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    General Mark Milley’s Term Had It All

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    At midnight on Sept. 30, Gen. Mark A. Milley’s turbulent term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will end.He is the last senior official whose tenure spanned both the Trump and the Biden administrations, a time that included just about every kind of crisis.Insurrection. Pandemic. The chaotic ending of the war in Afghanistan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Shoot-downs of unidentified flying objects.There was that time his boss wanted to deploy American troops on the streets against American citizens. The day U.S. intelligence picked up talk among Russian generals about using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. And a Republican senator’s blockade of military promotions that delayed his successor’s confirmation.As the senior military adviser to two presidents, General Milley demonstrated loyalty, until he deemed it no longer in the country’s interest, and was often praised for his leadership. But he also made very public mistakes, including an especially egregious one for which he would later apologize.In the end, his chairmanship was shaped by a straightforward loquaciousness, a commander in chief who specialized in chaos and a chain of fast-moving events around the world.“No one was asked to do as difficult a series of things as he had to do,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor who has studied the armed forces.Here is a look at Gen. Mark Alexander Milley’s four years as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, based on interviews with the general, his colleagues and associates, as well as reporting and books about the Donald J. Trump administration.The First CrisisSept. 30, 2019On an Army base field just outside Washington, General Milley takes the oath of office.It is a rainy Monday, and President Trump is there. He has told his aides that General Milley, a barrel-chested Green Beret with bushy eyebrows and a command-a-room personality, looks like a proper general to him.“I have absolute confidence that he will fulfill his duty with the same brilliance and fortitude he has shown throughout his long and very distinguished career,” Mr. Trump says.The honeymoon does not last three days.General Milley, left, was sworn in during a ceremony with Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald J. Trump and other military leaders.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesOct. 4, 2019General Milley’s Turkish counterpart, Gen. Yasar Guler, tells him that Turkey will send thousands of troops over the border into Syria to target American-backed Kurdish forces. The Kurds are the Pentagon’s most reliable partners in the fight against the Islamic State. But Turkey says they are terrorists.General Milley has to take the matter to Mr. Trump, who is mad that U.S. troops are in Syria.Two days later, Mr. Trump announces a de facto endorsement of the Turkish move: He will pull the American troops out of Syria, essentially leaving the Kurds to fend for themselves.“Morally reprehensible and strategically dumb,” opines Senator Angus King, independent of Maine.Oct. 16, 2019An emergency meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader; and members of Mr. Trump’s national security team degenerates into a shouting match over Mr. Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. troops out of Syria.“Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Mr. Trump says after the meeting, tweeting a photo of Ms. Pelosi standing across a table from him, pointing her finger in the air.At the Pentagon, the talk is all about the man seated next to Mr. Trump in the photo: a grim-looking General Milley, with his hands clasped in front of him. He has been on the job for 16 days.Oct. 26, 2019Mr. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal order forces General Milley and Pentagon officials to speed up a plan to take out the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom they have been monitoring at a compound in Qaeda territory in Syria.They want to carry out the risky nighttime raid while they still have troops, spies and reconnaissance aircraft in the country.The raid is successful, thanks in part to the same Kurdish forces Mr. Trump effectively abandoned.“He died like a dog,” Mr. Trump says of the ISIS leader.Nov. 13, 2019General Milley has figured out a way to turn Mr. Trump around on Syria. He has told the president that American commandos and their Kurdish allies need to stay to guard the oil there.Some 800 troops will remain in northern Syria.“We’re keeping the oil,” Mr. Trump tells reporters. “We left troops behind, only for the oil.”Jan. 3, 2020General Milley and other senior officials have given the president a range of options to deal with attacks by Iranian-backed Shiite militias. Mr. Trump chooses the most extreme: assassinating Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander.Mr. Trump has been fuming over television reports showing Iranian-backed attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.That night, General Suleimani is killed in an American drone strike at Baghdad International Airport.The fallout is immediate. Iranian groups put a price on General Milley’s head. And five days later, just after concluding a barrage of retaliatory airstrikes, Iran mistakenly shoots down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing 176 people on board.General Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, was killed in an American drone strike.Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via ShutterstockWomen mourning General Suleimani during a funeral procession in Baghdad.Ahmed Jalil/EPA, via ShutterstockPandemic and ProtestsMarch 24, 2020At a virtual town hall event, General Milley predicts that the coronavirus will not last long. “You’re looking at probably late May, June, something in that range,” he said. “Could be as late as July.”That same day, the Navy announces that three sailors on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the virus.May 25, 2020Memorial Day. More than 350 sailors from the Theodore Roosevelt are in quarantine on Guam. The virus has taken the aircraft carrier out of service for weeks, causing an imbroglio that leads to the resignation of the acting secretary of the Navy.Back in Washington, General Milley is heading to Arlington National Cemetery, where he will meet with Gold Star families who had lost loved ones in America’s wars.For General Milley, Memorial Day is a workday. He helps place flags on the graves. “I have soldiers that are buried here that died under my command,” he tells a CBS News crew.That night he sees a report on TV about a Black man in Minneapolis who died at the hands of the police.June 1, 2020“Can’t you