The glut of deals suggests that the airline industry’s supercharged pandemic recovery may finally be slowing as the supply of tickets catches up and, on some routes, overtakes demand, which appears relatively robust.

Consider the fares that Denise Diorio, a retired teacher in Tampa, Florida, recently scored. She spent less than $40 on flights to and from Chicago and paid just $230 for a round-trip ticket from New York to Paris and back, a trip she plans to take this month.

“I’ve been telling all my friends, ‘If you want to go somewhere, get your tickets now,’” she said.

The bargains she found may be exceptional, but Diorio is right that deals abound.

Early this month, the average price for a domestic flight around Thanksgiving was down about 9% from a year ago. And flights around Christmas were about 18% cheaper, according to Hopper, a booking and price-tracking app. Kayak, the travel search engine, looked at a wider range of dates around the holidays and found that domestic flight prices were down about 18% around Thanksgiving and 23% around Christmas.

“In a lot of cases, we’re seeing some of the lowest fares that we’ve seen really since travel started coming back after the drop-off in 2020,” said Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, a travel blog and deal-watching service.

Domestic ticket prices fell over the summer, Potter said, and deals on international travel, particularly to Europe, have become more common recently.

Airlines lower their fares when they are trying to get more people to book tickets as demand is slowing or they are facing stiffer competition. There’s little question that competition has intensified on some routes, but travel experts say it’s not clear whether demand is waning.

Thanksgiving this year is expected to set a record for air travel, with nearly 30 million passengers forecast, according to Airlines for America, an industry group. That would be about 9% more than last year and 6% more than in 2019, before the pandemic.

But some airlines say demand is slowing outside of holiday and other peak travel periods. In addition, some airports have been so flooded with flights that carriers have been forced to cut fares to fill planes.

That hadn’t been much of a problem for most of the recovery from the pandemic. Weather and other disruptions limited the supply of flights last year and in 2021, as did shortages of trained pilots, parts and planes, among other factors. That drove up ticket prices, kept planes full and helped airlines take in strong profits.

“The airline industry has never delivered the types of profit margins and return on capital that it has done over the last 2.5 years,” said John Grant, chief analyst with OAG, an aviation advisory and data firm. “We’re getting back to a more normal industry.”

For the largest U.S. airlines, the good times have continued, fueled in particular by thriving demand for international travel. But smaller and low-fare carriers have started to suffer. Several reported disappointing financial results for the three months that ended in September. Executives at those airlines have said demand is weakening, fares are falling and costs remain high. They also say bad weather and a shortage of air traffic controllers have made flying more difficult.

JetBlue Airways, for example, lost $153 million in the third quarter, compared with a $57 million profit in the same period last year. The company said recently that it was moving flights away from crowded markets, such as New York, to those where it expected stronger performance, such as the Caribbean. The budget carriers Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines recently told investors that they were looking to cut costs by tens of millions of dollars.

Competition has been fierce in some important markets, driving down fares and profits.

In Denver, where Frontier is based, about 14% more seats were available on flights this summer than in the summer of 2019, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. Miami and Orlando, Florida, two popular destinations served by many budget carriers, saw even larger increases in capacity.

But while airlines added flights in popular markets as they chased passengers, airports in other cities, including Los Angeles, a hub for several major airlines, had large declines in capacity from the summer of 2019.

“You’ll find that there’s a large correlation between the airlines that are doing well and the ones that are struggling, margin-wise, when you compare where their concentrations are,” Barry Biffle, Frontier’s CEO, said last month on a conference call to discuss the airline’s third-quarter results.

When it comes to international routes, analysts are less certain of why fares are falling and whether they will remain low. The kinds of deals that Diorio got for her Paris trip could mean that larger airlines soon find themselves facing a financial squeeze or merely that the industry is returning to a pre-pandemic normal.

“Historically, demand to Europe softens in the winter,” said Steve Hafner, Kayak’s CEO. “So I think that reflects normal trends.”

But demand for international travel could face challenges, partly because of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Analysts also warn that many consumers may be less willing or able to splurge on travel than they were in the last couple of years, when they had pandemic savings to draw from. Even if demand remains strong, airlines risk offering too many seats on popular overseas routes.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Whatever the cause of the recent drop in fares, the deals are a welcome break to travelers from years of high prices, Potter said.

“Either way the recipe is there for cheap flights,” he said. “If it’s just a little bit of overcapacity, that’s a win for consumers. If travel demand is dropping, in some ways that’s an even bigger win for people who are never going to give up on travel.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

What they encountered shocked them: Moldy bread on lunch trays, rotting vegetables, breakfast cereal and other foods crawling with insects or rodents, cracked or missing bathroom and ceiling tiles, mold and rot almost everywhere, leaky roofs stoppered with plastic bags, windows blocked with feminine hygiene products to keep out the rain, loose ventilation covers that created perfect hiding places for contraband and weapons.

The inspection identified “serious operational deficiencies” at the Federal Correctional Institution, a low-security complex in Tallahassee that houses about 750 women — “the most concerning were the alarming conditions of its food service and storage operations,” according to a report by the department’s inspector general made public on Wednesday.

The conditions are both extreme and emblematic of the worsening crisis at the prisons bureau, which operates more than 120 facilities. Almost all need serious repairs and are struggling to hire and retain employees when jobs in the private sector offer higher pay and less stress.

But the report also offered a rare, vivid and at times nauseating glimpse of a vast, dysfunctional system that is supposed to guarantee safe and sanitary conditions.

