• Coding Workflow Shift: Transition from 80% manual coding with autocomplete to 80% agent-based coding with minimal edits, representing a fundamental change in programming methodology over weeks rather than years.
• Error Patterns: LLM mistakes shifted from syntax errors to subtle conceptual errors, including incorrect assumptions, lack of clarification-seeking, overcomplication, and occasional unintended code/comment removal.
• IDE Necessity: Large integrated development environments remain essential for monitoring agent work despite capability improvements, contradicting "no IDE needed" narratives.
• Agent Persistence: LLMs demonstrate relentless task completion without fatigue or demoralization, working through extended problem-solving periods where humans would typically pause or abandon approaches.
• Productivity Expansion: Primary benefit extends beyond speed increases to enabling previously impractical coding projects and tackling domains previously inaccessible due to knowledge gaps.
• Declarative Programming Advantage: Success-criteria-based direction rather than imperative instructions produces longer agent iteration loops and greater leverage in code generation tasks.
• Skill Atrophy Risk: Manual code generation capability showing decline in the user, with discrimination (reading) remaining stronger than generation (writing) due to reduced practice.
• Industry Implications: Anticipated 2026 increase in low-quality digital output across platforms, potential widening of productivity gaps between engineers, and organizational workflow disruption as capabilities outpace integration infrastructure.

[

](/karpathy)

[

Andrej Karpathy

](/karpathy)

[

@karpathy

](/karpathy)

A few random notes from claude coding quite a bit last few weeks. Coding workflow. Given the latest lift in LLM coding capability, like many others I rapidly went from about 80% manual+autocomplete coding and 20% agents in November to 80% agent coding and 20% edits+touchups in December. i.e. I really am mostly programming in English now, a bit sheepishly telling the LLM what code to write... in words. It hurts the ego a bit but the power to operate over software in large "code actions" is just too net useful, especially once you adapt to it, configure it, learn to use it, and wrap your head around what it can and cannot do. This is easily the biggest change to my basic coding workflow in ~2 decades of programming and it happened over the course of a few weeks. I'd expect something similar to be happening to well into double digit percent of engineers out there, while the awareness of it in the general population feels well into low single digit percent. IDEs/agent swarms/fallability. Both the "no need for IDE anymore" hype and the "agent swarm" hype is imo too much for right now. The models definitely still make mistakes and if you have any code you actually care about I would watch them like a hawk, in a nice large IDE on the side. The mistakes have changed a lot - they are not simple syntax errors anymore, they are subtle conceptual errors that a slightly sloppy, hasty junior dev might do. The most common category is that the models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They also don't manage their confusion, they don't seek clarifications, they don't surface inconsistencies, they don't present tradeoffs, they don't push back when they should, and they are still a little too sycophantic. Things get better in plan mode, but there is some need for a lightweight inline plan mode. They also really like to overcomplicate code and APIs, they bloat abstractions, they don't clean up dead code after themselves, etc. They will implement an inefficient, bloated, brittle construction over 1000 lines of code and it's up to you to be like "umm couldn't you just do this instead?" and they will be like "of course!" and immediately cut it down to 100 lines. They still sometimes change/remove comments and code they don't like or don't sufficiently understand as side effects, even if it is orthogonal to the task at hand. All of this happens despite a few simple attempts to fix it via instructions in CLAUDE . md. Despite all these issues, it is still a net huge improvement and it's very difficult to imagine going back to manual coding. TLDR everyone has their developing flow, my current is a small few CC sessions on the left in ghostty windows/tabs and an IDE on the right for viewing the code + manual edits. Tenacity. It's so interesting to watch an agent relentlessly work at something. They never get tired, they never get demoralized, they just keep going and trying things where a person would have given up long ago to fight another day. It's a "feel the AGI" moment to watch it struggle with something for a long time just to come out victorious 30 minutes later. You realize that stamina is a core bottleneck to work and that with LLMs in hand it has been dramatically increased. Speedups. It's not clear how to measure the "speedup" of LLM assistance. Certainly I feel net way faster at what I was going to do, but the main effect is that I do a lot more than I was going to do because 1) I can code up all kinds of things that just wouldn't have been worth coding before and 2) I can approach code that I couldn't work on before because of knowledge/skill issue. So certainly it's speedup, but it's possibly a lot more an expansion. Leverage. LLMs are exceptionally good at looping until they meet specific goals and this is where most of the "feel the AGI" magic is to be found. Don't tell it what to do, give it success criteria and watch it go. Get it to write tests first and then pass them. Put it in the loop with a browser MCP. Write the naive algorithm that is very likely correct first, then ask it to optimize it while preserving correctness. Change your approach from imperative to declarative to get the agents looping longer and gain leverage. Fun. I didn't anticipate that with agents programming feels *more* fun because a lot of the fill in the blanks drudgery is removed and what remains is the creative part. I also feel less blocked/stuck (which is not fun) and I experience a lot more courage because there's almost always a way to work hand in hand with it to make some positive progress. I have seen the opposite sentiment from other people too; LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. Atrophy. I've already noticed that I am slowly starting to atrophy my ability to write code manually. Generation (writing code) and discrimination (reading code) are different capabilities in the brain. Largely due to all the little mostly syntactic details involved in programming, you can review code just fine even if you struggle to write it. Slopacolypse. I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. We're also going to see a lot more AI hype productivity theater (is that even possible?), on the side of actual, real improvements. Questions. A few of the questions on my mind: - What happens to the "10X engineer" - the ratio of productivity between the mean and the max engineer? It's quite possible that this grows *a lot*. - Armed with LLMs, do generalists increasingly outperform specialists? LLMs are a lot better at fill in the blanks (the micro) than grand strategy (the macro). - What does LLM coding feel like in the future? Is it like playing StarCraft? Playing Factorio? Playing music? - How much of society is bottlenecked by digital knowledge work? TLDR Where does this leave us? LLM agent capabilities (Claude & Codex especially) have crossed some kind of threshold of coherence around December 2025 and caused a phase shift in software engineering and closely related. The intelligence part suddenly feels quite a bit ahead of all the rest of it - integrations (tools, knowledge), the necessity for new organizational workflows, processes, diffusion more generally. 2026 is going to be a high energy year as the industry metabolizes the new capability.

