The Morning: Inconvenient facts

Plus, the National Guard, air-conditioning and Cristiano Ronaldo.

View in browser|nytimes.com August 13, 2025 Good morning. Here's the latest: National Guard: Troops began to deploy in Washington, D.C., as part of President Trump's plan to crack down on crime there. Museums: The White House said it would review exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution. It said the museums would have 120 days to replace "divisive or ideologically driven language." Economy: A key inflation measure rose in July as businesses grappled with tariffs. More news is below. But first, a look at how the Trump administration deals with unfavorable data. In the Oval Office. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times Truth hurts By Evan Gorelick I'm a writer for The Morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an obscure economic arm of the federal government, is getting a new leader. Trump has nominated an economist from the conservative Heritage Foundation to replace the bureau's chief, whom he fired after a less-than-stellar jobs report. It's hard to get bad news — so the administration is trying not to. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that hiring this year was more sluggish than it had previously reported (revisions like that are normal), the president said without evidence that the new figures were "rigged" to make him look bad. Economists across the political spectrum worry that his nominee will proffer friendlier data. Trump has previously canned scientists, closed databases and otherwise fettered the delivery of inconvenient facts. Today's newsletter is about the administration's efforts, across the government, to throw out troublesome data and silence the people who gather it. No thanks Expertise and data can pose problems for any president's agenda, but Trump has done more than his predecessors to erase the inconvenient facts. Climate science. In the name of deregulation, the Trump administration rejected the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases threaten public health. Trump's budget eliminates funding for a Hawaii lab that has collected climate data for 70 years. The administration is shuttering the E.P.A.'s scientific research arm. It also retired an extreme-weather project that tracked the costs of natural disasters and said it would stop updating a database that companies use to calculate their emissions. The census. Trump has ordered a new population count that excludes illegal immigrants; his allies hope it will lift their allotment of seats in Congress. It may not have that result — and Trump may not have the authority to call a mid-decade recount — but the census affects federal funding and tells us who we are as a nation. The administration also ended several Census Bureau surveys, disbanded expert advisory committees and pushed out 1,300 employees. Gender and D.E.I. The government scrubbed more than 8,000 web pages after Trump signed executive orders targeting diversity initiatives and what he calls "gender ideology." In one instance, the administration tried to delete a federal database that included information on whether teens identified as transgender. When a court required that the government keep it online, the C.D.C. added a note: "This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it." Be quiet The president also seems not to like the bearers of bad news. He has intimidated some officials and sacked others. In addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Trump administration has targeted: Inspectors general. The president has fired or demoted more than 20 people in independent offices responsible for making sure the government works properly. The remaining employees told Luke Broadwater, one of our White House correspondents, that they are now reluctant to pursue investigations that could elicit political blowback. The Fed. Trump has repeatedly threatened to oust Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, for refusing to lower interest rates. The independence of central bankers is protected by law, and White House meddling can boost inflation and hurt growth in the long run, writes Colby Smith, who covers the Fed. Health officials. Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired all 17 experts from the C.D.C.'s vaccine advisory committee. They held that vaccines, including Covid shots, were safe and effective. Kennedy disagrees. Courts. Judges are supposed to interpret laws impartially, away from political pressures. But Trump has attacked judges who have scuttled his agenda. Last month, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against one who ruled against Trump's deportation plans. The payoff Now there are fewer people in a position to challenge the White House. Trump has fired Justice Department lawyers whom he found too deferential to court orders. He has also axed Democratic members of independent bodies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He filled top posts in the F.B.I. and the Pentagon with MAGA stalwarts who screen for loyalty within their agencies. Trump's allies say the president is doing what every leader does: surrounding himself with people he trusts to implement his vision. But as government records and independent officials vanish, it is becoming more difficult to track key data points in American life — H.I.V. infections, school performance and more. That leaves politicians to find their own data. It's easy to do when a cherry-picked statistic can prove virtually any point. At a press conference last week, Trump furnished new jobs numbers from a right-wing economist. He said that they proved his economy was better than Joe Biden's. Trump finally found the data he wanted. THE LATEST NEWS D.C. Takeover At the Washington Monument. Kenny Holston/The New York Times About a dozen Trump-deployed National Guard troops appeared near the Washington Monument yesterday evening. They took photos of themselves with visitors, and they left after roughly two hours. To justify his takeover of Washington, Trump cited several false and misleading claims about homicides and youth crime. Here's a fact check. Trump said he needed to send in troops to secure the capital. He had a different reaction on Jan. 6, Luke Broadwater writes. Trump-Putin Summit Trump will meet Vladimir Putin at a military base in Anchorage on Friday, a White House official said. The German chancellor will convene a video call tomorrow with Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and several European allies. They have been imploring Trump not to cut a peace deal with Putin behind their backs. At a 1945 meeting, the world's superpowers redrew the European map without input from the affected countries. Some fear a repeat in Alaska, Steven Erlanger writes. Russian forces advanced in Ukraine, seeking an edge on the battlefield before the summit. More on the Trump Administration An annual collection of U.S. human rights reports cut or blunted previous references to abuses by close partners of the Trump administration including El Salvador and Israel. A federal appeals court gave teams affiliated with DOGE access to potentially sensitive data on millions of Americans, overruling a lower court. The head of the U.F.C. said Trump was moving ahead with plans to host a fight at the White House next July 4. Mexico has sent 26 people accused of being cartel operatives to the U.S., seemingly to alleviate pressure from Trump to combat the flow of fentanyl across the border. International In Kabul, Afghanistan. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, has become so dry that its six million people could be without water by 2030. The government is scrambling for solutions but lacks cash. Investigators have found evidence that Russia is at least partially responsible for hacking a U.S. federal court system that contains sensitive records on national security crimes. Zakaria Zubeidi, a Palestinian, was recently freed from Israeli prison. In a Times interview, he questions what his time as a militant, a theater leader and a prisoner achieved. Other Big Stories New video shows the Uvalde school police chief trying to negotiate with a gunman barricaded in a room with dozens of children in 2022. The commander faces trial on charges of abandoning or endangering the children. A federal judge ordered ICE to improve the conditions inside migrant holding cells in New York City. The A.I. start-up Perplexity made an unsolicited offer worth about $35 billion to buy Google's Chrome web browser. STAY COOL, FRANCE Source: Copernicus ERA5 data, processed into E.U. subregions by Ronnkvist, Haskell-Craig, et al. | By The New York Times Politicians are in the business of promises. And in the midst of a European heat wave, Marine Le Pen, a far-right leader in France, made a particularly controversial one: to deploy air-conditioners across the country if her party came to power. Now air-conditioning is political. The head of France's Green Party said the country should instead build greener cities and more energy-efficient buildings. A conservative newspaper defended the technology: "Making our fellow citizens sweat limits learning, reduces working hours and clogs up hospitals." "Is air-conditioning a far-right thing?" one French talk show mused. Read our dispatch on how a common appliance in the U.S. has inflected debates in France. THE MORNING QUIZ This question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter. Click an answer to see if you're right. (The link will be free.) The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about a community in Ohio where women are focused on pesticide-free farming and avoiding ultraprocessed foods. What are they known as? MAHA moms Ballerina farmers Crunchy Trumpers Down with dye-ers OPINIONS Mamdani's emergence as a progressive leader signals the end of America's embrace of unfettered capitalism, Jonathan Mahler writes. Here are columns by M. Gessen and Bret Stephens on Trump and Putin's summit. Sign up for the Evening newsletter. Catch up on the biggest news, and wind down to end your day. Get it in your inbox MORNING READS In Seville, Spain. Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times Glow-up: Restorers in Seville, Spain, gave a figure of the Virgin Mary longer lashes and a smokier gaze. People weren't happy. Great bedrooms: Take a look at T Magazine's favorites, which include an airy sanctuary in Bali and a maximalist experiment in Belgium. Trending: People online were looking up information about Danielle Spencer, who died at 60. In the 1970s, she played the lovably bratty and witty Dee on the hit sitcom "What's Happening!!" — one of the first American television shows to center the experiences of Black teenagers. She spent much of her adult life as a veterinarian. SPORTS Soccer: Cristiano Ronaldo is engaged to Georgina Rodríguez. They have been living together in Saudi Arabia, testing the boundaries of social change in an Islamic kingdom. (Her huge ring went viral.) Sports' stalking problem: As more athletes use social media to chronicle their lives, some strangers have become dangerously obsessed. A QUIRKY LENS Damien Maloney for The New York Times Tristan Duke — a polymath, tinkerer and experimental photographer — captures the world in mysterious ways. The Times paid him a visit at his Los Angeles lab for a peek at his work. It includes: A camera made of ice. Duke developed a method to carve ice into camera lenses. On a trip to the Arctic, he hauled up diamond-pure glacier chunks from the sea, shaped them and used them to photograph the glaciers themselves. Rainbow images. Duke recreated a long-lost technique for producing color photographs without pigments. The effect is based on the physics principles that make rainbows appear on the surface of soap bubbles. Photos taken a trillion frames per second. Duke used a so-called Femto camera, first developed by researchers in 2010. He built it from scratch with his students, then used the device to take ultra-slow-motion videos of lasers. Read the full story here. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Christopher Simpson for The New York Times Use a single skillet to cook Dijon chicken with tomatoes and scallions. Watch late night hosts joke about Taylor Swift's album announcement. Embrace the bidet. GAMES Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were coauthor and cutthroat. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Correction: A chart in yesterday's newsletter comparing violent crime rates in Washington, D.C., with those in other areas described incorrectly the first set of places represented. It listed major cities and metropolitan areas in the U.S., not the largest cities. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch If you received this newsletter from someone else, subscribe here. Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. 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