Ships Under Fire in Strait of Hormuz, and Kennedy’s Pushback on Antidepressants

0:00I'm Jonathan Knight, and I'm the general manager of New York Times Games. Our puzzles are human-made every day with the standards you'd expect from the New York Times. And this matters because when you choose to spend time with our games, it should be time well spent solving puzzles handcrafted for you. We think that's something worth investing in and something worth paying for. If you think so too, download New York Times games from your favorite app store or go to nytimes.com slash playgames.

0:33From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, May 5th. Here's what we're covering.

0:44One day into President Trump's plan to get traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz again, the U.S. military says it's been shooting down cruise missiles and drones fired at commercial ships by Iran. and it has launched strikes of its own, sinking six Iranian speedboats. The new attacks have shaken the temporary truce, and they've also added to the confusion and uncertainty for ships caught near the waterway. While the U.S. is vowing to help tankers carrying everything from natural gas to fertilizer get out, it's unclear if the shipping companies will take the risk. One trade analyst told the Times, a key reason cargo ships aren't going through yet is insurance costs.

1:26Even if a captain is willing to sail through the strait, the ship's owners or the owners of its cargo could refuse. Shipping companies said Iran needs to be part of any plan to move a large number of ships through the waterway. According to the International Maritime Organization, around 1 ,600 vessels are currently trapped in the Gulf. Before the war, about 130 ships a day used to cross the strait. Yesterday, according to one financial intelligence firm, four ships got through. Meanwhile. China, let's see them step up with some diplomacy and get the Iranians to open the strait. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant called on China to try and help get the strait open.

2:09I would urge the Chinese to join us in supporting this international operation. The country has continued to buy Iranian oil through the war, which has in part kept Iran's economy afloat. But the U.S. has been applying pressure, warning China that it will go after entities involved in those oil sales, like refineries and financial institutions. So far, the Chinese government has avoided taking a strong position on the war.

2:40In Indiana today, voters will cast ballots in a state legislative primary. Usually that's kind of a sleepy affair, down ballot races without a lot of eyes on them. Not this time. Today will be a test of President Trump's power in the Republican Party. It stems from last year when Trump urged red states to redraw their election maps to try and get the GOP more seats in Congress. Several followed suit, but not Indiana. In a rare instance of elected Republicans publicly defying the president, a critical mass of Indiana lawmakers said no to his redistricting effort. So Trump has primaried them. For months, he's been inviting challengers to the White House and putting out endorsements on social media.

3:26And tonight, seven Republican incumbents will be fighting to keep their seats against candidates that Trump backed over them. It will be one of several tests of the president's power this primary season. When you look at a suite of races in May, these are a pretty remarkable set of primaries where President Trump has laid out one singular criteria. Will you be loyal to him? And if you have crossed him before and not done his bidding, he wants you out and he wants people in, some of whom he has personally recruited, who he believes once in office will vote lockstep with him into the future. Times political correspondent Shane Goldmacher has more on what races to watch this primary season on today's episode of The Daily.

4:15And The Times will have coverage of the Indiana results as they come in tonight.

4:25In Washington. The United States does not just face a mental health crisis. We face a dependency crisis driven by over-medicalization. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan yesterday to rein in what he's called Americans' overuse of antidepressants. We will no longer treat them as the default. We will treat them as one option. Kennedy has narrowed in specifically on SSRIs, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants. That includes household names like Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac. The user base is huge. Roughly one in six Americans reported taking an SSRI this year. Kennedy acknowledged that patients can benefit from them, and he stressed that he wasn't telling anyone to just stop.

5:13But he argued that too many people start taking the meds without knowing how long they'll stay on them and with no plan to come off. He has singled out SSRIs before. He's previously claimed without evidence that they are partly responsible for the rise in school shootings and that they can be harder to quit than heroin, something he repeated yesterday. For his new effort, Kennedy announced several initiatives, like trainings and new guidelines to nudge clinicians to help patients get off medications and consider other treatment options like therapy or exercise. No major medical organizations were represented at yesterday's event.

5:53And my colleague Ellen Berry, who covers mental health, has been speaking with psychiatrists and other experts in the field about Kennedy's new push. I think there's sort of two issues here. One is the kind of technical and structural question of what do people need to get off cocktails of psychiatric medications they've been on for a long time? And I think sort of genuinely, you hear from people inside the profession that they could absolutely do better on this. At the same time, I hear some concern about the overall statement that we overuse psychiatric medication. And the concern I hear from psychiatrists is that this conversation could end up sort of undermining confidence in an entire system of care.

6:37Some of these psychiatric meds are used by tens of millions of Americans. They are the first-line treatments in many cases for anxiety and depression, very common disorders. And there's concern about undermining confidence in them.

6:58Health authorities are continuing to look into a possible hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Three passengers have died after showing symptoms of the rare disease, and three others are sick. The ship, which had been heading from Argentina to the Canary Islands, is currently anchored off the coast of Cape Verde in West Africa, but passengers have not been given permission to disembark. Hantavirus is typically contracted when people come into contact with infected rodents or their droppings. Early symptoms can be like the flu. In severe instances, it can progress into lung or heart failure.

7:34It's rare for the disease to spread among people. A regional director for the World Health Organization said yesterday that the risk to the wider public remains low, saying, quote, there is no need for panic or travel restrictions.

7:53And finally. The feathers, the diamonds, the headpiece. The Met Gala is often billed as the world's most exclusive party. Can you just look at the detailing in my dress? And last night, it brought what has become its trademark mix of high fashion and heated controversy. The event, which raised a record amount of money for the museum's Costume Institute, was filled with sometimes eye-popping looks. Bad Bunny, for example, shocked people by showing up looking old, wrinkled, and gray, thanks to heavy costume makeup that he joked took 53 years to put on. Before the night got started, though, protesters had been calling out the event as a glaring symbol of wealth inequality.

8:37The gala's lead sponsors this year were Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos, which sparked a lot of backlash. One activist group went as far as putting bottles of fake urine around the museum, a reference to reports from some Amazon workers that they're not even given time for bathroom breaks. The group also projected giant slogans on buildings near Bezos' New York penthouse, including, if you can buy the Met Gala, you can pay more taxes.

9:10Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.