, by requiring the winners to run in different congressional districts. In her filing, the Attorney General said Missouri planned to comply with one aspect of the state court ruling and proceed with a November referendum on the new map. But she argued that the state should continue with the map used for the primary until that referendum is held. The only question, she wrote, is whether the group of challengers who sued, led by Richard Von Glein, executive director of the Advocacy Group People Not Politicians' Missouri,

7:15and quote, void a congressional map before he gets his vote. The new map was drawn outside the usual redistricting cycle that Mr. Trump's request, as part of an effort to improve the Republican Party's chances of holding the House in the 2026 midterms. The redrawn Missouri map, adopted by the state legislature in September of 2025, divided the core of Kansas City, Missouri, the state's largest city, into several districts in an attempt to unseat Mr. Cleaver, one of two Democrats in the state's congressional delegation. The new map did not significantly alter the partisan makeup of the other Democratic held district, which is in the St. Louis area. Democrats and state residents opposed to the boundaries last year collected hundreds of thousands of signatures seeking a referendum on the issue. But Mr. Hoskins, the Secretary of State, said he did not believe that redistricting could

8:18legally be subject to a voter referendum, and he declined to add it to November's ballot. Lawyers for Mr. Von Glein told the justices in a filing on Monday that Mr. Hoskins had waited until the last possible day to object to the referendum, doing so only after implementing a new map for the August primary. The state's predicament, they said, was a timing problem of his own making. Missouri's constitution has long granted citizens the power to override congressional redistricting legislation through a statewide vote, according to referendum proponents. Last December, Mr. Von Glein and people not politicians submitted 691 boxes of referendum petitions to the Secretary, containing more than 300,000 signatures, more than twice the required number. This court cannot and should not reward the Secretary's scheme to outsmart Missouri voters,

9:19Missouri law, and the Missouri Supreme Court by granting the state's emergency request, Mr. Von Glein's lawyers, said in a Monday filing. In its ruling last week, Missouri Supreme Court's seven judges agreed that a referendum on the New District lines had been improperly denied a spot on the November ballot, and that the redrawn map should have been paused until voters weighed in. The redrawn map, quote, did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters, unquote, Judge Ginger K. Gooch, who was appointed by a Republican governor, wrote in the opinion. The prior map, she added, remains in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election. Our next story is headlined 60 posts in 10 hours, how Trump's social media reflects his version of reality.

10:19It's a Washington memo by Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent who reported from Washington. Just before noon on a holiday weekend, while many Americans were at the beach, President Trump's social media account roared to life. In what has increasingly become his weekend habit, he unleashed a day long barrage of posts that put the bully in the modern bully pulpit. There were images of Mr. Trump intimidating Canada's Prime Minister with a hockey stick, personally bombing enemy targets, and patrolling dark streets with killer robots. There were maps showing the United States taking over other countries and maps renaming a state. There were attacks on the, quote, democratic party, unquote, and tributes to himself as, quote, the greatest president of all time exclamation point, unquote. The 60 messages posted online over 10 hours and 41 minutes are for the window into Mr.

11:23Trump's own unique reality. One anchored not in fact, but in an expression of ego. For years, his social media feed was said to be a mirror of his id. But with AI, it has become the manifestation of how he wants to be seen in a more visual, visceral way than ever before. As a warrior, as a conqueror, as a historical figure, as a younger and thinner and more muscular version of himself. In Mr. Trump's digitally enhanced version of the world, he is a giant in every way, a man who defeats every adversary, overcomes every obstacle and sinks every putt. He not only redraws the map of the world, but vanquishes the heavens themselves. The moon is ours, declared one post last weekend with an image of the earth's only satellite. Another posted a few weeks ago showed him leading an extraterrestrial alien in shackles.