“It was stunning,” Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, said in an interview.

The assessment was part of a new program of intensive spot inspections that will cover three to four prisons a year, a small but telling snapshot of conditions endured by 160,000 inmates and about 40,000 workers. In January and February, Horowitz’s team found serious structural problems at the federal women’s prison in Waseca, Minnesota.

“We do our regular reviews of broad systemic issues, but we have begun using this unannounced inspection program to see with our own eyes what’s really going on, day to day, for the inmates and staff,” Horowitz said.

The initial goal of the inspections, he added, was to improve conditions at individual facilities. At Tallahassee, the warden filled a vacant supervisory position in the food preparation division, which began cleaning up the kitchen and storage areas during the week the inspector general’s team was on site.

But the larger objective appears to be marshaling support among lawmakers for a huge increase in the prison bureau’s budget. That money would go toward structural repairs as well as an increase in compensation for workers who are often compelled to take mandatory overtime or to neglect administrative duties to cover shifts because there are not enough corrections officers.

In testimony this week before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, Colette Peters, heralded recent gains in retaining employees. But she said that in some of the system’s 120 facilities, staffing levels in some key departments, especially in medical units, were still half of what they needed to be.

The bureau’s unmet infrastructure needs are just as dire. Peters said her team was surveying the 300-plus prison buildings operated by the bureau, but she estimated that $2 billion was needed to clear the backlog of repairs and renovations identified as urgent.

“Over the last 10 years, the bureau has received an average of approximately $100 million per year in appropriations for necessary repairs and alterations,” she told the subcommittee.

A spokesperson for Peters said the bureau would “carefully evaluate and implement any necessary corrective actions to ensure that our mission of operating safe, secure and humane facilities continues to be fulfilled.”

One of the most alarming issues at Tallahassee, Horowitz said, was that fixing the roofs on the prison’s ramshackle 1930s-era buildings was not included on the bureau’s $2 billion repair wish list. The inspector general’s investigators found that all five buildings housing prisoners needed new roofs, and that many of the window, shower and bathroom fixtures were leaking so badly that staff members and inmates stuffed what textiles or paper products were at hand to keep living areas dry.

But the problems took on an outsize proportion in the kitchen, dining areas and food storage warehouse.

Investigators found haphazardly heaped bags of food staples, like pasta, stored near a large wall opening which allowed rats, mice and insects to roam freely. Boxes and bags had been gnawed open, with rodent feces scattered on and among provisions destined for food trays. Insects were found inside plastic bags containing cereal.

Cans and jars were warped or leaking their contents. And the cafeteria itself was in a state of disrepair, with many of the plastic stools attached to tables broken into jagged stumps that made sitting uncomfortable — and possibly providing a source for sharpened weapons. A windowsill in the dining hall was covered with hundreds of dead bugs no one had bothered to clean.

The problems were widely known, but not addressed. In a June 2022 survey conducted by the bureau, 55% of inmates at the prison rated their meals as “poor” and complained that “outdated” food was served to them.

The bathrooms and ventilation systems in Tallahassee were also in shambles. Many of the grilles covering ventilation shafts had either fallen off or been pried free from cinder block walls, creating a potential hazard and doubling as convenient cubbies for contraband, according to the inspector general’s team.

And the contraband — mostly cigarettes, vapes and phones — flowed easily and brazenly into the facility, according to the report, which cited interviews with the staff.

One of the main conduits was also one of the most obvious: Inmate sanitation crews that collected trash in garbage bags from publicly accessible areas in front of the female prison and an adjacent male detention center were screened before reentering the prison.

Their bags often were not.

“During our inspection, we saw inmates enter through the front gate without having their garbage bags screened,” the investigators wrote.

“They are doctors, they are lawyers, they are accountants, they are elected officials, they are executives at high-tech companies and pharmaceutical companies, they are military officers, government contractors, professors, scientists,” Joshua S. Levy, the acting U.S. attorney in Boston, said at a news conference Wednesday. “Pick a profession, they’re probably represented in this case.”

Prosecutors did not name any of the clients.

The prostitution scheme was run through at least two websites that advertised appointments with Asian women, one of which purported to be a nude modeling service for professional photographers, according to an affidavit from a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security filed in the U.S. District Court in Boston.

The three suspects, who were arrested, are Han Lee, 41, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, Massachusetts; and James Lee, 68, of Torrance, California.

They are accused of using “coercive tactics” to draw the women into providing sexual services, for which clients were charged about $350 to $600 per hour. The meetings took place in high-end apartments in well-off suburbs of Washington and Boston, including Fairfax and Tysons Corner in Virginia, and Cambridge and Watertown in Massachusetts. Some of the properties were leased in Han’s and Junmyung’s names, according to the affidavit from the homeland security agent.

“The commercial sex workers only had to show up, work for sex and get paid,” Special Agent Zachary Mitlitsky said in the affidavit. “All other aspects of recruiting and making appointments with customers and finding a location for the commercial sex to occur were taken care of by the prostitution network and the co-conspirators.”

Because of the prices for services, the upscale apartments and the professions of the clients, the agent surmised that the operations were high-end. He added that the women were often flown across state lines to engage in prostitution.

The defendants are accused of hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars they made through the illicit business in personal bank accounts and money orders. Junmyung, a student who reported no income on a rental application, was accused of purchasing a luxury car with proceeds from the brothels.

