2026 State of The Times Remarks

Which brings us to my annual roundup of the year's best journalism.

Let's start with the story of the year. A returning president emboldened to rewrite the rules - of politics, of governance, even of morality - as he transforms the country and its place in the world.

By any measure, Trump has just finished the most consequential first year of a president since F.D.R. Much of what Americans know about their president and their government is because of steadfast reporting by The New York Times.

The administration has tried to block and punish unflattering coverage. But under Joe's unflappable leadership, our colleagues in Washington - and across the newsroom - have done an extraordinary job.

I think of this work as coming from three different postures.

Our colleagues kept pace with the deluge of news to ensure the public had the chance to see and understand each action of the administration. This is The Times playing its longstanding role as paper of record, whether reportingbreakingnews or breakingnewsourselves.

We slowed down to help the public understand why these actions are happening and what they mean. This is the modern promise of The Times, with the country's best beat reporters using their expertise to help the public see patterns, understand the context, and grasp the broader implications.

And we stayed on top of the biggest stories, digging deeper into the issues , people , and motives behind them. This is the investigative Times that has grown so much stronger in the last decade as we've more than tripled our investigative ranks. Our coverage over the last year has expanded what was already the largest body of accountability reporting ever produced by a single news organization on a single subject. Our competitors have noticed.

In those three reporting postures you can see our journalistic mission brought to life. Seek the truth. Help people understand the world. Hold power to account. Playing just one of those roles would be a great public service. We have been best-in-class in all three.

So much has happened in the last year, you can be forgiven for not remembering it all. But youcan'tsay The Times didn't tell you what was coming.

As the audacious plan revealed in our original Project 2025 reporting was put into action, we introduced readers to Trump's team and his supporters in Congress, in Silicon Valley, and in capitals across the globe. We looked at the ways changing cultural, technological, and political environments have given them strength. We covered votersmarching in protest while Democrats struggled to react, torn between tacking to the center or making their own populist turn.

We went deep on the president's ambitious policy agenda, as he moved with astonishingspeed to upend the existing political order. We drew the curtainback on Elon Musk'sunprecedentedincursion into the federalgovernment, and how his claims of savingsdidn't add up. We tracked the gutting of foreign aid and its impact around the world, and the shrinking of the federal work force.

We chronicled the president's shift to a more bellicoseforeign policy, one that defied his campaign rhetoric and divided his ownparty. After going live to report strikes in Iran last month, we helped readers assess the damage and understand what's next for Iran and the broader region. And in Venezuela, we brokenews that helped people, including Congress, understand what drove the attacks, as well as the reality on the ground.

We showed how the administration successfullyshut the border, ending the historic surge in illegal immigration under Biden. We tracked the administration's deportation efforts, the legal and legally questionable alike. We helped readers understand the peopleleading these efforts, and thosetheytargeted.

We scrutinized the use of immigration enforcement to punish pro-Palestinianspeech and deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador. We documented crackdowns - and the resistance they spawned - in Los Angeles, Portland, and Minnesota. The Visual Investigations teamwent deep on deadly encounters with ICE. "The Daily" probed the experience of local police officers caught in the middle.

We showed how Trump wielded tariffs as a weapon, and how they affected cars, rugs and boots - not to mention the country'sglobalrelationships. We looked at the impact of saber rattling with Canada, Greenland, and Colombia.

We examined the president's Make America Healthy Again movement and what it meant for everything from vaccines to eating habits. We documented how he targeted the rights, care, and even legitimacy of transgender people. How he gutted the Education Department, while also trying to influence local control of schools. How he took aim at diversity policies with implications that stretched from the military to education to the workplace. How he rolled back environmental protections, targeting electric cars, windmills, and clean air rules.

Our democratic model is defined as much by process as policy. Weshowed how Trump's early executive orders advanced a muscular vision of presidentialauthorit y. We examined how Trump claimed powers long understood to belong to Congress and independentfederal agencies. We explained how Supreme Court rulings had both helped and hindered this shift. And looked at the role of lowercourt judges in checking overreach, and the attacks they faced as a result. Our polling team examined what the publicmade of these shifts.

We documented how Trump dismantled guardrails and co-opted the tools of law enforcement to punish his enemies and help his allies. We showed how Trump used the pardon system to support those who backed his claims about the 2020 election, stormed Congress on January 6, or supported his re-election. And we talked to those on the administration's frontlines, to provide a firsthand view of how these efforts unfolded.

We showed how Trump's team has leveraged the powers of his office - or the fear of them - to subvert other pillars of civil society: tech giants, law firms, broadcast media, universities, and nonprofits.

We dug into how Trump has used the White House to advance his own interests, pursuing business deals and accepting personal gifts. From a 400 million dollar luxury jet from Qatar to a real estate project in Serbia to a suspiciously large payment from Amazon. We also tracked his attempts to put his name and image all over the country, even on Mount Rushmore.