Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.
Trump ordered National Guard to police the nation’s capitalPresident Trump announced this morning that he would temporarily take control of the police department in Washington, D.C., and deploy 800 National Guard troops to fight crime in the nation’s capital. He also said that he intended to clear out the city’s homeless population. The president described the federal takeover, which the White House said would last 30 days, as a necessary step to address crime in Washington. At a news conference announcing the decision, he painted a dystopian picture of a city filled with “roving mobs of wild youth,” “bloodthirsty criminals” and “drugged out maniacs.” The city’s official data shows that violent crime is at a 30-year low. Local officials immediately criticized the president’s move, and pockets of protesters sprang up. Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged that Trump had the authority to take over the city’s police, but described his actions as “unsettling and unprecedented.” Trump suggested that he would be using Washington as something of a guinea pig to prove that Republicans can clean up cities better than Democrats can, and that the federal government might eventually target cities like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. For more:
The killing of Al Jazeera journalists raised tensionsAn Israeli airstrike that deliberately killed several Al Jazeera journalists escalated tensions between Qatar and Israel. The network is funded by the Qatari government, which is also a central mediator in talks to end the war in Gaza. Qatar’s prime minister called targeting journalists in Gaza a crime “beyond imagination.” The attack on Sunday killed the well-known correspondent Anas al-Sharif as well as another correspondent, two photographers and an assistant. The Israeli military had accused al-Sharif of being a Hamas fighter, an allegation that he and Al Jazeera had rejected. Here’s what we know about the journalists who were killed. For more: There is little clarity over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to capture Gaza City, frustrating Israelis across the political spectrum.
European leaders plan talks before the Trump-Putin summitUkraine and its European allies are worried that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will use his meeting this week with Trump to drive a wedge between the White House and Kyiv. That risk was underscored when Trump said that he was negotiating with Russia over what he called “land swaps.” Reflecting Europe’s concerns, Germany’s chancellor announced today that he would convene a virtual summit on Wednesday to discuss the war. A German spokesman said that both Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, would participate, along with several European leaders. In other news from the war:
An unlikely advocate for a powerful psychedelicIn September 2023, Rick Perry, the former Republican presidential candidate, energy secretary and Texas governor, lay down on a mattress just outside Tijuana, Mexico, put on an eye mask and soon began to believe that he was hurtling through space. His hallucinations, induced by the powerful psychotropic drug ibogaine, continued for 12 hours. Since then, Perry, a 75-year-old social conservative, has dedicated his life to promoting the potential clinical use of ibogaine for brain trauma, addiction and even cognitive decline. “It has literally given people their lives back,” Perry said of the drug, which he convinced Texas to research for use as a treatment for veterans. More top news
Many people are turning to A.I. at workAt workplaces as diverse as restaurants, hospitals and law offices, artificial intelligence has become a useful — sometimes even critical — tool for roughly one in five U.S. employees. My colleagues spoke with 21 people who are using A.I. at work. A restaurant owner uses ChatGPT to pick wines; a psychotherapist turns to the technology to write therapy plans; and a music teacher relies on an A.I. chatbot to (more politely) let students know that they didn’t make the cut for a competitive high school jazz program.
Tristan Duke just keeps blowing our mindsThe Los Angeles artist Tristan Duke recently published a book of photographs of Arctic glaciers taken through lenses made of their own ice. While astonishing on both an artistic and technical level, the work just scratches the surface of Duke’s boundary-pushing work. He has also been using a camera that captures light itself at a trillion frames per second. He has reverse-engineered a long-lost method for producing color images without pigment. And he has experimented with miniature photographs visible only through a microscope — not to mention his earlier work hand-etching holograms onto metal platters. Take a look at Duke’s art.
Dinner table topics
Cook: These sweet and salty frozen grapes are an unbeatable summer treat. Watch: “Counterattack” is one of the best action movies to stream right now. Read: “Ruth” is an absorbing novel about a woman torn between curiosity and purity. Plan: These five European castles are perfect for children. Decorate: Take design inspiration from T magazine’s favorite bedrooms. Exercise: Experts want to correct these common misconceptions about running. |
