The Sunday Read: ‘What Alice Munro Knew’

Over the weekend, Jensen Huang, the chief executive and co-founder of Nvidia — which makes the chips that power artificial intelligence — admitted to having an affair with a woman who has been determined by U.S. officials to be a spy. That revelation came after The New York Times broke the story of how U.S. intelligence officers uncovered what they say was a plot by Alice Huang to use their relationship to funnel information to Beijing. Tripp Mickle, a tech reporter for The Times, explains how Beijing tried to compromise one of the tech executives closest to President Trump, and what the scandal could mean for a company with enormous influence over the future of A.I. — and the entire American economy.

After a stinging rebuke last week at the polls, President Trump announced that he would elevate Stephen Miller — a driving force behind some of the most polarizing policies of Mr. Trump’s second term — to chief of staff. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, White House reporters for The New York Times, explain what Mr. Miller’s appointment reveals about the president’s priorities for his final two years in office.

The governor-elect of Georgia is elated about her party’s victories in the South, but knows realignment is far from secure.

Today, we’re sharing an episode from a brand-new show called “METRO,” made by the Serial podcast team and the reporters here at The Times who cover New York City. Every other week, Sarah Koenig and her team will tell stories about the city and its most fascinating raw material: New Yorkers. They’ll bring you investigations, personal stories, essays and interviews that take the bigness of New York and make it human scale and relevant, no matter where you live. You can find all episodes of Serial’s “METRO” wherever you get your podcasts and in The New York Times app.

Warning: This episode contains strong language. Last spring, the political picture for Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, was downright bleak. President Trump was back in the White House. Schumer’s Democratic caucus was largely powerless to stop him. And restless Democratic activists were calling for Schumer to resign. Fast forward to this week. Democrats have roared back to power in both the Senate, where the party flipped seven Republican seats, and the House. And now Schumer, who personally recruited several of the winning candidates, is poised to become the next Senate majority leader with an unambiguous goal: reining in Trump. On Thursday afternoon, I visited Schumer’s office in the U.S. Capitol to talk about all of that during a 45-minute interview. In between profanity-laced descriptions of the president, Schumer laid out his plans for Senate Democrats over the next two years, including investigations into the Trump administration and legislation seeking to lower Americans’ cost of living.