just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something?” Mr. Trump asks General Milley and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper in the Oval Office.Mr. Trump says that demonstrations in the streets over the killing of George Floyd were making him look “weak.” He wants 10,000 active-duty troops in Washington, D.C., alone to take on the protesters.General Milley and Mr. Esper explain that pitting American soldiers against American protesters could hurt civil-military relations and incite more violence. They talk Mr. Trump out of it.General Milley leans into Mr. Esper, presses his thumb to his forefinger and whispers that he is “this close” to resigning. So was Mr. Esper, the defense secretary recalled in his book, “A Sacred Oath.”It is not even noon yet.Around 6 p.m., General Milley and Mr. Esper are again summoned to the White House. Neither knows why at the time, but they will soon be taking a walk with the president.Mr. Trump has decided to stage a photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church across Lafayette Square near the White House. He holds a Bible, which his daughter Ivanka has pulled out of her bag. General Milley is wearing his camouflage uniform.As Mr. Trump poses, General Milley disappears from view. But the damage is done. General Milley is the most senior officer of a military that at its core is supposed to be above politics.“An egregious display of bad judgment, at best,” says Paul D. Eaton, a retired major general and a veteran of the Iraq war.General Milley spends the rest of the night walking through the streets of Washington, talking to National Guard troops and protesters alike. At 12:24 in the morning, he heads home. Not long after, he is writing a resignation letter.“It is my belief that you are doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” one draft says, according to “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker. He does not send the letter.Protests that sometimes turned violent erupted in Minneapolis and across the country after the police killing of George Floyd.Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesGeneral Milley joined Mr. Trump and other senior officials in a walk from the White House, through protesters and law enforcement, to a church nearby.Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 11, 2020General Milley apologizes for the walk in the park. “I should not have been there,” he says in a commencement address at the National Defense University.Mr. Trump is furious. “Why’d you do that?” he asks General Milley later that day.This is the Rubicon that many people in the Trump administration eventually cross: the moment when they change from ally to enemy in the eyes of the president. Mr. Trump never cared much for Mr. Esper, whom he calls “Mr. Yesper.” General Milley, by contrast, the president once favored. No more.Aug. 20, 2020General Milley is in Colorado Springs for a Northern Command ceremony and makes a beeline for Mr. Esper to tell him about an alarming phone call the night before: Robert C. O’Brien, Mr. Trump’s fourth national security adviser, says there is interest in killing another senior Iranian military officer.Why now? General Milley tells Mr. Esper the proposed strike has not gone through the normal bureaucratic discussion that precedes operations of this magnitude. To put Mr. O’Brien off, General Milley goes into what he calls his “hamana hamana,” nonsense talk.For the next five months, General Milley tells people that he will do everything he can to keep the Trump team from launching strikes — potential acts of war — without proper vetting.Oct. 14, 2020General Milley and Mr. Esper huddle over what to do about some military nominations they want to make.They want two women — Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost of the Air Force and Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson of the Army — to be promoted, on merit, to elite, four-star commands. But the men are worried that Mr. Trump will not go for it, because promoting women is too “woke” for him.They agree on a strategy. They will hold back the nominations until after the November elections. Maybe Joe Biden will win, the men figure.Oct. 30, 2020General Milley reassures his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, in a phone call that Mr. Trump has no plans to attack China, no matter what intelligence is picking up about the president wanting to create a crisis to help him in the polls.Before the InsurrectionNov. 9, 2020Mr. Trump has lost the election but is not conceding. And he has decided that the transition period is a perfect time to revamp the Pentagon leadership. He takes to his usual medium to announce that he has “terminated” Mr. Esper. Christopher C. Miller, a former Army Green Beret, will take over the Defense Department.General Milley threatens to resign, according to Mr. Esper’s book. Mr. Esper tells him: “You’re the only one left now to hold the line. You have to stay.”Nov. 10, 2020The purge is on. Mr. Trump fires two Defense Department under secretaries and sends in political loyalists: Kash Patel, a former aide to Representative Devin Nunes of California, and Ezra Cohen, an ally of Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser. Anthony Tata, a retired general who once referred to President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader,” is now in the top Pentagon policy job.General Milley vows that there will be no coup under his watch. “They may try,” but they will not succeed, Milley tells his deputies, according to “I Alone Can Fix It,” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. We’re the guys with the guns.”Nov. 11, 2020During a meeting, Mr. Patel hands General Milley a sheet of paper that says Mr. Trump is ordering all remaining U.S. troops home from Somalia by Dec. 31 and from Afghanistan by Jan. 15.General Milley heads to the White House. He and other national security aides talk Mr. Trump out of the Afghanistan pullout by reminding him that he has already ordered an Afghanistan withdrawal in the next months. The Somalia withdrawal date is moved to Jan. 15.Nov. 25, 2020Mr. Trump removes Henry Kissinger and Madeleine K. Albright from the Defense Policy Board, replacing them with loyalists. He also pardons Mr. Flynn, the former general and national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.A week later, Mr. Flynn endorses an ad calling for martial law and for a national “re-vote” — to be conducted by the military.“I just want to get to the 20th,” General Milley tells aides, referring to Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.Jan. 6, 2021Mr. Trump summons his supporters to the Capitol. Rioters storm the building to overturn the election.National Guard troops clashed with protesters into the evening on Jan. 6, 2021.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesNational Guard troops were stationed in the Capitol for weeks after the attack.