9:25 PM · Jan 26, 2026

·

88.8K

Views

• Assignment dispatch: A London editor requested the photographer travel from Barcelona to cover a deadly train crash in Adamuz, southern Spain, arriving 22 hours after the collision occurred.
• Ethical approach: The photographer prioritized victims and families, avoiding documentation of those most traumatized and recognizing the journalist's responsibility to prevent compounding suffering.
• Experience scope: The photographer had previously covered conflicts and disasters across multiple continents, including wars, plane crashes, and natural disasters.
• Documentation objective: The primary role involved photographing wreckage from multiple angles to document what occurred and support colleagues' detailed reporting on the incident.
• Access strategy: Due to authority-imposed restrictions on media access from the eastern approach, the photographer located alternative routes through western terrain and natural parks.
• Initial documentation: Images taken from a hilltop vantage point resulted in front-page publication the following day; authorities inspected credentials and asked the photographer to vacate the area.
• Evidence discovery: While searching for additional angles, the photographer located an unmarked metal undercarriage component partially submerged in a stream, possibly critical to understanding the crash cause.
• Investigation impact: After reporting the discovery to colleagues and authorities, subsequent publication generated Spanish media coverage and official scrutiny regarding investigation thoroughness, though authorities declined specific timeline clarifications.

The call came from an editor in London last Monday morning. Could I get to the scene of a deadly train crash in southern Spain? I checked flights from Barcelona, where I live, grabbed my cameras and rushed to the airport. During my flight and a two-hour drive to the town of Adamuz, where two high-speed trains had collided, I considered what I needed to capture.

I would reach the scene 22 hours after the crash, once survivors had been evacuated and the wounded taken to faraway hospitals. Most of the bodies had been retrieved. Their relatives were privately undertaking the grim task of identifying remains, mostly through DNA testing.

Our first responsibility as journalists covering a disaster lies with the victims and their families. Their testimony is important to understanding what has happened and what it means. But we must avoid compounding people’s trauma or deepening their pain. I would arrive too late to photograph those most affected, and for that I was quietly relieved.

I’ve covered countless conflicts and disasters throughout my career, including wars in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Gaza, and Sudan, a plane crash in Cameroon that killed 114 people, the immediate aftermath of Russian strikes on civilians in Ukraine, and, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an Ebola outbreak, a volcanic eruption and massacres.

In such situations, we weigh the risks — both physical and emotional — to ourselves and to those we are documenting. We are up against the demand for news, competing with large networks of photographers working for the news wire services, as well as the unchecked flow of social media information and misinformation. Official accounts need to be verified. The Times relies on teams of reporters, editors, photographers and graphics editors to deliver detailed, deeply reported and accurate information.

Our main role in reporting on disasters is to document what happened and ask tough questions. My job on this assignment was to provide visuals illustrating the extensive reporting being done by my colleagues.

The cause of the crash was a mystery. It occurred on a straight stretch of track. The authorities said the trains and the tracks had recently been maintained. Taking a forensic approach, I knew I’d need to photograph as many angles of the wreckage as possible.

Image

The scene after the deadly crash.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

One problem: The authorities had closed off much of the surrounding area, blocking media access from the direction of Adamuz, east of the tracks. I approached from the west, driving up a winding back road through the spectacular Parque Natural Sierra de Hornachuelos.

As I crested a ridge, I saw in the distance a stalled train — a slash of red cutting across rugged green hills. When I got closer, emergency and construction crews were working on the other side of the tracks.

The crash site was obscured by the terrain, so I walked up a nearby hill for a better view. I passed no police lines or cordons. On the hilltop, I reached above a chain-link fence to snap a few frames of the overturned carriages. Then, a drone buzzed me several times.

I took this to mean I should leave the area. I walked back to my car, where two members of the Guardia Civil law enforcement agency inspected my press pass and ID before politely asking me to move along. I complied. One of my photos from the hilltop was published on the front page of The Times the following day.

I still need more pictures of the scene, so I set out before dawn the next morning looking for views from the opposite side of the tracks. Without encountering any police cordon, and keeping my distance from the crash site, I walked through steep forest trails for several hours, crossing streams and crawling through undergrowth. I found a vantage point in some bushes far enough away to avoid interfering with the investigation while offering a partial view of the second train, which had come to rest about 2,000 feet from the wreck I photographed the day before.

I was soon joined by another photographer from the Reuters news agency. After a few hours, we left. Looking for a shorter route back to my car, I stumbled through some bushes and emerged at the edge of a sun-dappled stream.

