The Morning: Trust matters

Plus, the United Nations, Iran war costs and Fat Bear Week.
The Morning
September 23, 2026
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Good morning. The Trump administration defended its expulsion of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House in a court filing that described access as a privilege, not a right.

There’s more news below. But first, a few words about trust.

A modest white house sports an American flag and yard signs reading, “No Data Centers.”
In Pennsylvania. Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times

The distrust election

My colleague Sabrina Tavernise has been talking to Americans about the political landscape of the United States since 2016. “This is the first time I’m actually seeing a real shift among working-class conservatives on Trump,” she told me yesterday.

Those guys were gung-ho for years about Trump’s drain-the-swamp outsider strength, she said, thrilled by his anti-establishment anger and his ability to make them feel good about themselves. They consistently defended him.

But now? “He is the establishment” is how Sabrina put it. What she has heard from some folks on the right: Trump’s not for them any longer. They don’t trust the guy.

An insulation salesman in New Orleans is one of them. “I feel like I was sold a bill of goods,” he told Sabrina. He was furious with Trump for starting a war with Iran after campaigning on a promise of no more wars. Then his rage deepened with the rise in diesel prices caused by that war, she reported. “The goods I agreed to buy were nothing like what was delivered.”

And it’s not just Republicans. Americans of all political stripes have lost trust in America’s institutions, industries and politicians, Sabrina reports. “Whether on data centers, chemicals in food, the Epstein files or the war in Iran,” she writes, people feel as if “they are being lied to.”

One example is Phyliss Paone, a retired utility company worker and lifelong Democrat Sabrina spoke with in Archbald, Pa. Paone said she would not vote for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s re-election because of what she saw as a political reversal on a proposed data center in her town. “He’s just saying what he needs to get votes,” she said. (She doesn’t trust the people behind the data center either. “They just lie to the people because they think we don’t know anything,” she said.)

A woman with a bobbed haircut stands in front of foliage.
Phyliss Paone Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times

Trust falls

Here’s the thing. Trust is central to a healthy society. “Without it, people do not cooperate with each other or with the authorities,” Sabrina writes. “That can lead to political paralysis.”

And trust is waning, especially when it comes to the government. In the 1950s, as the economy boomed, more than 70 percent of Americans said they trusted their leaders and legislators. But the upheavals of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Watergate took their toll. More recently, so did the post-9/11 conflicts and the pandemic in 2020.

Now, Sabrina notes, we’re facing outbreaks of cyclospora and terrible flight delays. Flock cameras spy on us. We hear little from the Pentagon about progress in the war in Iran. Tech executives talk about the risks of A.I., even as Trump tells voters to ignore those concerns. The health secretary downplays measles deaths even as we see cases mount. Affordability, the president says, is a “hoax,” even as Americans get stung by prices at the gas station and the grocery store.

Trust in the federal government is now at just 17 percent, according to a Pew Research Center report released last year. And as the chart below shows, confidence in many other U.S. institutions is in short supply:

A chart showing levels of trust in U.S. institutions by party affiliation.
Note: Survey conducted June 1-15, 2026. Source: Gallup. Karl Russell/The New York Times

It’s always the economy

Here’s the other thing. The notion that affordability is a “hoax” isn’t playing well with Republicans. The Times and Siena University released a poll last week that showed 60 percent of likely white voters without a college degree — that’s Trump’s base — disapproved of the president’s performance on the cost of living. And among Republicans overall, only 29 percent said the economy was better than it had been a year ago. That’s down from 72 percent in January.

One American Sabrina spoke to helped bring those numbers to life.

“We drank the Kool-Aid, and we were wrong,” she heard from Ryan Wagner, 41, a manager at a home restoration company. Wagner, who lives in northern Michigan, used to support the president faithfully. Now when he hears Trump talk about how food prices have gone down, he said, “my freaking eye is twitching.” He added, “I can’t even listen to him talk anymore.”

Folks are just exhausted. Wagner said that he had taken down his American flag and that he considered the Republican Party mostly dead. He told Sabrina he didn’t think he’d vote in this election. There’s no upside to that.

Read her story here.

Related: Republicans in tight races are distancing themselves from Trump and calling for an end to the Iran war.

FREE TO READ

A replica of the proposed 250-foot triumphal arch on the National Mall. The U.S. Capitol is visible through the arch.
A replica of Trump’s proposed arch on the National Mall in June.  Alex Kent/The New York Times

Strategy: Trump is increasingly using national security as a justification to get what he wants. Is it working?

All aboard: Some travel on private jets. Check out these folks who prefer private rail. 🚂

Take the wheel: Our reporter turned his life over to an A.I. agent. How did that go?