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021The Chinese are on high alert, so General Milley makes another call. “Things may look unsteady,” he says. “But that’s the nature of democracy, General Li.”Next, General Milley advises the Navy to postpone planned exercises near China.Ms. Pelosi is on the phone asking what’s to stop Mr. Trump from launching a nuclear weapon.General Milley tells her there are procedures in place.After that call, he summons senior officers to go over those procedures, according to “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. “If you get calls,” he tells the officers, “there’s a procedure.”He adds, “And I’m part of that procedure.”He turns to each officer in the room.“Got it?”“Yes, sir.”“Got it?”“Yes, sir.”A New BossJan. 20, 2021Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes the oath of office.April 6, 2021General Milley is in the Oval Office for the news he knows is coming but does not want to hear. Mr. Biden, like his predecessor, wants all American troops out of Afghanistan. This time, the deadline is Sept. 11, 2021, exactly 20 years after the terrorist attacks that launched two decades of war.General Milley had hoped that Mr. Biden would agree to keep a modest troop presence in the country to prevent it from falling back into the hands of the Taliban and from becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks. But Mr. Biden is adamant.General Milley and the new defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, tell senior commanders to start packing up. The last thing the men want now is for an American soldier to die in Afghanistan after the president has ordered a withdrawal.A race to the exits begins.General Milley and other leaders meeting with President Biden at the White House in October 2022.Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 23, 2021General Milley pushes back against criticism that the Pentagon is becoming too “woke.”After a Republican congressman presses Mr. Austin, the first Black man to lead the Pentagon, on whether the Defense Department teaches “critical race theory,” General Milley hits back. “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin,” he says. “That doesn’t make me a communist.”In a two-minute clip that plays over and over on social media platforms, General Milley defends the military’s right to study what it wants, including topics that some might find uncomfortable.“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it,” he says. “What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building, and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?”Last Days in AfghanistanJuly 2, 2021American troops leave Bagram Air Base, their last hold in Afghanistan. Within hours, the base is ransacked by looters.Aug. 15, 2021The Taliban seize Kabul, the capital. Attention turns to evacuating Americans and their Afghan allies from the country.At the Pentagon, General Milley receives hundreds of phone calls from aid organizations, media companies and lawmakers, all pleading for help evacuating their people. In meetings, he barks at the bureaucratic red tape.Taliban fighters took control of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesAmerican Air Force troops evacuated scores of people from Kabul.Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force, via ShutterstockAug. 26, 2021At 5:48 p.m. local time, a suicide attack at Kabul airport kills at least 183 people, including 13 U.S. service members sent to help with evacuations.Sept. 1, 2021General Milley is fielding questions at a news conference about a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including children. Senior officials know that civilians were killed, but they are sticking to the talking points that the strike also targeted terrorists plotting another attack.“Yes, there were others killed,” General Milley says. “Who they are, we don’t know. The procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.”Sixteen days later, the Pentagon acknowledges that the strike was a mistake.“This is a horrible tragedy of war,” General Milley says in a statement.Sept. 28, 2021The general has been talking.A bunch of books are out that describe his actions in the waning days of the Trump presidency: the call to China, the meeting with the nuclear code officers.Some senators at a hearing are angry that General Milley tried to protect the Pentagon from Mr. Trump. Others are angry that he told so many people afterward.In a break from usual military hearings on Capitol Hill, it is the Republicans who are angriest at the military general. General Milley is now a lightning rod for Trump allies across the country, regularly pilloried in right-wing media outlets.War in EuropeJan. 28, 2022General Milley warns that Russia has assembled more than 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s borders, with more coming every day, and enough military hardware to invade the entire country.Given the type of forces that are arrayed, he says at a Pentagon news conference, “if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and it would result in a significant amount of casualties.”Feb. 24, 2022Russia invades Ukraine.Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in February 2022.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesRefugees arrived in Hungary after Russia invaded Ukraine.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesOct. 24, 2022For the first time in months, General Milley is on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, who had been giving him the silent treatment.U.S. intelligence has picked up discussions among senior Russian generals about using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been making not-veiled threats about escalation, and General Milley wants to make sure Moscow isn’t about to cross a serious red line.After the call, General Milley’s people say that he and General Gerasimov will keep the lines of communication open.Nov. 9, 2022General Milley tells the Economic Club of New York that neither Russia nor Ukraine, in his opinion, can win the war. Diplomats, he believes, need to start looking for ways to begin negotiations.“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he says.The remarks cause a furor: Ukrainians worry that the Biden administration is preparing to abandon them, and White House officials scramble to reassure them that U.S. support remains solid.Feb. 11, 2023The text from a reporter comes to General Milley’s phone at 9:27 on a Saturday morning.For the third time in less than a week, NORAD is tracking an unidentified flying object over North America. This one is over the Yukon in Canada. U.S. fighter jets shot down the two others: a Chinese spy balloon, and who knows what.“It’s an alien, isn’t it,?” the text says.The general replies, “Not aliens!”Aug. 21, 2023The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a yearly show where troops clad in full ancient fighting kit including kilts, sporran, drums and bagpipes, put on a show at a centuries-old castle that has turned into a 90-minute farewell salute to America’s senior general.General Milley, in full military dress and white gloves, is in the guest-of-honor seat, in a crowd of thousands. As each group concludes its performance, a single green light in the darkened arena shines on the general, and he stands up, at attention. Each succession of troops stops to salute him. The green light goes off, and he sits back down.Sept. 22, 2023Mr. Trump has his own farewell salute for General Milley.In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump says the general’s retirement “will be a time for all Americans to celebrate!” He calls General Milley a “woke train wreck” and complains about the general’s calls with his Chinese counterpart. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”Mr. Trump concludes, “To be continued!” More

