New York Times - 9.8.26

0:00Welcome to the reading of The New York Times for Tuesday, September 8, 2026. As a reminder, radio-wise, a reading service intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities, they make it difficult to read printed material. Your reader for today is Julie Shaw. We'll start today's reading with the Miriam Webster, Word of the Day. The word of the day is magnanimous, which is an adjective. The definition is magnanimous is a formal word that means having or showing a generous and kind nature. The example given is, she was too magnanimous to recent the unkind words of those grousing about her winning the spelling B. Now we will read the front page headlines from today's edition. We begin with, inside the battle to save one pioneering general from Hegseth's purge. Next, Caribbean revelers celebrate at parade, even as many are missing. Next, as midterm approaches, Republicans find there is no escape from Trump.

1:02Next, authors wrangle with publishers over $1.5 billion Anthropic AI settlement. Next, how hyper-milers are trying to beat high-gas prices. Next, Peru shows the limits of Washington's anti-China push. And last, far-right victory in German state seen as Omen across Europe. The first article from the front page of today's edition is entitled, inside the battle to save one pioneering general from Hegseth's purge. General Christopher T. Donahue's vision for fighting future wars won him powerful supporters around the world. Could they save his career? By Adam Entus and Greg Jaffey. The article is accompanied by a picture of General Donahue. And it's captioned, General Christopher T. Donahue greeted service members before the 2023 renaming of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The general had extensive combat experience and strong support in the army.

2:06Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided in early 2025 to spike General Christopher T. Donahue's nomination to be the top US military officer in Europe. Mr. Hegseth believed that President Trump wanted heads to roll for the deaths of 13 US service members in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. General Donahue was not responsible for security at the bombing site, but he was a top commander at the airport, and so Mr. Hegseth decided he needed to go. He felt Joe Casper, Mr. Hegseth's chief of staff, to try to convince him that he was wrong. Mr. Casper asked a senior Pentagon official to prepare a card with a half a dozen bullet points laying out the facts in General Donahue's defense, current and former officials said. He took it with him in March of last year as he and Mr. Hegseth sped through traffic to the White House for a press event. For those few minutes in the car, Mr. Casper knew he would have his bosses undivided

3:08attention. The irons were blaring. He handed Mr. Hegseth the card. These were the facts of General Donahue's three-decade career. He had seen more combat in his 20-plus deployments than just about any officer in the US military. A star in the Klandestine world of special forces, he had spent years in the shadows hunting terrorist leaders, and then as the world and warfare changed, he changed with it. He had played a central role in the US military's efforts to help Ukraine hold off a much larger Russian force. A job that inspired his vision for a new kind of combat that married dive-bombing drones, robotics and artificial intelligence. Now his fate lay in the hands of Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host who had duped deployments as an army officer to Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Hegseth had come to the Pentagon vowing to weed out the small and feeble generals who he believed had failed in those wars. The play-doubt in the 16 months after the car ride was a clash between Mr. Hegseth and

4:08General Donahue's supporters who viewed him as a generational talent. That clash and its outcome was described to the New York Times by more than 40 people at the Pentagon in Congress and around the world, nearly all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. It amounts to one of the most consequential chapters in Mr. Hegseth's campaign to drive out those he sees as out of step with his priorities. A leadership purge that his critics say is driven by ideology, identity and suspicion of those with tenuous ties to former military leaders that he does not like. And it shows the intensity of the behind-the-scenes battle to save one general. The more General Donahue's allies pushed, the more Mr. Hegseth's opposition seemed to harden. The Pentagon declined to answer questions about General Donahue, saying in a statement that all senior military leaders serve at the pleasure of the president and the defense secretary. In the spring of 2025, General Donahue was commanding ground forces in Europe.

5:08Mr. Hegseth was new to the Pentagon. To the extent he was familiar with General Donahue, it was largely through the prism of the Afghanistan withdrawal and a grainy photo that indelibly linked the general to the war's tragic end. General Donahue was last US soldier to leave Afghanistan. As he stepped onto a hulking military cargo plane, an army photographer snapped his picture using his cell phone camera and night vision device. The green and black image rocketed around the world. Senior Pentagon officials said Mr. Hegseth seemed to be fixated on the photo, mistakenly referring to it as a selfie. The first item on the card that Mr. Casper handed to Mr. Hegseth and the car clarified that the photo was not a selfie and that General Donahue had nothing to do with its distribution. Other bullet points noted that Marines, not General Donahue's paratroopers, were in charge of the gate where the suicide bombing occurred. The defense secretary glanced at the card and passed

6:09it back to his chief of staff. I don't care, Mr. Hegseth told Mr. Casper. Brother, we need your help. At first, General Donahue wasn't supposed to go to Afghanistan for the withdrawal. The Pentagon said it just needed roughly 2,000 of his paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to help with security at the Kabul airport. Then, on August 16, 2021, shortly after the paratroopers started arriving, thousands of Afghans desperate to escape Taliban insurgents swarmed the runways preventing planes from taking off and landing. General Donahue's paratroopers watched in horror as Afghan special operations units who were waiting to be evacuated beat back the civilian so that flights could resume. Amid the chaos, General Donahue got new orders. Get to Kabul as fast as possible. Three decades had passed since General Donahue graduated from West Point. He was in his mid-20s when his leadership skills and football players build caught the eye of a senior officer in Delta Force,

7:11the Army's elite counterterrorism unit. He survived the selection process and disappeared into a world of secrecy and fake personas. Deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other hot spots followed as he rose to become Delta's top commander. The skill that often set General Donahue apart from his peers on those battlefields was his ability to win the trust of local partners. It had been on display in Afghanistan in May 2019 when he began leading special operations forces in the country and one over his Afghan counterpart Brigadier General Sami Sadat. Together they leveraged airstrikes special operations advisors and commandos to punish Taliban insurgents and retake territory that had been lost. We didn't feel like we cracked the code. We did crack the code, General Sadat said. But their battlefield gains were fleeting. In February 2020, Mr. Trump cut a deal with a Taliban to curtail U.S. military support to Afghan forces and began the American withdrawal.