Before me, partly submerged at the edge of the stream, was a large piece of metal. At first I thought it was just junk — it was not cordoned off like the rest of the wreckage — but I quickly put things together in my mind.

That front page photo showed that something was missing from the underside of the train — something much like the debris in front of me. Could this piece provide a critical clue to what went wrong? And were the authorities aware that it was sitting here, half-submerged and unmarked?

Image

The wreckage on Monday, a day after derailed cars from a northbound train were slammed by a southbound one.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Understanding that it could be important evidence, I kept my distance, took a few pictures, then climbed away, not wanting to disturb the area. I sent the photos to my colleagues, who swiftly informed the authorities while beginning their own investigation. The publication of our story and photos ignited a firestorm across Spanish media and raised questions about the thoroughness of the investigation.

Asked for official comment, the authorities said they knew about the debris, without answering questions about when they became aware of it.

The minister of transportation, Óscar Puente, told Spain’s state broadcaster that the undercarriage had been located on Monday morning.

The day after my discovery — and three days after the crash — the authorities shared photographs of their investigators marking the site and documenting the undercarriage. They have not responded to questions about when the photographs were taken.

• DOT AI Initiative: The Department of Transportation is planning to use Google Gemini to write federal transportation regulations, with the goal of producing draft rules in 30 days or less.
• Speed Focus: Agency leadership prioritizes rapid rule production over rule quality, with one official stating "We don't need the perfect rule" and "We want good enough."
• Safety Implications: DOT regulations govern critical transportation safety systems including airplane operation, gas pipeline safety, and toxic chemical transport by freight trains.
• AI Capability Claims: Presenters stated that Gemini can handle 80-90% of regulatory writing work, with human staff completing the remainder and proofreading.
• Implementation Status: The department has already used AI to draft an unpublished Federal Aviation Administration rule.
• Staff Concerns: Multiple DOT employees expressed alarm about the plan, noting that rulemaking requires expertise in statutes, regulations, and case law, and that errors could result in injuries or deaths.
• Workforce Context: DOT has lost nearly 4,000 of its 57,000 employees since January 2025, including more than 100 attorneys, reducing available subject-matter expertise.
• Expert Skepticism: Academic and former government officials cautioned that AI should only supplement human oversight in rulemaking, warning that delegating too much responsibility to AI risks deficient regulations and violations of reasoned decision-making requirements.

The Trump administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to write federal transportation regulations, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records and interviews with six agency staffers.

The plan was presented to DOT staff last month at a demonstration of AI’s “potential to revolutionize the way we draft rulemakings,” agency attorney Daniel Cohen wrote to colleagues. The demonstration, Cohen wrote, would showcase “exciting new AI tools available to DOT rule writers to help us do our job better and faster.”

Discussion of the plan continued among agency leadership last week, according to meeting notes reviewed by ProPublica. Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, said at that meeting that President Donald Trump is “very excited about this initiative.” Zerzan seemed to suggest that the DOT was at the vanguard of a broader federal effort, calling the department the “point of the spear” and “the first agency that is fully enabled to use AI to draft rules.”

Zerzan appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality. “We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” he said, according to the meeting notes. “We want good enough.” Zerzan added, “We’re flooding the zone.” 

These developments have alarmed some at DOT. The agency’s rules touch virtually every facet of transportation safety, including regulations that keep airplanes in the sky, prevent gas pipelines from exploding and stop freight trains carrying toxic chemicals from skidding off the rails. Why, some staffers wondered, would the federal government outsource the writing of such critical standards to a nascent technology notorious for making mistakes?

The answer from the plan’s boosters is simple: speed. Writing and revising complex federal regulations can take months, sometimes years. But, with DOT’s version of Google Gemini, employees could generate a proposed rule in a matter of minutes or even seconds, two DOT staffers who attended the December demonstration remembered the presenter saying. In any case, most of what goes into the preambles of DOT regulatory documents is just “word salad,” one staffer recalled the presenter saying. Google Gemini can do word salad.

Zerzan reiterated the ambition to accelerate rulemaking with AI at the meeting last week. The goal is to dramatically compress the timeline in which transportation regulations are produced, such that they could go from idea to complete draft ready for review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in just 30 days, he said. That should be possible, he said, because “it shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes to get a draft rule out of Gemini.”

The DOT plan, which has not previously been reported, represents a new front in the Trump administration’s campaign to incorporate artificial intelligence into the work of the federal government. This administration is not the first to use AI; federal agencies have been gradually stitching the technology into their work for years, including to translate documents, analyze data and categorize public comments, among other uses. But the current administration has been particularly enthusiastic about the technology. Trump released multiple executive orders in support of AI last year. In April, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought circulated a memo calling for the acceleration of its use by the federal government. Three months later, the administration released an “AI Action Plan” that contained a similar directive. None of those documents, however, called explicitly for using AI to write regulations, as DOT is now planning to do.

Those plans are already in motion. The department has used AI to draft a still-unpublished Federal Aviation Administration rule, according to a DOT staffer briefed on the matter.

Skeptics say that so-called large language models such as Gemini and ChatGPT shouldn’t be trusted with the complicated and consequential responsibilities of governance, given that those models are prone to error and incapable of human reasoning_._ But proponents see AI as a way to automate mindless tasks and wring efficiencies out of a slow-moving federal bureaucracy.

