The Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy looks back at her foremost influences in her memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me. While her writing and activism are shaped by early circumstances – both financial and political – at the centre is her relationship with her mother, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
The poet Sarah Howe won the TS Eliot prize for poetry for her debut collection, Loop of Jade. In her new work, Foretokens, she returns to the complex inheritance of family and language, as she tries to piece together the fragmentary, often mythical, early life of her Chinese mother, given away at birth.
The academic Lea Ypi travels through the history of Ottoman aristocracy to the making of modern Albania and the early days of communism as she attempts to retrace the life of her beloved grandmother. In her new book, Indignity: A Life Reimagined, she reveals the fragility of truth, as her own memories collide with secret police reports and newly discovered photographs.
Nearly 500 workers were detained in a federal immigration raid at Hyundai’s Georgia EV plant, sparking diplomatic involvement from South Korea. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Western troops sent to Ukraine would be considered “legitimate targets.” In Los Angeles, the 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass faces weekend closures as a major repaving project begins. Meanwhile, President Trump hosted Silicon Valley leaders at the White House, where executives pledged billions for AI and manufacturing as part of his push to keep U.S. tech globally competitive. In business, McDonald’s is cutting meal prices while Erewhon plans an exclusive NYC tonic bar.
President Trump walks back a weekend social media post warning Chicago is “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” while the city braces for possible immigration crackdowns and National Guard deployment. Jury selection begins for Ryan Routh, the man accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump, as he represents himself in court. And Russia launches its largest drone assault of the war, striking a government building in Kyiv and testing the limits of U.S. mediation.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Gigi Douban, Russell Lewis, Miguel Macias, Mohamad ElBardicy and Alice Woefle.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
One month after sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C. saying they would fight crime there, President Trump is so pleased with the results that he is discussing how to put federal troops onto the streets of cities across the country — from Chicago to New Orleans. It’s a potentially dramatic expansion of what has already become an unprecedented military deployment on domestic soil.
Today, we hear from residents of Washington about what life is like with the National Guard in town.
Guest:
Jessica Cheung, a senior audio producer at The New York Times
Background reading:
The District of Columbia sued the Trump administration last week, challenging the National Guard deployment and describing it as a “military occupation.”
Here’s what we know about Mr. Trump’s crime and immigration crackdown across the U.S.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Photo: Alex Kent for The New York Times
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
An unpopular budget will probably spark the ousting of another prime minister, Francois Bayrou—and with him goes another government. Parliamentary impasse is now business as usual, and voters are fed up. Getting Chinese spenders spending is tricky, so policy wonks are at last considering reforming the stingy pension system. And why so many people listen to podcasts at warp speed.
For the first time since invading Ukraine, Russia hits a government stronghold in Kyiv. President Trump denies he’s calling for a “war” in Chicago, despite using that word in a social media post – but previews new immigration action in Democratic-led cities. And the man accused of plotting an assassination on Trump’s golf course heads to trial.
When Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Supreme Court, she was in some ways an unlikely choice. She was living in South Bend, Indiana, not New York or D.C. She went to Notre Dame Law School, making her the only justice that didn’t go to Harvard or Yale. She’s the mother of seven kids. And, at the time of her appointment, she’d largely spent her career as a professor, with just under three years on a federal appeals court.
To put it bluntly, Amy Coney Barrett was an outsider.
But people close to President Donald Trump saw something: She was an originalist. A former clerk for Antonin Scalia. A devout Catholic with real intellectual bona fides. And a rising star in the conservative legal movement. In short, she was the ideal jurist to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
After her 2020 nomination, the left called her inexperienced and a religious zealot. They said her confirmation hearing was rushed, and that she would undermine trust in the Supreme Court.
But with a 52–48 vote, just six weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Barrett was confirmed—without one Democratic vote. She took her seat at the highest court at just 48 years old, and became only the fifth woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court.
Considering how our nation’s most powerful people stick around into their 80s, she’ll likely have a major impact on American law and life for decades to come.
We’re now five years into her time on the bench. And in a turn of events, CNN ran a piece last year titled “The Last Best Hope for Supreme Court Liberals: Amy Coney Barrett.”Newsweek ran “Amy Coney Barrett Is Liberal Justices’ ‘Best Chance’: SCOTUS Analyst ”and The New York Times ran “How Amy Coney Barrett Is Confounding the Right and the Left.”
How did we get from “dangerous, religious zealot” to “last best hope”?
On one hand, Barrett has done what one would expect of a Republican appointee: voting to overrule Roe v. Wade; voting to outlaw affirmative action; and voting against the administrative state.
At the same time, she has voted with liberal justices in some of the most pivotal cases—and in Trump-related cases, she is the member of the conservative supermajority who has sided in Trump’s favor the least.
In short, Barrett surprises. She just wrote a new book called Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, where she makes the simple but salient points: Her job is not to like all of her decisions, nor is it to please the media or a president. It’s to follow the text of the Constitution, full stop.
On Thursday night Bari sat down for a rare conversation with Justice Barrett at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City.
Bari also asks her about key cases like Dobbsv. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the birthright citizenship case, nationwide injunctions, the shadow docket, transgender minors getting medical treatment, her willingness to dissent with liberal justices, her response to people who call her an “evil DEI hire,” and so much more.
