What a Times Reporter Saw in Iran, and Takeaways from Trump’s Speech on Election Security

0:00The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections. I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling. I go to games always. Doing the mini, doing the wordle. I loved how much content it exposed me to. Things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for. This app is essential. The New York Times app. All of the times, all in one place. Download it now at nytimes.com slash app.

0:33From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, July 17th. Here's what we're covering.

0:44My name is Abdul Latif Dahir. I'm a Middle East correspondent for the New York Times. I just got back from spending over a week in Iran. Iran recently allowed the Times into the country to cover the massive funeral ceremonies for the former Supreme Leader. And my colleagues got a rare look at the country under war. As part of the trip, we did have a guide and a translator that was assigned to us by the Iranian government. But despite these restrictions that were put on us, I was able to get a glimpse into what everyday life was for many Iranians. During our trip, we were able to see some of the sites that were struck during the American and Israeli strikes on the country.

1:27We saw like a university campus that was hit. So there was a lot of damage. The other thing that we saw was sort of like the slices of life, particularly how as much as there were like, you know, women and men who dress conservatively and were supportive of the government, we were also able to see the flip side of that, which is young men in shorts, pierced ears, you know, women with dyed hair, driving motorcycles. So we were able to get a sense of these two irons that coexist on a day-to-day basis. We were also able to talk to people on the streets, in markets, who talked a lot about the economic hardships that the war had brought on, the challenges that they were facing, feeding their families, running their businesses.

2:10The theme of economic hardship was top of mind for so many people. When it comes to the ongoing war, I heard two different messages from the Iranian people. One is, of course, the supporters of the government. They were very angry about how the United States and Israel had attacked their country. And they basically also talked a lot about revenge, right? Like they wanted revenge for all the things that were done to them over the last few months. On the flip side of it, like, you know, when we spoke to some of these people on the streets who did not like the government, who are not supportive of the Iranian theocracy, they were very much also still against the war.

2:48They were like, it's the duty of other Iranians to like bring down the government. And it's not just a job of foreigners to come in and do that on their behalf. Meanwhile, for the seventh straight day, the U.S. has launched waves of airstrikes on Iran, which is retaliated by firing on countries across the Middle East that have U.S. military bases, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Syria.

3:19Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. Last night at the White House, President Trump gave a primetime address making at times outlandish claims about the integrity of U.S. elections and saying his administration was releasing the documents to prove it. This vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you. The American people are beautiful, are great American people. But that all changes right now. The documents relate to claims of election interference, non-citizens voting, and alleged fraud.

4:00He billed these documents as having revelatory information about multiple scandals in American elections. But when we took a much closer look at these documents, we found that not to be the case. And in fact, much of this information was already known. Nick Korsny covers elections for The Times. He says, for example, Trump brought up a case from 2020 when an election clerk in Michigan flagged irregularities in voter registrations. But when the FBI then investigated, it found no fraudulent votes were cast. And Nick says the documents released yesterday offer no new information about anything going wrong.

4:38Another claim the president made on Thursday that he portrayed as a historic scandal was this attempt by China to acquire American voter data. Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history. But China's efforts to collect that data has been known for years. It's been detailed in intelligence documents, and a lot of voter information is publicly available. Nick says that in the speech, Trump called for the U.S. to beef up election security, including some of the kinds of protections that his own administration has actively dismantled.

5:23For example, under Trump, the FBI's task force on foreign influence has been shut down and a key cybersecurity agency has been gutted. Trump also used the speech to repeat his calls for Congress to pass a controversial voting restriction bill known as the Save America Act. But the problems Trump focused on in his speech yesterday have almost nothing to do with the measures that are a part of that bill.

5:53Now, one other quick update from the White House. A teleprompter operator who had early access to Trump's speeches has been accused of using his position to place bets on what the president would say. The prediction market site Kalshi said earlier this year the staffer had won around$100 ,000 by correctly predicting certain words Trump would say in his speeches. The company said it referred the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets. This spring, the White House issued a warning to its staff, telling them they were prohibited from using their positions to make bets.

6:31And yesterday, the White House press secretary said the teleprompter operator, quote, will no longer be here.

6:47In Ukraine yesterday, there were large-scale protests around the country, something that's only happened twice there since the war began. People took to the streets, furious that Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had ousted the country's defense minister, Mikhailo Fedorov. Military analysts say that in recent months, Fedorov was central in helping Ukraine turn the tables on Russia by going all-in on cutting-edge drone warfare. And at the protests, one sign read, quote, why break what's working? But during his time as defense minister, Fedorov, who is 35, clashed with seasoned military generals who doubted his push for drones and autonomous weapons and had argued that infantry deployments were still crucial.

7:38This week, Zelensky explained his decision to let Fedorov go by telling reporters, quote, For his part, after being ousted, Fedorov held a news conference where he aired the most dramatic public critique yet of Ukraine's war strategy and said there was rampant corruption in the country's defense industry. Analysts say that speech and the contentious debate over the country's military strategy seem to have cracked the sense of unity that's largely held strong in Ukraine since the war started. The editor-in-chief of one Ukrainian political magazine told the Times that could be a dangerous turn, saying, quote, the biggest enemy is internal division.