Such optimism was on display in a windowless conference room in Northern Virginia earlier this month, where federal technology officials, convened at an AI summit, discussed adopting an “AI culture” in government and “upskilling” the federal workforce to use the technology. Those federal representatives included Justin Ubert, division chief for cybersecurity and operations at DOT’s Federal Transit Administration, who spoke on a panel about the Transportation Department’s plans for “fast adoption” of artificial intelligence. Many people see humans as a “choke point” that slows down AI, he noted. But eventually, Ubert predicted, humans will fall back into merely an oversight role, monitoring “AI-to-AI interactions.” Ubert declined to speak to ProPublica on the record.

A similarly sanguine attitude about the potential of AI permeated the presentation at DOT in December, which was attended by more than 100 DOT employees, including division heads, high-ranking attorneys and civil servants from rulemaking offices. Brimming with enthusiasm, the presenter told them that Gemini can handle 80% to 90% of the work of writing regulations, while DOT staffers could do the rest, one attendee recalled the presenter saying.

To illustrate this, the presenter asked for a suggestion from the audience of a topic on which DOT may have to write a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a public filing that lays out an agency’s plans to introduce a new regulation or change an existing one. He then plugged the topic keywords into Gemini, which produced a document resembling a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. It appeared, however, to be missing the actual text that goes into the Code of Federal Regulations, one staffer recalled.

The presenter expressed little concern that the regulatory documents produced by AI could contain so-called hallucinations — erroneous text that is frequently generated by large language models such as Gemini — according to three people present. In any case, that’s where DOT’s staff would come in, he said. “It seemed like his vision of the future of rulemaking at DOT is that our jobs would be to proofread this machine product,” one employee said. “He was very excited.” (Attendees could not clearly recall the name of the lead presenter, but three said they believed it was Brian Brotsos, the agency’s acting chief AI officer. Brotsos declined to comment, referring questions to the DOT press office.)

A spokesperson for the DOT did not respond to a request for comment; Cohen and Zerzan also did not respond to messages seeking comment. A Google spokesperson did not provide a comment.

The December presentation left some DOT staffers deeply skeptical. Rulemaking is intricate work, they said, requiring expertise in the subject at hand as well as in existing statutes, regulations and case law. Mistakes or oversights in DOT regulations could lead to lawsuits or even injuries and deaths in the transportation system. Some rule writers have decades of experience. But all that seemed to go ignored by the presenter, attendees said. “It seems wildly irresponsible,” said one, who, like the others, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. 

Mike Horton, DOT’s former acting chief artificial intelligence officer, criticized the plan to use Gemini to write regulations, comparing it to “having a high school intern that’s doing your rulemaking.” (He said the plan was not in the works when he left the agency in August.) Noting the life-or-death stakes of transportation safety regulations, Horton said the agency’s leaders “want to go fast and break things, but going fast and breaking things means people are going to get hurt.”

Academics and researchers who track the use of AI in government expressed mixed opinions about the DOT plan. If agency rule writers use the technology as a sort of research assistant with plenty of supervision and transparency, it could be useful and save time. But if they cede too much responsibility to AI, that could lead to deficiencies in critical regulations and run afoul of a requirement that federal rules be built on reasoned decision-making.

“Just because these tools can produce a lot of words doesn’t mean that those words add up to a high-quality government decision,” said Bridget Dooling, a professor at Ohio State University who studies administrative law. “It’s so tempting to try to figure out how to use these tools, and I think it would make sense to try. But I think it should be done with a lot of skepticism.”

Ben Winters, the AI and privacy director at the Consumer Federation of America, said the plan was especially problematic given the exodus of subject-matter experts from government as a result of the administration’s cuts to the federal workforce last year. DOT has had a net loss of nearly 4,000 of its 57,000 employees since Trump returned to the White House, including more than 100 attorneys, federal data shows.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was a major proponent of AI adoption in government. In July, The Washington Post reported on a leaked DOGE presentation that called for using AI to eliminate half of all federal regulations, and to do so in part by having AI draft regulatory documents. “Writing is automated,” the presentation read. DOGE’s AI program “automatically drafts all submission documents for attorneys to edit.” DOGE and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House did not answer a question about whether the administration is planning to use AI in rulemaking at other agencies as well. Four top technology officials in the administration said they were not aware of any such plan. As for DOT’s “point of the spear” claim, two of those officials expressed skepticism. “There’s a lot of posturing of, ‘We want to seem like a leader in federal AI adoption,’” one said. “I think it’s very much a marketing thing.”

• Minneapolis ICE incidents: Renee Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti were shot by federal agents while present as observers attempting to help others during law enforcement operations.
• Gaza journalist deaths: Israeli airstrikes killed three Palestinian journalists—Abdel Raouf Shaath, Mohammad Salah Qishta, and Anas Ghneim—who were documenting Egyptian aid distribution at a displacement camp.
• Hamas actions: The organization executes rivals, maintains military control, and refuses to disarm despite losses resulting from the October 7, 2023 conflict.
• Masked enforcement personnel: Both ICE officers and Hamas fighters wear masks to conceal identities, a practice the author associates with concealing questionable activities.
• Electoral motivations: Trump, Netanyahu, and Hamas leadership prioritize upcoming elections over negotiated solutions, with each pursuing military or enforcement-focused strategies.
• Gaza territorial control: Israel currently occupies approximately 53 percent of the Gaza Strip, with Hamas holding the remaining 47 percent amid ongoing territorial disputes.
• Trump administration position: The administration promotes Hamas disarmament, military leader departure, and Israeli withdrawal, while some officials like Vice President Vance emphasize de-escalation.
• Immigration policy perspective: The author advocates for border control combined with legal immigration pathways, noting voter concerns about illegal immigration influenced recent electoral outcomes.