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      Your Monday Briefing: China Reopens

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      Also, Brazilians storm government offices and the Times investigates a 2021 Kabul airstrike.People embraced at Beijing’s international arrivals gate yesterday.Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChina reopensFamilies across the world are preparing for reunions after China fully opened its borders yesterday and began welcoming visitors without strict quarantine requirements.The reopening comes at an auspicious time for global tourism. China is also allowing its citizens to once again go overseas, just as the travel period for Lunar New Year begins.But unease has tempered the celebratory mood. Some countries fear that China’s outbreak could lead to new mutations of the virus and added additional restrictions for incoming travelers. And within China, there are fears that rural villages, which have a disproportionate number of older adults and scant access to medical care, are particularly at risk as domestic travel increases.Here are more specific restrictions:The E.U. “strongly encouraged” its 27 members to put in place testing and masking requirements as Chinese return to popular cities there.Hong Kong capped the daily number of visitors at 60,000 people. It will require visitors to show a negative P.C.R. test.South Korea halted all direct flights to Jeju Island, once favored by Chinese tourists. Travelers have to take a P.C.R. test when they arrive in Seoul and quarantine if they are found to be sick.Japan is requiring visitors to provide proof of a negative P.C.R. test before arriving and to take another test when they arrive.Thailand is anticipating around 300,000 Chinese visitors in the first three months of 2023. But it will still require visitors to have two vaccine shots. They will also need to have medical insurance to cover Covid treatment if they get sick.Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress building yesterday.Eraldo Peres/Associated PressProtesters storm Brazil’s governmentAngry supporters of Jair Bolsonaro charged into Brazil’s Congress and presidential offices yesterday afternoon. This is a developing story. Here are live updates.Dozens of protesters streamed into the presidential offices. Some held a barricade to hold back police and allow more protesters to enter. Inside the building, the protesters could be seen attempting to build more barricades with chairs. Outside, a crowd using sticks or poles struck a police officer on horseback, pulling him off his horse, according to video posted to social media.The action was the violent culmination of incessant rhetorical attacks by Bolsonaro and his supporters against the nation’s electoral systems. The protesters believe the election was stolen from Bolsonaro. In reality, two months ago, he lost his re-election bid for the presidency.Details: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in October and took office on Jan. 1, was in São Paulo. Congress was not in session. Both Congress and the presidential offices were largely empty.Bolsonaro: He has been staying in Florida, where he traveled late last month as his presidency was coming to a close.A week after a Times visual investigation, the U.S. military admitted to a tragic mistake in the strike.By The New York Times. Video frame: Nutrition & Education International.A flawed Kabul drone strikeMy colleague Azmat Khan obtained new information about a botched U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021 that killed 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children, in the courtyard of their family home.Analysts saw possible civilian casualties minutes after the drone fired a missile, according to an official U.S. military investigation — 66 partially redacted pages that The Times obtained through a lawsuit. The analysts also assessed that children had been killed.The information was then shared with top commanders, according to the investigation. But military officials at the time issued misleading statements about their assessments, saying that there were “no indications” of civilian casualties.Pentagon officials also maintained that an ISIS target had been killed in the strike, even as evidence mounted to the contrary. Only after The Times published an investigation did military officials acknowledge that the aid worker had posed no threat and had no connection to ISIS.Analysis: The investigation provides detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder. Military analysts wrongly concluded that a package contained explosives and that a car’s “erratic route” was evidence that the driver was trying to evade surveillance.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificJack Ma’s retreat comes as the ruling Communist Party wages an unprecedented crackdown on Big Tech.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnt Group, one of China’s most influential tech titans, said Jack Ma, its founder, planned to relinquish control.An executive for the Indian subsidiary of Wells Fargo was arrested after being accused of urinating on another passenger on an Air India flight.Naomi Osaka withdrew from the Australian Open.Around the WorldKevin McCarthy’s fight to become House speaker was the longest since just before the Civil War.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAfter 15 rounds of voting, Kevin McCarthy is now the U.S. House speaker.Iran hanged two men who had participated in anti-government protests. At least nine more people remain at risk of execution.At least 40 people were killed when two buses collided in Senegal.Damar Hamlin, who went into cardiac arrest during a football game, is breathing on his own and has spoken to teammates.The War in UkraineA volunteer Chechen battalion trained last month outside of Kyiv.