12:31The ratitat of Everwilder, evermore outrageous posts each weekend has become a fixture of the president's second term, seen more and more as a barometer of his mental state. Mr. Trump's critics, who never considered him a model of stability in the first place, now point to these frenetic bursts of fantasy and vanity as proof that the 80-year-old president is deteriorating further with age. It is a measure of how much Mr. Trump has changed the nature of the presidency that any of this has become routine. Past presidents believed they had a duty to carry themselves with a certain dignity befitting the office. Mr. Trump sees politics like the cage match he sponsored this summer at the White House. Indeed, the images he posted over the Labor Day weekend included one with his face on Hulk Hogan's rippling body. Another posted a day later imagined a grinning Mr. Trump easily winning an arm-wrestling match

13:36against Mr. Hogan, the flamboyant wrestling star who died last year. He floods the zone with so much of it that we've become numb to just how bizarre it is. Since Aramathus, Mr. Trump's former deputy White House press secretary, quote, an 80-year-old president is spending a ridiculous amount of time consuming and reposting endless AI fan fiction portraying him as the biggest, strongest, and most important person alive. It feels like we're genuinely watching his brain rot in real time, unquote. To his defenders, Mr. Trump is a master of baiting his adversaries, getting them to react. It's called, we do a little trolling as Mr. Trump wants to put it. The more out there the message is, the more his supporters cheer. As abnormal as the images he posts may be for a president, Mr. Trump's allies argue

14:37that they convey a certain raw, earthy quality that suits an age of no-holds-barred politics. With all due respect, the media and President Trump's other critics have spent more than a decade complaining about his use of social media, said Alex Brusowitz, a former campaign aide, quote, they keep calling it un-presidential. But if the president is doing it, it is presidential by definition. I think most Americans appreciate the authentic and transparent way he uses these platforms, unquote. Violence is a recurring theme in Mr. Trump's feed. He relishes the idea of himself as a tough man staring down anyone who gets in his way. He smashes Iran with a giant hammer. He pilots a spacecraft blasting the planet. Most arresting was his post last weekend showing him in a hockey uniform with a stick towering over a fallen Prime Minister Mark Karney of Canada

15:43and taunting Get Up Governor as if Canada really were the 51st state that he says he wants to make it. That one, unsurprisingly, further inflamed international tensions. As Mr. Trump surely knew it would, it's hard to imagine any other president picturing himself physically assaulting the leader of an ally. But for Mr. Trump, who's been unable to force Mr. Karney to back down in a terror fight, the cartoonish image allows him to present himself as winning, even when he's not. Never mind that he may cry foul if anyone else were to picture him as the target of violence. Goaded by Mr. Trump, the Justice Department indicted James B. Comey, the former FBI director, for a social media post showing seashells spelling out the numbers 8647, interpreting the image as a threat to the president.

16:44This is truly unhinged behavior from the president of the United States, representative Shelley Pingri, a main Democrat, wrote online after the Karney post. And I don't want to hear, oh, it's just Trump being Trump or that he's trolling enough. Enough of this, none of this is normal or okay. Republicans cannot keep shrugging this off. Congress, the cabinet, and everyone around him has a responsibility to stop enabling this dangerous behavior and start asking whether he's fit to hold this office. The White House shrugged off the criticism. Truth social is the most powerful and popular social media platform in the world because it serves as president Trump's authentic voice, where he communicates directly with the American people and the world without the biased media taking him out of context. Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in a statement using the name of the president's social media platform.

17:49In fact, by traditional measures, truth social is nowhere near as popular as major social media platforms like Facebook or X, and its traffic is slumped in the last year. But it has effectively become the town hall for Mr. Trump's MAGA followers and therefore plays an outsized role in American politics. Either posting himself or approving posts crafted by AIDS. Mr. Trump uses it as his main outlet for presidential messages to the world. Last Sunday was a striking day on truth social, but increasingly typical of the president's weekend blitzes when he has fewer staff members around him and more unscheduled time. While at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Mr. Trump started posting at 11.54am and kept returning to his account in staccato bursts throughout the day.

18:49At 1.47pm, he posted six messages within two minutes. From 2.40pm to 3.43pm, he circulated another 27 posts. He continued through the evening, only letting up after his final one of the night at 10.35pm. They were the kinds of posts that are common on the internet, just not normally from a head of state, impertinent, insulting, scornful, belligerent, and sometimes out-and-out wacky. They offered a Rorschach test for followers, funny to those who admire what they see as Mr. Trump's rye sense of humor, delusional to those who think he's lost his mind. As with Canada, his many posts on Iran that day portrayed his war as he would like it to be, not how it really is. In the actual Middle East outside of his control, Mr. Trump is stuck in a quagmire with no clear end in sight.

