--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, September 26th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At around 7 p.m. last night in federal district court, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted for making a false statement and obstructing a congressional hearing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The story of how these charges came about is an extraordinary example of President Trump's relentless demand for retribution against those he perceives as his enemies.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what happened. Comey was the head of the FBI when Trump first took office back in 2017. And he was abruptly fired by Trump when the bureau was investigating potential ties between his presidential campaign and Russia.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump has railed against that investigation for years, calling it a hoax and a witch hunt, and calling Comey himself a leaker.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Comey went on to become an outspoken critic of the president, comparing him to a mafia boss. When Trump came back to power this January, he began pressuring the Justice Department to pursue Comey.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Recently, he'd become impatient with the lack of action. Last week, Trump forced out the U.S. attorney overseeing the Comey investigation after he failed to bring charges.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And he installed a White House aide who used to be one of his personal lawyers in the job. She has no experience working as a prosecutor.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Just days into her new position, she brought the Comey case to a grand jury and they voted to indict.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: So your testimony is you've never authorized anyone to leak. In terms of what the charges are, they're related to testimony that the former FBI director gave in front of a Senate committee almost exactly five years ago.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by what the testimony you summarized that I gave.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: The charging document alleges that when questioned by senators, Comey falsely claimed he had not authorized someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source to the media about an investigation.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: That investigation appears to have been into Hillary Clinton. If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: Although many current and former prosecutors tell The Times, they believe the case will be difficult to prove.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: In a video statement, Comey declared himself innocent and urged Americans not to be intimidated by the administration.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn't either.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For more about the charges against Comey, listen to today's episode of The Daily with my colleague Devlin Barrett.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Look, I think one of the most important details of what happened in this indictment is that no career prosecutor signed it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It is only signed by Trump's handpicked new head of the office. Is that unusual?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's very unusual.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, three more updates on the Trump administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Come October 1st, there will be more tariffs. President Trump announced yesterday that he's putting new import taxes in place on a varied list of common products.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 50 percent on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, 25 percent on semi trucks and between 25 and 100 percent on some prescription drugs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The administration has said the goal is to spur domestic production, though some economists have warned that consumers could end up shouldering the additional costs of that plan.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In particular, there have been concerns about drug prices going up.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But at the moment, it seems like many of the most well-known and best-selling medicines won't be affected.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump said companies can get an exemption from the tariffs if they agree to boost U.S. manufacturing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And most of the major brand drug makers have announced plans to do that this year.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also the Times has learned that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has issued an unusual directive on short notice ordering scores of U generals and admirals stationed around the world to gather in Virginia on Tuesday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Hegseth has not disclosed the reason for the gathering, which could pull in up to 800 high-ranking officers, but it has set off concerns among the military's top brass about potential firings.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the past few months, Hegseth ordered a 20% reduction in four-star officers and has already fired more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a statement, the Pentagon's chief spokesman said Hegseth would be, quote, addressing his senior military leaders early next week, but offered no additional details.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The clearest motivation for this attack are his own words. In his handwritten notes, he says, I want to cause terror.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He doesn't want to just impact the ICE agents and the law enforcement agents that were carrying out that mission yesterday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He wants to impact ICE agents and law enforcement across the country.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Federal authorities said on Thursday that the gunman who opened fire on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas this week had been aiming for ICE agents and that the attack was the very definition of terrorism.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They said he'd left many notes outlining his motivations and that the attack was carefully planned.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But they called it a, quote, tragic irony that it was detainees who were shot instead, with one dead and two others injured.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: According to people who knew the gunman who killed himself after the shooting, he hadn't really expressed any strong political positions publicly.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Though like other recent gunmen in high-profile attacks, he'd struggled with growing isolation and adjusting to adulthood, bouncing from job to job and spending months living out of his car.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the Middle East, the Times has been covering a rare lifeline for injured Gazans stuck in the middle of the war.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Medical evacuation flights organized by the United Arab Emirates.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Since the beginning of the conflict two years ago, there have been just over two dozen of the flights, carrying about 3,000 Gazans who need a doctor's referral and Israeli approval to travel, to the UAE for advanced medical treatment.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Ismail Nahr was recently able to travel on one of those flights.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It was filled with kids and their parents who were getting a temporary break from the violence and hunger crisis that has gripped Gaza.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of the first parents to board this flight was Mohamed Rajab Mqat.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: During the flight, he told me that he used to weigh over 240 pounds, and then now he's down to 165.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You could clearly see that he was very tired, sunken eyes, and he was traveling with his son, who's 10 years old.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And as soon as they sat down, the flight crew was offering just like the basic trolley food, They had a fruit bowl, a mini salad.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the first thing he said was, wait, each one of us gets our own plate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Another parent I met on this flight was Asma Liddawi.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She was traveling with her 12-year-old son, Ahmed, who was in multiple bombings.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: bombings, but the first one that happened in December 2023 caused him a pelvic fracture and he hasn't been able to walk since then.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the course of nearly two years of war, she tried to get him to multiple doctors, multiple hospitals, and eventually she got, I guess the word is lucky, to be evacuated.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And I asked her what it meant for her being a parent, especially during this war,
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And she told me that before the war she used to think about their futures and their education
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And then now over the past two years it was just about survival about just the next day
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, at the United Nations yesterday...