8:14General Sadat remembered sitting by General Donahue's side in their command post watching a drone feed as the Taliban rolled over an Afghan unit. He was very angry, frustrated, and ashamed. General Sadat said, 18 months later the Afghan President had fled the country and the government had collapsed. General Sadat reconnected with General Donahue, who was already on his way back to Afghanistan and told him that his Afghan forces had dissolved. Brother, we need your help, General Sadat recalled telling him. General Donahue landed in Kabul on August 17. Around 2am, he met with Kari Hamdullah Mokhilus, a Taliban commander whom General Donahue's commandos had been trying to find and kill as recently as 2020. The General's former target was now his partner. You don't like me. I don't like you. General Donahue's paratroopers recalled his telling the Taliban commander, but we're going to have to work together. The biggest threat to both

9:15was the Islamic State terror group, which was determined to turn the withdrawal into a blood bath according to U.S. intelligence. The U.S. military would control the airport and its entry gates. U.S. commanders wanted the Taliban, who had set up checkpoints outside the airport, to let American citizens and allies pass through and keep out would-be suicide bombers. General Donahue's paratroopers began preparing for a major attack. They cleared the roads leading to the airport's field hospital so they would be able to rush wounded to get care. The intelligence identified Abbey Gate, a major airport entry point controlled by the Marines, as the most likely target. The Marines were planning to leave and turn over control of the site to General Donahue's troops. On August 24th, General Donahue visited the gate and saw thousands of desperate Afghans crowding the Marines who were trying to maintain order and screen them. The chaos and proximity between the Afghans and the Marines made it an ideal target for a suicide

10:16bomber. General Donahue told his paratroopers. The plan was for General Donahue's paratroopers to take control of the Abbey Gate from the Marines on August 27th and shut it down. But General Donahue thought it was too risky to wait. He met with the senior U.S. commander at the airport and recommended shutting the gate immediately. British forces, which were using the entry way to evacuate their citizens and allies, asked the Americans to keep it open. Pentagon leaders grudgingly agreed a senior U.S. official recalled. The Marines were still in control of Abbey Gate at 548 PM on August 26th when the suicide bomber struck. Eleven Marines, one Navy medic and one Army soldier along with scores of Afghans were killed. General Donahue could hear and feel the blast at his headquarters on the other side of the runway. I need to know the numbers and types of casualties. He told his staff. The situation was so dire that medics began pumping blood from healthy soldiers into the veins of the wounded. On August 30th, Americans' longest war came to a bitter end. General

11:21Donahue took a parting glimpse at the Kabul airport and then hurried onto the big gray plane. It was the last one out and in keeping with Army tradition, he was the final soldier to board. The Army photographer captured the moment at 1146 PM using his iPhone and the night vision monical attached to his helmet. When the plane landed in Qatar, General Donahue called his wife. His paratroopers overheard the conversation. We're out, he said. I know, she said. How do you know, he asked. Everybody knows, she said. She sent him the photo which was now posted on news sites around the world. General Donahue, taken a back, showed the photo to members of his team. He had spent most of his career in the shadows. Now he was everywhere. This is not good, he said. He wanted fewer generals. On the 2024 campaign trail, Mr. Trump blasted the Biden administration for the withdrawal and the Abbey Gate deaths, calling the episode,

12:25the most embarrassing moment in the history of the United States. He wondered why no generals had been fired for it. He did not mention the deal he had cut with the Taliban that set the collapse in motion. The withdrawal first became a career threatening problem for General Donahue in November 2024. Mark Wayne Mullin, then a Republican senator from Oklahoma, put a hold on his nomination to lead U.S. ground forces in Europe, effectively blocking him from taking the job. The hold set off a scramble among senior army officials, members of the special operations community, and some of General Donahue's supporters in Congress. Mr. Mullin, after meeting with General Donahue, relented. For General Donahue, it would prove to be a fleeting victory. His career envisioned would soon collide with Mr. Hegseth, who resigned from the army after being singled out for tattoos that the service deemed extremist. The military I loved, I fought for, I revered spit me out, Mr. Hegseth wrote in a 2024 book. Mr. Hegseth went on to blame the army's generals whose ranks he

13:30believed were bloated. It was time he wrote to clean house. Before he was confirmed as defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth met with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort and emerged from their talk believing the president-elect shared his vision. He wants fewer generals, Mr. Hegseth told Aides. General Donahue, in his 50s and one of the military's youngest four-star generals, seemed to be on the ascent. Three years earlier, he created a new headquarters to funnel intelligence, technology, planning, and strategy to the Ukrainians. It worked, and the Ukrainians retook large swathes of their territory. But in the years that followed, the US military and its NATO partners couldn't provide the Ukrainians with enough shells and missiles, so the undermaned Ukrainians improvised. They replaced scarce and costly shells and missiles with cheap drones. General Donahue and like-minded military leaders were convinced that US support to the Ukrainians was a worthwhile investment. It was bleeding the Russians and preparing the US military for future wars.