The women were showcased on the websites according to their height, weight and bust size along with seminude photos, according to the affidavit. Potential clients were required to provide their names, email addresses, phone numbers and information about their employers in an online form to verify their identity before being allowed to make an appointment by text message. The clients would then receive a “menu” of services and women.

The charges unveiled Wednesday recalled previous allegations of an escort service run in the nation’s capital between 1993 and 2006 that was advertised as providing “legal high-end erotic fantasy” and ended the career of at least one high-profile official in Washington.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

But Meyer, 62, who meant to use the skull only as a “conversation piece” and did not really want to part with it, put a “really high price on it”: $4,000.

Still, the skull drew attention to her store, Elemental Arts, in the Paradise Vintage Market.

On Saturday morning, while Meyer was unpacking vintage clothing and high-end glassware at the store, a deputy with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office came in to question her about the skull. It is a misdemeanor in Florida to knowingly buy or sell human remains.

“We’re working hard to see if there was a crime committed,” said Carmine Marceno, the county sheriff, who added that his office was working with the office of Amira Fox, the Florida state attorney whose jurisdiction includes Lee County. “When a human skull ends up in a store, it’s alarming.”

Meyer knew that the skull was from a human. But it was an anthropologist, Michelle Calhoun, who saw it in the store and reported it to the sheriff’s office, according to an incident report. Calhoun told a deputy that she was certain that the skull belonged to someone who was Native American. Efforts to reach her by phone Monday were immediately unsuccessful.

Marceno said that the skull, which looked to be about 75 years old, lacked signs of trauma or foul play, but the medical examiner’s office was further investigating the matter.

Phone messages and emails to the District 21 Medical Examiner’s Office, which serves Lee County, and Fox’s office Monday were not immediately returned.

Meyer, who is also a managing partner of Paradise Vintage Market, said that she acquired the skull last year when she purchased a storage unit that had belonged to an elderly man who was ill. She said she buys more than 100 such units each year as part of her work and often does not collect any names or contact information from the sellers.

“We never know what we’re going to find in the storage unit,” Meyer said. “But this was probably the most interesting thing we’ve ever found.”

Meyer said that a quick Google search did not turn up any federal statutes that banned the sale of human remains, so she decided to put it up for sale. “I did not look at any Florida statutes,” she added.

Maybe she should have.

Selling human remains “generally is not legal,” said Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield, the director of the University of Florida’s C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. But Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist who has examined hundreds of skulls throughout her career, said that she was not surprised to learn that a human skull had been listed for sale.

Earlier this year, Stubblefield said, she saw an oddities market in Orange County, Florida, selling what it said were real human remains. “Most people aren’t checking the code all the time,” she said.

It is against federal law to purchase or sell the human remains of Native Americans, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, said Jennifer Knutson, president of the Florida Anthropological Society.

After Meyer met with the sheriff’s deputy Saturday, she said, Calhoun came back to the store. She explained to them why certain characteristics of the skull, including the eyebrow region and the formation of the teeth, led her to believe that the skull had belonged to a young Native American female, Meyer said.

During their meeting, Calhoun said, “Beth, if it’s Native American, then it needs to be in a ceremony for burial,” according to Meyer, who added, “It would be so interesting to be a part of that.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The trial stems from a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which accuses Trump and other defendants, including his companies and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, of inflating the value of assets to obtain favorable loans and insurance deals.

Judge Arthur Engoron ruled even before the trial began five weeks ago that Trump and the other defendants were liable for fraud. He will decide Trump’s punishment. James has asked that Trump pay $250 million and that he and his sons be permanently barred from running a business in New York.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing. His attorneys have argued that the assets had no objective value and that differing valuations are standard in real estate.

Here are five things we learned during Monday’s testimony:

Trump Treads Carefully

The former president gave mixed messages about the financial valuations at the center of the case.

During Trump’s four hours on the stand, he acknowledged playing a role in preparing his financial statements, saying that he looked at them and occasionally had suggestions. He also continued to suggest that his assets were, in fact, undervalued in the statements.

But he also distanced himself from the documents, placing the blame instead on the former controller of the Trump Organization, Jeff McConney; Allen Weisselberg, its former chief financial officer; and his outside accountant Mazars USA.

Trump minimized the importance of the statements and said the banks paid little attention to them. He also touted the disclaimers on the documents, saying they made it clear that the financial statements were not to be implicitly trusted.

A Witness Box Can’t Contain Him

Trump is voluble, even explosive, in his off-the-cuff speech, and Engoron had difficulty controlling the former president on the witness stand.

Early in his testimony, Engoron instructed Trump to answer a question posed to him by the attorney general’s lawyer Kevin Wallace, telling him, “No speeches.” After the warning was ignored, Engoron turned to Trump’s attorney, Christopher Kise, and asked him to control his client, adding, “This is not a political rally.”

From the witness stand, Trump said, “This is a very unfair trial. Very, very. And I hope the public is watching.”

James Is Trump’s Chief Target

James has emerged as a nemesis for the former president.

Walking into the courtroom Monday, Trump called James “racist,” and he continued to lash out at her from the witness stand. He labeled James, who was sitting in the first row of the audience, “a political hack” who had used this case in her effort to run for governor.

At one point, Trump said, “People don’t know how good a company I built,” and accused the attorney general’s office of trying to demean him, pointing directly at James.

After court, James said that Trump had tried to create distractions during his testimony, but she added that “the numbers don’t lie.”

Lawyers Take Gag Orders Seriously

Although Trump went after James and Engoron, he avoided mentioning the judge’s staff, specifically the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield.