Tech utopia: A crypto-backed “digital nation” is planning to build a city in Uruguay. See what it looks like now.

Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a video explaining why network TV cameras aren’t following Trump.

THE LATEST NEWS

United Nations

The United Nations Headquarters in New York.
In New York. Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times

Politics

A chart showing how money has been spent on the Iran war.
Source: U.S. Central Command. Ashley Wu/The New York Times
  • The war with Iran has cost $43.6 billion, according to the Pentagon. Click the chart to explore how that money breaks down.

Health

Animals

A large bear.
C. Loberg

Other Big Stories

OPINIONS

A short video showing Ezra Klein and Jensen Huang walking onto a set and sitting down.
The New York Tiems

Ezra Klein and Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chip-making company Nvidia, discuss A.I. competition, rogue agents and what it actually means to build intelligent machines. Click the video above to watch their conversation.

The president of the Rockefeller Foundation and the YouTuber known as MrBeast make the case for filming charity work. Video “uniquely moves people to act,” they write.

The Anniversary Sale ends soon: Morning readers, enjoy our best offer.

Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your interests with expert coverage of news, culture, business and more. Save now: $1/week for your first year.

TODAY’S NUMBER

Several people kneel or stand on a stage with a set that has both mystical and military elements.
“Mittwoch aus Licht” at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Julian Roeder

29

— That is how many hours are in the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle “Licht,” which got underway on Saturday with a premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The plot involves an intergalactic camel who drinks champagne. There’s much more, including a string quartet lifted by helicopter.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart could miss the rest of the season after a knee injury in Monday’s loss to the Rams.

M.L.S.: The Columbus Crew fired its developmental squad head coach after he told a female referee, “Don’t forget, this is a man’s game.”

RECIPE OF THE DAY

A Chinese roast pork sandwich on garlic bread sits on a green-and-whlte plate. Near the sandwich is some dipping sauce, a drink and a coffee pot.
Sarah Anne Ward for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Amy Elise Wilson

I wrote this recipe for Chinese roast pork with garlic bread back in 2020, when I really believed you needed to make the pork — the sweet-salty Cantonese barbecued pork known as char siu — yourself. You don’t. You can buy a small container of the meat from the Chinese restaurant that’s on the way home, and then put the sandwiches together for dinner in about 20 minutes flat. It’s a taste of the Catskills, delicious in the extreme. (Read how it came to be.)

FORGOTTEN NO MORE

“Lake Titicaca,” a vibrant painting of an Indigenous man piloting a reed boat in the Andes, sits on a rolling dolly.
“Lake Titicaca” by Alejandro Mario Yllanes. Nic Antaya for The New York Times

“Lake Titicaca,” a large 1935 oil-on-burlap of an Andean boatman by the Bolivian painter and engraver Alejandro Mario Yllanes, a protégé of Diego Rivera, will soon be on view at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

It’s a remarkable change of fortune for a painting that, by several accounts, was rescued in the 1970s from a Manhattan dumpster. Read the tale of its rescue and renaissance.

More on culture

  • The six-book shortlist of nominees for the Booker Prize was revealed yesterday in London. It’s a stout roster: Marlon James’s “The Disappearers”; Douglas Stuart’s “John of John”; Elizabeth Strout’s “The Things We Never Say”; M. John Harrison’s “The End of Everything”; Luke Kennard’s “Black Bag”; and Rebecca Perry’s “May We Feed the King.” Read about them.
  • It’s The Times’s 175th anniversary. Adam Nagourney, who writes beautifully about the paper’s history, delved into the corrections that have dogged our work over the years. (Sadly, he lays to rest the rumor that we once called the musician Meat Loaf “Mr. Loaf.”)
  • Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” holds the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a 23rd week, surpassing the record set by Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
  • Late night hosts had thoughts about the White House press ban.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS

A black-and-white photo of Charles Spencer, Princess Diana and Prince Charles in black-tie attire.
Charles Spencer, left, with Diana and Prince Charles in 1985. Keith Butcher/Shutterstock

Indulge in Charles Spencer’s memoir about his sister Diana, “the most hunted person of the modern age.” We have a review (the book is “elegant and reproving”) and delicious takeaways: “My husband,” the princess told her brother before her divorce, “is in love with his valet.”

Exercise to help lessen lower back pain. (I know. But doing nothing is worse.)

Manage the fallen leaves of autumn with the best cordless electric leaf blower tested by the garden gnomes at Wirecutter. Not too early in the morning, please.

GAMES

A yellow hexagon containing I, surrounded by gray hexagons containing D, G, L, N, Y and Z.

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was equinox.

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

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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Host: Sam Sifton

Editor: Adam B. Kushner

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

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