14:34Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth did not see it that way. They spoke of curtailing US support and forcing Kiev to cut a deal with Moscow. In February 2025, Mr. Hegseth traveled to Europe. The trip began with a tense conversation with General Christopher G. Kevoli, General Donahue's boss, who, as the head of the European command, led all US and NATO forces on the continent. General Kevoli, who was retiring that summer, told Mr. Hegseth that he would soon need to choose his replacement. The frontrunner for the job was General Donahue, who was standing by with his troops in Poland. It was Mr. Hegseth's last stop. The meeting, their first and only, was brief and positive. Our new model. In Washington, Mr. Hegseth received a binder with candidates' photos and bios. General Dan Cain, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had scribbled an effusive endorsement with a black sharpie next to General Donahue's picture, the official said.

15:38The two officers had worked together earlier in their careers. Mr. Hegseth initially agreed that General Donahue would take over European command. But Mr. Hegseth later told his staff that Mr. Trump wanted punishment for the deaths at Abbey Gate. After Mr. Casper's failed attempt in the car to salvage General Donahue's nomination, the chief of staff met General Donahue in his office. The top job at European command was now off the table, Mr. Casper explained. General Donahue looked dejected, but he still had his army posed in a purpose which he described to a former colleague. The headquarters he established in Germany in 2022 to aid the Ukrainians should serve as the laboratory where we test new ideas and capabilities and then rapidly share them across the force, he said. He saw the war as a historic opportunity, the colleague recalled. In the waning days of its defeat in Vietnam, the army had sent a general to the Middle East to study how the outnumbered but innovative Israelis defeated Arab armies in the 20th, 1973, Yom Kippur War.

16:45That General's report had transformed the army. This should be our new model, General Donahue told the former colleague. He began to turn his vision into a detailed plan using a dry erase board, officers recalled. His command would take Ukrainian advances in cheap, mass-produced drones and drone interceptors and build on them with new tactics and high-tech systems unique to the US military, like precision-guided missiles, patriot batteries and intelligence from satellites. All of this would be plugged into an artificial intelligence-enabled command and control system, that would identify and track thousands of potential enemy targets in real time. The system would then be shared across NATO to defend against Russia but could be replicated in the Pacific and elsewhere. The officers in the room initially called it the Global Killing Machine. Its proper name became the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative. He pitched the plan to army secretary Daniel P. Driscoll over beers at a bowling alley at his base in Germany,

17:49said Pentagon officials. Mr. Driscoll was taken with it. General Randy George, the army's chief of staff was going to retire in the summer of 2027. Now that the European command job was off the table, General George, Mr. Casper and Mr. Driscoll cooked up a new idea. General Donahue could take over for General George when he stepped down. The army chief of staff job would allow General Donahue to bring the vision he had sketched out in Europe to the entire force. But Mr. Ahegseth had other plans. He wanted to nominate General Christopher Loneve, his senior military adviser to the chief of staff post. Mr. Driscoll had a strained relationship with Mr. Ahegseth. He tried to advance his preferred candidate by arranging a meeting between Vice President JD Vance, his close friend and Yale Law School classmate and General Donahue officials said. Mr. Vance might be willing to push Mr. Trump to overrule Mr. Ahegseth, Mr.

18:51Driscoll reasoned. Mr. Ahegseth learned of Mr. Driscoll's effort and made clear his opposition. The meeting never happened. Mr. Ahegseth had said in motion a plan to reduce General Donahue's job in Europe from a four star to a three star position this summer. The move was in line with the Trump administration's policy of shifting the military's focus from Europe to Asia. For Mr. Ahegseth, it had also had the benefit of forcing General Donahue to retire if he did not get another four star position. In late February, the drone threat that General Donahue had been preparing for in Europe became a deadly reality for US forces in the Middle East. Mr. Trump had launched an extensive attack on Iran and Iran responded with volleys of Shahid drones similar to those used by the Russians. US troops were not ready. One attack struck a US army base in Kuwait killing six soldiers. Overnight, the Pentagon sent frantic messages to commanders around the world, desperate for drone

19:55interceptors. General Donahue had already distributed the commands stocked to NATO partners, but he knew someone who had more of them. General Oleksander Syrisky, the commander in the chief of the Ukrainian forces. They had grown close over the previous four years and frequent secure video conference calls that began with the same salutation. My friend or my brother and ended with General Donahue saying, what else can I do for Ukraine, the Ukrainian general recalled. Afterward, he would genuinely try to do something, General Syrisky said. Now the situation was reversed. The US military was the one needing help. General Donahue asked General Syrisky for drone interceptors and Ukrainian officers with experience using them in battle. They would join their European-based American counterparts and teach troops in the Middle East how to defend themselves. I called the president of Ukraine, explained the situation and told him that

20:58I believed providing this assistance was the right thing to do and that it would not compromise Ukraine's defense, General Syrisky said. As this was happening in early March, General George called General Donahue to tell him to put in his retirement papers. Mr. Hegseth wanted him out. General George said he would try to convince Mr. Hegseth to extend General Donahue's command six months until December 2026. The Army Chief asked for 30 minutes with Mr. Hegseth to discuss General Donahue and other issues, but Mr. Hegseth kept postponing the meeting. On April 1, Mr. Hegseth fired General George in a phone call that lasted 15 seconds, officials said. General George could no longer help him. There was now one last slim hope for General Donahue, his supporters in the Senate. They were frustrated by Mr. Hegseth's lack of transparency and they valued senior officers like General Donahue for their frank assessments. One of General Donahue's

