Good morning. There were tit-for-tat attacks across the Gulf region overnight, as the cease-fire in the war with Iran continues to collapse. That has narrowed President Trump’s options, our Peter Baker reports. And Pat Oliphant, the dean of American political cartoonists, has died at 90. There’s more news below. I’m going to start today, though, by looking at an escalation in the pressure that the Trump administration is putting on The Times.
Air Force OnesHere’s a letter I got from a reader yesterday morning, reprinted in full: “You people need to cooperate with our administration because national security is a higher priority than a free unbridled press that thinks they can do whatever they want. Your reporters are shameful.” They are not, and that’s not how journalism works in the United States. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. You may have already heard the basics of the reporting that led to that letter. But the story is still worth exploring, in part because of what it tells us about the challenges facing independent journalism in 2026. The Times reported last week that while President Trump flew to Turkey on July 7 for a NATO summit aboard his new Air Force One, he flew back the following day aboard the old Air Force One. The Times reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. The Times cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues. For a U.S. president, it’s risky to fly internationally in a plane not hardened against attacks. The Trump administration, angered by the story and eager to flush out those who spoke to The Times, issued subpoenas on Friday night for journalists who reported it, seeking their testimony before a federal grand jury “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” Those reporters are colleagues whose names you have seen often in this space: Julian Barnes, Adam Goldman, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt. The subpoenas were an escalation of Trump’s attempts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations. “The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” David McCraw, our top newsroom lawyer, wrote in a statement that night. In a statement on Saturday, a Justice Department spokeswoman said that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.” She continued, “We value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country, but D.O.J. also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information.” Yesterday, I talked about that with Dick Stevenson, The Times’s Washington bureau chief. Dick’s been in D.C., running coverage of the federal government, for the better part of 30 years. He knows well the tension that exists — that should exist — between journalists and administrations, whichever party is in office. And he was straightforward about where he and his team are right now. “Facing an administration and a president willing to go to great lengths to seek to impede what we do,” he told me, “only hardens our resolve to stick with our mission.” Public interest
Reporters tell readers things that powerful people don’t want you to know. They report what is in the public interest, a term of art that refers to information essential for an informed, safe and healthy society. Like, to share one example, whether the civilian airplane a foreign government donated to the United States a year ago is safe to fly under fire. Joe Kahn, our executive editor, put it more eloquently in a note he sent to the newsroom on Saturday: “The security of the jets used as Air Force One, which transport not only the president but also hundreds of government officials and staff, members of Congress, journalists and invited guests, is manifestly in the public interest.” The subpoenaed reporters, he continued, would keep doing their jobs, even as they defend themselves. And he urged an empathy for them that I’d urge readers of The Morning to practice as well. “However unjustified and unlawful these intimidation tactics are, the five of them will have to endure a period of scrutiny and legal uncertainty,” Joe wrote. “They should know that all of us as their colleagues, and the full resources of The Times, are behind them and that we will fight this legal abuse together.” Read the article that enraged the president, along with a few other terrific pieces that caught my eye today. We’ve made them all free links.
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507 pounds— That is the dry weight of one of those giant flags a crew unveils before World Cup matches. Each flag measures about 174 feet by 125 feet.
France and Spain meet this afternoon in a semifinal that many will call the actual World Cup final. France’s coach said that Kylian Mbappé was “100 percent” fit after a quarterfinal injury scare. Despite the magnitude of this matchup, tomorrow’s semifinal between England and Argentina is a much hotter ticket.
I made Eric Kim’s recipe for cold noodles with tomatoes, but I replaced the noodles with matchstick cucumbers and added a hit of the green plum syrup known in Korea as maesil cheong because I read in one of his cookbooks that his mom uses the stuff all the time. I put the soup in the freezer for 30 minutes, then served it alongside a bowl of rice dressed in fried egg, butter and soy sauce and alternated bites of hot and slurps of cold.
Jon Caramanica, one of our pop music critics, went to all three Jay-Z concerts at Yankee Stadium this past weekend. Sunday night’s was deeply delayed, and the performance stretched toward 3 a.m. on Monday. Jon found it transcendent and dizzying to experience — “ |
