The New York Times-The Morning Newsletter.

"Trump's emergencies, Chinese cyberattacks, Harvard research funding."

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September 4, 2025

Good morning. Here’s the latest:

Hacking: Chinese cyberattackers may have stolen data from almost every American. Harvard: A judge ruled that the Trump administration broke the law when it froze the university’s research funding. Portugal: A popular funicular in Lisbon crashed, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than a dozen others. Health: Florida plans to stop requiring vaccines in schools. It would be the first state to do so.

More news is below. But first, we look at President Trump’s emergency declarations.

National Guard members in Washington on Tuesday. Alex Kent for The New York Times

Calling national emergencies

	By Adam B. Kushner I’m the editor of this newsletter.

The United States is a nation in crisis, President Trump says. The problems are both profound and urgent. He knows how to fix them, but his ideas are hard to implement: They require new legislation or lumbering legal petitions. But there’s a way around that. The law often gives the president new and broad powers in a state of emergency.

So he has declared nearly a dozen. Trump can deport immigrants without due process, he says, because it’s an emergency to fight a Venezuelan gang’s invasion. He can dispatch federal troops to L.A. and D.C. because it’s an emergency to quell protests and fight crime. He can ask the Supreme Court for emergency rulings because we can’t afford to wait for judges to debate his policies.

Even when Trump doesn’t declare a legal emergency, he describes crises that justify dramatic action: Foreign aid is so woke and wasteful that we should end it altogether. The vaccine advisory board at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was so beholden to drug companies that its members had to be fired en masse.

It feels dizzying. Just how urgent are these crises, and who gets to decide?

For an essay The Times published this morning, I wanted to catalog Trump’s emergencies — both the legal ones and the rhetorical ones — to explore how he is using them to remake the government.

The law

Unlike several other nations, the United States doesn’t have a broad emergency provision that lets its leader suspend rights and laws. But a web of statutes gives the president emergency powers in specific instances.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 empowers him to quickly deport foreigners during a war or an invasion — but doesn’t define what an invasion is. Trump’s Homeland Security Department has said it is battling an invasion by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. U.S. law under Title X lets the president deploy the National Guard domestically to enforce federal law. Trump sent troops to Los Angeles because, he said, protesters had endangered federal buildings and immigration officers. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 says the president can take action against an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” Trump imposed new tariffs on dozens of countries because he said the U.S. trade deficit presented such a threat, though it is not new.

Source: Census Bureau| Note: The E.U. was formed in 1993; data before 1997 n.a.| By Karl Russell

A local law in Washington, D.C., lets the president take over the police force in a “crime emergency” — even though crime has fallen.

Source: Metropolitan Police Department | Includes homicides, assaults with a weapon, sexual abuse and robberies. | by The New York Times

Judges must now decide whether Trump’s emergencies are genuine. They’re generally bad at this. “It’s striking how little policing of bad faith courts do,” says David Pozen, a constitutional expert at Columbia Law School. “They’re working with limited precedent, vague statutory language and a tradition of deference to the executive branch, all of which potentially cut in Trump’s favor.” In this way, the president has immense power to define reality.

The vibe

Even if the courts constrain Trump’s legal declarations of emergency, the spirit of emergency seems to inflect everything that the White House does. A judgment against Trump’s tariff plan will “literally destroy the United States,” he says. His chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, declares: “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

The climate of emergency can be used to rationalize virtually any action. The president can pardon insurrectionists and fire the people who punished them, meaning the very idea of justice is up for grabs. The president can say that data about the economy — or weather or autism or the census — is bogus and proffer his own figures instead.

Perhaps Trump’s zeal for emergencies will backfire: In polls, voters say they dislike the chaos around his administration. But it’s also possible they’ll just acclimate. By invoking so many crises, Trump signals that he must take abnormal action to cope with an abnormal time.

Read why scholars are alarmed by the idea of government-by-crisis: “We tend to associate autocracy with emergency,” one told me.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Administration

Polls have shown Eric Adams in fourth place as he runs for re-election as mayor of New York City. Al Drago/Bloomberg

Trump’s advisers have discussed giving Eric Adams a role in the administration, hoping that his exit from New York’s mayoral race would hurt Zohran Mamdani’s chances. The White House instructed a half-dozen agencies to obstruct the offshore wind industry. Trump has criticized wind farms as ugly, expensive and inefficient.