22:01supporters was Senator Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and Republican of Montana. Mr. Sheehy's combat record and pro-Trump reputation gave him extra credibility with Mr. Hegseth. He had succeeded in persuading Mr. Hegseth to drop his objections to a handful of senior officers, particularly those Mr. Sheehy had served with in combat, but his efforts to say General Donahue were going nowhere. In a meeting with Mr. Sheehy, General Kane explained why. The Senator's campaign was only causing Mr. Hegseth's opposition to grow, reinforcing his perception that General Donahue was too powerful, independent and connected. Exposed person for the chairman disputed that he used those words to describe Mr. Hegseth's perception of General Donahue. Mr. Sheehyhy stopped pushing. Senator Joni Ernst and Iowa Republican who had deployed to Iraq and served 22 years in the National Guard had been General Donahue's most insistent champion. She continued to look for a

23:05way to help him. She believed Mr. Hegseth had promised her that he would allow General George, a fellow Iowan, to finish his full term, and she felt betrayed when Mr. Hegseth fired him. Now she was determined to block Mr. Hegseth's choice to lead the army. Instead of General LaNave, she suggested three alternatives to the White House. Her top choice was General Donahue. But a senior White House official told her that Mr. Hegseth would never nominate General Donahue for the job. With less than a month left in the General Donahue's career, Mr. Ernst asked him if he would be interested in taking over the four-star command in Austin, Texas, focused on transforming the army. It would give him a new platform to spread the vision that he had made a reality in Europe, but he had a big concern. Do you honestly think Secretary Hegseth would work with me if I was there, General Donahue asked, according to a congressional official familiar with the exchange? Honestly no, Mr. Ernst replied. General Donahue retired on August 27, surrounded by people he had fought

24:11alongside. The next article from the Front Page of Today's edition is entitled, Caribbean Revellers celebrate at parade, even as many are missing. At the annual West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, many Haitian New Yorkers targeted by an immigration crackdown were absent from the festivities by Michael Wilson and Miles G. Cohen. A jubilant West Indian American Day Parade spread across a brightly colored belt of Brooklyn on Monday, bastroms boomed and reggae flared from floats that passed through the smoke of countless grills and food stands. Headdresses studded with jewels shared the streets with wings made of tissue paper, but to many the day was striking for those who were missing. A June decision by the Supreme Court that allowed President Trump to end the temporary protected status program singled out multiple countries, including Haiti, a vital and vibrant presence in the New York City's West Indian communities. The program had granted people from troubled countries permission to stay in the United States

25:15until it was safe to return home. On Monday, it appeared that there was a smaller Haitian presence at this year's parade. Jackie Des, who set up her food stand on Utica Avenue and President's street while it was still dark out, said that hours later she had yet to sell a single plate of Haitian rice and peas. A lot of Haitians used to come out, but this year I don't see many of them. Ms. Des, age 50, said, you see one suffering, all of us suffer. Along the route on Eastern Parkway, Daphne Henry, age 29, said she spent over an hour looking for a group of Haitians to walk with. Any Haitians, Ms. Henry said as she watched floats go by near Utica Avenue. Normally it's a whole crowd like on every block. In years past Ms. Henry, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, said she usually found her community by listening for their music, but this year she said we haven't heard one lick. There were signs of solidarity about a dozen nurses on a New York state nursing

26:16association float wave signs that said restore Haitian TPS. Among them was Debra Williams, age 50, who said at least 10 of her Haitian colleagues, TPS holders, have left New York City, health and hospitals, slash McKinney, near East Flag Bush since the ruling went into effect on August 5th. Some others, she said, are going to leave their jobs soon. It's very sagged Ms. Williams, whose family immigrated from St. Vincent and the Grenadine said, I have to march for the rights of the Haitians. At an annual West Indian American day VIP breakfast held before the parade, Mayor Zoran Mamdani said the Yut sent the Caribbean communities in Brooklyn had been tested by this federal government. It is a mosaic of a diaspora that every day showcases what it can look like to stand up to that cruelty, to celebrate freedom and to show that this city would not be the city we love, we're not also for this diaspora. He said as he spoke next to Governor Kathy Hochal,

27:20Attorney General Latisha James and Boozhu Banton, a hit reggae artist. And yet throughout a day gifted with mild temperatures and a cloudless blue sky, the parades swayed along as in recent years with spectators draped in their country's flags and dancers painted from the Pridon Jovelle festival, which marks the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. The Vern Lawrence, aged 44, danced with her daughter and mother on the grassy median that defied sections of Eastern Parkway. They were all dressed in t-shirts featuring the Jamaican flag. Ms. Lawrence said she had been to the parade at least 20 times. Jamaicans are everywhere, she said, looking out at a sea of yellow and green. We always show up and show out. Nearby, Shani Moss, aged 30, and her younger sister jumped in place as they watched hundreds of people into procession wave their country's flags. This is like Christmas, Ms. Moss, who wore a bermuda flag headwrap. We're having a ball.

