The Headlines - Trump’s Standoff With White House Reporters, and the Rise and Fall of ‘Pervert Glasses’

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Plus, the Friday news quiz. Here’s what we’re covering:In Trump’s White House, China’s Dictator Is Welcome. American Media, Less So., by Peter BakerIran Proposes 7-Day Plan to End War, by Farnaz Fassihi and Pranav BaskarNetanyahu, Addressing U.N., Denounces Israel’s Critics as ‘Moral Cowards’, by Isabel Kershner, Farnaz Fassihi, Max Bearak and Michael LevensonMental Health Among Teenagers Is Improving, C.D.C. Finds, by Azeen GhorayshiComplaints About Meta’s ‘Pervert Glasses’ Won’t Slow Tech’s Wearable Gadgets Drive, by Brian X. Chen and Eli Tan Tune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, September 25th. Here's what we're covering. Normally, Jackie, we'd be watching a pretty elegant affair on the South Lawn, and we don't get access to that now. In Washington last night, the fallout from President Trump's standoff with the White House press corps was on full display. So we ordinarily would have a lot of images to show of this, and it's going to be difficult to, you know... State visit to quite a scene, too.

The president was hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a state dinner at the White House in what Trump called a made-for-TV moment. But the cameras that would normally capture that were turned off as the five major networks that make up the White House TV pool continue their boycott in solidarity with reporters that Trump has banned. A judge blocked Trump's ban yesterday, but some journalists still had trouble getting access. and the White House has not formally agreed to let CNN back into pool coverage. The whole thing led to a slightly surreal scene last night with some American journalists blocked from entering the White House while Chinese state media was welcomed inside. During the visit, Trump appeared to make a joke with Xi

about how China had the friendliest press corps. At the dinner itself, Trump said he had, quote, never gotten along better with the Chinese leader, even as the two countries face deep divides over artificial intelligence, Taiwan, trade. On that point, the Trump administration announced the extension of a trade truce between China and the U.S. earlier this week. But mostly Xi's visit was less about policy and more about pomp and circumstance, with lavish ceremonies, military flyovers, and gifts. Trump gave the Chinese leader a statue of a bald eagle, and she said, that China would be sending two more pandas to a U.S. zoo.

Now, two updates from the United Nations General Assembly in New York. First, all lies were on the Palestinian leader and the Israeli Prime Minister yesterday, as they delivered a pair of dueling speeches. Our people are being subjected at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces to killing, destruction, starvation, and attempts at displacement. In a pre-taped video address via an interpreter, The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of carrying out a genocidal campaign against his people, saying that continued Israeli attacks in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank were part of a, quote, malicious colonial scheme.

Hours later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage. If there are any other moral cowards who haven't yet left this hall, please do so now. Even as many countries' diplomats walked out on him. and protesters gathered outside the U.N.'s headquarters. To all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the anti-Semitic mayor of New York, I say this, shame on you. In his speech, Netanyahu pushed back sharply on his critics,

at times pounding the lectern and raising his voice, and he spent considerable time attacking New York's mayor Zoranam Dani, who has called Netanyahu a war criminal. Analysts say that for Netanyahu, his U.N. speech was at least partly directed at audiences back home in Israel, where he's in the middle of a tough re-election campaign. There, Netanyahu's party has used Mom Dani as a kind of political foil because of his outspoken criticism of Israel. It's even put Mom Dani's face on billboards and campaign posters around Israel, alongside images of the leaders of Iran and Hezbollah.

Also, at a press briefing at the UN yesterday, Iran's foreign minister announced that his country has sent the Trump administration a seven-day plan to end the U.S.-Iran war. The proposal is effectively the same as the memorandum of understanding that the two countries agreed to back in June before fighting restarted. Among other things, it calls for the end to all hostilities, for the U.S. to release billions of Iran's frozen assets, and for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened all over the course of one week.

That would then lead right into comprehensive negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. An American official familiar with talks between the U.S. and Iran told the times they've had constructive discussions through mediators, but there have been no breakthroughs as the war approaches the seven-month mark. New data out this week from the CDC offers an updated look at Americans' mental health, and there is a bright spot. Mental health among teenagers in particular is improving. It hit a real low in 2021 in the midst of the pandemic,

when many kids' lives were upended by school closures, screen time was soaring, etc. But teenagers surveyed at high schools across the country in 2025, the newest data available, reported improvements in key measures, with fewer students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, serious thoughts of suicide, or suicide attempts. Despite the broader trend, the data shows that many young people are still struggling. For example, more than 40 percent of girls said they'd felt persistent sadness in the last year, almost double the rate for boys. And more than 30 percent of teenagers who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual reported, seriously considering suicide. One former CDC official told the times that overall, the data suggests that a new focus on

talking about mental health at schools was helping, even if there's still a lot of work to be done. Quote, what we're seeing now is a rebound, and that's wonderful. And finally, this time last year, Meta's smart glasses seem to be really catching on. Millions of people were buying the camera-equipped raybands that let you easily film everything, hands-free. Users were sharing footage of them cooking, trying new restaurants, going on vacation, all filmed from their glasses. And for a moment, smart glasses seem like they might actually become the biggest thing in tech since the smartphone. But it didn't take long before the creepy stories started rolling in.

