August 4, 2025

Good morning. Here's the latest:

Texas: Democratic members of the Texas House left the state in an effort to stop Republicans from adopting an aggressively redrawn congressional map. Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to remove the lawmakers if they did not return by today.
Migration: More than 60 people died when their boat capsized as they tried to cross the sea between the Horn of Africa and Yemen.
Russia: A long-dormant volcano in the country's Far East erupted for the first time in hundreds of years. See a video.

More news is below. But first, we have a Silicon Valley vibe check.

A worker on a crane removes the letters of a

A Twitter sign being removed in San Francisco in 2023. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

System upgrade

By Adam B. Kushner

I'm the editor of this newsletter.

Silicon Valley has transformed. No surprise there — change is its business, after all. But just as artificial intelligence will upend the economy, it has already upended the culture of the place that makes it.

America's tech corridor holds immense influence over our future. So it's worth understanding life there — and the people who power it. Today's newsletter is about the new vibe in Silicon Valley. That's the focus of several stories our tech journalists have recently reported from the world's tech capital.

'Shut up and grind'

Silicon Valley behemoths like Google, Apple and Facebook became famous a generation ago for pitching great lifestyle jobs: Forget the cubicles and neckties of the old economy. Come enjoy free sushi and workout classes; take breaks for Ping-Pong. Let's change the world!

Then, around 2022, they decided they had become bloated. Meta eliminated a third of its work force. Elon Musk bought Twitter and fired three-quarters of its staff.

New focus. The job cuts weren't just about economics. They were also about priorities. Over the years, leaders felt progressive politics had overtaken the workplace. Now companies began to nix "moderators, marketers, media handlers and all things associated with diversity and inclusion," writes my colleague Mike Isaac, who chronicles this seismic realignment. "Heaven help those with a humanities degree."

Masters of war. The new priorities include something that tech's early do-gooders had forsworn: digital armaments. As Sheera Frenkel reports, Meta, Google and OpenAI once banned the use of artificial intelligence in weapons. Today, OpenAI makes anti-drone tech, and Meta makes virtual reality glasses to train soldiers. One start-up sells drones fitted with A.I.-guided cruise missiles.

Fervid toil. Corporate dogma has changed. Now executives want hard skills, not soft ones. They're not focused on consumer payment and photo-sharing apps; they're building neural networks, ordering people back to the office and censoring employee debate.

"It's the shut up and grind era," writes Kate Conger, who has a great dispatch about life inside the big companies. As one recent Google alumna told her, "the level of fear has gone way up" even as offices still offer free food and high salaries. "I suppose it's better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death."

Young energy. On the other hand, the tech sector is roaring back. Hiring has surged around A.I. And a flock of entrepreneurs in their 20s has arrived to launch A.I. companies, Natallie Rocha reports. Keeping to local tradition, many are college dropouts. Meet them here.

People work on laptops, through the window behind them a view of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge can be seen.

In San Francisco. Loren Elliott for The New York Times

Vibe shift

Alongside — or perhaps because of — these changes, life outside work changed in Silicon Valley, too.

Center of gravity. Artificial intelligence companies are different from their forebears in a key way: Most of them are in San Francisco, not the valley. They've brought new money and energy into the city and have remade some neighborhoods. Here is a cheat sheet to where the new moguls live, work and play.

The utilitarians. At Lighthaven, a Berkeley compound, a group of people who call themselves the Rationalists gather to discuss A.I., which they say will improve our lives — if it doesn't destroy humanity. "The Rationalists believe it is up to the people building A.I. to ensure that it is a force for the greater good," Cade Metz writes in a fascinating profile. They have acolytes inside all the leading A.I. firms, some of whom briefly got the head of OpenAI fired.

Speaking in code. Like any subculture, Silicon Valley has its own vernacular. To the rest of us, it is often impenetrable. Have a look at these local billboards (such as one that says "You can just do things") and take this quiz to see if you can guess what they mean.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Democratic Party

Gene Wu, in a blue suit, speaks into a microphone with several other people behind him.

