Good morning from Knicks-mad New York City. The United States struck new sites in southern Iran, and Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would intensify its attacks on Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon. Israel hit more than 70 Hezbollah targets in the last day, the military said. And there’s more news below. But first, let’s take some more of your questions.
Your questions, answeredReaders of The Morning are curious this week about, among many other things, weapons sales, the population of Gaza, websites that gather our personal information, the national debt and the federal jobs reports. We took the questions to reporters who know the answers. Please keep them coming! When I read that the administration has authorized a sale of weapons to another country, do they come from an existing U.S. stockpile, or is the government authorizing a defense contractor to make and sell new weapons? | Scott Gordon | Anacortes, Washington Mark Mazzetti, who covers national security, replies: There are two ways that the government authorizes a weapons sale to a foreign country. In one, the U.S. government acts as a middleman: A nation buys weapons directly from the government, which then works with defense contractors to complete the order. In the other (less regulated) form, the State Department issues a license to a foreign government to deal directly with an American defense contractor to purchase the arms. How are people in Gaza doing? Is food and humanitarian aid now getting to them? | Maggie Flynn | Los Angeles, California Adam Rasgon, who covers Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, replies: Since the October 2025 cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the delivery of food items into Gaza has improved, but humanitarian officials say it is still well short of what people need. Little progress has been made toward the reconstruction of Gaza. American and Israeli officials have said the rebuilding depends on Hamas giving up its weapons. The militant group has resisted that demand. Many Palestinians want to relocate abroad, but only a small fraction of Gaza’s inhabitants have been allowed to leave. Meanwhile, trash is accumulating in displacement camps, and rats are proliferating. Business and economicsIs there a law that requires websites to let users opt out of systems that gather personal information for advertising? Most websites I visit allow this, but not all. | Terry Toczynski | Berkeley, California Kashmir Hill, who covers tech policy, replies: It depends where you live! There’s no federal law. But a number of states have laws that grant their residents the right to opt out of the sale of their personal data or the use of it for targeted ads. See what each state allows here. The United States is $39 trillion in debt. To whom does it owe all that money? If we were to repay our debts, where would it all go? | Linda Frank | Williamsburg, Michigan Alan Rappeport, who covers economic policy, replies: About 80 percent of the debt is held by the public, which means people who buy Treasury securities like bonds, bills and notes. The government is borrowing against those and needs to repay them when they come due. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a fiscal watchdog, foreign investors hold about a third of those. The Federal Reserve holds about a quarter of the domestically held debt. The rest is counted as transfers of money between government agencies and federal trust funds.
Do Times reporters have confidence in the jobs reports coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Is there any evidence the numbers are being massaged for favorability? | Andrea Robinson | Napa Valley, California Ben Casselman, the Times’s chief economics correspondent, replies: When President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last year after a disappointing jobs report, many economists worried that he would try to interfere with the agency’s work. But there is no evidence that has happened. The agency is being run on an interim basis by its longtime deputy director, and Trump recently nominated a career civil servant — described by people who know him as a “data nerd” — to take over permanently. Economists and agency employees say there are no signs of interference. Political bias may not be a problem, but there are other reasons to be cautious about the numbers. U.S. statistical agencies have seen declining survey response rates, shrinking budgets and, during the Trump presidency, high rates of staff attrition. Economists worry that, over time, those issues could erode the reliability of government statistics.
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California has become one of the most unequal places in America, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman write. This makes it the ideal state to test the proposed Billionaire Tax Act. The Democratic Party has lost its strategic direction, moral clarity and credibility on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Senator Chris Van Hollen 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.
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