He had previously attacked Greenfield for being a Democrat like the judge, and his attorneys have argued that the frequent communication on the bench between the judge and Greenfield is improper.

During the first week of the trial, Engoron ordered Trump not to comment on members of his staff, and put similar restrictions on his lawyers. Trump has been fined $15,000 for violating that gag order.

On Friday, Trump’s attorneys argued gingerly against the gag order placed on them.

Kise called the gag order “restrictive,” leading Engoron to respond, “I am 1,000% convinced that you don’t have any right or reasons to complain about my confidential communications.”

Trump’s lawyers indicated that they will ask for a mistrial in response to the gag order.

When Will It End?

There is no court Tuesday, because it is election day.

On Wednesday, Trump’s daughter Ivanka will be the fourth and final Trump family member to testify. The attorney general’s office is then expected to rest its case.

Trump’s attorneys will then present a defense. They are expected to recall many witnesses who have already testified, including the defendants, and to call their own experts. On Monday, they said they expect the trial to conclude by Dec. 15, a week earlier than expected.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The new polling from The New York Times and Siena College found Biden losing in one-on-one matchups with Trump in five crucial swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Biden is ahead by 2 percentage points in Wisconsin.

Although the polling is worrisome for the president, Biden still has a year to campaign, which his team emphasized Sunday. They noted that polls have historically failed to predict the results of elections when taken a year ahead of time.

“Gallup predicted an 8-point loss for President Obama only for him to win handily a year later,” said Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign. “We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll.”

Still, the results of the poll, and other recent surveys showing similar results, are prompting public declarations of doubts by Democrats.

David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist who has expressed concerns about Biden before, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the new polling “will send tremors of doubt” through the party.

“Only @JoeBiden can make this decision,” Axelrod wrote, referring to whether the president would drop out of the race. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”

In a follow-up interview, Axelrod said he believed Biden, 80, had achieved a lot during the past three years but was rapidly losing support largely because of concern about how his age affects his performance.

“Give me his record and chop 10 to 15 years off, I’d be really confident,” Axelrod said. “People judge him on his public performance. That’s what people see. That’s where the erosion has been. It lends itself to Republican messaging.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday that he was concerned “before these polls.”

“And I’m concerned now,” he said.

“These presidential races over the last couple of terms have been very tight,” he said. “No one is going to have a runaway election here. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, concentration, resources.”

Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee and a supporter of Biden, said, “Don’t count out Joe Biden” on ABC’s “This Week” program. But she added that Democrats should be mindful of the polling from the Times.

“I would say a wake-up call once again for Democrats to be reminded that they have to go back out there, pull the coalition that allowed Joe Biden to break new ground in 2020, especially in Arizona and Georgia, but more importantly to bring back that coalition,” she said. “Without that coalition, it’s going to be a very, very difficult race.”

Munoz declined to comment on the specifics of the Times/Siena poll.

Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said in a memo released Friday — before the Times poll was public — that it would be “crucial” for Biden to show strength among key parts of his coalition in order to win.

The weekend poll results, including a 10-point deficit behind Trump in Nevada, strike at the heart of the argument the president’s campaign advisers have been making for a year: that voters will back Biden once they are presented with a clear choice between him and his predecessor.

In her memo, Rodríguez said “voters will choose between the extremism, divisiveness and incompetence that extreme MAGA Republicans are demonstrating — and President Biden’s historic record of accomplishment.

“The American people are on our side when it comes to that choice,” she wrote.

The Times polls presented voters with that choice, and many of them, including Democrats, said they would pick Trump if the election were held today.

Already, there were signs that the campaign is scrambling to address the vulnerabilities on display in the poll among young, Black and Hispanic voters.

Last month, the campaign quietly started two pilot programs aimed at bolstering support among Democrats in two key states, Arizona and Wisconsin. In each state, the campaign has hired 12 full-time staff members to test their assumptions about how Biden is viewed by particular groups and what he needs to do to earn their votes.

In Arizona, the new staff members in two offices in Maricopa County will focus on Latino and female voters. In Wisconsin, staff members will work from an office in Milwaukee to evaluate the president’s message for Black and young voters.

Campaign officials say the idea is to use the next several months to test new ways of communicating to those voters. Those include the use of “microinfluencers” who are popular on social media platforms, and “relational” campaigning, in which the campaign reaches out to voters through their network of friends rather than impersonal ads.

One of the central arguments of the Biden campaign is a belief that polls taken now, by definition, do not take into account the robust campaign that will unfold over the next year.

Biden has generated a significant campaign war chest. The president and Vice President Kamala Harris have $91 million in cash on hand and are expected to raise hundreds of millions more for use during the general election campaign that will begin in earnest next summer.

The president’s campaign aides say they are confident the polls will shift in Biden’s direction once that money is put to use attacking Trump (or another Republican, if Trump loses the nomination) and reaching out to voters.

That is similar to the argument that Axelrod made in September 2011, when Obama was trailing badly in the polls.

“The president remains ahead or in a dead heat with the Republican candidates in the battleground states that will decide the election in 2012,” Axelrod said at the time. “And ultimately it is in those battleground states where voters will choose, 14 months from now, between two candidates, their records, and their visions for the country.”

But Axelrod said he believed Biden is further behind now than his candidate was in 2011.

He said he believed Biden would continue to run for reelection, and would likely end up facing Trump again next year. He urged Biden and those around him to begin attacking Trump politically to make it clearer what a Trump victory in 2024 would mean for the country.