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesEthnic-based battalions and regiments with historical grievances against Russia have been fighting for Ukraine.Despite its pledge of a truce, Russia shelled Bakhmut on Friday.Germany, France and the U.S. have offered Ukraine new armored vehicles, a move that analysts say signals their support for future offensives.A Morning ReadSeniors lined up for food-aid vouchers in Hong Kong.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesAcross East Asia, populations are graying faster than anywhere else in the world. As a result, governments are struggling to pay out pensions, and people in their 70s need jobs.“As long as my body lets me, I need to keep working,” said a 73-year-old who wakes at 1:30 a.m. to deliver produce to restaurants across Tokyo.Lives lived: Two months after the armistice that ended the Korean War, a North Korean Air Force officer flew his Soviet-made MIG to an airfield in South Korea manned by U.S. forces. A year later, he had a new name — Kenneth Rowe — and was living in the U.S. Rowe died last month at 90.ARTS AND IDEASSeoul’s art explosionThe first Frieze Seoul featured 120 exhibitors.Lets Studio, via FriezeWhen it comes to the global art market, South Korea remains a minor player. Its art sales in 2021 totaled about $726 million, according to a report. For comparison, China’s sales came in around $13 billion, and auction turnover in Hong Kong was $1.7 billion.But while South Korea may still be on the rise in the contemporary art world, a sense of possibility permeates the air. About 80 percent of the country’s art museums — more than 200 — were established after 2000. Art dealers and foreign galleries have descended. Last fall, South Korea’s capital even hosted Frieze Seoul, the fair’s first installment in Asia, which has editions in London, New York and Los Angeles.And the government is invested. It has been providing grants to artists and dealers in an effort to generate a hallyu, or “Korean wave,” which has propelled K-pop and Korean cinema to worldwide prominence.“Twenty years from now, if the country is as rich as it is right now,” a dealer said, “I think it can be like London or New York.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.For a no-fuss, one-pot weeknight dinner, make cheesy chicken Parmesan meatballs.What to ReadJanet Malcolm’s final book, the brief “Still Pictures,” may well be the journalist’s most personal.What to Watch“M3gan” is “a ludicrous, derivative and irresistible killer-doll movie,” our critic writes.WeddingsFor dayslong South Asian nuptials, some guests are turning to rented clothing.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Up to this point (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. David French is joining Times Opinion as a columnist.Start your week with this narrated long read about a teenager who survived an airplane crash in the Amazon. And here’s Friday’s edition of “The Daily,” on an agreement to protect biodiversity.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Your Monday Briefing: U.S. Lawmakers Visit Taiwan

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      Plus Salman Rushdie’s recovery and reflections on a year of Taliban rule.Good morning. We’re covering a visit by U.S. lawmakers to Taiwan and Salman Rushdie’s road to recovery.In this photo from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a diplomat from the ministry greeted the U.S. delegation. Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via Associated PressMore U.S. lawmakers visit TaiwanA delegation of five U.S. lawmakers arrived in Taiwan yesterday. Their visit came less than two weeks after a contentious trip by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, which infuriated Beijing and provoked Chinese military drills off Taiwan’s coast.Taiwanese officials said they appreciated the U.S. show of solidarity during the escalating tensions with Beijing. The U.S. delegation planned to meet today with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, and consult with the foreign affairs and national defense committees of Taiwan’s legislature, Taiwan said.China had no immediate response, but the presence of the five U.S. lawmakers so soon after Pelosi’s visit was likely to elicit a sharp reaction and possibly inspire more military exercises, analysts said. Context: After Pelosi’s visit, Beijing fired five missiles into waters that are part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone, a warning to Japan and to the U.S. about coming to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a conflict there. Last week, China wrapped up live-fire exercises that encircled the island and simulated a blockade. But Taiwan appeared undeterred, and China went easy on its economy.“It will be long, the injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction,” Salman Rushdie’s agent said in a text to The Times.Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesSalman Rushdie is recoveringAfter Salman Rushdie was stabbed roughly 10 times on Friday during a speech, “the road to recovery has begun,” his agent said yesterday. Rushdie was taken off a ventilator and could speak a few words. A 24-year-old man was charged with attempted murder and assault with a weapon. Prosecutors said the attack was premeditated and targeted.Rushdie has been living relatively openly after years of a semi-clandestine existence that followed the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which fictionalized parts of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. In 1989, about six months after the book came out, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then the leader of Iran, issued an edict known as a fatwa that ordered Muslims to kill Rushdie.Details: Because of the attack, the author may lose an eye, has a damaged liver and has severed nerves in his arm, his agent said.Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine WarOn the Ground: A series of explosions that Ukraine took credit for rocked a key Russian air base in Kremlin-occupied Crimea. Russia played down the extent of the damage, but the evidence available told a different story.Heavy Losses: The staggeringly high rate of Russian casualties in the war means that Moscow may not be able to achieve one of his key objectives: seizing the entire eastern region of Ukraine.Nuclear Shelter: The Russian military is using а nuclear power station in southern Ukraine as a fortress, as fighting intensifies in the region. The risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident has led the United Nations to sound the alarm and plead for access to the site to assess the situation.Starting Over: Ukrainians forced from their hometowns by Russia’s invasion find some solace, and success setting up businesses in new cities.Background: In 1991, the Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses” was fatally stabbed. The crime remains unsolved. The novel’s Italian translator, its Norwegian publisher and a Turkish novelist who published an excerpt all survived attempts on their lives.Taliban fighters in Kabul, Afghanistan, on the day the country’s government collapsed in August 2021.