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at nytimes.com/moving. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford,
today's Friday May 8th. Here's what we're covering.
President Trump says that the ceasefire between the US and Iran is still in effect, even after the two countries exchanged fire in the street of Hormuz yesterday. The President followed his comments up with a threat of more attacks, saying Iran, quote, "better sign their agreement fast." He was referring to a new deal that's on the table. It's a proposal from the US that would reopen the street of Hormuz,
and end fighting for 30 days, while the countries worked toward a more comprehensive long-term agreement. They want to sign it. I will tell you. They want to sign it.
“A lot more than I do. The temporary deal does not address the key points of the conflict that”
have stalled all the previous negotiations, like the future of Iran's nuclear program. Recently, President Trump has been making efforts to minimize the ongoing hostilities, calling them a trifle, a skirmish, and a mini-war, as the conflict has proved to be deeply unpopular with the American public, and increasingly expensive. Even some Republicans in Congress have been growing impatience. Yesterday, Representative Tom Barrett of Michigan, who is facing
a tough reelection race this year, proposed a bill to wind down the war. Barrett, who is an army veteran, said the President has sole authority to lead troops during wartime, but, quote, "I've lost too many friends on the battlefield to allow that to happen without Congress exercising its constitutional role," saying he wanted safeguards and a clear deadline.
“Meanwhile, there's also been continued fighting in Lebanon, despite the ceasefire there.”
The agreement has curbed the violence somewhat, but Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging daily attacks in the southern part of the country, and this week, Israel launched an air strike in the suburbs of Beirut. It hit an apartment building in a densely populated area, where Hezbollah holds sway. The Israeli military said it was targeting and killed a commander of the Iran-backed militia, but the attack risked further destabilizing the already shaky temporary
troops. The Trump administration is watching closely, as renewed fighting there could complicate any U.S. agreement with Iran, which has insisted that Israeli strikes in Lebanon and.
Now, two quick updates on the federal government. First, infectious disease experts are warning
that the U.S. response to the haunt of virus outbreak shows the country is ill-prepared to deal with future public health crises. The current outbreak on a cruise ship has left three people dead and at least five sick. Some passengers have scattered around the world, though, requiring them to be monitored elsewhere. There are six in the U.S. An expert say the CDC has been sluggish to respond. The agency has been largely silent, and it didn't set up a response team until nearly a month
after the first death. That timing is what worries some experts more than the virus itself, which they know rarely spreads among people. Some former public health officials say the Trump administration's deep staffing and budget cuts at the CDC have hamstrung the agency. And, new federal data shows the U.S. government appears to have reached a worrying new milestone, with the country's debt growing larger than its total economic output. Now, that doesn't mean
the country is facing an imminent fiscal crisis, but experts say the rising debt will make it more expensive for the country to borrow money in the future, and it does need to borrow money, since tax revenue doesn't fully cover the U.S.'s expenses. My colleague Tony Rom says economists have been warning about this milestone for years, but in Washington, the response has been largely muted. You didn't hear the chorus of criticism from Democrats and Republicans
about the need to do something swiftly to fix the debt, and that just sort of reflects the hard political reality here, which is that Republicans under President Trump have added considerably
To the debt.
don't seem particularly interested in the kind of grand compromise that might be needed to bring
“things back into balance. It's now been four months since U.S. special forces swept into Venezuela”
in the middle of the night and seized the country's president, Nicholas Maduro. Since then, there's been a flood of questions about the country's future, what will happen politically, economically, with a lot of forces jacking for power and influence. An oddly, one place to see that playing out is a Marriott Hotel in Caracas. You can see U.S. diplomats here. There are oilmen coming down from Houston and Dallas. There are finance types from New York and London. You see
these U.S. security guys with these tattoos, you know, really muscle bound types. It's like
something out of a movie set almost. My colleague, Simone Romero, covers Venezuela, and he's been
staying at the hotel, which he says has definitely seen better days. The whole thing is kind of run down, but it's become the place to be to try and talk deals over a $32 breakfast buffet with soggy scrambled eggs. It's just been bizarre to see this hotel become a kind of nerve center for decision-making in Venezuela and it's all about proximity to power. People want to be close to the de facto U.S. embassy, which is operating out of the hotel's top floor. U.S. diplomats are
camping out at the hotel because the actual U.S. embassy is not functional right now. For many Venezuelans in the country, they've been left waiting to see what all the negotiations and dealmaking will mean for their daily lives, with one political adviser telling the times "much of the awaited transformation is being guided from the Marriott."