More Politics

Eric Lee for The New York Times

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein gathered near the Capitol to demand the release of more documents related to his case. The Pentagon canceled a senator’s classified visit to a military spy agency after the far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer complained. The Justice Department has challenged several states that offer in-state tuition to unauthorized immigrants, saying that the policies discriminate against U.S. citizens.

Tariffs

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to move swiftly to allow the president to continue imposing tariffs around the world. The tariffs are undermining John Deere, an American icon and the type of manufacturing powerhouse that Trump says he wants more of in the U.S. China has been boycotting U.S. soybeans because of Trump’s tariffs. The standoff poses a big risk for China.

Vaccines

California, Oregon and Washington are seeking to create their own guidance on vaccines, in defiance of changes at the C.D.C. under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy plans to nominate seven new advisers to a panel that recommends vaccines, according to officials. He will face a Senate grilling today. Some Republicans have questioned whether his recent actions contradict pledges he made during his confirmation hearing.

China’s Parade

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images; Maxim Shemetov/Reuters; Liu Xu/Xinhua; Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik; Tingshu Wang/Reuters

President Xi Jinping transformed Beijing into a stage for an elaborate Chinese military parade. See photos of the spectacle. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un of North Korea joined Xi at the parade. Trump, who has spoken highly of all three leaders, accused them of conspiring against the U.S. In a conversation caught on a hot mic, Xi and Putin mused over how people might soon live to 150 — or forever — thanks to modern medicine and organ transplants.

Venezuela

The Trump administration said a deadly U.S. strike on a boat in the Caribbean was the start of a broader campaign against cartels. (The news of the strike was the most-clicked article in yesterday’s newsletter.) It’s not clear whether the people killed on the boat were given a chance to surrender before the U.S. blew it up. Specialists in the law of war have questioned the legality of the attack. What is Venezuela’s role in the drug trade? Genevieve Glatsky, a reporter in South America, explains.

THE MORNING QUIZ

This question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)

Trump blamed A.I. for a widely shared video that showed which of the following being thrown from a White House window?

A person A makeshift rope ladder A trash bag An apple pie

OPINIONS

People often assume they’ll get along with others who share their background or personality. But it’s actually the ability to riff that binds us together, Maya Rossignac-Milon and Erica Boothby write.

Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni discuss what Democrats can do to get rid of the scarlet L for “loser.”

Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience.

Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.

MORNING READS

David Chow

Weird and wobbly: After decades of simple stemware and minimalist tumblers, eye-catching glassware is the new vogue.

Bison: Tens of millions once called North America home. Restoring them could reawaken ecosystems.

Flu shots: Here’s everything you need to know for this fall.

Papa’s son: Patrick Hemingway, the second son of the novelist Ernest Hemingway, died at 97. He was a safari guide and big-game hunter in Africa and completed a book his father had started.

SPORTS

U.S. Open: Naomi Osaka’s comeback continues. She knocked off No. 11 seed Karolina Muchova to reach her first Grand semifinal since 2021.

Trending online: The N.B.A. is investigating the Los Angeles Clippers and its star, Kawhi Leonard, after the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” reported that the team’s owner paid Leonard millions through a no-show job to evade the salary cap.

Pirate site: The world’s largest illegal sports-streaming platform, Streameast, was shut down after a sting operation in Egypt.

MUSIC FOR MONEY

The King Fahad Cultural Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Iman Al-Dabbagh for The New York Times

The Metropolitan Opera is turning to Saudi Arabia to ease its financial problems. Since the pandemic, the Met has withdrawn more than a third of the money in its endowment fund — about $120 million — to help cover operating costs. The deal with Saudi Arabia is expected to bring the company more than $100 million; in exchange, it will perform in the kingdom for three weeks each winter.

But it also puts the Met in a precarious position politically. The company has been a vocal champion of human rights, and many in the West have shunned Saudi Arabia over its record of abuses and speech restrictions.

More on culture

In a letter to the White House, the Smithsonian pushed back against Trump’s demand for a review of exhibits but also said a team would review what information it would turn over. Oasis has returned in all its glory. Check out images from a concert in New Jersey.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Joe Lingeman for The New York Times

Make your own Honey Deuce melon-ball punch to celebrate the U.S. Open.

Learn to love the pianist Mal Waldron by listening to five minutes of his music.

Enhance your cooking with a carbon steel pan.

Never let your pets ride loose in the car. Here’s how to secure them.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were argonaut, guarantor and orangutan.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

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Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Desiree Ibekwe, Brent Lewis, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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