Evening Briefing: The Taliban’s new government

September 7, 2021

By Remy Tumin

Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Tuesday.

Taliban officials arrived at a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

1. The Taliban's new government in Afghanistan is beginning to take shape, and it looks familiar.

After weeks of assurances from Taliban leaders that the group would offer a more moderate and inclusive style of government, most of the Taliban's choices for several acting cabinet positions are senior figures who served in similar roles decades ago — a sign that the group's conservative and theocratic core remains largely unchanged. All were men, and several are listed by the U.S. and United Nations as global terrorists.

The most senior role went to Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, a hard-liner who was named acting leader of the council of ministers, functionally making him head of government. The top security posts went to relative newcomers from a younger generation of Taliban leaders.

Just hours before the Taliban announced the posts, their fighters were on Kabul's streets violently breaking up a peaceful demonstration of hundreds of women and men who were advocating women's rights.

The formation of a new Taliban government comes as a trial begins at the Guantánamo Bay tribunal. Five men stand accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings.

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Women celebrated in June in Pachuca, Mexico, after state lawmakers voted to lift penalties for elective abortion.Oscar Sanchez/Reuters

2. Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that making abortion a crime was unconstitutional.

The unanimous decision sets the stage for a nationwide legalization of abortion. Considering a law in the northern state of Coahuila, the Supreme Court ruled that any criminal penalization of abortion violated Mexico's Constitution.

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The decision opens the door to making Mexico the most populous Latin American country to allow abortion and comes at a moment when Texas and other American states have placed ever tighter restrictions on the procedure.

Days after Texas banned nearly all abortions, the Justice Department said it would continue to protect women who sought the procedure in the state. This is how the state's anti-abortion movement found success.

An expansive social policy bill would fund universal pre-K, like this class in Sunnyside, Queens.James Estrin/The New York Times

3. Lawmakers will begin to draft a $3.5 trillion social policy bill this week that would be the most significant expansion of America's safety net since the 1960s.

The legislation would touch virtually every American's life, from conception to old age. Passage of the bill is anything but certain. President Biden will need the vote of every Democrat in the Senate, and virtually every one in the House, to secure it. To Republicans, who are readying a counteroffensive, the Democratic plans are nothing short of socialism.

Democrats say they will finance their spending with proposed tax increases on corporations and new forms of wealth taxation. But the targets are putting up a fight.

Separately, expanded unemployment benefits expired on Monday, an abrupt cutoff of assistance to 7.5 million people as the Delta variant of the coronavirus rattles the economic recovery. Another three million will lose a $300 weekly supplement.

Matthew Boedy said that seeing his mostly unmasked class was "an emotional hellscape."Micah Green for The New York Times

4. For some college professors, Covid has made the return to school a nerve-racking experience. A few have quit — one in the middle of class.

More than 1,000 colleges and universities have adopted vaccination requirements for at least some students and staff. But at some campuses, particularly in Republican-led states with high rates of contagion, vaccination is optional, and mask-wearing cannot be enforced. Teachers cannot ask students who have Covid-like symptoms to leave the classroom.

One professor of note returned to the classroom on Tuesday: Jill Biden started another year as an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College. As first lady, she is the first to balance her career with public-facing duties.

President Biden toured an area damaged by flooding from Hurricane Ida in Manville, N.J.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

5. "This is code red."

President Biden visited areas of New York and New Jersey that were battered by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, warning that action was needed to prevent extreme weather patterns from worsening. The White House sent Congress an "urgent" funding request for $14 billion to aid recovery from natural disasters that occurred before Ida and to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

Hurricane Larry is expected to cause life-threatening surf conditions and rip currents along the East Coast this week, although its current track does not suggest that it will make landfall in the U.S.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom held a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday. Allison Zaucha for The New York Times

6. The campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is heading into its final stretch.

Republican leaders have criticized his handling of the pandemic and the state's ballooning homelessness crisis. Now, Newsom and his allies are working to convince the state's large-but-distracted Democratic base that the recall election has nothing to do with any of those things — or even Newsom himself.

Newsom has especially struggled has struggled to connect with Latino voters, who make up 30 percent of registered voters in the state.

In other political news, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed a sweeping election overhaul that sharply restricts voting, capping a dramatic, monthslong fight.

Michael K. Williams's portrayal of Omar Little on "The Wire" was one of the most memorable characters.HBO

7. "A man got to have a code."

That's a catchphrase made famous by Michael K. Williams as Omar Little on "The Wire." Williams, who died over the weekend at 54, "could deftly toggle between gentle tenderness and steely menace from scene to scene," writes Jonathan Abrams, who wrote an oral history of the HBO show.

HBO executives initially asked for the scene introducing Williams as Omar to be cut. This is how his depth and intensity shaped the show.

Wendell Pierce, one of Williams's co-stars on "The Wire," praised him for "portraying the lives of those whose humanity is seldom elevated until he sings their truth."

Alexei Vella

8. Early-bird dinners, sturdier pizzas, noisier streets: The pandemic has brought a host of new developments that could last awhile.

For a year and a half, restaurant and bar customers have met the shifting realities of going out during a global health crisis. But these strange times have also spawned a number of smaller, less celebrated developments that amount to a transformation in American hospitality.

"A 6 p.m. reservation has never been so appealing — I'll even take a 5:30, if my friends are game," writes Tejal Rao, our California restaurant critic. "And they are!"

New York City's fall restaurant season will effectively be the first in two years. Here's a preview.

Sally Rooney in her hometown of Dublin.Ellius Grace for The New York Times

9. Sally Rooney's first two books made her more famous than she liked, and she thought she would never write again. Then she had a reckoning with why she writes at all.

The result is "Beautiful World, Where Are You," which focuses on the friendship between two women as they enter their 30s and develop romantic relationships. There is an argument, Brandon Taylor writes in his review, that the novel "is the kind of plotless un-novel we're growing accustomed to." And yet, it is "Rooney's best novel yet."

In a profile, Rooney said, "It was with this book that I sat down and thought, wait a minute, what is a novel?"

Her book is one the most anticipated titles for September. Here are 18 more.

The Dkk4 gene helps give tabby cats their distinctive stripes. Stephen Hyde / Alamy Stock Photo

10. And finally, how cats got their stripes.

In 1952, the famous code breaker Alan Turing laid the groundwork for the field of mathematical biology in a paper. Turing described what is known as a reaction diffusion process in which two chemicals — one that stimulates growth and one that inhibits it — can result in regular, alternating patterns.

Now, a team of geneticists has discovered that this process plays a key role in creating the traditional tabby stripe pattern of some domestic cats. The pattern is evident in even in embryonic tissue.

Have an innovative night.

Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing.

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