That kind of “competitive frame” is more important now, Axelrod said, than trying to tell people about Biden’s accomplishments.

“I think he’ll run,” Axelrod said. “I think he will be the nominee. If so, they need to throw the entire campaign into a very, very tough competitive frame very quickly.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The companies holding the rights to show NBA games — The Walt Disney Co., which owns ESPN and ABC, and Warner Bros. Discovery, parent company of TNT — are collectively paying the league $24 billion over nine years for that privilege. But their contracts expire after next season, and the NBA hopes to more than double the money it receives for rights in the next deal, according to several people familiar with the league’s expectations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.

It won’t get that without a fight. After decades in which sports leagues garnered ever-bigger piles of money for the rights to show their games, there are signs that media and technology companies are under increasing pressure to justify the exorbitant amounts they spend on broadcast rights. Interest rates are high, Wall Street is demanding profitability over growth, and streaming has reconfigured the entertainment industry.

The result of the NBA’s negotiations will say a lot about the future of broadcast networks, the cable bundle, streaming services and the sports media ambitions of technology companies.

“I think in this era that we’re coming out of, this is the last of the big deals,” said John Kosner, who advises sports media and tech startups after a two-decade career as an executive at ESPN.

The NFL, the most valuable sports league in the world, did not quite double its rights fees when it signed new agreements in 2021. And that was before the stock market declined, interest rates rose and wars began in Europe and the Middle East.

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which have televised NBA games for more than two decades, aren’t necessarily in positions to shell out lots of cash, either.

Disney has carried out extreme cost-cutting and layoffs this year, and CEO Robert Iger has said the company is considering “strategic options” to sell equity in ESPN. Warner Bros. Discovery also has cut costs and said in August that it had a debt load of nearly $50 billion following the merger of the two companies last year.

The most likely scenario, according to the people familiar with the negotiations, is that Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery will sign new agreements with the NBA to televise fewer games. The NBA declined to comment for this article.

The two companies together show about 160 regular-season games each year, as well as the playoffs and NBA Finals. Most games are shown on cable (ESPN and TNT), with a handful on ABC.

For both companies, NBA broadcast rights still represent a valuable bargaining chip in negotiations with their biggest customers: cable and satellite companies. Those distributors pay billions of dollars to Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery for the rights to show their cable channels, including TNT and ESPN, based in part on the expectation that those channels will air sports including NBA games.

An NBA package also would help both companies shift to a streaming future. Warner Bros. Discovery recently added a live sports package to its streaming service, Max, while ESPN has been vocal about having a standalone streaming offering for its flagship channel in the near future.

Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are not likely to be the only companies showing NBA games, though. If those companies end up showing fewer games in the new deal, the league may create a third rights package, perhaps even a fourth, of the games no longer included in the first two packages, as well as the league’s new in-season tournament.

The most likely buyers for those packages of games are Amazon and NBC, according to the people familiar with the negotiations.

Top executives at Fox, CBS and Google-owned YouTube have said that they are unlikely to put in serious bids for broadcasting rights. The intentions of Netflix and Apple are less clear, but Netflix has long said it is uninterested in paying the kind of prices the NBA is looking for. Apple has largely committed itself to a sports strategy of buying up all of a league’s domestic and international rights, as in its recent deal with Major League Soccer. That isn’t possible with the NBA.

Amazon and NBC are attractive partners to the NBA for different reasons.

For a generation, most NBA games have been watchable only with a cable package. But the collapse of the cable bundle — from around 100 million households with a cable package a decade ago to around 70 million today — has made old-school broadcast networks, the most widely distributed television channels, more attractive. With CBS and Fox as unlikely bidders, the league could want games to be shown on NBC’s broadcast channel.

As for Amazon, it is seen as highly unlikely that the NBA — a league proud of being forward-thinking regarding technology — would sign a new rights agreement with only traditional media companies, according to some of the people familiar with the negotiations. Amazon has long been interested in broadcasting the NBA, according to a person familiar with the league’s negotiation history, and it has won plaudits for how it has handled Thursday night NFL games.

The media and technology companies declined to comment for this article. CNBC, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have all previously reported on parts of the NBA’s media-rights negotiations.

The league has a number of other media assets it could leverage. Most NBA games are not shown nationally. Instead, they are broadcast in their local markets, with individual teams controlling the rights to sell those games. Teams have traditionally sold those rights to regional sports networks, but those are collapsing, leaving teams looking for alternatives.

If Diamond Sports, which is in bankruptcy proceedings, collapses, the NBA could suddenly regain control of the local rights for about half the teams in the league. If that happens, it might sell some of those rights to a national partner. But that would require the league to work with its team owners — as well as current rights holders — for the complicated task of navigating roughly 30 different local agreements.

It also would leave out a number of high-profile teams, including the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers, which have long-term local rights agreements with successful regional sports networks.

The NBA also could sell some international rights. The rights to show NBA games in some basketball-mad countries such as China could be extremely valuable, especially as domestic streaming companies seek new markets. But the league — unique in American sports in that it sells all its international rights directly rather than working with third parties — is seen as more likely to sell those rights country by country to the highest bidder.

The real wild card if the NBA looks to do something groundbreaking could be its old stalwart: ESPN.

Disney and ESPN executives have spoken in recent months with private equity firms, tech and mobile companies and sports leagues, and have concluded that if they are to give up equity, it should be to a league, or leagues, as part of a long-term partnership, according to two people familiar with ESPN’s plans.