And finally, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week and the fiction prize went to the novel
"Angel Down" by Daniel Krauss. It's about a soldier in World War I who encounters an angel, knocked down on the battlefield, stuck in barbed wire. It blends history, magical realism, science fiction, and the whole book is written as a single sentence. One sentence, almost 300 pages. Krauss explained how he got to that approach on the New York Times book review podcast. I started writing the book in more or less traditional format. I had gotten about 20 pages in
“maybe, and it was going well, but I remember saying to somebody, "Not every book has to be”
great." I was like, "This may not be firing at all cylinders, but it's sort of working, but I was frustrated with it. It didn't seem like I'd chosen the right approach." Krauss explained how he stopped mid-project, racked his brain, and honed it on the book's theme, how the war began a cycle of violence. And so I had the thought that, what if I wrote all in one sentence, and the end of the book circles back to the beginning of the
book, so that once you start reading it, in effect you're trapped in the book forever, and it's this ongoing wheel. You can check out the book review podcast for more of that interview and more reading recommendations. Those are the headlines. If you'd like to play the Friday news quiz, stick around, it's just after these credits. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Margaret Kadifa, Jake Lucas, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford, original theme by Dan Powell,
special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Sam Dolnek, Miles McKinley, and Zoe Murphy. Now, time for the quiz. Every week we ask you a few questions about stories the times has been covering. Can you get them all?
“First up, can you kind of clarify these reports of Kamakaze Dolfins that we've heard about?”
I haven't heard the Kamakaze Dolfins thing. It's like sharks with laser bands, right? U.S. officials have been getting a lot of questions about the war with Iran over the last few months, but this week, one line of questioning really stood out. And I can't confirm or deny whether we have Kamakaze Dolfins, but I can confirm they don't. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, and Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth were put on the spot about whether
Dolfins were being weaponized in the straight-of-form moves. They kind of laughed it off, but there is actually precedent for the U.S. Navy using sea creatures. In 1962, the Navy started a training program for Dolfins and all but one of these ocean dwellers, which animal was not in the Navy program. Octopus, Purpose, Seal, Whale. Octopus, Purpose, Seal, Whale. The answer? Octopus, while the animal is exceptionally intelligent as far as we know,
They have yet to be recruited.
to help with underwater surveillance. Next question. So, it turns out that customer service
snafu's hit all of us, even if you're famous and powerful. He calls his bank to change his phone number,
and I think is addressed. Recently, a man giving a speech in the Chicago area shared a story about how a good friend of his, who is definitely famous, but not by his birth name, hit a dead end
“trying to update his address on record at the bank. "Oh, I'm sorry, Sir. It says here, you have to come”
in person." And he said, "Well, that's not going to, I'm not going to be able to do that." The clip has been going viral thanks to the big reveal, which we have dinged out here. "What did matter to you if I told you?" She hung up on him. "Your question, who got hung up on?" The answer? "Could you imagine being known as the woman who hung up on the Pope?" "Hope Leo." Lucky for him, another priest sorted out the banking issues since Leo was busy, you know,
being in charge of more than a billion Catholics. Today is actually the one-year anniversary of
him being named Pope so far, the customer service agent from this story hasn't been identified, though to be fair, getting a call from his holiness probably is not in the training materials. And last question, "The top movie at the box office this past week was the Devil Ware's product, too, a sequel that came storming in 20 years after the original." "Bile means move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me." So, in honor of long, long-awaited sequels,
“can you guess these franchises that waited even longer to put out the second film?”
We're not going to make it easy, we're going to do a little wordplay puzzling here. As an example, if the clue was Lucifer Sport's Gucci, that would be Devil Ware's product, get it?
First one, the clue is elite firearm, as in there were 36 years between the movies in the elite
firearm franchise. That is... I feel neat, okay? First thing, top gun. Next, the clue is knife jogger. There were 35 years between the original and the sequel for knife jogger. That is... Blade Runner. And last one, insect-liquid. Another three plus decades passed between the first and the second movie for insect-liquid.
Answer? "It's Showtime." Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. As for why studios keep going back to the well, even decades and decades later, seems audiences have an insatiable appetite for sequels. Not only is Devil Ware's product too doing well, but nine of the ten top grossing films in North America in 2024 were sequels.
“That's it for this week's news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, our email is the headline”
set NY Times.com. I'm Tracy Mumford, and you do not have to wait three decades for the next episode. We will be back on Monday.