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesA year of Taliban ruleA year into Taliban rule, Afghanistan has seemed to hurtle backward in time, my colleagues write in an analysis. For many Afghans — particularly women in cities — the sense of loss has been devastating.Two decades of U.S.-financed reforms have been reversed by mounting restrictions on daily life, enforced by police-state tactics like door-to-door searches and arbitrary arrests. Schools and jobs are again restricted for women. Music has been banned, and beards are mandatory for men — an echo of the Taliban’s first rule in the 1990s.“Now it’s gone — all of it,” said Zakia Zahadat, 24, who used to work in a government ministry after she earned a college degree. She is mostly confined to her home these days, she said. “We have lost the power to choose what we want.”International isolation is exacerbating Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis, which may deepen after U.S. officials accused the Taliban of harboring the leader of Al Qaeda this month. But the country has been better off in one way: It is largely at peace after decades of war that upended the lives of rural Afghans in particular.Background: Here are photos from the Taliban’s offensive last year, with context and reflections from our Kabul bureau chief.Profiles: A group of Afghan employees from our Kabul bureau are adjusting after their evacuation to the U.S. Their new lives are challenging but full of opportunities.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificPolice spoke with witnesses at the airport in Canberra, Australia. Mass shootings are extremely rare in the country.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA gunman fired several shots inside Canberra Airport yesterday, grounding flights in Australia’s capital city. No injuries were reported.Five state-run Chinese companies, collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars, will delist from U.S. stock exchanges amid diplomatic tensions.The Times looked at how Sri Lankans ousted the Rajapaksa family.The War in UkraineHere are live updates.Ukrainians who live near a nuclear power plant were trying to flee because of intensifying fighting in the area.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesFears of a nuclear accident are rising at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, as Russian shelling continues nearby. An employee died after shells struck his home, and the West called for a demilitarized zone around the plant.Ukrainians, armed with new long-range weapons from the West, are striking deep behind Russia’s lines of defense.U.S. officials said that Russia was suffering heavy casualties in Ukraine, which could foil its plans to seize the entire eastern region this year.Amid sanctions, Russia’s gross domestic product fell 4 percent from April through June compared with last year.World NewsA fire in Egypt set off a stampede and killed at least 41 people, including several children and the church’s bishop.Tarek Wajeh/Associated PressAt least 41 people were killed after a fire broke out in an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox church in greater Cairo yesterday.At least eight people were injured in a shooting in Jerusalem early yesterday. Israeli authorities described the incident as a terrorist attack.Kenyans are still waiting for results from a presidential election last week. “People are so tense that they cannot even think straight,” a hospital nurse said.Norway killed Freya, a walrus who had spent weeks lounging on Oslo’s piers. Officials said she became a threat to human safety and moving her was “too high risk.”U.S. NewsPresident Biden is poised to sign landmark legislation that will lower the cost of prescription drugs, extend health care subsidies and put billions of dollars toward climate and energy programs.A lawyer for Donald Trump told investigators in June that all classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence had been returned. But last week’s search turned up more.Officials are growing concerned that TikTok, and other Chinese-owned apps, could leak Americans’ data to Beijing. And election misinformation is thriving on the app before the midterms.Some Asian American voters feel overlooked by Democrats despite the group’s growing electoral power.A Morning ReadAnime idealizes intimacy and romance, but tends to be notably coy in its depictions of physical encounters.A hug, therefore, has thus taken on symbolic importance, Maya Phillips writes in a video-filled essay. It often is a different kind of consummation, especially when characters embrace as they fall through the air.ARTS AND IDEASPark Ok-sun, 98, at the House of Sharing in Gwangju, South Korea.Woohae Cho for The New York TimesThe fate of the “comfort women”The photographer Tsukasa Yajima, known for his stark, poignant portraits of the former sex slaves for Japan’s soldiers in World War II, has won praise for blowing the whistle on South Korea’s treatment of “comfort women.” But it has also come at a cost.Recently, he exposed subpar conditions at South Korea’s best-known shelter for those survivors, the House of Sharing, where he runs its international outreach program. Along with South Korean employees, Yajima exposed how donations meant for survivors’ welfare were enriching South Korea’s biggest ​and most powerful ​Buddhist order, Jogye.An investigation by a joint panel of government officials and civilian experts confirmed most of the whistle-blowers’ ​accusations and more, and it lead to criminal indictments. Angry donors have sued ​the House of Sharing.Yajima, a Japanese national, has borne the brunt of a backlash from past and present shelter employees. The whistle-blowers face dozens of defamation​ and other lawsuits; four of them quit last month, complaining about harassment. But Yajima has insisted on staying on​.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.Yotam Ottolenghi has made thousands of meringues. This pavlova is his favorite.RecommendationTo stay cool with style, use an Ankara hand fan.What to Read“On Java Road,” a new thriller by Lawrence Osborne, chronicles a mysterious disappearance amid Hong Kong protests.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Brain fart” (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The National Association of Black Journalists gave Dean Baquet, The Times’s former executive editor, its lifetime achievement award.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Germany’s Far Right Is Nowhere in the Election. But It’s ‘Here to Stay.’