Analysts have valued ESPN at $25 billion to $50 billion, meaning a potential partner would have to trade billions in value for even a small stake. While a partner could pay Disney for a stake in ESPN, what the company is really looking for is exclusive content, some of those involved in the negotiations said.

Disney executives have spoken with a number of sports leagues, including the NBA, about selling them equity in ESPN and what the company would want out of such an arrangement. According to one of the people, the benefits sought by ESPN in a partnership could include more closely integrating a league’s social media operations with the network’s, content including documentary rights and more in-game audio from players, distributing games it does not have the broadcast rights to within its apps, and working together on marketing.

Just hours after the hard-right Republican said he would put aside his candidacy for the moment and support elevating the interim speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, to temporarily lead the House, Jordan reversed course yet again and said he would move forward with his bid to win the post.

His decision came after a furious backlash from rank-and-file Republicans including many of his far-right supporters, who said empowering McHenry — a stand-in appointed to his post after the ouster of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy — would effectively cede control of the House floor to Democrats and set a bad precedent.

It was the latest abrupt turn in a Republican speaker drama that has played out for more than two weeks, underscoring the depth of the party’s divisions and disarray. Unable to unite behind a candidate to lead them, the GOP is now unable even to agree on a temporary solution to allow the paralyzed House to function while they sort out their differences.

After falling short in two consecutive votes for speaker, Jordan, the hard-line co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and a favorite of former President Donald Trump, had told members during a closed-door meeting Thursday morning that he did not plan to force a third vote right away. His candidacy has run headlong into opposition from a bloc of mainstream GOP holdouts, and he appeared to be losing more ground with each vote.

Instead, he said he would back a plan floated by some centrist Republicans and Democrats to explicitly empower McHenry — whose role is primarily to hold an election for a permanent one — to conduct legislative work through Jan. 3.

But during a contentious closed-door meeting of Republicans, his backers demanded he fight on.

“We made the pitch to members on the resolution as the way to lower the temperature and get back to work,” Jordan said. “We decided that wasn’t where we’re going to go. I’m still running for speaker. I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race.”

He said he wanted to speak with the 22 Republicans who opposed his nomination Wednesday before scheduling a third vote.

The idea was met with intense backlash during a raucous closed-door meeting of House Republicans with several members emerging and declaring the proposal dead on arrival. Some members waived pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution and suggested the plan violated the country’s founding principles.

“Just reading the room, I think it’s dead,” said Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida.

Tempers at the meeting ran hot as members aired grievances and lamented the chaotic state of the chamber.

McHenry holds the position of speaker pro tempore under a House rule instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It requires that the speaker secretly prepare a list of lawmakers to temporarily assume the post in the event that it should suddenly become vacant. The ouster of McCarthy this month activated the rule for the first time, and McHenry, a close ally of his, was at the top of the list.

But because the situation is without precedent, the scope of an acting speaker’s powers is a matter of dispute. Some lawmakers in both parties believe they should eliminate any uncertainty by passing a resolution to explicitly empower McHenry to conduct legislative business for a set period of time. They have been discussing doing so through early January, although the timing is a matter of debate.

Jordan’s waffling about the way forward came after he fell well short of the majority he would have needed to be elected speaker Tuesday, and he was defeated again Wednesday when the number of Republicans refusing to back him grew.

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio said Thursday he was continuing to talk with Republicans to see if any would flip to Jordan but was finding the divisions in the party too deep. Several members he talked to were still deeply embittered at how some of Jordan’s supporters forced out McCarthy and declined to support Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, when he was initially named the party’s choice to succeed McCarthy.

But the proposal to empower McHenry angered hard-right Republicans, who condemned the idea as a partnership with Democrats who have been calling for the move. McHenry negotiated a deal with the White House on the debt limit this year that was opposed by his party’s right wing.

“It’s a giant mistake to give the Democrats control of a Republican majority,” said Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, who backs Jordan. He added: “What they’re doing right now is walking the Republicans off the plank. We don’t deserve the majority if we go along with a plan to give the Democrats control over the House of Representatives. It’s a giant betrayal to Republicans.”

The roadblock Jordan has encountered is a rare instance of the party’s more mainstream wing — normally those who seek compromise and conciliation — breaking with their Republican colleagues in defiance of the ultraconservative faction led by Jordan. It also underscored the seemingly intractable divisions among Republicans — as well as the near-impossible political math — that led to the ouster of McCarthy as speaker two weeks ago and that have thwarted the party’s attempts to choose a successor.

As the infighting continues, the House remains without an elected speaker with wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine. And on the domestic front, Congress faces a mid-November deadline to pass a spending measure in order to avert a government shutdown.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

This U.S. Open men’s final will get a rematch — just not between Djokovic and Alcaraz. Daniil Medvedev of Russia, after defeating Alcaraz Friday night in four sets, will play Djokovic Sunday afternoon for the championship.

It will be a rematch of the 2021 U.S. Open final, which Medvedev won, stopping Djokovic from completing a calendar Grand Slam that year.

Here’s what you need to know about the match Sunday:

Djokovic and Medvedev took different paths to the final.

On paper, it would seem that Djokovic has battered his way through to the championship match. He won five of his six matches in straight sets. But he has faced some formidable opposition along the way. In the third round, Djokovic ran into trouble when he dropped the first two sets to Laslo Djere, a fellow Serbian. But Djokovic was able to will his way back to win, wrapping up around 1:30 a.m.

