The Sunday Read: ‘A Republican Election Clerk vs. Trump Die-Hards in a World of Lies’

Here at “The Daily,” we take our annual Thanksgiving episode very seriously. A few years ago, we rang up an expert from the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, who told us that yes, in a pinch, you can cook a turkey in the microwave. Last year, we invited ourselves over to Ina Garten’s house to learn the timeless art of holiday entertaining (Ina’s tip: flowers that match your napkins complete a table.). This year, determined to outdo ourselves, we traveled to Montana to hunt our very own food. Our guest, Steven Rinella — perhaps the country’s most famous hunter — is an avid conservationist and a lifelong believer in eating what you kill. What first drew us to Rinella was the provocative argument he put forth in his best-selling book, “Meat Eater.” “To abhor hunting,” he wrote, “is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way.” So, a few weeks ago, we spoke with Rinella at his podcast studio in Bozeman, Mont, about the forces that turned him into what he describes as an “environmentalist with a gun”. The next morning, we hunted ducks with him, and then, inspired by Rinella, we ate what we had killed.

When President Trump’s peace plan to end the war in Ukraine was leaked last week, many felt as though Russia had written the proposal, and to a large degree, it reflected the Kremlin’s demands. The plan set off a global outcry that has forced American officials to revise their approach in the days since. Kim Barker and David E. Sanger explain the process that led to the contentious plan and why it comes at a vulnerable moment for Ukrainian leadership.

A federal judge on Monday tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. The manner in which the judge dismissed the Comey indictment could now lead to a legal fight over whether the government can try to refile the charges with another grand jury. Devlin Barrett, who covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The New York Times, discusses President Trump’s campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies and walks us through the judge’s rulings

Once primarily limited to severely disabled people, autism began to be viewed as a spectrum that included children and adults far less impaired. Along the way, the disorder also became an identity, embraced by college graduates and even by some of the world’s most successful people, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the steep rise in autism cases “an epidemic.” He blames theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject — like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol — and even instructed the C.D.C. to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism. Today, Azeen Ghorayshi explains what’s really driving the increase in diagnoses.

“Wicked” was one of the biggest movies of 2024. It was culturally ubiquitous, a box office smash and an Oscar nominee for Best Picture. Now, a year later, “Wicked: For Good” arrives in theaters to finish the tale of the complicated friendship between Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. Can “Wicked: For Good” be the sensation that its predecessor was? Will it inject new life into a movie business that has suffered a historically bad business year? Will it satisfy the legions of “Wicked” fans who have been waiting to see their favorite musical brought to the big screen? Gilbert Cruz is joined by Kyle Buchanan, a pop culture reporter for The New York Times who profiled the stars of “Wicked,” and Madison Malone Kircher, a reporter for the Styles desk and affirmed “Wicked” fanatic, to discuss what “Wicked: For Good” means for the movies.