Good morning. The weekend is almost here. Before we get there, though: The U.S. issued new sanctions on Venezuela’s leader and its oil industry. Indiana lawmakers rejected a map aimed at adding Republicans in Congress. And rescuers saved a hiker in Utah from quicksand. A drone filmed him. More news is below. But first, I’d like to talk about how hard it is to build big things in America.
American inertiaAmerican history is full of transformative industrial, technological and architectural innovations. Think of the Model T assembly line. The electrical grid. The interstate highway system. The Hoover Dam. The moonshot. It’s difficult to think of any recent examples on that scale. That’s because it’s getting harder to build stuff. Politicians can’t agree on what to make, or where or how. Red tape slows everything down. Regulatory approval scares off investors. And local critics resist change. They don’t want to see it unfurl outside their windows. The combination leaves us debilitated. My colleagues wanted to see what those problems looked like on the ground. And they wondered: Can they be overcome? Penn Station
Politicians have been pledging to rebuild North America’s busiest train station for more than 25 years, over the course of five presidencies and four New York State governors. Penn is a widely loathed and hugely important transit hub through which some 600,000 souls pass each day — nearly twice the number of people who use the nation’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. Few would describe the experience as pleasant. It’s dark and overcrowded. Trains are often delayed, and tempers run high. It needs fixing. And yet, my colleague Patrick McGeehan wrote, in every attempt, “progress has been torpedoed by a political rivalry or a powerful billionaire or infighting among transit agencies with their own priorities.” It’s the city versus the state versus the federal government versus private developers, with commuters as the victims every time. “We need a parent to come in here and knock heads between the various entities,” one transportation advocate told him. HousingOne subject on which Republicans and Democrats align: The country doesn’t have enough housing. Americans agree. But, they often say, Don’t build on this specific block in this specific neighborhood in this specific city at this specific point in time! Conor Dougherty, who covers housing in California, went to Beverly Hills to see what might be done about that, reporting on a little-known state law that lets developers erect high-density projects in neighborhoods that don’t want them. The builder’s remedy, as the law is called, terrifies small cities like Beverly Hills, where a developer Conor met is using it to create high-density housing. In that developer’s work, Conor found what might be the ultimate impact of the law: housing measured not simply in units, but in units built because of fear of litigation. A decaying highway
I live just west of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, part of which is a crumbling 70-year-old triple-cantilevered road. The city has already reduced it by a lane to lessen the weight on the road. But as drivers seek alternatives to the clogged artery and urban planners argue about what to do, standstill traffic plagues surrounding neighborhoods, including my own. My colleagues Winnie Hu, Helmuth Rosales and Marco Hernandez put together this arresting visual story that explains what happened to the expressway and what might be done about it — if only politics, red tape and the neighbors didn’t intrude. (Everyone wants to fix the B.Q.E. Everyone has a different idea about how best to do it.) “The B.Q.E. has just bedeviled and frustrated everybody who’s ever driven on it, looked at it, and worked on it,” Lara Birnback, the head of the Brooklyn Heights Association, told The Times. “It’s like a curse.” Chip factoriesHuge computer chip factories are rising from an empty expanse of the Sonoran Desert on the northern edges of Phoenix. As my colleague Peter Goodman reports, political leaders cheer them “as insurance against geopolitical turmoil and disasters like pandemics. Whatever happens, the nation will have its own supply of computer chips.” But the company building the plants is not American. It’s Taiwanese. American companies lack the money, the people and the experience to build them. “A tangle of bureaucracy often hinders ambitious visions, sowing confusion, uncertainty and delay,” Peter writes. Even in Phoenix, which will benefit from the plants, workers are in short supply and people are worried. They’re concerned about big buildings, water use, about dangerous chemicals. “Here is part of the explanation for delays at computer chip clusters from New York to Ohio to Texas,” Peter writes. “Here is why companies around the globe are reluctant to make things in the United States, fearing a bewildering array of regulations and trouble finding workers.” A sign of hope?Recently, a kind of anti-inertia platform for a moderate wing of the Democratic Party has emerged, reports Michael Kimmelman, who writes about building and buildings. Its advocates argue, he writes, “that America should increase the supply of housing and upgrade its infrastructure through targeted deregulation.” This platform, should it take root, might do wonders in reducing the amount of red tape and overcoming inertia to make new things. It’s a lot to ask. (Pessimism, of course, plagues us, too.) But Michael notes that there are small, incremental signs in America that we may be coming unstuck. I’ll let Michael take us home: The evidence is not yet in A.I., or in any single, epochal project equivalent to the Golden Gate Bridge, much less in an invention to revolutionize the built world on the level of the internal combustion engine. It is in myriad steps and indicators, like the recent trimming of environmental regulations that have, for years, stalled housing growth in California. Or in the rollback of single-family zoning laws in various cities and states, red and blue, from California to Montana to Maine. Now, let’s see what else is happening in the world.
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Heavy rains are flooding the Pacific Northwest. Rivers have swollen, soaking residential areas. Homes, cars and gas stations have been submerged. Roads have closed. Residents have fled for safety under “go now” evacuation orders. Here’s what’s happening:
The rain is weakening. Read more about the storms.
In Trump’s first term, his poor approval numbers were in spite of the economy. Now they’re because of it, Kristen Soltis Anderson writes. Rising health care spending is killing the American dream, Zack Cooper writes. Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.
She named her Blessings: In Saudi Arabia, where women can be jailed for giving birth outside marriage, a single Kenyan mother promised to get her daughter out — no matter what. Unlikely friends: Some dolphins are leading killer whales to salmon and earning their share of lunch. Your pick: The Morning’s most-read story yesterday was about how late night hosts deciphered Trump’s rambling speech on affordability.
62— That’s the percentage of Americans who own a drip coffee maker, according to the National Coffee Association. It’s an increase of 7 percent since 2020. (Only 11 percent report owning a cold-brew maker, but that’s a 57 percent increase since 2020.) Explore the rest of the coffee grounds.
Motorsports: NASCAR has settled an antitrust lawsuit. N.B.A.: A pair of Nike Air Ships Michael Jordan worn during his rookie season sold for almost $700,000 at a Sotheby’s auction.
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