What JD Vance Knew About the War, and New Warnings About A.I.

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Friday, September 11th. Here's what we're covering. Over the past six months. As the President of the United States says, we have the cards. We have the military advantage. We now have additional economic pressure that we're applying on them through the blockade. Vice President J.D. Vance has been one of President Trump's key messengers about the war in Iran. I think that they're losing their capabilities by the day. I think they're realizing, by the way, that their control over the Strait of Hormuz is effectively gone. He has publicly echoed Trump's confident tone about the American military campaign. We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. So as the President just told me, we're locked and loaded. Now, my colleagues in The Times' Washington bureau have learned how, behind the scenes, Vance has gone out of his way to get his own upgrade. Updates about the war directly from U.S. military commanders. And how that information has sometimes been vastly different from what the administration presented to the public. According to interviews with more than half a dozen current and former administration officials, Vance, who opposed the war from the outset, has taken the unusual step of personally contacting commanders in the field before their views are consolidated by the Pentagon. Over the course of the spring and summer, Vance reached out to the U.S. military and said, Vance reached out to the U.S. military and said, He reached out to officers in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, asking them about everything from battlefield tactics to casualty estimates to how they assessed Iran's resilience. He also asked for a detailed accounting of what weapons remained in U.S. stockpiles and how any shortages could affect the U.S.'s ability to deter China, Russia, and North Korea. The commanders gave him a blunt, sobering assessment, saying their stocks of critical munitions, like interceptor guns, example of it happened in Gander. But it's a reminder to everybody that there is goodness out there in the world too, right? You know, it's not all, the world's not all bad. It's not all gone. There is still hope. 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 Times 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 Kadifa, Jake Lucas, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Sam Dolnick, Lauren Jackson, 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? Okay. Here we go. The president posted on his social media sites a photo showing the map of New Mexico with Mexico crossed out and, of course, replaced with the word America. This week, President Trump started publicly toying with the idea of renaming another part of the U.S., saying the state of New Mexico should change its name to New America. Now, the president has no legal authority to do that. It's a state-level decision. In New Mexico, the state's Democrats. The state's Democratic leaders have already rejected the idea. But another state actually did change its official name, shortening it just a few years ago. Your question, what state was it? A hint. It's one of the 13 original colonies. And before the change, its name had referenced plantations. The answer? Rhode Island. Rhode Island. Its full official name used to be the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. But in 2020, after mass protests against systemic racism, Rhode Islanders voted to remove the plantations reference. Okay, next question. I'm not that person. I can promise you that. This week, a new documentary stunned audiences during its. world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The project was actually a complete secret. People in the audience weren't even told what they were about to see until they stepped into the theater. Why would I deceive you? There's no. there's no reason for me to do that. The film, which is called You Can See Everything, centers around an infamous, disgraced tech entrepreneur. You're being real right now? I'm always being real. Your question. Who is the movie about? Maybe you recognize that deep voice. The answer? Elizabeth Holmes, who invited a documentary crew into her home just before she had to report to prison for defrauding investors in Theranos, her infamous blood testing startup. Nathan Fielder, who's known for his very absurd, sometimes cringe-inducing, mix-and-match experience with the film, has been the first to report to prison. He's been is shown in the trailer interviewing Holmes. He said that the time he and the film crew spent talking to her was so strange and unnerving that none of them could, quote, reach a consensus on what was happening. The film will be out in theaters in mid-October. And last question. The school year is back in full swing and just in time for students to return to campus. Cornell University in upstate New York is the first school year to return to campus. The school year in New York has put a very specific new rule in place for the communal kitchens in its dorms. Your question. What is no longer allowed in those kitchens at Cornell? A little bit of a hint here. Schools in more urban areas probably don't have to deal with this. To give you the answer, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Matt Yahn, who's the host of the Times' newly relaunched book, The New York Times. I'm going to turn it over to Matt Yahn, who's the host of the Times' newly relaunched newsletter for college students called Extra Credit. Matt has the answer. Recently, Cornell banned students from processing wild game in residential kitchens on campus. Apparently, it became an issue after two students who were also licensed hunters killed a black bear and brought it back to campus to make pastrami out of it. A spokeswoman for Cornell said for students who do hunt, there are plenty of certified meat processors near campus. So there you go. No more butchering wild game in the dorm kitchen. For more college news and everything relevant for life on campus, sign up for the Extra Credit newsletter. You can find it at nytimes.com slash newsletters. They even share some great cheap and easy recipes you can pull off in your dorm room, but likely no DIY bear pastrami. That's it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, our email is theheadlines at nytimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. Have a great weekend. We will be back on Monday. Bye.