The Daily

In one of the most serious political corruption cases in recent history, federal prosecutors have accused a senior U.S. senator of trading the power of his position for cash, gifts and gold. Tracey Tully, who covers New Jersey for The Times, tells the story behind the charges against the senator, Robert Menendez, and his wife, Nadine, and describes the role played by Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman at the center of the allegations. Guest: Tracey Tully [https://www.nytimes.com/by/tracey-tully] covers New Jersey for The New York Times. Background reading: * Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, charged with taking bribes in exchange for exerting political influence [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/nyregion/menendez-bribery-charges.html], predicted that he would be exonerated. * Inside the Menendez investigation [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/nyregion/bob-menendez-indictment-bribery-investigation.html]: Federal prosecutors have accused the senator and his wife, Nadine, of accepting bribes in exchange for official actions by Mr. Menendez. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily [http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily]. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

California is poised to become the first state to outlaw discrimination based on a person’s caste. The system of social stratification, which dates back thousands of years, has been outlawed in India and Nepal for decades. Amy Qin, a correspondent who covers Asian American communities for The Times, explains why so many believe a prejudice that originated on the other side of the globe now requires legal protection in the U.S.  — and why so many are equally convinced that it would be a bad idea. Guest: Amy Qin [https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-qin], a national correspondent covering Asian American communities for The New York Times. Background reading: * The bill, recently passed by the California State Legislature [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/california-caste-discrimination.html], has led to intense debate among South Asian immigrants. * Meena Kotwal [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/world/asia/india-caste-discrimination-dalit-journalist-mooknayak.html?searchResultPosition=3], a Dalit journalist, started a news outlet focused on marginalized groups in India, hoping that telling their stories would help improve their lives. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily [http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily] Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

“The weird thing about growing up kidnapped,” Shane McCrae, the 47-year-old American poet, told me in his melodious, reedy voice one rainy afternoon in May, “is if it happens early enough, there’s a way in which you kind of don’t know.” There was no reason for McCrae to have known. What unfolded in McCrae’s childhood — between a day in June 1979 when his white grandmother took him from his Black father and disappeared, and another day, 13 years later, when McCrae opened a phone book in Salem, Ore., found a name he hoped was his father’s and placed a call — is both an unambiguous story of abduction and a convoluted story of complicity. It loops through the American landscape, from Oregon to Texas to California to Oregon again, and, even now, wends through the vaster emotional country of a child and his parents. And because so much of what happened to McCrae happened in homes where he was beaten and lied to and threatened, where he was made to understand that Black people were inferior to whites, where he was taught to hail Hitler, where he was told that his dark skin meant he tanned easily but, no, not that he was Black, it’s a story that’s been hard for McCrae to piece together. McCrae’s new book, the memoir “Pulling the Chariot of the Sun,” is his attempt to construct, at a remove of four decades, an understanding of what happened and what it has come to mean. The memoir takes the reader through McCrae’s childhood, from his earliest memories after being taken from his father to when, at 16, he found him again. his story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times,download Audm [https://www.audm.com/?utm_source=nytmag&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=the_eastern_front_angelos]for iPhone or Android.