Every day now, I sit at my computer and ask myself: What is there left to say about the two news stories I care about most? One is unfolding in my hometown, on the banks of the Mississippi River; the other is unfolding on the West Bank of the Jordan and on both banks of the Wadi Gaza.

Which video should I linger on longest? The footage of Renee Good, shot in the face by an ICE officer in Minneapolis while she was clearly trying to evacuate the scene? Or the video from Saturday of federal agents shooting Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive care nurse, after he tried to help a woman who was being pepper-sprayed? Or perhaps the video from Wednesday showing the aftermath of Israeli strikes that killed three Palestinian journalists, among others, in Gaza? The journalists had been working for a committee providing Egyptian aid and were documenting its distribution at a displacement camp. Or perhaps the videos of Hamas executing rivals and refusing to yield, despite the fact that the war the group ignited on Oct. 7, 2023, has resulted in nothing but catastrophe for Palestinians?

These stories have much more in common than you might think. All are driven, in my view, by terrible leaders who prefer easy, violent solutions to the hard work of negotiated problem-solving. These leaders see an iron-fisted approach as the best way to win their next elections: President Trump in the 2026 midterms; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is expected to call elections around the same time; and Hamas, in its desperate effort to lead the Palestinian movement in the postwar era, despite having lost the war.

Hamas and ICE also share one very visible trait that I never thought I’d see in the United States: Almost all of their foot soldiers wear masks. My experience as a reporter in the Middle East taught me that people wear masks because they are up to something bad and don’t want their faces captured on camera. I saw it often in Beirut and in Gaza; I never expected to see it in Minneapolis. Since when have America’s domestic policing forces, charged with defending the Constitution and the rule of law, felt the need to hide their identities?

I understand why Hamas fighters wear masks — they have both Israeli and Palestinian blood on their hands and fear retribution. But if you placed a photo of an ICE officer next to a Hamas militiaman in a news quiz, I would defy you to tell them apart. Memo to the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem: That is not a good look. What are you hiding?

Good and Pretti were both clearly present as observers — and trying to defend others — yet both were drawn into the chaos and shot at close range by agents who should never have pulled a trigger. Yet the Trump team insists that ICE is blameless. That is not how you build legitimacy for a government effort to track down and deport illegal immigrants.

That same instinct for “fire, ready, aim” is one of the morally corrupting legacies of Israel’s war in Gaza. One of the Palestinian journalists killed by the Israeli airstrike on Wednesday, Abdel Raouf Shaath, had worked for years as a cameraman for CBS News and other outlets; the others were local journalists Mohammad Salah Qishta and Anas Ghneim. They were reportedly on assignment to film aid distribution by the Egyptian Relief Committee when their vehicle was targeted.

Really? Was that the only way to handle the situation during a cease-fire? Immediately launch an airstrike and ask questions later? Israel can assassinate nuclear scientists in Iran in the dead of night from 1,200 miles away, yet it can’t distinguish a journalist from a combatant in broad daylight next door? It’s shameful. This comes only months after Israeli forces killed the Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri on the stairs of Gaza’s Nasser Hospital in August.

Netanyahu apologized for that earlier killing. But regarding the three journalists killed last week, the Israel Defense Forces released a boilerplate statement saying troops identified “several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas” and “struck the suspects who activated the drone.” The I.D.F. added that details are being reviewed. That is what it always says. That is how a nation and an army loses its soul.

Here is what is really happening: Netanyahu is running for re-election. Israel currently occupies approximately 53 percent of the Gaza Strip, with Hamas holding the other 47 percent. Trump — with help from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey — is pushing for Hamas to disarm, for its military leaders to leave and for the organization to become a purely political entity. In return, Trump expects Israel to begin a withdrawal toward its own border.

Netanyahu knows that if he runs for election with Hamas still holding political influence in Gaza and the I.D.F. pulling back, he will be savaged by the far-right extremists in his coalition. Those allies don’t just want to stay in Gaza; they want to annex the West Bank. So Bibi wants the war to continue; he wants to provoke Hamas into fighting so he never has to withdraw.

Meanwhile, Hamas is clinging to its weapons to maintain control on the ground. Even if forced to become a political entity, it will do everything in its power to hijack the technocratic Palestinian government the Trump administration is trying to install.

Back at home, Trump seems to believe the chaos in Minneapolis will work for him in November — even though polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of ICE’s tactics. He is betting he can run on a “law and order” platform fueled by anti-immigration sentiment.

There is, however, another view inside the White House. Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis last week to urge local officials to cooperate with federal agents to “lower the temperature and lower the chaos.” Suddenly, the cynical Vance — of all people — was the voice of calm and reason. I suspect he was channeling the fears of Republican lawmakers who worry that ICE’s activities could lead to an electoral disaster in the midterms.

To my friends and family in Minnesota: Stay proud of the way you are documenting abuses and standing up for your neighbors — those with legal papers and those without them — who abide by the law, work hard and enrich our city. But it is vital that this campaign be accompanied by a loud commitment to immigration reform that both controls the border and creates a legal pathway to citizenship.

