“In a political battle for minds and hearts, intimacy is a powerful weapon,” Yuval Noah Harari writes. “Chatbots like LaMDA and GPT-4 are gaining the rather paradoxical ability to mass-produce intimate relationships with millions of people.” Read: nyti.ms/3AMWmEG

“To clinch victory and drive a nail into Mr. Trump’s political career, there are three imperatives Ms. Harris must drive at successfully to become the certified fresh candidate at the ballot box in November,” James Carville writes. Read: nyti.ms/3MExVff

Anita Ford planned the death of her abusive husband — and then went to prison for life. For women like Ford, "killing their way out of a relationship was an act of salvation — for themselves, for their children," writes Rachel Louise Snyder. Read: nyti.ms/3z2y49p

“North Carolina isn’t just one of the seven principal battleground states in the 2024 presidential election,” Frank Bruni says. “It’s a singularly fascinating test case of how much MAGA extremism could cost the Republican Party — and Trump himself.” Read: nyti.ms/3MxXWgw

“Trump needs a scandal that makes a moment, and he won’t stop trying until he finds one that works,” Charles M. Blow writes. Read: nyti.ms/4gdVcCr

“Sympathy cannot be a replacement for judgment,” Bret Stephens writes. “Israelis — the hostage families above all — have spent the past 11 months suffering the bitter and predictable consequence” of a previous hostage deal. Read: nyti.ms/4gdVvNB

To beat Harris, Trump needs to run on his record and remind people of hers. Read: nyti.ms/3zeUi7Z

“Donald Trump seems to wish he could still run against Joe Biden,” Carlos Lozada writes. “Kamala Harris probably wishes she didn’t have to.” Read: nyti.ms/3B0EkPk

Twelve Pennsylvania voters spoke with Times Opinion about how they're deciding between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the 2024 race. nyti.ms/3ASVwGz

In New York Times Opinion Who will win, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? In this Opinion video, a historian with a near-perfect record for predicting election results shares his pick. nyti.ms/47fr59A

“The truth is passengers don’t pay because they can get away with it” on New York’s public transit, Pamela Paul writes. “The harder truth is that the city lets them. And the hardest truth is that the best solution is more policing.” Read: nyti.ms/4cSWvDR

“Tell me again, please, how it’s more important to protect your right to own a gun than to protect lives, children’s lives. I just can’t seem to remember.” #NYTLetters Read: nyti.ms/3Tm3MoT

Some of the most institutionally destabilizing aspects of Trump-style populism — “its resort to demagoguery, its threats to liberal norms and its association with corruption — may be inseparable from its core appeal,” Noah Millman writes. Read: nyti.ms/4ggBlT2

“We should call this war the ‘war of the worst,’” Thomas L. Friedman says about the war in Gaza in this episode of The Opinions. “I have never seen a war in the Middle East where the worst people from all sides are driving it.” Listen: nyti.ms/3z3Pen3

“Last December,” Pablo Delcan writes, “I announced the creation of the very first non-artificial-intelligence generative art model.” The “model” was him and a stack of blank paper, sketching in response to prompts sent to him over the internet. Read: nyti.ms/4gpcyMW

Donald Trump’s “weave"-like style of oration “can be amusing, but it is yet another attribute that proves him — almost every time he opens his mouth — to be unfit for office,” John McWhorter writes. Read: nyti.ms/3zaTr8v

“We’re now in a culture in which we want worse things — the cheap hit over the long flourishing,” David Brooks writes. “You reach for immediate gratification, but it fails to satisfy.” Read: nyti.ms/4gbhB3p

Photographer Robert Stothard traveled around Ireland to try to find out why the country has tens of thousands of vacant properties — and a housing crisis. Read: nyti.ms/4dT5gz8

Donald Trump’s “false claims about bacon prices, and his assertions about what’s driving them, offer a window into his judgment,” Paul Krugman writes. “And the view isn’t pretty.” Read: nyti.ms/4dQMxEw

“Winning on the most limited agenda and by the narrowest of margins is still winning.” Ross Douthat charts a potential path for a Harris victory. Read: nyti.ms/4ee9lh4