The Evening: Trump suggests he might pull out of the debate

Also, Russia attacked Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

View in browser|nytimes.com August 26, 2024 By Matthew Cullen Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Monday. A tussle over the presidential debate A major Russian attack on Ukraine Plus, the first day of the U.S. Open 🇺🇸 2024 The presidential election is 71 days away. Here's the latest from the campaign trail. Todd Heisler/The New York Times, Roger Kisby for The New York Times Harris and Trump squabbled over debate rules Donald Trump said today that he was still "thinking about" whether he should participate in a Sept. 10 debate with Kamala Harris on ABC News, threatening again to pull out of the only debate that both candidates have agreed to. Harris's campaign announced today that it was pushing for the agreed-upon rules to be altered. Her team said it wants both microphones to remain on throughout the entire debate, rather than muting the person who isn't speaking. The effort seems to be aimed at turning Trump's proclivity for speaking off the cuff and out of turn against him. Such squabbles over debate rules might seem minor, but the last presidential debate proved to be the turning point that convinced many top Democrats that they needed a new candidate. My colleague Jess Bidgood, who writes the On Politics newsletter, said the debate could easily be the defining moment in a historically brief presidential campaign. Here's what else to know: Trump and Harris strike starkly different tones on how to fight poverty. Harris has become tougher on immigration, but the subject remains a political vulnerability for Democrats. North Carolina's rural voters could swing the election. Hear what they have to say about the candidates. What would you like to know about the election? Send us your question and we'll take it to our reporters. Stay up-to-date: Live coverage | Poll tracker | The "Run-Up" podcast | On Politics newsletter Sheltering in a metro station during a Russian air attack in Kyiv today. Roman Pilipey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Russia attacked Ukraine's energy infrastructure Russian forces today launched more than 200 missiles and drones across a broad swath of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's leader, condemned the assault as "one of the largest strikes" of the 30-month-old war. The barrage damaged energy facilities across the country and caused residents of Kyiv to seek shelter in basements and subways. Multiple cities reported blackouts, and officials said that four people had been killed and more than 30 injured. The strikes occurred as Ukraine's troops continued to advance, slowly, into Russian territory. Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, in 2014. Jim Wilson/The New York Times French officials explained the Telegram founder's arrest Prosecutors in France announced today that Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging platform, was arrested outside Paris over the weekend in connection with an investigation into criminal activity on the app and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement. He has not yet been charged. The investigation, the French officials said, was into charges including money laundering and complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the selling of drugs. Telegram has long been on the radar of law enforcement agencies because terrorist organizations, drug sellers, weapons dealers and far-right extremist groups have used it to communicate. For more: My colleagues explain how Durov went from Russia's Mark Zuckerberg to a wanted man. John Taggart for The New York Times Recycled plastic isn't always what it sounds like Many companies, including Nalgene, Ferragamo and Stanley Black & Decker, sell products that are made with Tritan Renew, a plastic that is marketed as 50 percent recycled material. But that's not exactly true. The company behind the material uses a green accounting method called "mass balance" to build up credits for recycling plastic and then apply them to the products. More top news Court: Prosecutors appealed Judge Aileen Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump. Weather: Forecasters warn that "dangerous heat and humidity" will spread across the central and eastern U.S. this week. Middle East: After weeks of foreboding, an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah has been averted, at least for now, as both sides returned to more contained confrontations. Venezuela: A top election official said he had no proof that Nicolás Maduro won the election. Pakistan: At least 38 people were killed in several assaults across Baluchistan Province in what appears to be part of a campaign by armed separatists. Business: Kroger seeks to acquire Albertsons in the biggest supermarket merger in history, but federal regulators argue the deal would hurt workers. New York: The city's bus system has a big fare evasion problem, with roughly one out of every two passengers failing to pay. Climate: Meta and Google are looking to power their data centers in a new way — by harnessing clean heat far below