19:49In the virtual Middle East of his own creation, Mr. Trump is a triumphal commander in chief bludgeoning Iran into submission. The flurry of posts last weekend included an image of a bomber attacking with the caption, bi-by-carg, referring to the Iranian island, and a map showing the straight-of-horamus labeled New-US territory. Another featured supposed before and after maps of Iran, with the latter showing the country in the shape of Mr. Trump's own wavy-haired profile. Maps, in fact, were big with Mr. Trump as he played with his phone that day. He posted a map of the north half of the western hemisphere, showing the U.S. flag superimposed on Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, Cuba, and all of Central America and the Caribbean islands, all under the label of United States of America.

20:49Canada, Mexico, and Greenland have gotten used to this sort of provocation. But Iceland was shocked to be included, and summoned the U.S. ambassador to complain. There is nothing funny or normal about making fun of the sovereignty of states, Prime Minister Christian Frostedotter of Iceland, told reporters. Even as he showcased his imperialist ambitions abroad, Mr. Trump asserted his authoritarian instincts at home, posting multiple maps and images of him preemptively renaming the state of New Mexico as New America, something he has no power to do. As with the Icelanders, the New Mexicans were not amused. Oh hell no, representative Melanie Stanzberry, a Democrat, wrote online. While Mr. Trump's posts regularly influence domestic politics and foreign policy, he also uses AI to promote grandiose versions of himself as a superhero, a pope, and at one point last spring a Jesus-like figure.

22:00Last weekend's posts included one that he has circulated before, offering his own chart, ranking American presidents, with him, naturally at the top as the greatest. Another post asserted, quote, he will go down in history as the greatest president of all time, unquote. Mr. Trump, who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War with a diagnosis of bone spurs provided by a doctor who was one of his father's tenants, particularly enjoys presenting himself as a martial hero. In an image posted last month, Mr. Trump wore the military uniform that he never wore in real life, standing between General George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur. George Washington has become a regular guest in Mr. Trump's world lately. Sundays burst included images of him with the father of the country on horseback and in the Oval Office. The advent of AI has allowed Mr. Trump to go further than the mainly written social media posts of his first term.

23:07Trump is always treated social media as a window into whatever he is thinking at that moment, but AI makes that window far more vivid and frankly more disturbing, said Ms. Matthews, his former press aide, quote, and it feels like the more difficult reality gets for him, the more AI slop he posts, unquote. Mr. Brusowitz, the former campaign aide, called Mr. Trump an innovator who is paving the way to the future of politics. President Trump is the first true social media president, he said. He has always adapted to the times using new technology and platforms to take his message straight to the public. His AI posts generate enormous attention whenever he hits send. That's a quote. No one would debate that they are attention generators, one way or another. That seems to be the point. Now, a story headlined Trump's ability to channel voter concerns is tested as Republicans gather in Dallas. It's by Maggie Haberman.

24:19President Trump is poised to become far more visible outside of the White House than he has been for most of his term, starting with a Republican midterms convention in Texas and continuing with travel to boost candidates according to his age. If the president expands his domestic travel after the two day mini convention in Dallas that begins on Wednesday, it will be a test of whether he still has the ability to connect to the concerns of voters, something that helped him win the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections. President Trump's ability to harness voter anger over any rooted manufacturing base or a lack of accountability after the 2008 fiscal crisis or the toll of the so-called forever wars in the Middle East after the September 11 terrorist attacks was part of how he was able to succeed. He loved the adulation he got at rallies in his two at 2016 campaign in particular and threw himself into them again in the final stretch of the 2024 race that began against President Joseph Arbide in junior and ended up with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

