Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday:
Congress is deadlocked on the shutdownThere was a sense of déjà vu today on Capitol Hill. Just like yesterday, Republicans rejected the Democratic proposal to fund the government, and then Democrats rejected the Republican plan. No votes changed, and neither side appeared faintly interested in giving an inch. Two Democratic senators — Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — voted for the Republicans’ measure, as did Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. Republicans need eight if one of their own, Rand Paul of Kentucky, keeps voting against his party’s spending plan. The result is a government shutdown with no immediate offramp in sight. Already, hundreds of thousands of workers have been furloughed and parts of the government have begun to grind to a halt. Critical services continue to operate — including Social Security and Medicare benefits — so if the shutdown is brief, you might not notice its effects. But the longer the government remains closed, the more pain could be felt: Most civil litigation out of the Justice Department has stopped, no new education grants are going out and some important economic data has been put on pause. The Trump administration has also threatened to leverage the closure to fire “a lot” of civil servants. In an afternoon conference call with House Republicans, Russell Vought, the budget director, told members that the reduction-in-force plans would go into effect in the next day or two, according to a lawmaker on the call. For more:
Jane Goodall died at 91Jane Goodall, whose groundbreaking work documenting the behavior of wild chimpanzees made her one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91 while on a speaking tour in California. Goodall was just 29 when, in 1963, the National Geographic Society published her account of the lives of Flo, David Greybeard, Fifi and other chimps she observed in Tanzania. Her discoveries, including evidence that animals other than humans could make and use tools, were described as “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” Their significance — and her skill at presenting them to the public — also opened the door for more women in the largely male world of science.
ICE used the nation’s capital as a testing groundFederal immigration authorities struggled to meet the White House’s demands for higher arrest numbers in cities with so-called sanctuary policies, like Washington, D.C. Then, Trump announced a takeover of policing in the nation’s capital, and immigration arrests in the city skyrocketed. A Times review of dozens of videos filmed by witnesses in Washington showed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement worked with other law enforcement agencies to identify migrants during stops for minor infractions. The strategy served as a test case, as ICE expands its efforts to increase deportations in other major cities. In other Trump administration news:
A debate escalates around the expansion of autism diagnosesThe perception of autism has broadened significantly over the past few decades, from a disorder largely limited to severely disabled people to a spectrum that includes people who are far less impaired. Now, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for increased focus on autism, some families are calling for the spectrum diagnosis to be split in two. They argue that the broadening of the autism diagnosis obscures the experiences of the seriously disabled people it was first meant to describe. However, many autistic activists strongly object, warning that splitting the diagnosis risks invalidating their own experiences. More top news
A guide to Thomas Pynchon’s novelsThomas Pynchon has a reputation for writing challenging books. He is celebrated as a literary innovator and revered by graduate students, but his precedent-shattering novels are rarely recommended to casual readers. Our critic A.O. Scott believes that oversight is a mistake. Ahead of the release next week of Pynchon’s first book in a dozen years, he pulled together a guide of Pynchon’s previous eight novels through a pulpier, more accessible, lens.
Looking for a place for Mary Tyler Moore’s hat to landIn the opening title sequence of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Moore’s character removes her tufted tam-o’-shanter and, right in the thick of bustling Minneapolis foot traffic, tosses the hat skyward. The ebullient image might be the most famous freeze frame in television history, but her hat has been hidden away for decades. Several years after Moore’s death, her husband has sought a forever home for her hat and other items.
Dinner table topics
Cook: You can make a great California roll in your own kitchen. Listen: These tunes will make you love the music of Nina Simone. Read: A new biography shows how Bruce Lee changed movies. Game: The video game Hades II is a brilliantly balanced and elegant sequel. |