In the quarterfinals, Djokovic faced Taylor Fritz, the highest-ranked American man, and in the semifinals, he took on Ben Shelton, a rising young American.

The road to the final has been slightly bumpier for Medvedev than Djokovic. Two of Medvedev’s matches were pushed to four sets, in the second round against Christopher O’Connell and in the fourth round against Alex de Minaur.

Medvedev’s toughest opposition came in the semifinals Friday, when he played Alcaraz. After the first set went to a tiebreaker, it seemed like fans were about to settle in for a long night. But Medvedev dominantly took the second set, 6-1. Alcaraz won the third but could not gain more traction than that, sending Medvedev to the final.

Medvedev played spoiler in 2021.

Medvedev and Djokovic have been in a U.S. Open final before. Two years ago, Djokovic was looking to complete the calendar Grand Slam, having won the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon all in one year. (He also competed in the Tokyo Olympics that year, but he did not medal and thus lost his chance for a Golden Slam.)

All Djokovic needed to complete the Grand Slam was to win the U.S. Open.

But Medvedev spoiled the party. Medvedev went on to win the 2021 U.S. Open final in straight sets, keeping Djokovic from completing the calendar slam.

The match was bizarre at times, and in it, Djokovic displayed emotions fans aren’t used to seeing. At one point in the third set, Djokovic covered his face with a towel and then appeared to begin crying and shaking, a sign of how much completing the calendar slam meant to him.

Medvedev said Friday that Djokovic finds ways to improve after losses, making this year’s final more difficult.

“When he loses, he’s never the same after,” Medvedev said, referring to the 2021 final. “He’s going to be 10 times better than he was that day, and I have to be, if I want to still beat him, 10 times better than I was that day.”

Djokovic leads their head-to-head.

Djokovic and Medvedev have played each other 14 times, and Djokovic has had the advantage with nine wins. Their most recent matchup was in March at a tournament in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which Medvedev won, 6-4, 6-4.

While Medvedev was able to spoil Djokovic’s shot at the Grand Slam in 2021, Medvedev acknowledged Friday night that playing Djokovic won’t be easy.

“Novak is going to be his best version on Sunday,” Medvedev said. “And I have to be the best-ever version of myself if I want to try to beat him.”

Djokovic is looking for No. 24.

Anytime Djokovic plays in a Grand Slam final, there is the potential for history to unfold. With 23 Grand Slam titles, Djokovic has surpassed Rafael Nadal, who has 22, and Roger Federer, with 20.

With Federer retired and Nadal away from the game because of an injury, Djokovic has the chance to distance himself from his counterparts in the Big Three of men’s tennis. But Djokovic said Friday night that he has tried not to focus too much on the numbers.

“I’m aware of it, and of course I’m very proud of it,” he said. “But again, I don’t have much time, nor do I allow myself to reflect on these things.”

Djokovic recalled a similar historical weight when he lost the 2021 U.S. Open final and said he doesn’t want that to happen again.

“I’ll try to just focus on what needs to be done and tactically prepare myself for that match,” he said.

Keep an eye on Medvedev’s return position.

Those who have been more focused this tournament on players like Frances Tiafoe, Alcaraz and Shelton may have one big question on their minds when they watch Medvedev play: Why does he stand so far back from the baseline to return serves?

It might look like a disadvantage to Medvedev, but he uses the position in his favor. By standing so far away from the baseline, sometimes up to 20 feet, Medvedev gives himself more time to return the serve. He also uses the tactic as a tool to strengthen his positioning during the point itself; by starting far behind the baseline, he all but guarantees that he will move forward as the point develops.

The strategy, of course, has its cons. By standing so far back and taking more time, Medvedev leaves more court space open and gives his opponents more time to get into an advantageous position for their next stroke after the serve.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

He has had plenty of success here, winning the U.S. Open three times. It’s where he made one of his most famous shots, returning Roger Federer’s serve with a walloping forehand when he was down double-match point in their semifinal in 2011.

His mind, though, has been stuck on one of his lowest moments, just before the end of his disappointing loss in the 2021 U.S. Open singles final against Daniil Medvedev.

Djokovic was one win away from just about the only thing he has not accomplished in his career — becoming the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win all four Grand Slams events in a single year. He sat in his chair on the sideline before the final game listening to the crowd of 23,000 in Arthur Ashe Stadium, who had long mostly cheered for his beloved opponents, roaring for him instead. He sobbed into a towel.

He knew that New York crowds appreciated seeing greatness and history. He had felt and heard them pulling for him as soon as he walked onto the court, and they were still there for him as he sat on the edge of defeat.

“I fell in love with the New Yorkers and New York in a completely different way that day,” Djokovic said this past week.

After missing the tournament last year because of his refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19, Djokovic is finally back at the U.S. Open. Like his collection of Grand Slam singles titles, now numbering 23 and the most of any man, the love he felt that Sunday two years ago seems only to have grown, on both sides.

“I cannot wait to have Novak back in New York,” tournament director Stacey Allaster said at a recent media conference.

Djokovic has always been a gladiator on the court. He roars, pounds his chest, returns taunts from fans and smashes the occasional racket. He got himself defaulted from the 2020 U.S. Open when he swatted a ball in anger and inadvertently hit a line judge.

But now, at 36, he has grown into being relaxed and introspective off the court. While he has no shortage of pointed political stances, which he does not hide, he also apologizes for being late, makes fun of himself and is easy with a smile. He wants people to like him, and he isn’t afraid to admit it.