25:33But early in 2025, Mr. Trump made clear to several advisors that he did not want to keep holding rallies. The campaign portion of his political career was over, he suggested, as he settled back into the West Wing and worked day by day to remake it in a hue of gold. His domestic travel in 2026 has included roughly two dozen events that were strictly about policy or a particular activity his administration had worked on. Some of those trips were tacked on to visits he was making to Florida or Sterling, Virginia or Bedminster, New Jersey to be at his private clubs and play golf. And so Mr. Trump has been living in unusually isolated existence with an extremely small group of advisors and officials helping him arrive at decisions and a small group of aids providing him with constant positive feedback. That information ecosystem tends to override what the President absorbs from polling and focus groups conducted by his own team, reactions that show voters frustrated by ongoing inflation, a spike in gas prices after a war he helped start in Iran, and a mistrust among some who cast ballots for him over how he handled the release of investigative material related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

26:59Since earlier this year, the President's advisors have been forecasting a more aggressive schedule that will take him out into the country every week. They have assured reporters that it will finally come to pass after this week. When Mr. Trump has made appearances outside the White House, his scripts tend to stay the same regardless of the event or the setting. He rails against the fake news, casts his memory back to the 2016 campaign, and talks about hoaxes he claims have been perpetrated against him. And Mr. Trump seems to be making a similar case about the economy that Mr. Biden did in 2024. Essentially, insisting the economy is doing well, even though voters are not feeling it in their daily lives. Mr. Trump has repeatedly mocked the word affordability as a contrivance by Democrats made up to attack him. That mockery has been less present in the past two weeks as the midterms drawing near appears to have gotten his attention.

28:05Still, Republicans have expressed frustration that Mr. Trump has only begun to dull out portions of the nearly $1 billion he says his political action committee has raised and helped them in their races. Now, the goal for Republicans is to win in a cycle in which the president has given them no room to separate from him, and in which they hope he can push his party's base to match the Democrats' energy and to appeal to the voters who have only turned out during his presidential elections to do so again. His cabinet members are expected to attend the convention in large numbers and to spread out across the country in key states in the coming weeks. The name of the game is turnout, said Natalie Baldassar, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, described Mr. Trump as the unequivocal leader and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party who is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress, that's a quote, and said he will draw a sharp contrast between his common sense agenda and what she called radical Democrats in Congress.

29:22Much of the 2026 playing field is on states and districts where Trump won, said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster with public opinion strategies pointing to states like Iowa and Ohio, both of which Mr. Trump has won by double digits. That means candidates are likely to welcome Trump's presence on the trail as they work to turn out Trump 2024 voters in a midterm election. That's a quote, Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide, said that every GOP candidate will be tied to Mr. Trump and that running away from him, quote, plays into an asymmetry that only benefits Dems, unquote. The challenge for the GOP is capitalizing on his appeal among voters they can't otherwise access, he said. Our next story is headlined costly conflicts with Canada and Iran, loom over Trump's midterm pitch.

30:27It's by Tony Rahm reporting from Washington. President Trump plunged the United States even deeper into a series of costly global conflicts this week creating new economic hazards that have rattled financial markets, risked another rise in prices and unnerved some Republicans ahead of the 2026 election. On a day when Mr. Trump was set to rally GOP voters ahead of the approaching midterms, the consequences of the President's agenda were on full display. A trade war he initiated with Canada appeared headed toward another escalation while a new outbreak of fighting in Iran sent oil prices above $100 per barrel for the first time since July. Both developments threatened to unleash even higher costs on American families and businesses which have already been stung by years of unchecked inflation that Mr. Trump has pledged to train.

31:28The President's attacks on Canada and his new bid this week to block some of its exports to the United States altogether risked damage to American states and domestic industries that rely heavily on commerce across the border. And his ongoing war with Iran contributed to another spike in gas prices with the average cost of a gallon of gas topping $4.22 nationally on Wednesday. The fallout has complicated Mr. Trump's task to convince a rest of electorate that the nation is on the right track almost two years since voters sent him back to the White House in the hopes that he would improve their finances. While the economy once might have served as Mr. Trump's source of political strength, it has recently become his greatest liability, one that may jeopardize Republicans continued hold on the House and Senate in November. The changing political winds prompted even some members of Mr. Trump's own party to try to distance themselves from the White House this week.