28:21Several people were stabbed in the area before the parade began and at least three people were shot or grazed by bullets near the route in late afternoon. The police said that shortly before dawn, three men were stabbed at Carroll Street and Utica Avenue, where the Jovelle celebrations had continued throughout the night. One of the men, aged 32, was listed in stable condition later at King's County Hospital, where the other two men, ages 23 and 36, were treated for lesser injuries. There was no immediate arrest. Minutes later, and about a mile away around 6am, a 25-year-old man was slashed in the face at Eastern Parkway and no strand avenue. The police said, his attacker also fled. Then, just after 4pm, a 24-year-old man was shot in the buttocks, a block from the parade route on no strand avenue, and listed in stable condition at King's County Hospital, police said. A person of interest was taken into custody. About five minutes later,

29:23and a few blocks away, a 37-year-old woman was shot in the ankle, and a 19-year-old man was grazed by bullets on both legs. Police said, both were in stable condition and no arrest had been made. At a news conference last week, police commissioner Jessica S. Tish said the West Indian American day parade in Brooklyn would end half an hour earlier than normal to curb the violence of past years. But the festivities started to wind down even earlier. With about 45 minutes left in the parade, announcements were being made along the route, telling revelers to get homes safe. Top of mind for many, though, was Haiti. City Councilwoman Rita Joseph, herself a Haitian immigrant, said many in her Brooklyn district were among the 300,000 Haitians who have had permission to live and work in the United States since 1990. I watched a lot of my neighbors, friends, families, the constituents that I represent have their status taken away overnight, she said. She said the Brooklyn B-35 bus, which is typically teaming with Haitian home health

30:27aids on the way to work, has felt empty during the morning commute. So have the churches and the hair salons, but she hoped they saw Monday as a day to band together. This celebration intersects with fear for my community, she said, but we're going to dance and we're going to organize it's the same time. The next article from the front page of today's edition is entitled, as midterms approach Republicans find there is no escape from Trump. The president's strategy, message and spending have left the GOP in a difficult spot, as lawmakers tried to outrun his sagging approval ratings by Annie Carney, Reed J. Epstein, and Luke Broadwater. In the White House Rose Garden last week, President Trump gathered some of the most politically endangered House Republicans for a dinner, where he promised to make himself the face of the party's uphill battle to keep control of Congress. He was with them 100 percent all the way until November, Mr. Trump told the roughly two dozen lawmakers as they dined on

31:29prime aged beef burgers, a table's adorned with bouquets of yellow roses. The president said he would travel to 35 key districts to see if we can get everyone elected. The scene encapsulated the box that GOP lawmakers have found themselves in as they stare down a bleak political environment. They cannot afford to snub Mr. Trump needing his help from enormous financial reserves and strong turnout from his base to win their campaigns, but they also do not want the election to be a referendum on the president, whose popularity is at a record low, and so far he has shown little appetite for focusing on anyone's political needs besides his own. Two months before the midterm elections, Mr. Trump and the Republicans who have long tied their political fortunes to him appear to be at cross purposes, as the party struggles to keep the House and Senate in GOP hands. As Republicans work to distance themselves from the president's unpopular decisions, Mr. Trump is headlining a splashy convention in Dallas this week and has said that voters should pretend

32:32please that I'm on the ballot. As the candidates work to show they are focused on the concerns of everyday Americans, the president is spending much of his time in Washington focused on the construction of a White House ballroom, a 250 foot arch and a golf course on a public park alongside the Potomac river. And as they brace for the final costly week of their campaigns, he has yet to dull out hardly any of the nearly one billion dollars. He says his political action committee has raised. This is my money that I control, Mr. Trump said on Friday, suggesting he would spend between $400 million and $500 million on Republicans that I think are good. His political operation reported on Saturday that it had made its first expenditure to defend a Senate seat in Texas. But beyond that, Republicans have received little information about when or where the money come. For now, Mr. Trump appears to be focused primarily on promoting himself and boosting his popularity. The first 30-second television spot released by his political team, the launch of a post-labor day

33:37ad blitz was a case in point. It touted the president as the toughest, most resilient person and made no mention of Democrats, the midterm elections, or any Republican candidates. And as Mr. Trump gathers Republicans and Dallas on Wednesday for the unprecedented two-day midterm party convention, the festivities will be as much about boosting his own approval readings and public self-esteem as it is the candidates who are actually on the ballot, a person involved with the planning said. The president called me two nights before Thanksgiving last fall, and he said, Mike, we got to do a midterm convention, Speaker Mike Johnson said, and I said, that's not a thing. And he said, make it a thing. Okay, so we're going to do a midterm convention. A ball and chain. Many vulnerable Republicans are steering clear of this week's convention, choosing instead to spend time campaigning in their states and districts. And while some see a benefit in the confab as a way to raise money for the party, tickets cost $25,000, including for

34:41lawmakers, they also worry that it will do exactly what candidates most want to avoid, turn the election into a national conversation about Mr. Trump. After 10 years of tying themselves to Mr. Trump, Republicans have little room to maneuver around him. Candidates up and down the ballot have embraced his lies about American elections, while few have publicly broken with him on signature issues such as spending cuts, tariffs, or the war with Iran. A White House spokeswoman disputed that there was any fissure between the president and his party. President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican Party, who is committed to maintaining Republicans' majority in Congress, Olivia Wales, the spokeswoman, said. But some Republicans fear the party has little to campaign on after two years that have yielded few legislative achievements and a spare congressional schedule that involved weeks on and at home. Some of Mr. Trump's moves they argue have made things worse. I'm fearful that the president's numbers are a ball on chain that will be hard to overcome,