The public has seen more of the latter since the French Open in June when Djokovic overtook Federer and Rafael Nadal, his longtime rivals, in the race for the most Grand Slam singles titles.

Fans packed the lower bowl of Ashe for his first practice at the stadium this past week. Amid cranking serves and banging backhand returns, Djokovic acceded to the shouted requests for his famous tennis impersonations, mimicking the motions of Maria Sharapova, Andy Roddick, Pete Sampras and others that are part of a routine that began in the U.S. Open locker room in 2007, many championships ago.

“Kind of a signal that I’m feeling very comfortable on the court,” he said. “Good fun. Positive energy.”

Afterward, he told Allaster it was one of the best practice sessions he had ever had.

When security guards gave the signal that the hitting session was nearing its end, children — and plenty of adults, too — pushed toward the edge of the court, waving phones and oversized tennis balls as they clamored for pictures and autographs. Djokovic spent more than 20 minutes working the edge of the court like a presidential candidate on a rope line as fans from the other side of it chanted his name, hoping to get him to come over there next.

He couldn’t. A gym workout awaited. He has not come for another round of sympathy cheers. He is studying videos of the top competition, keeping to his strict regimen, getting his sleep, eating before it gets too late, and watching every morsel of food he puts in his mouth.

Wednesday night’s protein and carbohydrate-packed dinner, eaten shortly after his gym session, was two salmon steaks, two large baked sweet potatoes, healthy servings of small yellow potatoes and chickpeas, and a bowl of pasta with olive oil and fresh vegetables.

“The matches are going to get tougher, more demanding as the tournament progresses,” he said between bites. “So, I’m always thinking in advance. I’m focusing on the next challenge, of course, but I also have in the back of my mind the long-term goal and the long-term plan, which is to win this tournament.”

Much has changed since Djokovic last came close to winning here. He has become the elder legend of the sport and solidified his status as the greatest player of the modern era. Federer is retired. Nadal is recovering from surgery and on the edge of retirement. Carlos Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spanish upstart long touted as the sport’s next big thing, has emerged ahead of schedule to fulfill every lofty expectation. He is the U.S. Open’s reigning champion and the world No 1.

Fending him off and all the other comers of the so-called next next generation (an ungentle swipe at the mid- and late-20-somethings such as Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas, whom Alcaraz has leapfrogged) is probably the final chapter of Djokovic’s career. His Grand Slam rivalry this year with Alcaraz, a rare and tantalizing intergenerational duel that pits raw talent and athleticism against inimitable experience, is the focus of the sport.

Djokovic prevailed in their first match at the French Open, where Alcaraz succumbed to stress-induced cramping, but lost in five thrilling sets in the Wimbledon final. Maybe it was a torch-passing moment. Maybe not. Either way, Djokovic is enjoying himself. Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner of Italy and Holger Rune of Denmark, he said, are members of a generation that unapologetically believes it is capable of beating him to win big tournaments. They are bold, and he loves that.

“My role nowadays is to prevent them from that,” he said with the sly grin that has become a late-career trademark.

He can remember when he was one of them, in his late teens and early 20s, showing up in New York and, like many players before him, being blown away by the size and energy of the city. For a kid from a mountain town in the Balkans, even one who had traveled throughout Europe for tennis, it was a lot.

On his first visit, he stayed with family friends in New Jersey, commuting every day to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Every time he sees a sign for the Midtown Tunnel, his thoughts drift back to the innocence of that first trip in 2003.

Now he spends the week before the U.S. Open at a hotel in Manhattan, soaking in the energy of the city before moving with his wife and young children to a friend’s estate in Alpine, New Jersey. There he switches into “lockdown mode” and finds peace and serenity among the trees and nature, especially on the days between matches, when he will often practice with hitting partners there rather than trekking to Queens.

There is another advantage to that locale. Djokovic has heard plenty of stories in the locker room of players who have fallen victim to the pull of the New York night. Some of them involve his peers, and he may have even accompanied them to a club or two in an earlier life.

“I was lucky early on to have people around me that kept me at bay,” he said. “But I did have freedom to explore and go around. Let’s say that I did get to know New York at night as well.”

That will not happen this year, not with the memory of the loss to Alcaraz so fresh in his mind and the young Spaniard presenting a challenge equal to Djokovic’s greatest duels with Federer, Nadal and Andy Murray in his prime. After that Wimbledon loss, Djokovic put his rackets away for two weeks and headed for Croatia and Montenegro to vacation with his family in the mountains and the waters that he knows so well. He pulled out of the National Bank Open in Toronto, citing fatigue.

The tennis schedule does not indulge regret and hindsight, though, and quickly it was time to begin preparing for the next quest, the tournaments that often unfold in the sweltering, late-summer humidity of Cincinnati and New York. He trained in the hottest times of European summer days. Then he did two more “big heat” workouts when he arrived in Cincinnati for the Western & Southern Open.

Good thing. Last Sunday’s final against Alcaraz was an enthralling three-set slugfest that lasted nearly four hours. Djokovic won in a deciding-set tiebreaker after being pushed to the edge of heat stroke. Alcaraz cramped in the climactic moments. Djokovic called it one of the toughest mental and physical challenges of his career.

A grueling test like that wasn’t really a part of his U.S. Open prep plan, but the intent was to win the tournament. It always is.

“How you win and how long does it take, that’s something that’s unpredictable,” he said. “Better this way than losing a match like that, that’s for sure.”

Or, love and dreamy moment aside, the one that happened in New York the last time around. This year, he hopes, another kind of dream awaits.