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      In the next national Parliament, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is likely to remain a pariah force. But it looks assured, too, of a role in shaping the country’s future.BERLIN — They promised they would “hunt” the elites. They questioned the need for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin and described Muslim immigrants as “head scarf girls” and “knife men.”Four years ago the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, arrived in the German Parliament like a wrecking ball, the first far-right party to win a place at the heart of Germany’s democracy since World War II. It was a political earthquake in a country that had once seen Hitler’s Nazi party rise from the fringes to win power in free elections.As another election looms on Sunday, the worst fears of many Germans have not come true: Support for the party has dipped. But neither have the hopes that the AfD would disappear from the political scene as suddenly as it appeared. If Germany’s fate in this election will not be settled by the far right, political analysts say, Germany’s future will partly be shaped by it.“The AfD is here to stay,” said Matthias Quent, professor of sociology at Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences and an expert on the far right. “There was the widespread and naïve hope that this was a short-lived protest phenomenon. The reality is that the far right has become entrenched in the German political landscape.”The AfD is polling at roughly 11 percent, just below its 2017 result of 12.6 percent, and is all but guaranteed to retain its presence in Parliament. (Parties with less than 5 percent of the vote do not get any seats.) But with all other parties refusing to include the AfD in talks about forming the next governing coalition, it is effectively barred from power.“The AfD is isolated,” said Uwe Jun, a professor of political science at Trier University.Yet with Germany’s two main parties having slipped well below the 30 percent mark, the AfD remains a disruptive force, one that complicates efforts to build a governing coalition with a majority of votes and parliamentary seats. Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s two lead candidates in the election, believes that, eventually, the firewall other parties have erected against his party will crumble — most likely starting in one of the states in the former Communist East that is currently its power base.Tino Chrupalla, second from right, and other members of the AfD party before a meeting of the Parliament in Berlin last year.Michael Sohn/Associated Press“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “I’m confident that sooner or later there is no way without the AfD,” he told reporters this past week. “It will certainly start on the state level.”Founded eight years ago as nationalist free-market protest party against the Greek bailout and the euro, the AfD has sharply shifted to the right.The party seized on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome over a million migrants to Germany in 2015 and 2016, actively fanning fears of Islamization and migrant crime. Its noisy nationalism and anti-immigrant stance were what first catapulted it into Parliament and instantly turned it into Germany’s main opposition party.But the party has struggled to expand its early gains during the past 18 months, as the pandemic and, more recently, climate change have shot to the top of the list of voters’ concerns — while its core issue of immigration has barely featured in this year’s election campaign.The AfD has tried to jump on the chaos in Afghanistan to fan fears of a new migrant crisis. “Cologne, Kassel or Konstanz can’t cope with more Kabul,” one of the party’s campaign posters asserted. “Save the world? Sure. But Germany first!” another read.At a recent election rally north of Frankfurt, Mr. Chrupalla demanded that lawmakers “abolish” the constitutional right to asylum. He also told the public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Germany should be prepared to protect its borders, “if need be with armed force.”None of this rhetoric has shifted the race, particularly because voters seem to have more fundamental concerns about the party’s aura of extremism. Some AfD leaders have marched with extremists in the streets, while among the party’s supporters are an eclectic array of conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazi sympathizers.The AfD has not been linked directly to political violence, but its verbal transgressions have contributed to a normalization of violent language and coincided with a series of deadly far-right terrorist attacks.Supporters of the party at a rally in the central German city of Magdeburg this summer.Annegret Hilse/ReutersIn June 2019, a regional politician who had defended Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy was shot dead on his front porch by a well-known neo-Nazi. The killer later told the court that he had attended a high-profile AfD protest a year earlier.Since then, a far-right extremist has attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle during a Yom Kippur service, leaving two dead and only narrowly failing to commit a massacre. Another extremist shot dead 9 mostly young people with immigrant roots in the western city of Hanau.The AfD’s earlier rise in the polls stalled almost instantly after the Hanau attack.“After these three attacks, the wider German public and media realized for the first time that the rhetoric of the AfD leads to real violence,” said Hajo Funke of the Free University in Berlin, who has written extensively about the party and tracks its evolution.“It was a turning point,” he said. “They have come to personify the notion that words lead to deeds.”Shortly after the Hanau attack, Thomas Haldenwang, the chief of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, placed elements of the AfD under surveillance for far-right extremism — even as the party’s lawmakers continued to work in Parliament.“We know from German history that far-right extremism didn’t just destroy human lives, it destroyed democracy,” Mr. Haldenwang warned after announcing his decision in March last year. “Far-right extremism and far-right terrorism are currently the biggest danger for democracy in Germany.”Today, the agency has classified about a third of all AfD members as extremist, including Mr. Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, the party’s other lead candidate. A court is reviewing whether the entire party can soon be placed under formal observation.Alice Weidel, the AfD’s other co-leader, during a media conference in Berlin last month.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock“The AfD is irrelevant in power-political terms,” said Mr. Funke. “But it is dangerous.”Mr. Chrupalla, a decorator who occasionally takes the stage in his overalls, and Ms. Weidel, a suit-wearing former Goldman Sachs analyst and gay mother of two, have sought to counter that impression. As if to hammer home the point, the party’s main election slogan this year is: “Germany — but normal.”A look through the party’s 207-page election program shows what “normal” means: The AfD demands Germany’s exit from the European Union. It calls for the abolition of any mandates to fight the coronavirus. It wants to return to the traditional German definition of citizenship based on blood ancestry. And it is the only party in Parliament that denies man-made climate change, while also calling for investment in coal and a departure from the Paris climate accord.That the AfD’s polling numbers have barely budged for the past 18 months suggests that its supporters are not protest voters but Germans who subscribe to its ideas and ideology.