32:35As the President doubled down on his trade war with Canada, for example, Senator Susan Collins of Maine voiced her objections. A vulnerable candidate, in a tough re-election fight this November, she pushed the Trump administration behind the scenes to relax a set of duties on road salt and other products that could hurt her state most. Mr. Trump did indeed reduce some of those tariffs late Tuesday, but he also moved simultaneously to ban a subset of imports from Canada, a drastic step that could provoke further retaliation from Ottawa. That led Ms. Collins to express renewed concern that the trade war between the two countries could, in her words, lead to higher costs for Maine families and uncertainty for businesses as she urged the administration in a statement to de-escalate this conflict. The mounting uncertainty exacted a toll on financial markets, where major indexes posted another day of declines on Wednesday.

33:41At the same time, the yields on some government bonds rose, reflecting investors continued anxiousness about the economy, the rise in oil prices, and the government's own financial health. Those yields remained high even after the Treasury Department announced that it would repurchase up to $6 billion of its own debt, a movement to make federal borrowing less expensive. Nor were the consequences contained to Wall Street. Government borrowing affects consumer borrowing, meaning that high yields and mounting uncertainty contribute to rising mortgage costs for aspiring homeowners. The intertwined developments illuminated the serious political headwinds facing Mr. Trump. Despite his efforts to assuage American economic frustrations, majorities of voters increasingly tell pollsters that they are frustrated with the patient progress and that they blame the president for their financial troubles.

34:43In response, the president has redoubled his efforts to convince voters otherwise. At the midterm convention in Texas this week, he is expected to reprise the message that his policies from withering tariffs abroad to tax cuts and deregulation at home have grown the economy, boosted investment, created jobs, and driven down prices. We're going to explain what we've done, the president told reporters as he prepared to depart for Dallas soon, adding the economy is very strong, as it's a quote. The data tell a more complicated story. In the nearly two years since Mr. Trump won the White House, the U.S. economy indeed grew amid a boom around artificial intelligence, while the labor market has remained strong. But those gains have been tempered by months of high inflation, as rising prices outpace workers wages. For Mr. Trump, the next report card on the nation's battle against inflation is due later this week.

35:46But the government report will offer a snapshot of prices from a month ago, a period that mostly predates the president's latest policy maneuvers and the economic hazards he may have created as a result. Ending a period of relative calm, Mr. Trump has recently reprised his aggressive style of trade-brinksmanship. He has readied a slew of new tariffs targeting close U.S. allies and has even suggested that Washington could take the cataclysmic step of cutting off all trade with dozens of countries which it runs a trade deficit. Mr. Trump has reserved his fiercest attacks for Canada in the wake of trade talks collapsing last month. Both countries have slapped each other with new duties, culminating in Mr. Trump's move late Tuesday to announce a ban on some Canadian imports starting in late September. The ban's targeted some Canadian alcoholic beverages, dairy byproducts, molasses and motorcycles.

36:49To downplay the economic consequences, Mr. Trump's age described the total range of affected products as small, which would spare Americans from rising prices. But the concern is that the tit for tat could still inflict direct financial damage on U.S. industries and states that are closely intertwined with Canada. That included states like Kansas, where Wichita is the U.S. headquarters for Bombardier, a Canadian plain manufacturer. As part of his retaliation, Mr. Trump has threatened to block the company's domestic sales, a move that's prompted Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican, to appeal to the White House in a bid to protect local workers. So two could Mr. Trump's actions perpetuate further retaliation from Canada, risking a cycle of more serious blowback for both economies. At C. Sheff, the chief credit officer at Moody's ratings, said the risk is continued uncertainty, which could freeze or alter business activity during the dispute.

37:56It's very hard to impose very broad tariffs that don't damage your own economy and your own production, she said. The escalating trade spat coincided with another headache for Mr. Trump, the war with Iran, a conflict now in its seventh month. Renewed strikes and continued snarls in global shipping, drove the price of Brent Crude, the global benchmark, back above $100. Marking about a 40% jump from before the conflict. The recent tumult has promoted or prompted rather economists to project that oil will stay higher for longer than they initially thought, perhaps further constraining the global economy. A continued rise in oil could also keep headline inflation in the United States higher, said Padrick Garvey, the head of research for the Americans for the Americas at I.N.G. Mr. Garvey added that the continued energy shock would further carry political risks, feeding, quote, into this idea that the Trump administration hasn't delivered on its promises with respect to taking down prices.