Earth's surface. Food: California is considering banning food dyes in schools. Some studies have found a link between dyes and hyperactivity. TIME TO UNWIND Coco Gauff during her first-round match against Varvara Gracheva. Earl Wilson/The New York Times Day 1 of the U.S. Open The U.S. Open, which began today in Queens, has been the most unpredictable of tennis's Grand Slam tournaments in recent years. Five different players won the last five titles, on both the men's side and the women's side, and this year's event is expected to be just as competitive. Coco Gauff and Ben Shelton of the U.S. won their opening contests, and high-ranked stars like Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka will play later tonight. Here are the matches we are most looking forward to. For more: Does all the grunting really help? Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear at their home in France. Clara Watt for The New York Times The reigning couple of Russian translation For more than three decades, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have been the West's pre-eminent translators of Russian literature. They are the Constance Garnett of our time, making classics by Tolstoy and Chekhov, as well as lesser-known Russian works, accessible in English. The married couple are adored by many readers, but also strongly disliked by others, in part because they aim for something like objectivity and fidelity in their translations, leaving in awkward diction rather than smoothing it over. Jared Isaacman is preparing for a SpaceX mission. John Raoux/Associated Press Dinner table topics A daring spacewalk: The billionaire Jared Isaacman is going to space for a second time. This time, his aspirations are grander and riskier. Channeling a playhouse: An artist turned a covered wagon in her Moroccan garden into a guesthouse, taking inspiration from Roald Dahl. Tech cannibalism: When generative A.I. ingests its own output, the results get a lot worse. A reader asked: Is it better to be overdressed or underdressed? WHAT TO DO TONIGHT Armando Rafael for The New York Times Cook: This Hasselback kielbasa recipe is a good reason to fire up the grill. Watch: "The Practice" is one of the best international movies to stream right now. Read: Danzy Senna's new novel "Colored Television" is funny, foxy and fleet. Listen: All eight of these songs could be the song of the summer. Save: Opening a Roth account may be a good move at any age. Soothe: There are a number of tricks to stop a bug bite from itching. Compete: Take this week's Flashback history quiz. Play: Here are today's Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini Crossword. Find all of our games here. ONE LAST THING Graham Dickie/The New York Times A new generation of club kids St. James Joy is a popular daytime party in Brooklyn where attendees can groove to techno music and salsa. It's also one of a handful of dance spots in New York where toddlers are welcomed for some pre-bedtime fun. The parties give nightlife-loving parents a dance floor release, while offering their children a dose of social life and a chance to burn off their energy. "It's such an important part of my life that I want my kids there," one parent said. Have an upbeat evening. Thanks for reading. I'll be back tomorrow. — Matthew Philip Pacheco was our photo editor today. We welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com. Writer: Matthew Cullen Editorial Director: Adam Pasick Editors: Carole Landry, Whet Moser, Justin Porter, Jonathan Wolfe Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for The Evening from The New York Times. To stop receiving The Evening, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

On the ground at the DNC with Today, Explained

Field Notes from the week covering the DNC with the Today, Explained team.

View this email in your browser    Miranda Kennedy for Vox. The Vox Explainer is a newsletter exclusively for Vox Members. We are sharing a sneak peek into the latest edition in which the Today, Explained team takes us along on a reporting trip to Chicago for the 2024 Democratic National Convention. To get access of future versions of the Vox Explainer and other member benefits, become a Vox Member today. Become a Vox Member Hey there, Vox Members!  I'm Miranda Kennedy, executive producer of Vox's daily news podcast, Today, Explained. I just got back from a trip to Chicago for the DNC. I traveled there for the week of festivities with a small podcast team: host Noel King and producer Hady Mawajdeh. We'd planned to attend well before Vice President Kamala Harris was named to the top of the ticket; originally, we wanted to report on the protests against the war in Gaza and President Joe Biden's problems with Black voters. Well, when we got there, we found that both of those issues are still very alive and active for Democrats — even now that Kamala is the Democrats' candidate for the top job.  You can listen to the Today, Explained episodes from the DNC here.  —Miranda Kennedy, executive producer of Today, Explained FIELD NOTES WITH MIRANDA KENNEDY & TODAY, EXPLAINED SUNDAY, AUGUST 18 5:40 am ET: Catch a Lyft ride to DCA airport in Washington, DC. Being DC-based, both Today, Explained co-host Noel King and I had very little choice in our flights, due to the overwhelming demand for DC-Chicago routes ahead of the convention's start. (It was the same on the way back, too!) Producer Hady Mawajdeh was traveling from Dallas, and he had only marginally more choice. It was a packed convention!  9 am CT: Arriving at my destination in northwest Chicago, I check out my gear. I do not usually do the work of a producer, but our team is lean and mean for this convention, so I've prepped by digging out my fuzzy microphone from my daughter's playroom where it's been living for the last several years, since she discovered how much fun it is to play with the "dead cat" (as audio people call it). I double- and triple-check my battery supply for my recorder.   3 pm CT: Back in Dallas, Hady spends the afternoon prepping for the trip. As the lead/coordinating producer, he needs to bring a huge amount of gear with him. For the delegate roundtable we're taping on Monday alone, he needs four mics and mic stands, cables, recorders, and extras for when something goes wrong. He's been working with our audio engineering department for weeks to get and test all the right equipment. He even made a TikTok displaying his complicated gear-assembling project.  Hady's full gear outfit for the DNC. Hady Mawajdeh for Vox. MONDAY, AUGUST 19 7:40 am CT: Noel arrives, having woken up "before God and the birds," as she put it, to be able to fly into convention central in time for Monday's reporting. She takes an L train to her hotel, dumps her bag, and rushes back out with her equipment to meet me.  9:30 am CT: Noel and I meet at Chicago's Union Park, a quarter-mile from the United Center, where the DNC is being held. Union Park is the starting point for a large coalition of protesters called March on the DNC, who have been planning protests for over a year. The focus of those protests, of course, shifted toward Gaza and away from other issues in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and launch of Israel's war on Gaza. The park is full of protesters milling around, grabbing water, and listening in to a press conference held by the organizers. Afterward, they march along a city-approved route which has them "in sight and sound" of the convention hall, as they put it, even though Chicago did not allow them to get as close to the DNC itself as they had hoped.  Scenes from the March on the DNC protest. Miranda Kennedy for Vox. 10:45 am CT: Noel and I cut short our interviews to grab an Uber to a nearby WeWork, where we need to upload some of our reporting, asap. The starting time of the march was a little too late for the Today, Explained radio deadline of 1:30 pm ET. We have to go through our tape and get Noel's tracking (which is what we call her voice tracks) uploaded to our team back in Washington, who are finalizing Monday's show. We pass a card reader back and forth between us on a table in our shared workspace, call our engineers in a panic, and quickly approve text for Noel to read, so we can make the deadline. Our show for Monday is a mostly prerecorded interview about the comparisons to Chicago hosting the DNC back in 1968. But we were determined to update it with sounds of the protests on the streets at the convention in 2024.  1 pm CT: Hady has arrived in Chicago, and we meet him at an office downtown where we are going to conduct a delegate roundtable with three Black women delegates. We have been planning this roundtable for weeks. Hady conducted dozens of pre-interviews with delegates and other convention attendees from all over the country, in order to pick three strong speakers who will represent different age groups and regions of the country while talking through what Kamala Harris's candidacy represents to them and the future of the US. Noel interviews them at length across a wide table, until the most high-profile of the women — the lieutenant governor of Illinois — has to dart off to a meeting at the convention hall.  Recording the roundtable. Miranda Kennedy for Vox. 3 pm CT: We make our way back to the WeWork, to go through our tape and make a plan to edit down the interview into an episode size. Also, importantly, to order Sweetgreen.  TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 8:30 am CT: Noel writes and tracks a radio promo for our Wednesday episode from her hotel room before leaving for the day. We need to provide our 120+ radio stations with promotional materials each day for the next day's show. All of our shows this week are featuring political themes from in and around the DNC, but Tuesday's show is luckily being produced from DC and New York, featuring Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram asking writer Jonathan Chait about the future of the Democratic Party.  10 am CT: Noel heads to the L train again, to do some reporting on Chicago's South Side. This is for Thursday's episode, which is a look at the complicated relationship between under-resourced Black communities in Chicago and the almost 50,000 migrants who have poured into the city in the last two years. It's difficult to get people to talk about it, and many of Noel's potential interview subjects back out at the last minute. To be as nimble as possible, she is walking around the area on her own trying to grab interviews.  