The winning message remains: high wall, big gate. Control the border, but increase legal immigration. Democrats must never forget that one reason Trump returned to power was the previous administration’s failure to control illegal immigration. Independent voters still care deeply about that.

Trump, Bibi and Hamas each have their eyes on the prize: the 2026 elections. The people of Minnesota, Israel and Gaza must keep that in mind. Because if Trump maintains control of Congress, if Bibi wins re-election and if Hamas seizes control of the Palestinian movement, all three societies will head into a darkness from which recovery will be agonizingly difficult.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.

• Primary Care System Dysfunction: Electronic medical records are overloaded with excessive information, making comprehensive patient chart review impractical, and physicians often fail to conduct thorough intake discussions about existing health conditions.
• Declining Medical Education Standards: Medical school admissions have accepted weaker candidates and training rigor has deteriorated, resulting in physicians with diminished critical thinking abilities and reduced diagnostic competence.
• Financial Incentive Misalignment: Reimbursement structures penalize physicians who deviate from standardized treatment guidelines, forcing prescription of medications like statins regardless of individual patient necessity.
• Time Constraints and Documentation Burden: Physicians face insufficient appointment times and excessive documentation requirements that eliminate meaningful patient interaction and reduce quality physical examinations.
• Loss of Personalized Medicine: Modern healthcare has eliminated the human element of medical practice, replacing individualized care with volume-based profit models that prioritize patient throughput.
• Military Healthcare Advantage: Military physicians operate under systems that allow independent clinical judgment without insurance-driven constraints, resulting in longer appointments and better patient outcomes.
• Medical Record Fabrication: Pre-filled examination templates enable physicians to document fictional physical findings without conducting actual examinations, compromising medical accuracy and patient safety.
• Prevention Versus Treatment Focus: The system emphasizes pharmaceutical intervention over lifestyle modification, despite evidence that weight reduction and behavioral changes effectively treat conditions like Type 2 diabetes.

A few days ago, I wrote, “If you like everything I write, I’m doing something wrong.”

Still, it’s fair to say Thursday’s article about my disastrous primary care visit struck a nerve. The emails keep flooding in. Instead of attaboys (or commiseration), I’ve decided to run four notes from physicians who see the system’s crisis from the inside.

Given the financial and political power behind our current healthcare structure, changing it may seem impossible. But we need to keep talking about its problems, if only to stand up to the monumental gaslighting from tens of billions of dollars in annual hospital, insurance, and drug company ads pretending the system is working.

—

(Against gaslighting. For the truth. With your help.)

—

Now your doctor’s notes: edited only for length, except for one minor redaction to protect the identity of one of the doctors who worries about the skill of his trainees.

—

Jennifer S:

Your story is so incredibly sad and also, unfortunately, universally true. I remember growing up with a family practice doc who saw my parents, my brother, and I for a good twenty years. She was very much like your doc, cared about us as a family, knew what we were up to in our lives, and we felt well taken care of…

I am a physician myself, an OBGYN. I’m in the military and trained at both a military medical school and residency. Military physicians are sheltered from the civilian insurance behemoth- we can largely practice medicine how we see fit due to the military health system Tricare. I’m paid the same regardless of how many patients I see or what medicines I prescribe or what vaccines I recommend- I can usually order whatever labs or imaging studies that I think are in the best interest of my patients, without having to think twice about cost.

But even so, I know family practice docs are often stretched thin in the military, with short appointment times and low staffing. As a specialist, I am spoiled with 30 minute appointments, and I take the time to speak with my patients. I’ve been a patient myself, so I know what it’s like to be on the exam table.

You would not believe how many women cry in my office, not because of their problems or anything I said, but because they are so overwhelmed with gratitude to have a physician actually LISTEN to what they have to say and take their concerns seriously. It makes me incredibly sad to encounter patients like this on a regular basis. I also love small talk with my patients, and it seems the health care system has squeezed the human aspect of medicine right out, to the tune of a higher profit margin.

I am fortunate that I am relatively competent at completing my documentation quickly enough, but I worry when I get out into the real world I will be pressured to get patients in and out the door to make a profit. I’m sure your old doc still did hand written notes, which were often short, sweet, and to the point. In our litigious society, documentation is often lengthy and time consuming, which I fear has also stolen face time with patients.

I appreciate your story, but unfortunately I fear nothing can be done to turn the tide of modern medicine. Mass illegal immigration is also putting immense strain on a broken system, and maybe that will lessen in the coming years under the current administration. I wonder if AI will help (or perhaps worsen) the trajectory of American healthcare. I’m sure I will come to rely on AI like your new doc did. Elon Musk certainly seems to think AI will be a change for the better.

—

Craig C:

I am a primary care physician in XXX.

First of all, THANK YOU. You have been a great voice of reason for me over the past 5+ years… I would like to explain a few things as I think patients largely misunderstand them.

1. Trying to consume someone’s medical chart as a new patient is impossible. I have many patients who say “it’s in my chart.” The current electronic medical records are so full of worthless information that this is not a reasonable expectation. However, the physician should have ASKED you about any other health problems and discussed them.

2. Screening prostate exams have largely faded out of practice.1 Prostate cancer screening itself is quite controversial even if done correctly.

3. The quality of primary care is deteriorating quickly. For a few reasons: Admissions to medical school have allowed weaker candidates to get in and the rigorous nature of medical training is deteriorating. This is a point that doesn’t get talked about enough, but curious if you have info or thoughts on it. I take students twice a year and have seen a noticeable decline in their ability to critically think about anything. I’m not even that old. I’m of the opinion that this may be the single gravest threat to medicine in the future.

