Good morning. Hundreds of flights across the U.S. have been canceled today because of the government shutdown. Tesla shareholders yesterday approved the world’s first trillion-dollar pay package, for Elon Musk. (That’s a big number!) And I have two stories to share from the world of health care. Trump announced a deal with drugmakers to lower the cost of anti-obesity drugs, and my colleagues have a story explaining why emergency C-sections may not always be necessary. Let’s dive in.
Expect delaysThis morning, the Transportation Department is reducing the number of flights at 40 airports across the country. About 4 percent of flights will be cut today, officials estimated. That could rise to 10 percent by next Friday. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said on Wednesday that the reductions in flights were meant to “alleviate the pressure” on air traffic controllers, some of whom have taken second jobs because they aren’t being paid. Yesterday, the department was silent about details of where the pain points will be. But travelers are going to feel them today. Administration officials told Times reporters yesterday to expect cuts across the country.
Airlines are scrambling to figure out what to do. Delta Air Lines will cancel about 170 flights scheduled for today; American Airlines will cancel about 220 flights. In total, more than 815 flights have been canceled. And the Thanksgiving travel season is coming! How are you supposed to deal with these rebookings, refunds, delays, lines and travel insurance? My colleagues on the Travel desk have tips:
Of course, travel isn’t the only part of American life snarled by the shutdown. It is affecting many, many people. (And online, it’s clear who Americans think is responsible: the other side.) Hundreds of thousands of government employees are working without pay. Others have been furloughed. Some have been laid off. More than 40 million people dependent on federal food benefits are waiting to see whether the administration complies with yesterday’s order from a federal judge in Rhode Island to make the payments in full — today. Obamacare premiums have soared. Here’s what else is happening with the shutdown:
Risky surgeriesThe second story that grabbed my lapels yesterday was about the rise in the number of cesarean sections performed in America and what they owe to a scientifically dubious test. Nearly every woman who gives birth in an American hospital wears a belt of sensors that monitor the baby’s heartbeat, Sarah Kliff, who covers health care, reported. If a pattern in that heartbeat appears to be abnormal — it’s too slow, for instance — doctors may declare the baby in “fetal distress” and call for an emergency C-section. It happens a lot. As Sarah notes, one in three deliveries now happens in an operating room, “a figure that far exceeds public health recommendations.” Fetal monitoring is “the worst test in medicine,” a professor of obstetrics told her. Doctors used to check the heart rates of babies in the womb using stethoscopes. In the 1970s, they embraced electronic monitoring as a more objective measure of how things were going. Yet the hearts of healthy babies beat in all sorts of ways. The widespread use of the monitors means that doctors have many more opportunities, as Sarah puts it, “to mistakenly interpret these ambiguous signals.” C-sections that arise from the monitoring can bring their own complications. One is a condition called placenta accreta, where a mother’s placenta attaches to scar tissue left by a previous surgery. When that woman gives birth, she can hemorrhage, sometimes so badly and so quickly that she can bleed to death within minutes. Placenta accreta used to be rare: In the 1970s, it affected one in 4,000 pregnancies. As C-sections have become more common, it has soared as high as one in 272 deliveries. Sarah found some heartbreaking stories. One woman was diagnosed with accreta during her third pregnancy. Despite being referred to a specialist, she hemorrhaged at seven months and delivered two days later. Doctors could not control the bleeding, and she died at age 31. Her newborn daughter spent two months in intensive care. I encourage you to click through and read about both the use of fetal monitoring and the rise of placenta accreta, along with the comments readers have left on both articles. The responses are raw, emotional, questioning, wise. Now, let’s get you caught up.
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Nancy Pelosi was not just the first woman to serve as speaker of the House of Representatives. She was the most prominent one to stand up to Trump — and she did so visibly, consistently and often internet-virally. Yesterday, after Pelosi, 85, announced that she would retire rather than run for re-election next year, Annie Karni, who covers Congress, pulled together a few of their most memorable interactions. There was that time when Pelosi, wearing suffragist white on the rostrum of the House chamber for the State of the Union, offered Trump the most patronizing of claps. There was that meeting, at a huge conference table filled with graying white men in dark suits, when she stood up and wagged a disappointed finger at him. And there was that unforgettable moment in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his State of the Union speech as soon as he finished giving it, which Annie said “drew as much attention as anything he had said that night.” “In every public interaction between the two,” Annie said, “Pelosi seemed not only unintimidated, but also permanently appalled and deeply unimpressed.” For more: Pelosi has been the target of millions of dollars of Republican attack ads for more than a decade. Republicans might have already moved on to their next boogeyman: Mamdani.
Democrats’ wins on Election Day show that there are multiple paths forward for the party, Michelle Cottle writes. Here is a column by Michelle Goldberg on Pelosi’s retirement. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
Vindicated: Iguanas on Clarion Island in Mexico were considered an invasive species, but DNA evidence proves they beat humans to the island by hundreds of thousands of years. Michael Scott: Internet memes had to come from somewhere. Turns out, a lot came from “The Office.” Sweet! Are some kinds of sugar “less bad” than others?
6,907— That’s how many nautical miles two British women traveled as the first female crew to row across the Pacific Ocean without stopping.
N.F.L.: The Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland, 24, died by suicide after crashing his vehicle following a police chase. A monthslong search: The former star receiver Antonio Brown was cap |