Gene Wu, chair of the Democratic caucus in the Texas House. Jim Vondruska for The New York Times

The Texas Democrats who left the state yesterday did so to block a map that was redrawn to flip five Democratic congressional districts to favor Republicans.
An arm of the national Democratic Party has called on blue states to start their own redistricting efforts.
In the New York City mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani won over Jewish voters who were energized by his economic agenda and unbothered by — or sympathetic to — his views on Israel.
A group of moderate Democrats wants the party to embrace private-school vouchers. This has created yet another internal fight.

Trump Administration

President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for producing jobs numbers he didn't like. When leaders meddle in government data, it rarely ends well, Ben Casselman writes.
The Trump administration's measures to punish elite universities, like D.E.I. bans and grant freezes, are also hurting America's community colleges.

Middle East

Though Hezbollah has lost much of its power since the recent war with Israel, it is resisting demands to surrender what is left of its arsenal.
With Gaza cease-fire talks at an impasse, U.S. and Israeli officials have floated the idea of a comprehensive end to the war rather than a phased one.

IN ONE IMAGE

A man tussles with immigration officers who are trying to detain him in a hallway. A woman is trying to free him from the agents.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

This photograph, taken by the Times photographer Todd Heisler, captures the recent arrest of a Paraguayan asylum seeker at a New York City immigration court. Masked agents regularly patrol hallways at immigration courthouses. Relatives wail in anguish as loved ones are whisked away. Read more about the image and the man who was detained.

Courthouse arrests have increased overall detentions in New York. Federal authorities have arrested more than 2,300 people in the city and several in nearby suburbs since Jan. 20, a 200 percent jump from the five months before Trump took office. More than half of those arrested in the country's largest city had no criminal record, according to a new investigation by Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Ashley Cai that was published today.

OPINIONS

Premature babies in Gaza have no incubators or baby formula. It's up to the world, whether through cease-fire talks or arms embargoes, to save them, Mushon Zer-Aviv writes.

Here are columns by David French on the Israeli government and Margaret Renkl on the magic of a pop-up concert.

Catch up on the biggest news, and wind down to end your day.

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MORNING READS

Hieronymus Bosch/Museo Nacional del Prado

Focus challenge: Spend 10 uninterrupted minutes with Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights."

Flip Gordon: In Mexico, a former American soldier has found a home as a lucha libre wrestler.

Pop quiz: Does soda made without high-fructose corn syrup actually taste better? The Times conducted a taste test.

Metropolitan Diary: Lugging a prized find off the street.

Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a French beach town's plea for tourists to keep their clothes on.

Lives Lived: Loni Anderson was trending online yesterday. She played the platinum blond receptionist on the TV sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" in the late 1970s and early '80s and later became a tabloid mainstay during her contentious divorce from the actor Burt Reynolds. Anderson died at 79.

SPORTS

Tennis: The upsets at the Canadian Open continue after Clara Tauson beat the Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek. A day earlier, Coco Gauff fell to Victoria Mboko, a wild card from Canada.

Soccer: Lionel Messi suffered a "minor muscle injury" during Miami's win over Necaxa in the Leagues Cup, the club said. It's unclear how long he will be out.

Swimming: The U.S. women clinched gold over Australia in the medley relay — and set a world record in the process — at World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.

AWARDS WITH LOW STAKES

Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang stand between two giant pillars of stone or concrete. Rogers leans against one with a hand on his hip; Yang has his arms folded.

Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Ariel Fisher for The New York Times

Tomorrow, Bravo will air an awards show that is anything but traditional: The Las Culturistas Culture Awards, hosted by actor-comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers. The show's prize categories include Best Word to Whisper, the Creatine Award for Straight Male Excellence and the Eva Longoria Award for Tiny Woman, Huge Impact.

The awards are an outgrowth of a popular podcast Yang and Rogers have hosted since 2016. In a recent Times interview, the pair shared their favorite categories:

ROGERS Worst Sticky Feeling. I love Worst Sticky Feeling. I think it speaks to everyone in the world.

YANG Mine might be the Circus Award for Stop Being Weird.