Because of the continued decline in the quality of the primary care doctors in this country, they are reduced to vaccine pushers. No thinking, just guidelines. The early Covid propaganda would have been impossible without primary care doctors driving the narrative.

So, ultimately, we will have worse primary care doctors, more specialist referrals, more expensive and overall worse healthcare.

I hope we as a country move the other way.

—

(Physician, heal thyself!)

[

](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fxbv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1fd8198-9745-4723-ab24-2ce930a9a299_575x507.png)

—

Fred B.

As a physician (mostly retired), I can tell you that what you describe is, sadly, the rule rather than the exception. Although I practiced as a specialist, I always did a thorough examination on every new patient. I once found a throat cancer in patient whom I was seeing for prostate cancer! Nothing special, I just looked in his throat as part of a basic intake physical. In medical school, we were all taught to do this. Unfortunately, it rarely happens. I can’t tell you how often heard from patients that they hadn’t been thoroughly examined in years. Even when I see a doctor, I am given the “quick and dirty” examination, including listening to my heart and lungs through my clothes (a personal pet peeve).

I suspect it is a combination of boredom, a schedule too full to allow time for a good physical, and pressures to spend time on things that generate income for the employer…..like cranking as many patients through the clinic as possible.

I once obtained a copy of my medical notes from an ER visit. Within that note was a description of a physical examination that was mostly fiction. This can happen because the provider is dishonest. It can also happen because of a heavy reliance on pre-filled templates which describe a typical, normal history and physical. Check your doctor notes. You may be surprised.

—

(For pennies a day, the medical care you save may be your own.)

—

DeAnna M:

Good thing you didn’t do your blood work. You would’ve had some little issue in your lipid profile and they would’ve stuck you on a statin.

I am an internal medicine physician. I actually did volunteer work at our community health center doing diabetic education. I became so frustrated with the providers just slapping medicines on everything. One of my conversations with one of the providers was on using statins. She basically told me that if they didn’t put people on them, they would get “dinged“. So as you mentioned with the blood pressure, they have certain guidelines that requires certain medicines, and if the providers stray from this…reimbursements suffer.

But I was also pretty frustrated with people not doing the things they need to do to stay healthy. I cannot imagine the amount of money we spend on Type 2 diabetes, which is basically treated by weight reduction.

I really want to do something about this because I was trained in a time where physicians thought for themselves. I feel like most would like to, but the system just does not allow it anymore.

—

Thursday’s piece, if you missed it:

[

How can American medicine be this bad?

](https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/how-can-american-medicine-be-this)

Alex Berenson

·

Jan 22

I don’t see doctors much.

[

Read full story

](https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/how-can-american-medicine-be-this)

1

A few of you pointed this out. Antigen tests have replaced the physical prostate exam. So no more “bend over and cough” moments for me. At least not in the doctor’s office!

• Iran Protests Casualties: Senior Israeli officials report that January 8 protests in Iran resulted in massive casualties, with estimates ranging from 20,000 deaths, described as among the deadliest days in recent global history.
• Trump Administration Misinformation: Trump initially claimed on January 14 that killings had stopped in Iran, apparently based on false information forwarded by Steve Witkoff from Iranian President Pezeshkian.
• Execution Documentation: Israel provided intelligence to the Trump administration showing executions of protesters continue, including the case of soldier Javid Khales sentenced to death for refusing to shoot civilians.
• Internal Policy Division: The Trump administration contains two competing factions—one led by Witkoff and Kushner seeking diplomatic solutions, and another including Secretary of State Rubio and Defense Secretary Hegseth supporting military action.
• Military Deployments: Substantial U.S. military assets have been deployed to the Middle East including cargo jets, refueling aircraft, fighter jets, and the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, with firepower equivalent to the entire Israeli Air Force.
• Coordination Planning: CENTCOM Commander Bradley Cooper met with IDF leadership in Israel on January 24 to coordinate military strategy, with UAE, UK, and potentially Jordan also preparing defensive responses.
• Gaza Demilitarization Negotiations: Kushner and Witkoff are negotiating with Israel over demilitarization terms in Gaza, with disagreement over what constitutes defensive weapons and the conditions for Israeli withdrawal.
• Hostage Family Reunion: Liam Or-Nassar, abducted during October 7 attacks, was reunited with his Arab Muslim father Ramzi Nassar on Friday, after the father had hidden his identity for over a year to protect his son.

[

](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Tw3o!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad7ead1a-2e8b-4a25-9140-524ca3c387eb_922x472.png)

It’s Sunday, January 25, and according to senior Israeli officials, on the night of January 8—when the internet was shut off—the streets of Iran saw the worst massacre in the history of the Islamic Republic, and among the deadliest days worldwide in a generation.

The regime opened fire on thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of their own citizens. Morgues overflowed, bodies lay in the streets, and families were torn apart. Some estimates place casualties from the protests as high as 20,000; I suspect it could be higher.

It was a crime on an almost unimaginable scale—and it will be answered.

And now—the consequences.

[

](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CpZD!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6836cbca-183d-4618-8f4e-472377f21c25_1280x720.jpeg)

CENTCOM’s Adm. Brad Cooper meets with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on January 24, 2026. (IDF)

There were two surprises when Trump claimed on January 14 that “The killing has stopped. The executions have stopped.” One was that he seemingly believed it; the other was that Iran would openly admit to planning to kill 800 protesters. Since, Iran has denied those plans and—thanks to Israel—Trump now knows they carried them out.

