The Headlines - How China Is Influencing N.Y. Elections, and What Ghislaine Maxwell Told D.O.J. Officials

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Plus, Spotify playlists can spill your secrets. On Today’s Episode:In Washington Crackdown, Making a Federal Case Out of Low-Level Arrests, by Devlin BarrettDemocrats Criticize Trump’s Push for National Guard in More Cities, by Alyce McFadden and Tim Balk5 Takeaways From Ghislaine Maxwell’s Interview About Jeffrey Epstein, by Chris Cameron, Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer, Sharon LaFraniere and Maggie HabermanRussia’s Top Diplomat Says There Is No Plan for Putin-Zelensky Meeting, by Tyler Pager and Ashley AhnFlorida Paints Over Rainbow Memorial for Victims of Pulse Nightclub Shooting, by Aishvarya KaviHow China Influences Elections in America’s Biggest City, by Michael Forsythe, Jay Root, Bianca Pallaro and David A. FahrentholdWe Are Tech Privacy Reporters. Our Music Habits Got Doxxed, by Mike Isaac and Kashmir HillTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, August 25th. Here's what we're covering. Today marks two weeks since President Trump announced he was sending more than a thousand National Guard members and federal law enforcement agents into the streets of D.C. to fight what he called out-of-control crime.

Soldiers have been patrolling the National Mall. Are you? Protests have sprung up at improvised security checkpoints, where agents have been stopping and searching cars. Stop! And videos have spread online of people being pulled from their vehicles or wrestled to the ground and detained. The White House has celebrated this operation as producing hundreds of arrests.

So last week, I went to the federal courthouse to see exactly what types of cases are being created by this crackdown. My colleague Devlin Barrett spent an afternoon in a federal courtroom, watching as just a small sample of the recent cases, came before a judge. Devlin says most of the arrests have been immigration related, and those go to immigration court, where reporters aren't allowed to observe. But the cases he could see suggest things are operating very differently than they did before Trump's crackdown. Sitting in federal court, I was struck by how many federal agents and cops are being used. to make single arrests for relatively minor crimes. In some cases, it appears that they're having 12 agents and cops arrest a single individual

who's either sitting in a car with an open container of alcohol or who's vandalizing a streetlight. That's not something that a federal agent would normally get involved in. But when you send, for example, a dozen federal agents to arrest a guy for an open container of beer, And then while he's in handcuffs, he supposedly resists arrest, and he's charged with a felony assault or resisting of a federal officer. What started as a pretty mundane arrest is now a case that carries a possible eight-year prison sentence. President Trump said Friday he wants to use the show of force in D.C. as a model for what he'll do in other U.S. cities. I haven't spoken to the mayor. No, when we're ready, we'll go ahead and we'll

straight down Chicago, just like we did D.C. Chicago is very dangerous, great place. I built great stuff there. I have the most beautiful building in Chicago, I think. But I hate to see what's happened to Chicago. Trump called Chicago a, quote, mess and suggested he turned his sights there next, though he hasn't taken any concrete steps to do so. Chicago's mayor called the potential deployment of National Guard troops there unlawful

and said, quote, There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago. but sending in the military is not one of them. Now, a few other quick updates on the Trump administration. Good morning, Ms. Maxwell. How are you? Good morning. The Department of Justice has released a recording of the Deputy Attorney General's

recent interview with Galane Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, who's behind bars for helping him traffic underage girls. The meeting, which took place last month, came as the administration was trying to tamp down on a surge of allegations that it wasn't being transparent enough in the Epstein case. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects. In the interview, Maxwell claimed that there were no dark secrets about President Trump, who once considered Epstein a close friend. She also said there was no so-called client list of powerful people who could be implicated in the Trump. trafficking. Epstein's victims and their families have objected to the interview, accusing Maxwell of having a strong incentive to tell the government what it wanted to hear. She's been lobbying

to get her 20-year sentence reduced or overturned altogether, and shortly after the interview, she was moved to a minimum security prison camp. Also, you're saying there's no meeting plans right now. Kristen, Kristen, I am awfully sorry, you're not listening. There is no meeting plan. But Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all. In an interview on NBC on Sunday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, dealt a blow to President Trump's efforts to end the war in Ukraine, saying there is no current plan for Russia to sit down with Ukraine. Trump had suggested that a Russia-Ukraine summit was imminent after he met with both Black. Vladimir Putin and Vlodemir Zelensky, separately.