39:09Regardless of what the president says publicly, unquote. Yet Mr. Trump on Wednesday appeared to shrug off the consequences of sky high energy costs. Asked how he would explain the renewed rise in oil prices to Americans, the president promised that they would come tumbling down after the election. The spike in fuel costs has also added to the challenge for the Federal Reserve, which is set to meet next week to decide the next move on interest rates. Having failed for years to bring inflation back to their 2% target, policymakers are now openly discussing whether they may need to raise interest rates soon. The mere possibility has enraged Mr. Trump, who in recent days has reprised his attacks on the Fed board and demanded that it cut rates rather than raise them. Such a move could actually worsen inflation, but Mr. Trump has downplayed the consequences as he insists the economy is strong.

40:13The effects of the Trump boom can be seen across many industries he said on social media last week. Now we move to a story headlined in England. Yes, England, T and Cantolo grow as the climate warms. It's by Stephen Castle, who sift English grown T in Mountfield East Sussex and tried slices of remarkably sweet orange melon in Ellsworth Cambridgeshire. It was an overcast morning in August, and the humid air hanging over a gentle east facing slope in England felt unnervingly tropical. You could be in Sri Lanka, said Mark Wyatt as he surveyed the dozens of rows of plants that stretched in front of him. Mr. Wyatt, the owner of 100 acres of land in the southeast area of Sussex, explained that this particular hillside, positioned between a nearby reservoir and a wood, inhabited a strange atmospheric pocket that trapped moisture.

41:18That happens to be ideal for the cultivation of his new crop, Camelia Sinensis, more commonly known as T. Britons have drunk T for hundreds of years, importing it from China in the 17th century, and then around 200 years later from India. Billions of cups are consumed in Britain each year, usually black T, rather than green, and often topped up with milk. Yet few have attempted to grow it, let alone in the open air. A rapidly warming climate, however, may be changing that. I thought we could create something interesting, something special, and, with climate change coming through, all the headwinds seemed to become tailwinds, Mr. Wyatt said. It should get easier over time as the temperature changes, and so does the nature of what is possible with passion and a bit of science. The past summer has been the hottest in record, in recorded British history, with temperatures hitting 38.1 celsius, or 100.6 Fahrenheit, and exceptionally dry conditions, inflicting drought on much of the country.

42:32Many farmers have faced crisis as potatoes emerge from the soil stunted or spoiled, wheat and oat yields fall, and cows produce less milk. The climate is a huge part of it, said Carol Wagstaff, an expert in agriculture and crop science at the University of Reading. Quote, if you add the uncertainties about the availability of labor, the geopolitical crises making energy very expensive, the challenges of sourcing fertilizer, you have this males from affecting farming. One of those crises, steadily warming temperatures, also presents opportunities, and some British farmers have begun to experiment with produce not typically grown in their country, including melons, kiwis, grapes, nuts, olives, and even citrus fruit. Mr. Wyatt, 58, bought his Sussex farm around 20 years ago, after a career in legal publishing.

43:32He initially raised livestock, but in 2022, he planted tea bushes for the first time after researching the process for years. This is the first year of commercial picking and processing. Mr. Wyatt hopes to expand his 8,500 bushes to 30,000 within three years, and to produce a ton of tea annually. The process is not without challenges. Water must be collected to irrigate the plants. At one point, during what has been a very hot year, the temperature in a greenhouse used for growing seedlings hit 56 degrees Celsius, or 133 Fahrenheit, Mr. Wyatt said. More than 100 miles north in Ellsworth, Cambridge, here, Anthony Davison is also experimenting on land farmed more conventionally by his great grandfather. You wake up to it when you see the French are buying loads of land in this country to grow grapes for wine, he said.