35:45said Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate Republican who is not running for reelection in his battleground district. I'm worried that we've lost a lot of our swings voters. In the Midwest, tariffs aren't popular. Ukraine polls at 70%. Why aren't we doing more for them? Nebraska's don't like chaos and all the name calling and treating our allies bad. Republicans are banking instead on portraying Democrats as socialist extremists and themselves as the sane and sober alternative. A handful of Democratic Socialists have won primaries this year, though their numbers in Congress are likely to remain in the single digits. Mr. Johnson, who was raised at $135 million this cycle, has been leaning heavily on that contrast. Imagine a nightmare scenario with these insurgent Marxist Democrats taking over the Congress. Mr. Johnson said last week while campaigning in Texas, they would impeach the president on the first

36:46day, placing bets, but when? The biggest question for Republicans has been when and if Mr. Trump will begin spending down his political operations, prodigious resources. Mr. Trump's super PAC, maggot incorporated, has so far stayed almost entirely on the sidelines and has not communicated its plans even privately. Two of Mr. Trump's political advisors, James Blair, a former top White House aide and Tony Fabrizio, a long time pollster, briefed Republican senators last month and left a strong impression that money was coming imminently, according to two people who attended the private meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity. But little has been spent as some Republicans are growing anxious that races in North Carolina and Georgia may be falling further out of reach. Apart from the new investments in Texas, so far, Mr. Trump's super PAC has only spent this year to boost Senator Darlene Graham in last month's Republican primary in South Carolina.

37:48The president had put his reputation on the line in that contest by endorsing Ms. Graham, but its outcome in a solidly Republican state was unlikely to affect his party's chances of holding the Senate. Mr. Trump's advisors, people familiar with their thinking, said, are reluctant to spend his money when House and Senate leaders have yet to drain their own campaign coffers. Mr. Blair has been in regular contact with counterparts in the Republican leaders' political operations to strategize about how to most effectively use the president's funds in the midterms. But there have been some major splits. Mr. Trump's decision to back Ken Paxton, the scandal tarnished Texas Attorney General, who defeated Senator John Korn in a primary this year, angered Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, and other Republicans who saw it as making that state far more costly for the party to defend. Mr. Thune has all but begged Mr. Trump to put some of his own resources into the race. On Saturday, MAGA Incorporated reported it

38:53had begun doing so, spending $10 million on television and digital advertising in Texas. Separation is hard. A handful of vulnerable Republicans have sought to carefully create some distance between themselves and Mr. Trump. Unlike previous presidents who have made themselves scarce when politics demanded, Mr. Trump has not made it easy. Representative Mike Lawler of New York last week aired a digital advertisement that features the president calling him a pain in the ass for advocating the repeal of the cab on the state and local tax deduction. But Mr. Lawler is also planning to speak at the convention. Representative Tom Barrett of Michigan bought ads on Facebook touting his votes to limit Mr. Trump's war powers in Iran. But in July, Mr. Trump held a rally in his district and called the congressman to the stage alongside him. I am proud to stand with you today, Mr. Barrett said. A handful of other Republicans, including the party's nominees for Governor of Georgia and Maine, and several running for Congress have quietly scrubbed photos of Mr.

39:57Trump from their campaign websites or removed mentions of his endorsement, which they were happy to promote during primary contests. But there are not many examples of Trump era Republicans successfully distancing themselves from the president in the eyes of voters. In 2018, the last midterm election with Mr. Trump in office, he celebrated the defeat of House Republicans like then-representative Mia Love of Utah, who had been critical of him. The idea that you can run away from him is silly, said Cory Bliss, who ran the House Republican Super PAC in 2018, the last midterm with Mr. Trump in office. Republicans need to have a thoughtful conversation with their voters about what they've accomplished. Some of them won't have a single thing to say, and they're the ones who will lose. The next article from the front page of today's edition is entitled, Authors Wrangle with Publishers Over $1.5 billion Amphropic AI settlement. The tech giant must pay

40:58$3,000 per pirated book that it used to train its chatbot. Many authors fear they could lose funds to others in the book business, by Neil Vigdor. The sum is gargantuan $1.5 billion. But as thousands of authors wait for their cut of the largest copyright settlement in US history from Amphropic, the tech giant that used pirated books to train its artificial intelligence chatbot, some are accusing the publishers of their books of trying to squeeze them out of a percentage of the payout. The haggling is coming into plain view as a settlement administrator attempts to clear up who owns the rights to some of more than 482,000 books, covered by the agreement in the class action case, which was approved in July by a judge in the US District Court in the northern District of California. For many of those titles, ownership was undisputed, but on repeated occasions, authors and publishers have state competing claims with the settlement administrator,

42:00which began recently informing them of those discrepancies, said Mary Russ and Berger, Chief Executive of the Authors Guild, a professional association that says it has more than 18,000 members. In an interview on Thursday, Russ and Berger said the settlement process was right for such misunderstood. My big fear when this was all set up is that not all publishers keep great records of what books they've reverted rights to, Russ and Berger said, and so you know they should be taking it off their catalog. Russ and Berger said she did not believe that publishers were acting in bad faith. I don't see this as a grab by the publishers, she said, adding, I don't think they're specifically trying to screw any author over. Authors could receive up to $3,000 for each one of their books that a judge ruled last year were illegally downloaded and stored by Anthropic in the development of its online chat box, Claude, but they must split the proceeds with publishers they granted book rights to and with co-authors according to the author's guild, a trade group.

