Your Friday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/briefing/trump-documents-salman-rushdie.html

Version 0 of 1.

(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)

1. The Justice Department cited serious possible crimes in its warrant to search Donald Trump’s Florida residence.

A list of documents removed from Mar-a-Lago included materials marked as top secret and meant to be viewed only in secure government facilities, according to a copy of the warrant reviewed by The New York Times.

Federal agents who executed the warrant did so to investigate potential crimes associated with violations of the Espionage Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to destroy or conceal a document to obstruct a government investigation, and another statute associated with unlawful removal of government materials. Follow our live coverage.

In total, agents seized 11 sets of documents, including some marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — shorthand for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Also included in the manifest were files pertaining to the pardon of Roger Stone, a longtime associate of Trump’s, and material about President Emmanuel Macron of France.

Trump claimed today that before leaving office, he declassified all the documents the F.B.I. found in this week’s search of his Florida residence. Even if that’s true, it probably doesn’t matter.

Notable: The White House is making a point of staying quiet about the F.B.I. search.

Related: Ricky Shiffer, 42, the man whom the police say they killed after he tried to breach the F.B.I.’s Cincinnati office, had been on the radar of the federal authorities for months.

Other legal developments: A Manhattan judge declined to throw out the criminal case against Donald Trump’s family business and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, clearing the way for a trial this fall.

2. Salman Rushdie was attacked at an event in New York.

Rushdie, an author who spent years in hiding and under police protection after Iranian officials called for his execution, was stabbed in the neck on Friday morning while onstage for a lecture in Chautauqua, near Lake Erie in western New York. It was not clear what motivated the attacker.

Linda Abrams, who was sitting in the front row, said the assailant kept trying to attack Rushdie even after he was restrained. “It took like five men to pull him away, and he was still stabbing,” she said. “He was just furious, furious. Like intensely strong and just fast.”

Rushdie was taken by helicopter to a local hospital, the state police said. His condition is not yet known. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said in an email Friday afternoon that Rushdie was undergoing surgery. Follow our live coverage.

3. The House passed landmark legislation on climate, health care and taxes.

After a vote of 220 to 207, House Democrats overcame united Republican opposition to deliver on key components of President Biden’s domestic agenda. The bill now goes to Biden for his signature.

The Inflation Reduction Act will pour more than $370 billion into climate and energy programs, lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to directly negotiate prices with insurance companies and increase taxes for stock buybacks and wealthy companies, among other things.

Just weeks ago, President Biden’s legislative priorities appeared all but dead, throttled by two holdout Democratic senators and a Republican Party determined to oppose him. Though the bill falls short of Biden’s $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act, it is still the most significant climate change legislation in U.S. history and a victory for Democrats just months before they defend their minuscule congressional majorities in the midterm elections.

Related: The bill contains numerous incentives for the electric car industry, but some companies are likely to benefit more than others.

4. Health officials detected polio virus in New York City’s wastewater.

The discovery, which came after a man in a county north of the city was paralyzed by polio, suggests that the virus is circulating in the city.

Most adults were vaccinated against polio as children, and the vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective. But in some city ZIP codes, fewer than two-thirds of children 5 years and younger have been fully immunized, worrying health officials.

In other health news, the Food and Drug Administration recommended that asymptomatic people exposed to Covid use at least three at-home tests spaced 48 hours apart, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its coronavirus guidelines.

5. The Russian economy shrank because of sanctions.

The country’s gross domestic product fell 4 percent from April through June compared with a year earlier, as the country felt the economic consequences of its war in Ukraine.

Experts said it could be the start of a yearslong downturn, after Western sanctions imposed steep restrictions on dealings with Russian banks and cut access to American technology, prompting hundreds of major Western corporations to leave the country. But Russia’s economy still proved more resilient than some economists had initially expected, in part because the country’s coffers were flush with energy revenue as global prices rose.

In Kyiv, a senior Ukrainian official said that 60 pilots and technicians had been killed and 100 people wounded when a series of explosions rocked a Russian air base in Crimea this week. Russia has not released a death toll and has downplayed damage from the blasts.

6. The adoration of tourists could prove fatal to a 1,300-pound walrus.

People are flocking to see Freya, a 5-year-old female walrus who appeared along Norway’s coast this summer. But a spokesman for the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries warned that the agency might have to “put the animal down” out of concern that she could harm the delighted onlookers.

There are other possible solutions, including moving Freya from the area, he added, while noting that killing her would be a “last resort.”

“She’s not aggressive,” said Rune Aae, who teaches biology at the University of South-Eastern Norway and maintains a Google map of Freya sightings. “But if she wants to play with you, you will lose.”

7. Sue Bird, the W.N.B.A.’s leader in assists, will soon retire.

Bird, a 13-time All-Star who has won four championships with the Seattle Storm, tore apart weaknesses in opposing teams’ defenses to accumulate 3,222 regular-season assists.

But Bird has also become an avatar for the modern W.N.B.A. No other player is as synced with the league’s infancy and growth, its history and its present. The consummate floor general excelled through consistency by delivering the ball to the right person at the right time in the right spot, year after year, decade after decade.

“She is the W.N.B.A,” said Crystal Langhorne, who converted 161 of Bird’s passes into buckets. “It’s going to be crazy with a league where she’s not there anymore.”

8. Sylvan Esso’s new album, “No Rules Sandy,” challenges electro-pop expectations.

A spirit of try-anything, knob-twirling whimsy pervades the LP by the duo, comprising Amelia Meath and her husband, Nick Sanborn. It revels in constantly shifting sounds that are “transparent yet intricate, airy but serious, fond of pop structures yet eager to bend them,” our critic Jon Pareles writes.

Or, hit shuffle on Playlist: Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. This week, it’s a little hard to tell if M.I.A. is skewering the self-involvement of social media culture on “Popular,” or if she’s vying for a TikTok hit herself, writes Lindsay Zoladz. But hey, who says you can’t have it both ways?

9. She’s tall and svelte, with a sleek conical hat. She frequents New York City’s most coveted restaurant tables, and she really lights up a room. Perhaps you’ve seen her?

She’s a lamp — specifically the Pina Pro cordless lamp from the Italian design company Zafferano. Pina Pros are providing intimate illumination for the outdoor dining tables across Manhattan that became popular during the pandemic.

One conundrum: At one restaurant, customers who took a shine to the rechargeable lamps bickered when their tables didn’t have them. And at least a few of the lamps have mysteriously disappeared.

10. And finally, who gives a hoot about vocal membranes?

Research into the physiology of 43 species of primates, including baboons, orangutans, macaques and chimpanzees, as well as humans, has found that Homo sapiens lack a set of protruding muscles, called vocal membranes or vocal lips, just above the vocal cords. That may have contributed to the emergence and evolution of human speech.

Researchers found that the presence of vocal lips destabilized other primates’ voices, rendering their tone and timbre more chaotic and unpredictable. Animals with vocal lips have a more grating, less controlled baseline of communication, the study found; humans, lacking the extra membranes, can exchange softer, more stable sounds.

Have a chatty weekend.

Brent Lewis compiled photos for this briefing.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.