44:37In his hands, he cradled a cantaloupe, picked minutes before. Carved open, the dark orange flesh tasted remarkably sweet and full of flavor, a contrast to many melons on offer in British supermarkets, which were typically picked long before they ripened, and transported hundreds, if not thousands of miles. To me, it's all about picking stuff when it's really fresh, said Mr. Davison, 64, who sells his product produce at Frank's Farm, a shop in cafe, named after his great grandfather, Frank Davison. He first grew cantaloupe in 2025, expects to produce just around 100 this year, and thinks he could increase output fivefold. Mr. Davison intends to take more and more land from the part of his farm where grain is grown intensively, and plans to experiment with peaches and nectarines. Iris Buddle, 20, who studies plant science at the University of Nottingham and works at Frank's Farm on her vacations, said that her lecturers often discussed the looming impact of climate change, but that she was seeing it unfold in real life.

45:48It's interesting that we have grown melons so well but cabbage, supposed to be so easy to grow in the UK, I have struggled with, she said. Those plants suffered damage from insects, she said, while, quote, with pumpkins, we think it's been too hot for them this year, unquote. The destructive aspects of climate change were visible on the other side of the farm, in a field where Mr. Davison's herd of cattle normally graze. The pasture has been scorched by the heat, forcing him to offer the cows hay, which is usually for winter feed. Mr. Davison believes that more British farms could follow his model, encouraging people to buy fresh produce adapted to the climate, bypassing big retailers and allowing growers to keep all the proceeds from sales. Not far from him, one farm is growing watermelons on a commercial scale. Oakley farms near Wisbec distributed around 8,000 this year to Tesco, a leading supermarket, which said in a statement that it had sold the British grown fruit for the past decade on a seasonal basis between July and August.

47:01Professor Wagsdaff warned that Britain's rising temperatures are also accompanied by more frequent and severe extreme weather events. Her conversations with farmers, she said, were once focused on maximizing yield. Now they're mainly about finding resilient crops that can withstand an unpredictable climate. If it was just getting warmer, we'd shift to melons, peaches and grapes or whatever, and that would be a very easy decision to make, she said. But, she said, the wrong weather at the wrong time can destroy your crops, so it's not without risk. One option could be to grow crops that can be planted relatively late in the season, when information on the coming weather is clearer. Other changes are riskier. If you are talking about peach trees, you're going to have to be braver, Professor Wagsdaff said, because you were talking about four years before you can get your first fruit. Mr. Wagsdaff admitted that his venture was a gamble, and it is a niche luxury product.

48:05Five grams of banks single estate English tea, which comes in both green and black varieties, sells for 11 pounds, or about $12.50. A readily available commercial tea, such as Twinnings, English breakfast tea, sells for about three pounds for 125 grams. Even at that price, profits are another matter. Mr. Wagsdaff thinks he is a dozen years away from making money from tea, although he expects the business, which includes accommodation for tourists, to break even in three years. You can use the word stupid quite a few times, if I'm honest, the amount of effort to get to this point dealing with Mother Nature, Mr. Wagsd said, sipping a cup of his black tea. During the lap of the gods planting tea outdoors, what's going to survive, he asked, is it going to survive? And once you've planted it and waited a number of years until you can get some leaf, what's it going to taste like?

49:08The answer, right in front of him, in a glass tea cup, is smooth, subtle, and infused with flavors from the English countryside. Now a story headlined, a place where memories of the 9-11 victims have faded away. It's by Carol Rosenberg reporting from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A few years ago, relatives of people killed in the September 11th attacks began leaving messages at a monument in Guantanamo Bay near the courtroom built to put accused terrorists on trial. It was a way to remember a loved one in the enormity of the tragedy. Inside a heart drawn on a stone, Deborah Garcia wrote a love note to her husband, David, and left it beneath the American flag at the site. Here to get you justice, someone else wrote on a conch shell, never forget 9-11, another message said.

50:11The words are now all gone. With the approaching 25th anniversary of the attacks that changed the United States, a grim reality has overtaken the place of remembrance. The messages written on shells, stones, and chunks of coral have been washed away by tropical rains and bleached white by the Caribbean sun. Time and justice have not been kind to the families of the nearly 3,000 men, women, and children who were killed on September 11th, 2001. The 19 hijackers died in the attack, and US Commandos hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, but none of the five prisoners charged in the plot have gone to trial. A military judge recently set June 5th, 2028 for the start of jury selection, but the death penalty case at the US Navy Basin, Guantanamo, is in its 14th year.

