Good morning. It is September 4th. The weather here in New York is getting a little more summery as the children head off to the first day of school, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

And, wow, there is a lot of news. The death toll from the Afghanistan earthquake is now at more than 2200 people just to check in on that with all the other things going on. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead story is something that could take up the whole paper and the whole podcast. As the Trump administration's decision to apparently summarily murder a boatload of people in the Caribbean advances to the front page from its interior placement yesterday. As usual, despite the placement, the headline downplays the most notable part of the news, “U.S. SAYS STRIKE ON BOAT SOUGHT TO STOP CARTELS.” Right. That is, essentially press release journalism and also yesterday's Below that, “WAGING NEW CAMPAIGN,” Also yesterday's news, but a more important part of it. And then “A Murky Legal Rationale for Using the Military to Combat Drugs,” and there, albeit through a haze of credulousness combined with indirection, the Times hits the heart of the matter, by “murky legal rationale,” if you read ahead in the story, you'll discover that the Times means no legal rationale at all. “Pentagon officials, the Times writes, were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.” The story also goes on to note that the Trump administration's choice to designate the Venezuelan criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, which it claims was running the boat as a terrorist organization, in no way authorized the U.S. to launch a military attack against a supposed Tren de Aragua target. Back at the top of the story, the Times writes, “the Trump administration declared the start of a new and potentially violent campaign against Venezuelan cartels on Wednesday, defending a deadly U.S. military strike on a boat that officials said was carrying drugs, even as specialists in the law of war questioned the legality of the attack.” The word “potentially” there is a real triumph of the Times's house style. There's nothing “potential” going on here. If you want to talk pure physics, the president, or whoever writes his social media posts, specifically called it a “kinetic strike.” And despite the lack of any legal justification, the administration in no way denies that the violence was actual, and they say they're planning to do more of it. Anyway, the story is sharp enough that the usual coating of institutional mush doesn't blunt the point. “The US Navy,” the Times writes, “has long intercepted and boarded ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters, typically with a Coast Guard officer temporarily in charge to invoke law enforcement authority. Tuesday's direct attack in the Caribbean was a marked departure from that decades-long approach. The administration has said 11 people were aboard the vessel. It was unclear whether they were given a chance to surrender before the United States attacked.” By “it was unclear” I think the Times means there's absolutely no evidence, nor is there any claim from the administration that it made any offer of surrender. The whole thing remains a matter of assertion rather than justification on the administration's part. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,” the Times writes, “said in an appearance on Fox and Friends on Wednesday that administration officials knew exactly who was in that boat and exactly what they were doing, although he did not offer evidence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio,” the Times writes, “at a news conference in Mexico City that seizing drug shipments in recent years had not dissuaded cartels and traffickers. ‘What will stop them is when we blow up and get rid of them,’ he said. But,” the story continues, “some officials at the Defense Department privately expressed concern on Wednesday about the administration's shifting narratives, including where the vessel was headed. Mr. Rubio had said on Tuesday that it was going to Trinidad, while Mr. Trump said the United States. On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio changed his version, saying the drug-laden boat was bound for the United States.” A little more sloppy news writing there. The Times has absolutely no reason to write in its own voice that it was “the drug-laden boat,” since the claim about the drugs comes from the exact same people who can't even offer a coherent account of where the boat was going. Furthermore, the story, and an accompanying story on the jump page, “untangling claims that Venezuela floods the U.S. with drugs,” makes the case that Venezuela is a minor player in the hemispheric drug trade, and particularly, as the second story said, “plays virtually no role in the trade of fentanyl, which is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China.” The main story cites a former senior federal law enforcement official who, in addition to pointing out that the U.S. has not been in the habit of summarily blowing up alleged drug shipments, also raised several other questions about the attack on the fast boat. None of them are actually questions. The Times writes, first, “Tren De Aragua was not known for handling large shipments of cocaine or fentanyl, instead it was known for smuggling what is known as “pink cocaine,” a psychedelic substance that is generally made by combining ketamine and MDMA, commonly known as “ecstasy,” a stimulant that can cause hallucinations. The former official also said it was unusual to have 11 people manning a vessel that can easily be crewed by two or three, especially since traffickers are always trying to maximize the amount of cargo space devoted to carrying drugs, not human beings.” In the former official's opinion, the Times writes, “it was more likely that the vessel was carrying migrants on a human smuggling run. It would be impossible to know for sure, however, given that any evidence of drug smuggling was destroyed in the attack.” 

And that is just one news story. The second news column is “three blue states form alliance over vaccines, a widening schism in US health policy.”

“Three democratic controlled West Coast states,” that would be California, Oregon, and Washington, “announced plans on Wednesday,” the Times writes, “to form a health alliance that would review scientific data and make vaccine recommendations for their residents, saying that the federal agency responsible for issuing such guidance for the country,”—that's the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—“had become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science.” The story goes on to say, “hours after the Western states announcement, Florida announced it was going in a starkly different direction. Its Surgeon General said the state would end all vaccine mandates, including for children to attend schools, claiming in a news conference that each mandate “drips with disdain and slavery.’” That rates its own story on page 17. 