“The AfD has brought out into the open a small but very radical electorate that many thought we don’t have in this country,” said Mr. Quent, the sociologist. “Four years ago people were asking: ‘Where does this come from?’ In reality it was always there. It just needed a trigger.”Mr. Quent and other experts estimate the nationwide ceiling of support for the party at around 14 percent. But in parts of the former Communist East, where the AfD has become a broad-based political force entrenched at the local level, it is often twice that — enough to make it the region’s second-strongest political force.Among the under 60-year olds, Mr. Quent said, it has become No. 1.“It’s only a question of time until AfD is the strongest party in the East,” Mr. Quent said.That is why Mr. Chrupalla, whose constituency is in the eastern state of Saxony, the one state where the AfD already came first in 2017, predicts it will eventually become too big to bypass.“In the East we are a people’s party, we are well-established at the local, city, regional and state level,” Mr. Chrupalla said. “In the East the middle class votes for the AfD. In the West, they vote for the Greens.”Christopher F. Schuetze More

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      To Save His Presidency, Biden Must Tell the Truth About Afghanistan

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      For days now, the news media has likened the chaotic end of our misadventure in Afghanistan, and the awful images of terrified people scrambling onto planes at the Kabul airport, to the final exit from South Vietnam. The comparison is overdrawn; the last American combat troops left Indochina two years before the collapse of the Saigon government.But there is at least one potential parallel between the two conflicts that should have President Biden worried: The last time a war blew up in the face of a Democratic president, it derailed his domestic agenda and stalled the most ambitious social reforms of a generation.To be sure, domestic political concerns should not overshadow the immediate urgency of getting all Americans and the Afghans who worked for them out of Afghanistan. But history shows how adversity abroad has often led to trouble for the governing party back home. Mr. Biden may not be able to save his ambitious legislative agenda unless he understands that lesson from the past.In 1964, Lyndon Johnson and his fellow Democrats secured crushing majorities that enabled them to enact a flurry of landmark legislation: the Voting Rights Act, the bill establishing Medicare and Medicaid, an overhaul of immigration law. It is a feat Mr. Biden and progressive Democrats in Congress today would dearly like to emulate.But Johnson’s decision early in 1965 to send thousands of troops to combat the Vietcong soon halted the momentum of his Great Society agenda and put Democrats on the defensive. A year later, as the war dragged on and protests mounted, Johnson’s approval rating dipped below 50 percent. In the midterm contests of 1966, the Republican Party picked up 47 seats in the House, and Democratic governors in eight states were replaced by Republicans — one of them a former actor in California named Ronald Reagan. By 1968, Republicans had taken back the White House, and Democrats never achieved a progressive policy agenda as far-reaching again.Joe Biden bears far less responsibility for the defeat in Afghanistan than Lyndon Johnson did for the debacle in Indochina. As Mr. Biden mentioned in his address to the nation on Monday, as vice president, he opposed the troop surge ordered by Barack Obama in 2009. He can also claim that he was merely carrying out an agreement Donald Trump signed last year.Furthermore, unlike the Vietnam War, which provoked a long, scorching debate that divided the country far more bitterly and profoundly than the more limited, if longer, battle with the Taliban ever did, this conflict could soon be forgotten. As the public’s attention shifts away from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden’s decision may seem less like a failure and more like a sober, even necessary end to a policy that was doomed from the start.Yet the president and his fellow Democrats face a political environment so daunting that even the slightest disruption could derail their domestic agenda. Even before the Afghan crisis, they needed the vote of every senator from their party to enact their budget blueprint, and Mr. Biden has never had the sky-high approval ratings that allowed Johnson to rule Congress with an iron fist. This week, for the first time, his rating dipped into the 40s. Whatever they manage to accomplish in Congress, Democrats could easily lose their narrow control of both houses in the next midterm elections, especially if Republicans effectively inflame fears about Afghan refugees being resettled in this country.The United States has not had a true majority party for 50 years, and that stalemate, with the enduringly fierce partisanship it engenders, is unlikely to end soon. To pass the big reforms he wants, Mr. Biden will need to describe what he did to end this war better than Johnson explained why he dispatched troops to meddle in another civil conflict in a nation thousands of miles from their homeland.President Lyndon Johnson with Gen. William Westmoreland in South Vietnam in 1967. The Vietnam War derailed Johnson’s domestic agenda.Yoichi Okamoto/LBJ LibraryTwo lessons from Johnson’s downfall are paramount. First, tell the truth, even if it makes you look bad, temporarily. The 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers demonstrated that Johnson lied continually when he lauded the progress the United States and its South Vietnamese allies were supposedly making. By 1966, the press was accusing the administration of creating a credibility gap that only yawned wider as the conflict escalated.All presidents lie at times, but those who admit mistakes, particularly obvious ones, can retain their popularity. This happened to John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and to Bill Clinton when he acknowledged his affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 (although he benefited more from the Republicans’ failed attempt to throw him out of office).Mr. Biden made a decent start at such truth-telling during his speech this week. But he should give a fuller explanation of why his administration failed to prepare for a Taliban victory that, according to years of intelligence reports, was quite likely.Second, keep the coalition that elected you united in its response to the crisis. Though Johnson had a reputation as a masterful politician, he became despised by millions of his fellow Democrats because of his Vietnam policy. If Democrats in Congress follow through on their vows to carry out extensive hearings into the collapse of the Afghan government, they could provoke a similar intraparty battle.But the president may be able to stave off that kind of public bickering. If he chooses to declassify whatever vital documents exist, in an attempt to convince his Democratic critics that he is serious about revealing why his exit strategy went wrong, it may dissuade them from engaging in their own lengthy investigation.The defeat in Afghanistan, like the one in Vietnam, was a long time coming. Democrats can take steps to prevent such interventions. But if they repeat the errors of their predecessors in the 1960s, they may secure the triumph of an opposition party whose leaders have not stopped lying about the election that drove them from power.Michael Kazin (@mkazin), a professor of history at Georgetown University, is the author of the forthcoming book “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More