The Headlines - Where Voters Are Abandoning Trump, and Barriers to New Cancer Treatments

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Plus, the Friday news quiz. Here’s what we’re covering:Trump Puts on a Midterms Show for an Audience That’s Already Sold, by Katie RogersHispanic Voters on the Texas Border Have Soured on Trump, by Jennifer Medina and Edgar SandovalChrista Pike Is in Critical Condition as Tennessee Pauses Executions, by Emily CochraneHochul Names Letitia James as Special Prosecutor in Cornell Case, by Santul Nerkar, Benjamin Oreskes and Hurubie MekoU.K.-Iranian Man Arrested in London in Connection to Air Base Incident, by Michael D. ShearNew Cancer Drugs Are Revolutionary. Why Don’t More Patients Get Them?, by Gina KolataGoogle Wants Hollywood to Stop Being So Afraid of Technology, by Brooks Barnes 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, October 2nd. Here's what we're covering. Well, thank you. Thank you. President Trump kicked off a multi-state tour yesterday trying to rally support for Republicans

in the final month before the midterms. Pretend I'm running, please. Because I am in the ballot. The push comes as his party faces the possibility of losing control of Congress. One place that battle is playing out is Texas. No Democrat has won a statewide election there since the mid-90s. But polls show there's a chance one of its Senate seats could flip blue in November.

One constituency that could be key to that is Hispanic voters, especially those along the southern border in the Rio Grande Valley. Trump made huge gains with that group in 2024, which helped propel him to victory. And Republicans had hoped they'd stick with. the party, but that enthusiasm has now faded. Me, my circle, my family, we feel betrayed. Yeah. We feel betrayed by this administration.

Among some of these voters, there's almost like a kind of shame that they voted for Trump in the first place. My colleague, Jennifer Medina, went to the Rio Grande Valley last week, where she spoke with many Hispanic voters who previously supported the president. I mean, right now the economy is a big issue. Gas prices, groceries. I mean, that's pretty high up there. They're mad about the economy and feeling like President Trump promised that my pocketbook would expand, that things would get better for me economically.

A lot of these raids, especially when they go to people's workplaces, home people. It's just like, come on. And they're also really furious, particularly around the immigration enforcement. Jenny says one woman she spoke with who voted for Trump in 2024, then saw her brother deported earlier this year. It's just so heartbreaking to see all of this. A lot of people are going to look at me like a clown. Ain't this what you were voting for? If this what you wanted?

They wanted calm along the border, but they didn't think that that would have any negative impact on people who they knew. And they really feel like how could the president be doing this to people who supported him? Democrats are hoping the growing anger will help them unseat Republican incumbents up and down the ballot. But Jenny says it's not that simple. Many of the voters she spoke with aren't suddenly enthusiastic about Democrats, and some said they simply won't vote at all. Now, a few quick updates on stories we've been covering this week. In Nashville, Krista Pike remains in critical condition at a hospital after surviving a botched execution attempt by the state of Tennessee Wednesday night.

It's not yet clear exactly what happened. Pike's lawyers say the execution team went through at least seven needles trying to find a suitable vein. An experts say the two lethal injections may not have reached her bloodstream, instead flowing into the tissue of her arm. It's also possible there was something wrong with the doses of the drug itself, pentobarbital. Some states that have the death penalty have struggled to get the drug, since the main company that makes it restricted its use in executions. This was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year, and the state's governor has now called them off through December. Pikes, lawyers are urging him to consider allowing her to serve the rest of her life in prison, where she's been since she was convicted of murdering her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

Slemer's mother has long pushed for Pikes' execution and had driven from her home in Florida to Nashville to witness it. Also, in New York, the governor announced that she's named the state's Attorney General Letitia James to serve as special prosecutor to investigate the rape allegation at Cornell University. The case has become a national flashpoint in the conversation about sexual assault on campuses. Explaining her decision, the governor wrote, New information has raised serious questions about how this case was handled, and she said she'd lost faith in the local DA's ability to oversee it fairly. That DA initially did not bring charges in 2024,

when the woman known as Jane Doe went to the police after she said she was sexually assaulted by multiple men at a fraternity house. The DA has defended that decision, but has now also reopened the investigation after the woman sued Cornell and seven men in connection with the alleged assault. And last quick update on an unfolding story. Authorities in London arrested another man on suspicion of preparing terrorist attacks in connection with a security incident at a British air base

used by the American military. They identified him as a dual British-Iranian national. His arrest comes after five other British men were detained in the middle of the night on Sunday while driving near the base in white vans. A bomb disposal robot was sent in to examine the vans, but no explosives were found, and those men have since been released on bail. The air base in southern England has been used by American bombers during the U.S. campaign against Iran,

and Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps previously warned that made it a, quote, legitimate target, though Iran's foreign minister has denied any involvement in this incident. In the world of cancer treatment, a growing class of targeted gene therapies has revolutionized the field, in some cases vastly extending people's lifespans. They're part of a range of new medicines that are quickly being, approved to treat cancer. Over the past five years, the FDA has approved an average of one new treatment a week. And yet, many patients who could be helped by these new drugs never have them prescribed. One recent study found that half or more of patients with metastatic breast,

prostate, or pancreatic cancers never even got a genetic test of their tumors, which is the first step to identifying a targeted gene treatment. The Times has been digging into the research and talking to doctors and patients to understand why, and overall, people point to a number of barriers. For one, while doctors are always trying to learn about the latest in care options, the sheer pace and scale of new discoveries can make it hard to keep up. As one official at a genetic testing company told the times, quote, the education burden is overwhelming.