51:13And with a pellet questions mounting, there is no end of the effort to find justice inside. Ms. Garcia has been coming to Guantanamo since 2023 to watch the hearings and seek justice for her husband, a computer programmer from Long Island. She said she went for the first time, quote, for my presence, my story, and my husband's life to be acknowledged, not to let them take my power, unquote. Hers has been a tragic road to Guantanamo as recounted in her blog. Her husband died at 40, leaving her with two young sons. Their eldest son, Daven, died of suicide in 2020. Still reeling from that loss, she became interested in a long-running lawsuit against the government of Saudi Arabia, the homeland of most of the hijackers, and the case at Guantanamo Bay. She has met with prosecutors and told her story to lawmakers in Washington.

52:15Only one memorial remains at the camp just as signpost as the place of pilgrimage is known, a sturdy metal plaque for Ronald P. Booka, a New York Fire Marshal who was killed when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. Mr. Booka, 46, was also an Army reservist, and a U.S. detention site in Iraq, Camp Booka, is named for him. His memorial, appeared as the others were fading away. Someone recently left a card there from the funeral of his mother, Astrid Marie Booka. She died in April at the age of 98. Since the first arrangement in the case in 2008, the office of the chief prosecutor has brought relatives of 173 of the victims to the base to watch the proceedings from behind-sound proof glass at the rear of the courtroom. At least 19 of those visitors have since died, including fathers, mothers, and grandparents.

53:21Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schramma is the fifth judge to preside in this version of the case. He was an undergraduate English major at Georgetown University and a defensive end on the football team, when hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon across the Potomac River from his campus. Children with no meaningful memories of that day have come to observe the proceedings, which take place in a courtroom that was built specifically for the September 11th case. It has been going on so long that the Coast Guard emblems around the compound, assigned of that service's contributions to security, have been replaced with the symbols of the U.S. Space Force, an entity that was created nearly two decades after the attacks. Cindy McGinty came to Guantanamo just once to watch a hearing in 2023, wondering what could constitute justice for the loss of her husband, Michael G. McGinty.

54:23The father of two, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was 42 when he was killed in the World Trade Center. On her stone, she wrote, Michael McGinty, never forgotten. She added 9-11 and drew a small dragonfly. Now, as the words at the memorial disappear, she fears that the horror of the attacks is also fading. My feelings are however very complicated, she said. I feel like the men in Guantanamo will never actually see a trial, and one of two things will happen. I will die, or they will, and hence be declared innocent. The youngest of those charged is 47, the oldest is in his early 60s. Their health has been declining from their time in CIA detention, and a lack of specialized medical care at Guantanamo to address their trauma and other disorders, their lawyers say.

55:23During discussions of a plea deal in the case, prosecutors told family members that a trial, followed by appeals, could take years. In military justice, if a convicted prisoner dies while appealing, the conviction is vacated. He would die innocent in the eyes of the law. A conviction through a guilty plea could prevent that possibility. Camp justice can feel like a cruel, claustrophobic place for the families who traveled to Guantanamo. A grief counselor accompanies them on their week-long trips, starting with when they assemble at the distinguished visitors' lounge at joint-based andries, outside Washington. Soldiers on temporary deployment to the prison operation and other shaperones escort the family members around the base. The courtroom has a special blue privacy curtain that can be pulled closed to shield them from the eyes of other observers. Other stories deeper in today's New York Times in business news, California U-Turn on Nuclear, the state is considering extending the life of its last power plant and allowing new reactors to be built.

56:37In international news, grieving for Tibetans online, with scarce details from China about flood victims, messages on social media are intimate portraits of laws. Signalling readiness to escalate, Iran facing rising U.S. pressure is taking an increasingly aggressive approach. This concludes the reading of the New York Times for today. Your reader for today has been Scott Johnson. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions concerning this program, please feel free to call us at 859-422-6390. 859-422-6390. Thank you for listening, and now please stay tuned for continued programming on Radio I.