12 pm CT: Hady heads out to interview an older Black couple at their beautiful home on Chicago's South Side. Because public transportation isn't great in the area, he actually rents a bike and cycles there, with all his gear in his backpack.  Hady's interview subjects. Hady Mawajdeh for Vox. 4 pm CT: After the day of interviews, we all meet back at the WeWork to go through what we have. We need to finalize the audio for that show before it airs Wednesday. And Noel and Hady need to upload the mountains of interviews and outside "ambi" (or street sound) to our servers so we can write it into radio scripts, which our engineers back home will then make sing for radio and podcast.  7 pm CT: We consider, and then decide against, attending one of the many convention parties. Tonight we have too much work to do and are too worn out to make it. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21 7 am CT: The team writes and tracks our Wednesday episode and our Thursday promo from our respective hotel rooms, before heading out for another day of reporting on the streets of Chicago.  12 pm CT: I hop on a city bus to meet Noel at an interview for our Thursday show. We are meeting a Chicago-based Latino academic at a South Side church that has helped shelter migrants. But, due to convention scheduling snafus — the academic is attending some events at the DNC — we are unable to get to the church in time, so we just meet him outside the United Center. The streets are mostly empty, having been closed to most traffic, so all the delegate traffic is foot traffic. The quietest spot we can find for the interview is a bench on the pavement; to get the best audio, I kneel and sit (alternately, in an effort to be less uncomfortable) on the sidewalk and stick my fuzzy microphone in our guest's face while he tells us about the migrant situation in Chicago.  8 pm CT: After another afternoon of working together in our Chicago WeWork, I pack up my gear into a messenger bag and head to a watch party at a nearby hotel. This is one of dozens such events each day this week, and it's one that convention-goers are especially hyped up for: It's Walz night! I take the elevator up to the 27th floor of the swanky hotel, into a music-pumping, high-energy penthouse room full of well-dressed, young convention goers. The night's events are being projected on five or six different TV screens around the room. There was so much excitement for Oprah, but Harris's running mate Tim Walz was clearly the star of the night.   It's Walz night! Miranda Kennedy for Vox. THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 8 am CT: I start editing the work that Noel and Hady have done overnight. Both of them were up much of the night working on the structure for this somewhat complex reported piece on migrants in Chicago.  12:30 pm CT: Even after several days in Chicago, we still struggle to remember that our deadline here is one hour earlier than it is back home on East Coast time. Due to convention traffic and logistics, I end up having to approve final versions of the show from the L train — and miss my stop in the process! 10 pm ET: We all tune in to Kamala Harris's late-night speech at the final day of the convention, and wait in vain for Beyonce to show up. Whoever started that rumor definitely fooled my team. FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 8 am ET: Noel does an interview with her co-host Sean about Harris's speech — the mood in Chicago, the top takeaways, and whether she hit all the notes she needed to.  1:30 pm ET: The Today, Explained team scrambles to get our final convention-themed show on the air by our radio deadline. Making a quick-turn show is always tricky, because we have so little time to turn the material around. But it's that much tougher when everyone is worn out from a frantic week of convention reporting. We'll all rest well this weekend.  The Today, Explained DNC team: me, Noel, and Hady. Miranda Kennedy for Vox. Listen to Today, Explained episodes from the DNC  here. More favorites from Vox video and podcasts   PODCAST   The migrant crisis, via Chicago Around 50,000 migrants have poured into Chicago in the last two years. Some Chicagoans are furious. We talk to residents, clergy, and migrants on Chicago's South Side about an issue that may be Kamala Harris's biggest liability.   VIDEO   Kamala Harris, explained in 7 moments The rise of Kamala Harris, from San Francisco prosecutor to presidential nominee.   PODCAST   Kamala's party The Democrats call Black women the "backbone" of their party. We ask three Black women delegates in Chicago about making history, Gaza, and Black men voting for Trump. This email was sent to comercialyventas.aliperiodicos@blogger.com. Unsubscribe from this email or manage your email preferences. View our Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service.   Vox Media, 1701 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. https://link.vox.com/oc/6572b43e95188a1312105314lr0uj.5h5/5c4dcf40