43:05Russ and Berger said the percentages were determined by a class action counsel that sought input from the guild and publishers. Textbook authors will receive far less in some cases 10 to 15% of the total as determined by their contracts with their publishers, she said. It's the text books where there are a lot of unhappy authors right now, Russ and Berger said. April Henry, a New York Times best selling author of more than 30 mysteries and thores for teens and adults, said she was baffled when she logged into the settlement claims portal to see that Harper Collins, her former publisher, had claimed partial ownership of her first book, Circles of Confusion. Henry, aged 67, said in an interview on Thursday that the rights to the book published in 1999 had reverted to her in 2007. It was like, well, that's not right, said Henry, echoing a complaint she made on social media on Wednesday. Her agent provided her with a letter confirming that she owned the book's rights that

44:08Henry said she uploaded to the portal. When she checked back in the portal, she said she learned that she would receive the full $3,000 for that book. I don't think Harper was deliberately trying to cheat, she said. Harper Collins declined to comment. Henry said she has 22 titles on the list of books that Anthropic had illegally obtained and that she expected to receive in the mid $20,000 range after her publishers and co-authors collect their cut. Having to share part of the settlement with a publisher was a source of frustration for Henry, who said she was first told that the payments would start flowing in August, only to hear that it might not happen until later this year. Another author, Amy Lupeau-Bare, who has written guidebooks about blogging and how families can navigate the digital world, vented on social media over her potential diminishing share of the settlement. My publisher is fighting the default 5050 payout split from the Anthropic Class Action settlement she wrote on threads. They only want me, the author whose entire work was stolen,

45:13to get 10%, so that's a fun email to wake up to. Her post, which did not name the publisher, received more than 1,000 likes and started a lengthy discussion about the settlement process. She declined to comment. John Wiley and Suns incorporated, which was listed as a publisher for two of her books on her website, raising digital families for dummies and blogging for dummies, did not address whether it was seeking a 90% cut. In a statement on Friday, a representative for the company said that it was following the settlement terms when it filed claims for all Wiley published works covered by the Anthropic Agreement. Allocations for educational titles were set by individual contracts said the representative, which did not immediately say whether Wiley put its dummies guidebook series in that category. The Association of American Publishers, a trade group that represents most of the major publishing houses in the United States and has hundreds of

46:14members did not immediately provide a comment on Friday. In 2024, a group of authors filed a class action lawsuit against Anthropic after learning that the company seeking huge amounts of digital text needed to train AI technologies had used their work without paying for it and stockpiled millions of pirated books. Anthropic chose to settle the case after a judge paved the way for a case to go through trial, finding that the company stealing of books had given the plaintiff's cause. At the same time, the judge said that the company's training of its chatbot with books that had a legally acquired was a fair use. Anthropic referred to a statement in May by Abarna Sridhar, the company's deputy general counsel, as the settlement was going through final approval. We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment and we're looking forward to bringing this matter to a close of statements said. JND legal administration, the settlement administrator, did not immediately

47:17respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Neither did a lawyer for the plaintiffs of the case. Kristalia Garcia, a professor at Georgetown Law who specializes in copyright law, said the dynamics of divvying up the Anthropic settlement funds were reminiscent of a 2007 federal lawsuit over the distribution of digital royalties for the music of the rapper Eminem. Producers who discovered Eminem sued a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group and argued that they should receive a higher percentage of royalties from downloads at iTunes and other digital stores. The two sides reached a settlement in 2012. Not all book contracts have language about who is entitled to settlement payouts and copyright infringement cases or revenues from emergent technologies including AI, Garcia said. So I think this is just kind of the publishing industry having that sort of streaming moment where their contracts didn't contemplate this she said. Muddying the settlement process further according to the author's guild are the more recent

48:22book ownership changes. Ross and Berger said an author contacted the guild this week with a dilemma. Rights to the books had reverted to the authors this year. It depends on who owned the rights when the books were downloaded when the infringement happened, which is, you know, 2021 and 22, Rassenberger said. In instances when ownership disputes remain unresolved, Rassenberger said a court appointed arbitrator will have the final say, but she added the guild will fight to the nail for them if they are in fact being screwed over. The next article from the front page of today's edition is entitled How HyperMilers Are Trying To Beat High Gas Prices. Gas prices have risen sharply since the start of the Iran War. Some drivers are using special techniques to maximize their miles per gallon and save it the pump by Pujasalhotra. When a traffic light turns green, Dan Krushal is unlikely to be the first driver out of the gate. He won't floor the gas pedal and he never drives over the speed limit. Instead, he eases

49:27forward by lightly pressing the accelerator and the moment he sees a yellow light he gently taps the brakes. These techniques and others make Mr. Krushal's age 61 a so-called hypermiler, a driver who squeezes as many miles as possible out of each gallon of gas. And after a summer of soaring gas prices driven by the war in Iran, hypermilers like Mr. Krushal's say their strategies can help drivers who are feeling pinched at the pump make the most of every gallon. People think when they are pumping gas I can't do anything about it, Bradley Phones age 74, a fellow hypermiler set of the increased gas prices I tell them you're in total control. People can control their fuel costs. Hypermilers mostly aim to maximize fuel efficiency by driving smoothly without hard stops or starts, but sometimes they employ more extreme measures like not using air conditioning or removing a vehicle's interior door panels to reduce its weight.