The rest of the top of the page is a picture of a military parade in Beijing for the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Unlike Donald Trump's desultory military parade in Washington, DC., here, the soldiers are marching in spectacularly tight formation in unison so that the whole thing looks like a magic eye puzzle. It also makes a noticeable counterpoint to the headshot of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the boat strike story with his pompadour overcombed but still looking somehow wobbly, an expression of what he evidently intends to be grim resolve on his face. 

Under the parade picture, the story is “White House Calls In Reinforcements for Siege on Wind Energy / Enlists Even Unrelated Agencies to Attack Offshore Farms.” According to the Times, “the all-out effort includes officials at Health and Human Services studying whether wind turbines are emitting electromagnetic fields that could harm human health,” as opposed to what coal plants emit. 

Below the fold, “Met Opera Gets A Fiscal Lifeline In Saudi Arabia, it's a deal for the financially free-falling opera company to perform in Saudi Arabia for three weeks each winter, the Times writes, “in exchange for more than $100 million.” 

Down at the bottom of page, the Times takes another whack at Zoran Mamdani. “As Mamdani Picks Up Steam,
He Tones Down His Stances.”

“In the roughly five years, the Times writes, since Zohran Mamdani first started campaigning for public office, he has argued that prostitution should be decriminalized. He has called to defund the police. He has said that billionaires should not exist, and that the admissions test for New York City's elite public high schools should be abolished. But before he began his long-shot bid to become the Democratic nominee for mayor last year, he abandoned some of his most provocative views. And during the course of the campaign, he has sought to downplay others. In the past several days, as Mr. Mamdani has faced mounting pressure from some of his rivals in the four-way general election, he has also tried to distance himself from the platform of the National Democratic Socialist of America, of which he is a member.” Hold that thought about “mounting pressure,” we're going to get back to that in a second after we take the jump, which carries us to page A20, where the Times writes that “Mamdani's opponents have accused him of political opportunism.” And after pointing out that Andrew Cuomo flip-flopped on congestion pricing, the Times says that “Mr. Mamdani's changes are particularly striking.” Are they particularly striking? As usual with Mamdani, the Times seems to be struggling with context and perspective here. 

For instance, right on the top of page A20, not page one. The headline is, “Trump aides are said to consider job for Adams if he quits mayor bid. Advisors to President Trump have discussed the possibility, the Times writes, of giving Mayor Eric Adams of New York City a position in the administration, has a way to clear the field in November's mayoral race, and hurt the chances of the Democratic frontrunner, Zohran Mamdani, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have also involved finding a possible place in the administration for the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa. The goal, the people said, would be to give former governor Andrew Cuomo a better chance of defeating Mr. Mamdani in November's general election.” 

The Times is reporting that the current mayor, elected as a Democrat, is negotiating with Donald Trump, the Republican president, to try to broker a deal that would allow lifelong Democrat Andrew Cuomo to try to defeat the person he lost to in the Democratic Party with Trump's support. But the story about opportunism and switching positions that goes on the front page is about Mamdani? Also, the Adams-Cuomo-Trump story says that the possibility of Trump intervening in the race “has taken on added urgency in New York as a chaotic race steams into the last stretch of the campaign season.” Here, you loop back to the other story's assertion of mounting pressure on Mamdani. There is no mounting pressure. There is no chaotic race. The guy who won the Democratic primary in a blowout is cruising in the polls toward the general election. The only chaos is in the New York Times's newsroom leadership and other would-be power brokers in the city, frantically betraying their inability to absorb the very straightforward political facts. 

And speaking of the difference between what the New York Times wants the news to be, and what the news actually is. At the bottom of page A-19, the headline is, “Judge Rules Trump Administration Illegally Cancelled Harvard's Research Funding.” The judge delivered a summary judgment in Harvard's favor, saying the Trump administration had used anti-Semitism as a smokescreen and had violated Harvard's First Amendment rights and failed to comply with the legally mandated terms of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Times truncates a quote from the judge to avoid having to say the name of the civil rights law as part of its policy of giving the readers as little information as possible. 

Again, this big win for Harvard is on page A19, as opposed to page A1, which is where in June, the Times ran, “Harvard is said to be open to spending up to $500 million to resolve Trump dispute.” And where in July, the Times ran, “Behind closed doors, Harvard officials debate a risky truce with Trump.” Surely New York Times standards editor Patrick Healy is already preparing his explanation of how Times editors and reporters so badly misjudged the state of play in the Harvard case. 

That is honestly nowhere near all the news. At least 15 people were killed in a funicular accident in Lisbon. The Fifth Circuit, of all circuits, rejected the cornerstone of Trump anti-immigrant policy by ruling that there was no way that the Alien Enemies Act could possibly be applied to mass migration instead of armed invasion. Dylan Byers, the dim-witted stenographer to billionaires currently covering the media for Puck News, reported that David Ellison, who just bought Paramount with his daddy, tech mogul Larry Ellison's money in a deal greased by a gigantic bribe from Paramount's previous owner, Sherry Redstone, to the Trump administration plans to pay Barry Weiss more than $100 million for her intermittently updated grievance blog, The Free Press, and to install her in a leadership position at CBS News. But if we dive into that, we're going to be here all day. 

Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho.

You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.