Inflation Data Undercuts Trump’s Economic Claims, and the Danger of New Jet-Powered Drones

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Thursday, October 15th. Here's what we're covering. In Ukraine recently, new jet-powered drones have been screaming across the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, outracing air defenses as they slam into gas stations, bridges, power plants. They've also hit a passenger train, a school, a shopping mall. The drones arrive so quickly, people barely have a chance to run. These new drones from Russia are a step beyond the older propeller-driven drones, the ones you think of with the incessant buzz like a lawnmower. Those Ukraine pretty much had under control. After years of attacks, the military had figured out how to take down what are known as shaheads, propeller-driven drones designed in Iran that were used by Russia. But Russia has now transformed them, developing jet-powered versions. Last month alone, it launched 3,000 of them at Ukraine, according to the country's air force. Officials say they're coming in as fast as 370 miles an hour, roughly three times faster than the old ones, and they can carry heavier explosive payloads. Ukraine can shoot them down, but at a price. The missiles it uses to do that cost nearly a million dollars. Meanwhile, one new factor that complicated Ukraine's defense this week: satellite connectivity. The Ukrainian government said that with no warning, it was hit with restrictions on the military version of Starlink, the internet service it relies on for battlefield communications, and for guiding interceptors to take down drones. The service, Star Shield, is funded by the Pentagon and was developed by SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs. Ukrainian defense officials say that this week when their devices, like drones, reached more than 100 miles per hour, they lost connection, which has disrupted combat operations. Ukrainian officials and analysts speculated that the restrictions came from Washington, as President Trump has been criticizing Ukraine's leadership and pressuring the country to limit strikes on Russia. In a social media post yesterday, Musk wrote that Star Shield systems are controlled by the military. the U.S. government and that, quote, any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately the president. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment. Whenever I have a news conference, somebody will stand up, say, Mr. President, affordability. I said, yeah, that was caused by Biden, who gave us the highest inflation in history, gave us the highest, and you know, the prices are all coming down. Yesterday, at a rally to try and energize Republican voters ahead of the midterms, President Trump repeated a claim that he's been making for months, that everyday costs for Americans are dropping. I have never seen anything like what's happening in our country, right? Our country is doing so well. But the same day, the government's own data laid out a very different picture. The latest Consumer Price Index report showed inflation is up, and that as of September, prices were 3.7 percent higher than they were a year before. U.S. inflation has really been pushing higher over the course of the year, and the main driver has been the war with Iran. What we've seen is that energy prices stemming from that conflict have really moved up. Whether it's gasoline prices or fuel oil, all of these different kinds of energy costs are more expensive than they were just a couple of months ago. My colleague Colby Smith covers the economy. She says that at the same time as inflation is rising, Americans' paychecks are not keeping pace. My colleagues and I, we crunch the numbers, and what we see is that on average, Americans have essentially experienced zero wage growth in inflation-adjusted terms since Trump returned to the White House in January 2020. And I think that's contributing to a lot of this feeling of economic malaise that has really intensified in the last couple of months. And that's incredibly important at a time when, you know, we're just weeks away from the midterm elections, and affordability issues are front and center. In addition to the Consumer Price Index, new data out yesterday from the Pew Research Center gives an even fuller picture of how rising prices are hitting Americans. Everyone says they're feeling it to some degree, with people across all incomes, reporting that they've cut back on discretionary spending in the past year, like going out to eat. But the survey showed that close to half of Americans are also having trouble covering the costs of basic needs, like food, housing, transportation, or medical care. On a recent September morning, I was sitting inside an immigration courtroom in Manhattan. Children flashed on the video screens. All of the children had crossed the southern border alone. This was a very difficult proceeding that could result in their deportation, and it was made all the more difficult by one glaring disadvantage, and that's that they didn't have a lawyer. Jasmine Ulloa covers immigration for The Times and has been tracking the surge of children facing deportation hearings without representation. According to one nonprofit research group, across the country, of all the immigrants, nearly half of the immigration cases involving unaccompanied minors this year through August, more than half did not have lawyers. The Times has been sitting in on some deportation hearings in New York and Arizona as kids faced questions from immigration judges. It was a striking procedure to watch children try to answer these questions without the help of adults. There was one 13-year-old girl who said she did not want to leave. She didn't know where her parents were. She had been living with her brother in Honduras. But because she said she wasn't afraid to be returned to her home country, the judge ordered her removed anyway. In another case, a judge ordered a one-year-old baby to fill out an asylum application, though the child didn't have counsel. There were also two boys, ages 15 and 17, who agreed to what's called voluntary departure. And whether they understood that decision or not, what that meant is that they would have to exit the country within hours. While migrant children do not have a right to representation in immigration court, federal law requires the government to try and provide them with legal aid to the, quote, greatest extent practicable. But Jasmine says that effort has been complicated recently by a contract dispute with a group that the government has long paid to help provide legal services for kids. The administration let that contract expire this summer, saying the organization had refused, which the group said was privileged attorney-client information. One former immigration official under President Obama told The Times that ending the contract appeared to be part of a systematic dismantling of the guardrails meant to protect kids. In response to questions from The Times, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for how unaccompanied minors move through the courts, disputed claims that those kids don't have access, to legal support. And finally, the world of competitive eating has lost one of its greatest champions, Tim Janis, better known as Eater X, who died recently at 49 of an aggressive form of lung cancer. Janis was one of the world's highest-ranked competitive eaters, who regularly placed in the top three at the very famous Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Time has proven that the best way to do it is to separate the meat and the bread. This way you can chew the meat, you can dunk the bread while you're chewing the meat, and then wash everything down with a soaking wet hot dog bun. At one point, Janis described his character as a hot dog eater. A careful strategy to the Wall Street Journal. But he didn't just do hot dogs. Janis also took home trophy after trophy for plowing through all kinds of other foods you probably never thought about shoveling down, like 141 pieces of nigiri in six minutes flat. The rigor and strategy Janis brought to the contests, filling notebooks with data, watching tape of his competitors, matched how eating contests themselves went from being kind of a sideshow to a more professional, organized sport. Along the way, Janis developed his own training regimen, downing a custom mix of cottage cheese and water to keep his stomach nice and roomy. Even though he got out of the world of competitive eating a decade ago to start a new career as a foreign service officer, some of his records still stand. The secret, he told the journal, was all about having the right mentality. Quote, The first thing is, you have to open your mind to the possibility of eating more hot dogs than you think you can. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times political reporters take stock of where things stand in the midterm elections as Republican candidates rush to deploy their enormous war chest. It's really raised the question for Democrats of can you beat out beat 10 to 1? And so in a race, can you beat out beat in spending a thousand to 1? And that's something that this election will help show us the answer to. You can find that in The New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.