A Major Crypto Pardon, and the N.B.A. Gambling Scandal with Mob Ties

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Friday, October 24th.

Here's what we're covering.

At the White House yesterday, two developments showed the sway that the tech and crypto industries hold with President Trump and how some of the most influential figures from those worlds have the president's ear.

Maybe you heard we were going to do a big surge in San Francisco, but I got a great call from

some incredible people, some friends of mine, very successful people.

Trump announced he was calling off a planned deployment of federal immigration agents to San Francisco, which was supposed to start tomorrow.

He said he'd halted it at the request of friends of his who live and work there.

And he specifically named the head of Salesforce, Mark Benioff, and the chief executive of the chip giant NVIDIA, Jensen Wong.

And they said, we're working really, really hard with the mayor and we're making progress.

Would it be possible

for you to hold off to surge?

And Trump also had a call with San Francisco's mayor.

The mayor said they talked about the recent drop in crime in the city and how the AI industry is booming there.

Trump then posted on social media that he'd been convinced to give the city a chance, even as he said federal intervention is needed in other Democratic-led cities to root out undocumented immigrants and address crime.

And yesterday, President Trump pardoned the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance,

wiping away one of the federal government's most significant convictions in crypto crime.

Cheng Pen Zhao, who goes by CZ, pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering violations that allowed terrorists and criminals to move money on his platform.

He served four months in prison.

Long considered the richest man in crypto, CZ then hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration to seek a pardon.

Can you explain why you chose to pardon him?

And did it have anything to do with his involvement in your own family's crypto business?

The president faced questions from reporters about the pardon decision, including if it was related to the deal Binance recently struck with the Trump family's crypto startup.

The president did not directly answer the question.

He had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime.

It wasn't a crime, that he was persecuted by the Biden administration.

And so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.

After the pardon was announced, another crypto executive who Trump pardoned earlier this year congratulated CZ on social media, writing, quote, welcome to the club.

In other news from the White House, late last night, President Trump announced that he's cutting off all trade negotiations with Canada, which has been trying to get the U.S.

to reverse some of the double-digit tariffs Trump slapped on its major exports.

The reason Trump gave for his sudden decision?

A video ad paid for by the province of Ontario.

When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs.

The ad uses parts of a speech made by President Reagan in the late 80s, where he called for free trade and warned about what he saw as the dangers of tariffs.

Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.

A lot of businesses in Ontario have been shaken by Trump's trade policies, and the province spent over $50 million getting the ad played on American TV to try and make the case against tariffs.

Yesterday, though, the Reagan Presidential Foundation put out a statement saying the ad misrepresented Reagan's speech by using selective sound bites.

And hours later, in a post canceling the negotiations, Trump called the video fake, though there's no indication of that.

The abrupt end to the talks adds a new level of uncertainty to the relationship between the U.S.

and its second-biggest trading partner.

In the Senate yesterday, with no end in sight to the government shutdown, both Republicans and Democrats made their own separate attempts to try and get government workers paid.

Those efforts went nowhere.

They're protecting our nation.

They're protecting our safety and security.

They're writing Social Security checks.

For their part, Senate Republicans tried to pass a measure that would pay workers who have been deemed essential, like law enforcement and air traffic controllers who've been required to keep working.

Democrats in the chamber blocked that bill.

Our ask today is simple.

Pay them for the jobs that they were hired to do.

They argued that all federal workers need to get paid, the essential employees and the roughly 700,000 others who've been furloughed.

The Democrats said they were worried that otherwise, the Trump administration could essentially pick favorites and deem essential whichever employees it wants, while leaving others whose work they feel doesn't align with Republican priorities unpaid.

Republicans blocked the attempt to pay pay everyone, saying if Democrats want that, they should simply vote to reopen the government.

Democrats have so far refused.

They're holding out for an extension of health care subsidies.

The shutdown is now in its 24th day.

It's the second longest shutdown in American history.

And finally.

Today we are here in New York to announce a historic arrest across a widesweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Casa Nostra.

In a scandal that is rocking the NBA, the FBI announced that more than 30 people have been arrested, including current and former players, for allegedly taking part in a pair of gambling schemes.

This is an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spanned the course of years.

At a press conference yesterday, FBI Director Cash Patel laid out the two alleged criminal plots and some of the tangled ties between them.

First, the sports betting.

The FBI said at least one current player and one former coach shared private information about injuries and starting lineups to set up bets.

Think of it as insider trading for sports.