According to Israel Hayom’s Danny Zaken, Israel handed the Trump administration intelligence amounting to a “smoking gun” showing that executions of protesters have not—and will not—stop. One case, condemned by the State Department on Friday, is worth mentioning: Javid Khales, a young Iranian soldier, was sentenced to death for refusing to shoot innocent protesters.

Israel was likely a partner in obtaining that intelligence. This reminds me of what a former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence said in the ’80s: to replace Israel, the United States would need another five CIAs.

But who told Trump that Iran had commuted the executions?

It seems the culprit was Steve “the Naïve” Witkoff, who forwarded the false text from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to the commander-in-chief.

Why would he pass it on?
Well, it appears Witkoff is captaining a team with Jared Kushner seeking a diplomatic solution to the Iranian problem—hoping to avoid a war that would interrupt their current plans to reshape the Middle East for the better. That’s the generous interpretation. In their corner sit Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar.

On the other side of the Oval Office, supporting a strike, sit Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and—surprisingly—Vice President J.D. Vance. In their corner: Israel, the UK, the UAE, and other European partners.

If military movements are any indication, Team Strike is winning.

On Thursday, Trump said that military action this time would make last year’s strike “look like peanuts.”

So far, the assets stationed in theMiddle East suggest otherwise.

Dozens of cargo jets have been in and out of the region, likely dropping off missile-defense systems to prepare for an Iranian response. Meanwhile, refueling planes and fighter jets have been transferred to the Middle East under U.S. Central Command. The big gun—the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group—is on its way and expected to arrive between today and Wednesday. This is nothing to sneeze at; a former Israeli Air Force commander has estimated that the firepower currently deployed is roughly equivalent to the entire Israeli Air Force.

Still, the deployments have yet to exceed the June war posture.

But a quick reminder: that wasn’t America going all out. Washington could take it a lot further with what’s currently in the region.

As for the strategy, the game plan seems to be one-man offense, with a team defense. Yesterday, head of U.S. Central Command Bradley Cooper arrived in Israel for meetings regarding coordination with the IDF. Other allies like the UAE, UK, and maybe Jordan are also likely to participate in blunting any Iranian response.

Almost everything is in place.
All that remains is Trump’s to give the green light.

[

](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Y3e8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0516a09c-48a6-4e7f-b9d7-df62bafd1557_640x400.webp)

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner next to Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting October 2025. (GPO)

Kushner and Witkoff have arrived in Israel to talk demilitarization. I’m expecting a fight—and not with Hamas. Whoever wins the battle over demilitarization, that’s not the real test.

Israel’s position is clear: complete demilitarization, down to the last Kalashnikov, as a precondition for any withdrawal. Hamas, by contrast, is demanding that certain weapons—RPGs, for example—be recognized as “defensive arms.”

Caught in the middle are Witkoff and Kushner, eager to show diplomatic progress, even if that means a lighter demilitarization. Whether they manage to stretch the definitions enough to call an RPG a “defensive arm” will depend on getting Israel’s agreement. To do that, they’ll have to face down the right flank of Netanyahu’s cabinet—if not Bibi himself.

But that’s a bit of a distraction.

In my view, the real test isn’t demilitarization. In practice, that will only be achieved through an IDF operation likely to come in the months ahead.

As a general rule, when you’re the one on the ground, you get to decide what “demilitarization” means—how many Kalashnikovs need to be piled up, and what counts as “defensive weapons.”

What really matters are two other issues:

1. Withdrawal: Israel must not withdraw a single centimeter before demilitarization is fully implemented and verifiably enforced.

2. Reconstruction: No construction materials should enter Gaza until there is a real, enforceable oversight mechanism that prevents the rebuilding of terrorist infrastructure.

Witkoff and Kushner have gone into battle. Let’s see who wins.

[

](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!IkM2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F88d6f48f-3614-429f-862a-00a942af2615_1600x1068.jpeg)

Liam Or-Nassar reuniting with his father Ramzi Nassar. (IDF)

When his son was taken by Hamas on October 7, this father had to hide his parentage. Liam Or-Nassar was abducted from Kibbutz Re’im, and his Muslim Arab father, Ramzi Nassar, made the agonizing decision to erase himself from the public story to protect his child.

Fearing that Hamas might view his son as a symbol of betrayal—a Muslim father married to a Jewish mother—Nassar asked that his family name be removed from all official and media references. Liam Or-Nassar became Liam Or and stayed that way until now.

Nassar also made the painful choice not to campaign publicly for Liam’s release, worried that exposure could either endanger him in captivity or elevate his “value” to his captors.

Despite Liam’s release in the first hostage deal of November 2023, Friday was the first time Nassar identified himself as Liam’s father since October 7.

Between Jew and Arab there are borders; between parent and child, none. To draw that line to save your son must have been unimaginably painful. Liam is home now—father and son can wear their names openly, together.

If you enjoy the newsletter, you can show your support by becoming a paid subscriber—it really helps keep this going. I’m also offering a special monthly briefing for a small group of premium members. I’d love to have you join us—just click below to find out more.

[

](https://t.me/amitseg)

[

](https://x.com/amitsegal)

Thanks for reading It's Noon In Israel! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.