8:27In the U.S. and Canada, a dense blanket of wildfire smoke is continuing to disrupt life for millions of people. Yesterday, air quality readings surged to dangerous levels in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Toronto, and many places in between as skies turned hazy shades of gray and orange. Many people decided to stay inside with the windows shut as they wait for the smoke to pass. It might take until next week for things to clear up in the upper Midwest. In the Northeast, the smoke is expected to dissipate by this weekend. But in Canada, where hundreds of fires have generated the smoke that's drifted across the continent, firefighters are struggling to get the blazes under control.

9:12They say that's in part because of a dangerous new dynamic. Wildfires are raging through the night. Historically, fires have been most active during the hottest parts of the day, and there's been a slowdown at night, giving firefighters a window to control the flames, as well as time to rest before things pick back up the next day. But climate change has disrupted that. Research now shows fires are increasingly burning earlier in the morning and later into the night, a side effect of the hotter, drier weather that fuels them.

9:49And finally, recently, the Times has been covering the hunt for counterfeit American money. It is a trail that will take you to Columbia, which is one of the world's top producers of counterfeit currency. Some of the most realistic fake bills are made there. Now, counterfeiting used to be something of an artisan process, a craft that certain families dedicated themselves to, relying on bulky equipment, printing plates, dark rooms. But over the past few decades, advances in digital photography and printing have made the lucrative crime easier than ever. Many Colombian counterfeiters are now actually former print shop workers, the kind of people churning out posters or business cards, who are lured into counterfeiting by the fact that it can cost just a few bucks to forge a convincing$100 bill.

10:42Some of that forged cash is smuggled into the U.S., but that's pretty minuscule. The bigger problem is outside the U.S. Roughly half of all the American dollars in circulation are actually in other countries, and that creates a huge opportunity to use counterfeit cash around the world. The forged money from Colombia, for example, often circulates around Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama, where dollars are the official currency. There, small businesses that depend heavily on cash transactions can often take a big hit when they've been paid in fake U.S. dollars. And the proceeds from counterfeiting can be used to finance other crimes, like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and terrorism.

11:27To try and crack down on all of this, local law enforcement sometimes teams up with the U.S. Secret Service, which was actually originally founded in the 19th century to battle counterfeiting before taking on additional roles like protecting the president. But it's basically a cat and mouse game, and experts say that if counterfeiting is done well, then obviously it's very hard to spot. One official with the Colombian National Police told The Times that officers could walk into a room with stacks of well-faked dollars on the table and not even necessarily know they were looking at a crime. Those are the headlines.

12:07If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around. It's just after these credits. 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 Dolnik, Maddie Maciello, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, and Chris Wood.

12:28Now, 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 question. So I think there's one thing everyone in this chamber can agree on. Americans do not like changing their clocks twice a year. On Capitol Hill this week, in a rare bipartisan moment, lawmakers in the House voted overwhelmingly to make daylight saving time permanent. It is the latest move in a growing push to scrap the whole falling back, springing forward routine. It affects sleep patterns, creates confusion for businesses, and requires everyone to adjust their schedules.

13:09It's not clear if the measure will make it through the Senate. But if it does, then no more trying to figure out how to change the clock on the microwave. Now, two U.S. states are actually way ahead on this and use standard time year-round. Your question, which two states don't change their clocks?

13:35The answer? Hawaii and most of Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo Reservation. That's because both Hawaii and Arizona opted out of daylight saving time decades ago. Fun fact, the federal government got involved in all of this in the first place because for a long time, daylight saving had been a local issue and it was a little chaotic. Different parts of the same state used to spring forward at different times of the year. which meant, for example, that in the early 60s, a single bus route along the Ohio-West Virginia border saw passengers change time zones seven times in just a few dozen miles.

14:16Next question. This week, J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, turned 75 years old. The coming-of-age story has had a lot of critics over the years, people upset about some of the vulgar language or dirty slang, and those who think it has not aged well and should be scrapped. It's been frequently banned, but also frequently assigned, though maybe not as much as it used to be. Your question, can you name five of the current most assigned books for American high schoolers? This includes some classic plays. We will give you hints for each one. To start, it's not Earl of the Nats or Duke of the Skeeters.

14:59It's Lord of the Flies Next one This book is really, really hot Like hot enough to burn That's Fahrenheit 451 Now, this one's by an author who was famously private So private that she actually gave almost no interviews in the last 50 years of her life That's Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird And for these last two, Leonardo DiCaprio has actually managed to play the title character in adaptations of both of these. In one, he throws Great Parties. That's The Great Gatsby. And to round it out, absolutely do not get your dating advice from this classic.

15:50That was Romeo and Juliet. Like The Catcher in the Rye, all these titles are now basically old enough to get the senior discount. They're somewhere between 60 and more than 400 years old.

16:05Last question. And Spain are into their second World Cup final. The matchup for the World Cup final is now set. Argentina will face off against Spain on Sunday. And the two are competing not just for honor and glory. There's also a significant amount of prize money on the line. Your question, how much will the team that wins the whole tournament this weekend earn? $4 million,$20 million, or$50 million? $4 million,$20 million,$50 million.

16:47The answer? The winners will pocket$50 million. Quick bonus question for you here about another big World Cup number. Before every game in the tournament, a crew of stagehands has unfurled enormous flags for the teams that are facing off. We're talking almost 200 feet long. It takes dozens of people just to carry one of these flags out and wrangle it. How much do you think each of those giant flags weighs? The answer to that is about 500 pounds. They've apparently always got a backup flag on hand because sometimes things do go wrong. The jumbo English flag got splotches of mold. And an unnamed country's flag got infested with mice.

17:36That's it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, send us an email at theheadlines at nytimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. The show will be back on Monday.