50:28It's both a lifestyle choice and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the hypermilers say, but they think some of their strategies could be useful to regular everyday drivers looking to save on Phillips. Gas prices have risen sharply since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, freezing the flow of energy from the Persian Gulf. As fighting in Iran intensified last week, diesel fuel prices hit a record high in the United States, with gas prices up nearly 40% according to the AAA Motor Club. As of Sunday, regular gas costs an average of $4.14 per gallon, though prices vary in different states. According to AAA, it is the highest price for a gallon of regular gas on Labor Day weekend, though that does not account for inflation. With a few tweaks, Mr. Fawn said drivers can easily save 30% or more on their gas bill. Drivers do not have to be at the mercy of the government, the high gas prices or anything else, he said. They have options.

51:30The 2017 Toyota Prius that Mr. Fawns drives in his home in Jackson, Wisconsin, just north of Milwaukee, is estimated to achieve 52 miles per gallon, according to its official EPA rating. But Mr. Fawns said he gets 83.2 miles per gallon by driving with fuel economy in mind. Mr. Fawns, who started a nonprofit organization called Drive Smart Wisconsin, keeps a list of simple techniques that he said any driver can use to save money on gas. At the top of the list is non-aggressive driving, which he defined as moving smoothly and purposefully. Other strategies include completing multiple errands in one trip so the car does not have to use extra fuel to warm up and keeping up with vehicle maintenance. Most cars are at peak fuel efficiency between 45 and 65 miles per hour. Hyper-milers recommend staying in that range and not going over the speed limit on the highway. Driving faster causes the vehicles drag to increase, reducing fuel mileage at an exponential rate. Hyper-milers also avoid unnecessary braking,

52:37which eats up fuel and they accelerate slowly when starting from a complete stop. They anticipate slowdowns ahead. You work the gas so you're barely holding the speed you want to hold. Explain Bruce Greggerson, age 79, a hyper-miler who lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It takes a little more concentration, but once you get used to it, you'll do it automatically. Hybrid cars, which combine a traditional gasoline-powered engine with one or more electric motors and a battery pack, offer greater fuel efficiency and are the vehicle of choice for many hyper-milers. Bob Winger, age 71, a Williamsburg, Virginia resident, is part of a group of hyper-mile enthusiasts who have set multiple world records for fuel efficiency, including one with the lowest consumption of fuel and a non-hybrid vehicle driving through all 48 contiguous states. Mr. Winger said they had set that record by using techniques such as Ridge riding, in which the passenger's side wheel moves along the white paint stripe on a highway,

53:41because the friction is lower there than on the asphalt. Such extremes are not necessary unless one is trying to set a world record, Mr. Winger said. Instead, he says drivers can achieve greater mileage by doing simple things like making sure their tires are properly inflated, which helps decrease resistance, using full synthetic oil and engine reduces friction within the engine he added. You don't have to do crazy stuff, he said. Just driving conservatively, you can save without really pulling out all the tools in the toolbox. The next article from the front page of today's edition is entitled, Peru shows the limits of Washington's anti-China push. As Secretary of State Margot Rubio travels to this week to Peru, its growing economic ties to China have raised tensions within the US, but show no signs of reversing course by Genevieve Glatsky. Peru's ambassador in Washington, Louise McGell Castilla, received a stern phone call in 2015

54:43from the State Department. After US officials learned that a Chinese firm would finance a sprawling new Pacific Coast Port project. Why they asked was Peru handing Beijing a strategic foothold in South America? Mr. Castilla's answer was blunt. Western investors had already passed. The port's Peruvian private sector promoters came to knock on doors here and in Europe, and no one opened the door, Mr. Castilla said. So any space left behind is space that someone else takes. Today, the $1.3 billion Chinese backed Megaport in Chankei, north of Lima, the capital, has become the most visible symbol of China's expanding economic presence in Peru. It is also a key reason the country, which Secretary of State Margot Rubio, is planning to visit this week has emerged as a testing ground for one of President Trump's core objectives in Latin America, rolling back Beijing's influence in the Western Hemisphere. Senior administration officials have warned while offering no evidence that Chinese finance

55:46projects threaten Peru's sovereignty, and in the case of the port could give Beijing a military foothold. But in Peru, Washington's pressure collides with a stubborn reality. China has become Peru's largest trading partner in a major investor in mining, energy, and infrastructure. A relationship that has helped underpin one of South America's most resilient economies. Even the inauguration in July of President Keiko Fujimori, a staunch conservative who has pledged closer security cooperation with Washington, is unlikely to deliver the anti-China shift the Trump administration seeks. She has given no indication she will scale back ties to China. In her first speech to Congress, Mr. Fujimura described Peru as a bridge between Latin America and Asia. Over the past decade, Peru has cycled through nine presidents, four impeachments, repeated waves of mass protests, one attempted self-coup, and countless corruption scandals. Yet, it has maintained steady economic growth, low inflation, and strong investor confidence,

56:50avoiding the debt crises and sharp downturns that have plagued several of its neighbors. The benefits, however, have been uneven. Millions of Peruvian still live in poverty and reliant underfunded schools in health care. Experts attribute Peru's economic stability largely to an independent central bank and successive governments that left economic policy to career economists insulating it from politics. In addition, China has become a crucial pillar of Peru's economy. When the 2008 financial crisis cratered US and European demand for minerals, China's construction boomed, continued absorbing Peruvian copper and iron. This is all the time that we have for today and concludes the reading of the New York Times for today. Your reader for today has been Julie Shaw. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions concerning this program, please feel free to call us at area code 859-422-6390. Thank you for listening and now please stay tuned for continued programming on Radio I.