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I speak to you today after almost two years in which our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have been facing a war of genocide, destruction, starvation, and displacement.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, addressed the General Assembly through an interpreter, calling Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip war crimes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Abbas also condemned the October 7th attacks by Hamas and said that the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was willing to take responsibility for Gaza, too, after the war.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His speech came as a growing number of Israel's allies have broken with the country to say they recognize a Palestinian state.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One notable holdout is the U.S., Israel's staunchest ally.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Abbas had to give his speech yesterday by video link because the U.S. denied him a visa to visit the U.N.'s New York headquarters.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address the U.N. this morning.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, this may have happened to you at some point.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You were shopping on Amazon, you put something in your cart, you went to buy it, and there was a big old orange button that screamed, Get free same-day delivery.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Clicking it would have enrolled you in Prime, Amazon's subscription service with a monthly fee.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: If you didn't want that, you would have had to look down below and click on a small link that read, no thanks, I do not want free delivery.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To the Federal Trade Commission, that was kind of sneaky, and the FTC sued Amazon back in 2023, claiming that with tactics like that, the company had tricked tens of millions of people into signing up for a Prime subscription, and then made it hard to cancel.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle those claims, which the FTC says is one of the largest settlements in the agency's history.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Despite the major payout, the company denied any wrongdoing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One industry analyst told The Times, it seemed like Amazon may have just wanted to end the hassle of a trial and the coverage of it before the holiday shopping season starts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: $1.5 billion of the settlement will go to customers who could get $51 each if they meet certain requirements about how and when they signed up for Prime.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: If you want to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around. It's just after these credits.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Alex Kosyakova, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Katie O'Brien, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, time for the quiz.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Every week, we ask you a few questions about stories The Times has been covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: How many can you get?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: OK, first up, former Vice President Kamala Harris published a new book on Tuesday about her presidential run.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There's a couple of juicy nuggets in there for people who like the behind the scenes of politics.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow asked Harris about one particular revelation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You say in the book really bluntly that your personal first choice for your running mate would have been and you praise him effusively.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You say you would have been an ideal partner if I were a straight man.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Who did Kamala Harris say she would have rather had on the ticket with her if she thought the country was ready?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The answer Pete Buttigieg
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Harris wrote We were already asking a lot of America to accept a woman, a Black woman.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And she said that adding a VP candidate who was openly gay to the ticket was, quote, too big of a risk.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She ultimately went with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz instead.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Next question?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Good morning. Heads of states, excellencies, dear guests, the fourth plenary meeting of the General Assembly is called to order.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, tons of diplomats and world leaders descended on New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Obviously, there was some diplomacy to be done.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But for some U.N. visitors, a nice perk of coming to the U.S. is the shopping.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This year, though, the Trump administration issued new regulations, specifically banning Iranian diplomats and officials from going to a store that's really been a favorite of theirs in the past.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Your question, where could the officials from Iran no longer shop?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Give you a hint. This chain sells half of the world's cashews.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Another hint it also sells diamond earrings, swimsuits, 40 packs of three-ply toilet paper, and caskets.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The answer Costco.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's right, you could call it the Iran Costco affair.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the past, Iranian officials have been photographed loading up on things like TVs or cereal boxes at Costco, apparently to bring back to Iran.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But the Trump administration has now prohibited them from shopping at any, quote, wholesale club store without permission, specifically naming Costco.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Experts say it's a calculated move on the U.S.'s part to try and embarrass the Iranians by calling attention to their big shopping sprees when many of their citizens back home are facing economic hardship.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And last question.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Everybody's favorite week up in Alaska, Fat Bear Week, baby.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The best week of the year.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The bracket is posted for Fat Bear Week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can vote for the bear that you think gained the most weight in preparation for winter.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's Fat Bear Week, the wildly popular annual competition where people vote on which brown bear in Alaska's Katmai National Park is the chonkiest.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The viral stunt started as a way for people to engage with the park online.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Every September, the bears are at their biggest because they've just been eating and eating and eating in preparation for hibernation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They can more than double their body weight over the course of a summer.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Many of the competitors have earned nicknames, Chunk, Grazer, Otis, or they're just assigned numbers, like my personal favorite, 747, an absolute jetliner of a bear.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And for the competition, the bears are filmed hunting for fish at Brooks Falls in the park.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Your question, what kind of fish are the brown bears trying to catch?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Salmon, bass, carp, perch.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The answer? The bears are getting their omega-3 fatty acids with salmon.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The voting for Fat Bear Week technically runs through September 30th, so you still have time to fill out your bracket.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yes, there are brackets for Fat Bear Week, just like March Madness.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some of you have sports, okay? Some of us have fat bears.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That is it for the news quiz.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Our email, as always, is theheadlines at nytimes.com if you want to send us your score.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Or challenge a friend, share the quiz with them, see how they do.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