Men filmed themselves pestering women, and people were secretly filmed. videos inside gyms, bathrooms, changing rooms, giving rise to the nickname Pervert Glasses. Some stores and restaurants started posting signs banning them, and META disabled the cameras on thousands of glasses whose users tried to disable the little red light that warns people the glasses are recording. Now, this week... We realized that we could actually design a whole new category of glasses, audio glasses. Mehta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a new model of the glasses with no camera, which he pitched as an upgrade. You can make them much lighter and slimmer.

They have the longest battery of any of our glasses. As my colleague Brian Chen, a Times tech columnist, put it, it felt like a sheepish retreat from the camera-centric models. Now, Meta is not the only tech giant to struggle with how to win people over with smart glasses. Google rolled out its own model more than a decade ago. It had to then release an etiquette guide reminding people to not be creepy and eventually just scrapped the product. Despite those problems, though, companies haven't given up and are still betting that sometime in the future,

people will get used to wearing tech that can be recording at any time in any place. Google is getting back in the smart glasses game this year, and meta is still selling its version with a camera. One tech expert told the times there's a clear incentive for the companies to keep pushing this, getting access to more and more user data. Having a device that sees everything you do, and here's everything you hear, is a data goldmine. Those are the headlines. If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around.

It's just after these credits. And if you are not a time subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to all of the journalism we publish when you download the Times app now. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Margaret Cedifa, Jake Lucas, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Sam Dolnik, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, and Chris Wood. 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? Here we go. The whole thing looked like it was made out of carbon fiber. fiber. It's only moving at one knot of boat speed. This summer, people out on the Great Lakes have told the times they've seen something when they've been out on the water that's made some of them a little nervous. Light bulb start going off, question marks, start getting raised. So somebody was watching. They've spotted vessels, but not like any kind these boaters had ever encountered there before. Your question, what have they been seeing on the Great Lakes? The answer?

Each drone is 33 feet long, with a distinctive orange mast that stands 19 feet tall. Floating surveillance drones that basically look like huge, unmanned sailboats. The U.S. military has used them in the Caribbean to try and track drug smugglers and as part of wartime surveillance in the Strait of Hormuz. Since May, the Coast Guard has deployed six of the sea drones to the Great Lakes, where they're controlled remotely by a Bay Area. area defense contractor. They're equipped with long-range cameras, radar, and other sensors, and they're meant to help intercept people or drugs crossing into the U.S. illegally from Canada. But the northern border is not a hotspot for that, and the Coast Guard told the times that so far the sea drones haven't caught any illicit activity on camera.

Next up, this week, a major new study was released that looked at the medical records of almost a hundred million Americans. And it found that more than a million people are taking a specific type of medication, even though they have not been diagnosed with any of the conditions it's officially approved to treat. What type of drug is it? The answer? GLP ones, like Ozempic or Wagovi. Technically, the medications have only been approved to treat a limited number of conditions, like obesity and diabetes, raising questions about how many doctors seem to be prescribing them to patients

who don't appear to qualify for them. There is little data on what happens when people without obesity or diabetes take the drugs. So as one medical researcher at Harvard said, quote, we don't know how this will play out. It's like this big Ozempic experiment. And last question. The city of Paris seems to have lost its mind.

over one famous singer who is in the city for a super sold-out 16-show residency. The excitement has spawned sing-along cruises down the River Sen, giant karaoke events, and crowds have been gathering outside her hotel for any glimpse of her. A big part of the thrill is that many fans thought they'd never get the chance to see her perform live ever again. Who is taking France by storm? The answer? Oh, bye. Selim Dion, who is back on stage after battling through a rare neurological condition called

Stiff Person Syndrome, which affected her ability to move and to sing. She chose to make her big comeback in France, because while most of the world knows her for My Heart Will Go On, it's all coming back to be now, she actually holds the record for best-selling French language album ever, with a whole other set of hits just in French. Dion, who grew up in Quebec, actually had to learn English as a teenager in order to try and break out of just the French-speaking market. Hello, how are you? Nice to meet you.

In a documentary from the 1980s, the CBC captured 15-year-old Dion trying out the language. Just a moment. Don't be hungry. That's it for this week's news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, our email is The Headlines at NYTimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. Have a great weekend. The show will be back on Monday.