Another accusation goes even further, claiming Terry Rosier, who currently plays for the Miami Heat, purposely left a game early, saying his foot hurt.

He told a friend he was going to do that ahead of time.

And betters, acting on that information, placed hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets that his stats that game would be low.

They cashed in and then allegedly gave Rosier some of the money.

One reason this is such an interesting story is because it puts the microscope on an industry that has grown very quickly.

My colleague Jenny Vrentes has been covering how in the last few years, sports betting has become a multi-billion dollar industry, despite concerns that it could lead to cases like this, which threaten to undercut the the whole point of sports, that no one knows what's going to happen in a game.

I think we are crossing over into this realm where it's possible that games have been manipulated.

I think it raises a lot of concerns and questions.

And this is what a lot of people were afraid of when we opened the door to widespread sports betting in the United States.

How would it change the game?

How would it impact our trust in the game?

Now, the second scheme allegedly took place off the court in private, invite-only poker games run by the mafia.

The indictment says that more than two dozen people, including Chauncey Billups, the current head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, were involved in rigged games.

It claims Billops and other sports celebrities were used to lure high rollers to play.

They were then cheated using a whole slew of techniques.

There were rigged shuffling machines, secret cameras, an X-ray poker table, and even special contact lenses lenses that were used to see hidden markings on the back of the cards.

According to officials, one victim lost almost $2 million,

and players who weren't able to pay their debts were threatened by the mob.

Those are the headlines.

If you'd like to play the Friday News quiz, stick around.

It's just after these credits.

This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.

And it is the last day for our managing editor, Jessica Metzger.

Thanks for everything, Jess.

Original theme by Dan Powell.

Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, River Davis, Zoe Murphy, Paula Schuman, and Mark Walsh.

Now, time for the quiz.

Every week, we ask you a few questions about what the Times has been covering.

Can you answer them all?

First up,

Got a new challenge for you here.

See if you can name these three big stories from this week with only sound effects as your clues.

I'll give you an example.

If one of the stories was egg prices going up, we play this.

Ready to give it a shot?

Start with an easy one.

The answer?

That's the heist at the Louvre.

Investigators are still searching for the power tool-wielding thieves who sped off on motor scooters with the priceless jewels.

Next one, a hint this one happened back in the U.S.

That story?

President Trump has ordered the demolition of the entire east wing of the White House to clear the way for his 90,000 square foot ballroom.

And third one for you.

That was

the outage of Amazon web services earlier this week that briefly took down hundreds of sites and apps, causing chaos for a whole range of companies, from Netflix to Slack to McDonald's.

Okay, moving on.

This week, one of the world's big economic powers picked a woman as its leader for the first time in the country's history.

She's a protege of the country's longest-serving prime minister who was assassinated a few years ago.

Which country is it?

I'll give you a hint: the countries in Asia.

The answer?

Sanae Takeichi was elected Prime Minister of Japan.

She's known for wearing blue suits in honor of her political hero, Margaret Thatcher, the conservative icon who was the UK's first female prime minister.

One of Takeichi's other idols?

The heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

She's actually an amateur heavy metal drummer herself, who reportedly told a Japanese podcast that she sometimes stays up late playing drums to let off steam.

And final question.

The World Series starts tonight with the Los Angeles Dodgers facing off against the Toronto Blue Jays, one team that almost made it to the series.

Mariners have led for most of the ballgame, and that's been wiped away with one swing.

The Seattle Mariners, they tried absolutely everything they could.

And there's always been a ton of superstition in sports, but some players and fans took it to a whole other level this year.

Which of these things did the Mariners and their base not try for good luck?

Hiring a witch on Etsy to cast a spell, keeping a jumbo candle from Costco burning for months, or making sure the team's lead announcer had his usual bag of lucky Cheetos.

So again, that's hiring witches, lighting a ginormous candle, or lucky Cheetos.

Which of those did they not try?

The answer?

All of those were Mariners' techniques except for the candle.

That was part of the routine of the Blue Jays, the team that beat them to reach the World Series.

Hiring a witch off Etsy, meanwhile, has actually become kind of a thing in the last few years, not just for slightly desperate sports fans.

Online, you can buy a spell to help you win a legal case or one that promises to get your ex to come back.

The Mariners fan said he paid about $16 for his custom spell.

I'm just going to guess that witchcraft is non-refundable.

That is it for the news quiz.

Our email, as always, is theheadlines at nytimes.com.

If you want to send us your score, tell us what you think about the quiz.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

The headlines will be back on Monday.

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