It also takes time and effort to update protocols at hospitals, where chemo has been the go-to standard for decades. And then there's the price. Many of the newest drugs can cost $10,000 or more a month, and even patients with private insurance may hit coverage limits that leave them with prescription bills that can push them to bankruptcy. In all, research shows that the people most likely to miss out on innovative cancer treatments are those who are uninsured or on Medicaid, along with black and Hispanic,

patients who have long experienced inequities in American health care. For the patients who do get access, experts say the results have been life-changing, fueling their hope that more people can get them. One lung cancer researcher told the times that just a couple decades ago, the metastatic form of lung cancer was a death sentence. Now, there are dozens of drugs that target multiple gene mutations, and quote, there are huge numbers of patients surviving five years, ten years, twenty years.

And finally. The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. You know how a lot of movies and TV shows have a pretty dark view of technology? One day the AIs are going to look back on us. Upright eight all set for extinction. Killer robots, humans reduced to being glorified batteries, etc. Well, Google would really love it if maybe Hollywood just toned down all that doom and gloom. What if the future wasn't terrifying? How about that?

So Google has partnered with Range Media, which is a talent management company, to try and change the narrative to put more positive spins on technology and movies and TV. Brooks Barnes covers Entertainment for the Times. He says, for Google, the new partnership, dubbed 100 zeros, is about, experimenting with emerging forms of entertainment and testing AI production tools. But shaping the portrayals of technology on screen is a clear goal, too. One of the first projects was a short film about a man who is able to connect and speak to his dead mother using AI. So Google commissioned that with range to try and show how AI can result in human

connection. One of the reasons that Google is trying to do this is that researchers have found that dystopian science fiction can have a surprisingly powerful impact on how the public views technology. And Hollywood in general has been increasingly putting out movies that imagine a terrifying technological future. And for companies like Google and Apple and Amazon, they would love to put out a happier, cozier portrait of technology. Those are the headlines. If you're looking for more tech news than here's some good news, Hard Fork is back today with tech journalist Max Reed at the helm.

Every week he'll be talking through the biggest stories coming out of Silicon Valley and what it all means for you. Check it out in the Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around. It is just after these credits. This show is made by Willjur. Jarvis, Margaret Kadifa, 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? First up. These are the most brilliant people in the world, and the job they've done is unbelievable. This week, President Trump gathered the leaders of the country's biggest tech companies at the White House and had them sign a voluntary agreement to put in place new safety

policies around AI. Well, we're doing one thing. We're going to be signing a document today at about five o'clock, renaming artificial intelligence, because it's not artificial. We all agree on that. While they were there, Trump also asked them to commit to rebranding artificial intelligence to a different term that he prefers. Your question, what did the AI leave? people like Dario Amadeh, Jensen Wong, Mark Zuckerberg, agree to start calling AI. The answer? The word super is the best word of all, and it's the simplest. And so we're going to be naming it, S.I. Super Intelligence.

Super Intelligence. Trump first trotted out the idea at the United Nations last week and has now made it official with an executive order. It has set off a bit of a naming spat, though, with the governor of California, Gavin Newsom coming in with his own order, requiring his state agencies to keep using the term AI. Altogether, it's arguably not the government regulation on AI some people were looking for this week. Next question. In China, the Times has been covering a new addition to the curriculum for all ninth graders. China is now requiring the students to read a classic English novel, which came out nearly 200 years ago. It shares a title with its main character.

Do you know what text is now mandatory for Chinese ninth graders? To give you a hint, you may have watched one of the many film adaptations of this from over the years. I have known you, Mr. Rochester, and it strikes me with anguish to be torn from you. Then why must you leave? The answer? Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. If you haven't done the reading, the book follows the poor orphaned Jane who goes to work as a governess for the elusive Mr. Rochester.

She later marries him, but only after discovering his first wife is hidden away in the attic and after inheriting a fortune of her own. Chinese state media has held up Jane Eyre as an example of an anti-materialistic love story that young people could learn from. And last question. It may be pumpkin spice season now, but a new trend in flavors is popping up. up in the food world. Got just enough of that, like, zesty tang to it from the fermentation, little bubbles, but it's

so earthy. The Times has been covering how a particular flavor inspiration has spread from cocktails to coffee to ice cream and snacks. That's the color of it. Like, really, honestly, really pretty dark green. It's not a fruity thing, so scratch your tropical thoughts. And it's not a nut thing, looking at you, ubiquitous pistachios. but it is steeped in nature.

Do you know what this hot new flavor trend is? A hint if you're struggling, you might say you're pining for a taste of this. The answer? Trees. Trees are hot, people. Juniper lattes and white pine needle ice cream are taking Americans' taste buds on a nature walk. One product development scientist at PepsiCo told the times, quote, we're seeing consumers show more interest in outdoor-inspired botanical, earthy flavors.

Interestingly, Starbucks tried a juniper latte back in 2018, but it was a complete flop then. Some trend experts think the national mood was maybe just too chipper at the time. But now that the vibe has darkened a bit, the thinking goes that people just really need to touch grass and are craving the feeling of fleeing out to the woods. even if chugging a spruce and cardamom soda is as close as they can get. That is 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 good weekend.

The show will be back on Monday with my colleague Will Jarvis.