But Lavrov's comments underscore just how far the two sides are from reaching any kind of peace deal. Last week, for example, Russia insisted that it needs to play a role in keeping Ukraine secure after the war is over, a condition many Ukrainian and European officials see as absurd. And the Transportation Department put out a directive last month that all crosswalks in the U.S. should be kept free of, Quote, distractions. The department didn't specify what that meant, but last week in Orlando, Florida, officials painted over a rainbow crosswalk, commemorating the 49 people killed at the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. In response, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on social media, quote, Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks. Orlando's mayor condemned the repainting as callous and cruel. Protesters have, have since painted the crosswalk rainbow again, though it's not clear how long that will last. Over the past few decades, China has developed a vast influence network around the world,

which is aimed at swaying public opinion. This has played out in countries like Canada and Australia, and my colleagues and I were surprised to find that it's actually here in New York City as well, where the Chinese government and people working at their behest have influenced elections. Michael Forsyth is an investigative reporter at the Times. He's been tracing how the Chinese government has specifically leveraged a network of ethnic Chinese community groups in the city to wade into politics. The groups host dinners and parades and welcome newcomers to the U.S., just like Irish or Italian community groups, have always done. But the Chinese consulate has become increasingly involved with dozens of these groups. sometimes putting pressure on their leaders to back Beijing's agenda,

and even going so far as to have them take oaths to defend Chinese interests. And while many countries, including the U.S., have meddled in foreign elections, Michael says the Chinese effort is one of the most expansive and effective. Consulate and consular officials will often meet with the leaders of these groups and sometimes pass the word on about supporting or opposing certain cases. candidates. And our investigation focused on three candidates at three levels of government, the city council level, the state senate level, and the U.S. Congress. In all these instances, the candidates held positions that were counter to the Chinese government positions,

such as more civil liberties in Hong Kong or sympathy for Taiwan and its democracy. And in each of those three instances, the Chinese government influenced community groups in New York City to defeat those candidates. Experts tell us there's two reasons why the Chinese government does this. One is to control the narrative in the diaspora community, quashing descent so that any opposition does not spread back home into China. Another reason is to cultivate officials in the Chinese American community who someday might have a future in higher levels of government. Maybe one of these candidates that they support on the local level can someday rise to Congress, Senate, or even the presidency. A spokesman for the Chinese consulate general denied it had influenced U.S. elections

and said it strongly rejected, quote, any malicious accusations and smears. You can find the full investigation at NYTimes.com. And finally, an anonymous prankster put up a website recently claiming he'd gotten access to some truly high-level intel, very personal, like, what does Vice President J.D. Vance listened to while he's making dinner. Or what is House Speaker Mike Johnson really grooving to? Or what songs does Congresswoman Rashida-Talib have in rotation? The website, dubbed the Panama Playlists, claimed all of this data could be easily scraped from Spotify. There, you could find the listening habits of not just politicians,

but billionaire CEOs, celebrities, and other public figures. The music picks of two New York Times tech reporters were even on the site. Not all of the leaked playlists have been confirmed as accurate. A dozen or so of the tech and media figures listed on the site confirmed to the Times they were real, but most of the politicians didn't respond. The Times has since talked with a man behind the Panama playlists, a 23-year-old engineer who said he used bots to collect the data. He said it was simple. You just type someone's name into the search bar and there you go. Many users, especially with older accounts, may not realize their real name or email can be publicly attached to their account. Overall, the playlist dust up has underscored how many people don't know what they're really sharing. A Spotify spokeswoman said all playlists have always been public by default. To hide your past playlists, you have to go to each one and flick the switch to private one by one.

Those are the headlines, today on the daily, Inside the AI Hiring War, that has companies offering quarter of a billion dollar packages to snap up top talent. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.