From the New York Times, it's the

headlines. I'm Tracy Mumpford. Today's

Tuesday, April 21st. Here's what we're

covering.

In a major shakeup for President Trump's

cabinet, the Secretary of Labor has

resigned as multiple scandals and

investigations closed in on her. Lorie

Chavez Damer, a former congresswoman

from Oregon, has been under

investigation by the Labor Department's

Inspector General, which was looking

into claims of widespread misconduct by

her, her family, and her staff. There's

also been a parallel inquiry by

Congress, and together they've surfaced

a range of embarrassing accusations.

Chavez Darr was accused of having an

affair with a member of her security

detail. There were allegations that she

and her staff used taxpayer dollars for

personal trips, spending money on fancy

hotels and SUV rentals, and text

messages reviewed by the Times suggested

she was drinking during the workday.

Beyond that, staff members filed civil

rights complaints describing a hostile

work environment and her aids allegedly

tried to steer federal grants to favored

political operatives.

In addition to Chavez Dreamer's own

conduct, the investigations were looking

into personal text messages that her

father and husband were sending to young

female staffers at the department.

According to people familiar with the

inquiry, the labor secretary told some

of the women to quote, "Pay attention to

the men." Earlier this year, Chavez

Darmer's husband was barred from the

AY's DC headquarters after being accused

of making unwanted sexual advances,

allegations his lawyer says are false.

In response to questions about her

resignation, one of Chavez Dreamer's

lawyers said she quote did not resign

because she violated the law. No such

finding exists. And a White House

spokesman said she had quote done a

phenomenal job in her role by protecting

American workers. The deputy labor

secretary Keith Sonderling will now step

up in an acting capacity. Multiple

employees told the Times he's already

effectively been doing the job since the

secretary was almost never at the

office. Chavez Darmer is now the fourth

senior cabinet official to step down or

be fired in President Trump's second

term. Republican Senator Tom Tillis told

reporters that he thinks Congress needs

to do a better job of vetting

administration nominees. He said, quote,

"Where benefit of the doubt was given in

the past, you've got to doubt."

Meanwhile, a flurry of accusations has

engulfed another top Trump

administration official. Cash Patel, the

director of the FBI, sued The Atlantic

yesterday, accusing the magazine of

defamation after it published an article

saying he drinks excessively and has had

unexplained absences from his job. The

article cited more than two dozen

anonymous sources, who said Patel drinks

to the point of obvious intoxication,

including at members only clubs in DC

and Vegas, and said his conduct has

alarmed his colleagues. In Patel's

lawsuit, which asks for $250 million in

damages, he accused The Atlantic of

printing obviously fabricated

allegations and said the FBI had been

given less than 2 hours to respond to a

list of 19 claims.

Later today, Vice President JD Vance is

expected to fly to Pakistan for

potential peace talks with Iran. There's

less than 24 hours to go until the

current ceasefire expires.

Publicly, Iran is trying to send the

signals that their participation is not

a given. Privately, we are hearing that

Iranian officials are still planning to

try to make it to the talks in Pakistan

this week.

My colleague Erica Solomon has been

covering the war. She says Iranian

officials know that getting a deal is

critical to end the attacks and

potentially roll back years of crippling

sanctions, even if their public

statements don't always reflect that.

Experts that I've spoken to are saying

that there are two main pressures that

are driving this kind of mixed messaging

we're hearing from Iranian officials.

One is internal. There is a huge very

emboldened base in Iran that feels like

they won this war. They survived US and

Israeli bombardment. They managed to

basically close the straight of Hormuz

to the global oil trade. They're going

out waving rifles, flags, and they've

been saying like no surrender, no

capitulation. This is the base that kind

of underpins the government. They have

to find a solution that makes these

people feel like they're not just giving

up. The second and most arguably more

important issue is President Trump

himself. He has been putting out a lot

of threatening statements vowing that he

could go forward with bombing the

country's infrastructure. So they feel

like Trump is trying to push them into a

corner and they don't even fully trust

yet that the Americans are actually

going to negotiate in good faith. They

still have a little bit of anxiety they

could get attacked by Israel as the

United States while they're heading to

negotiations or on their way back. So

the trust is so incredibly low from the

Iranian perspective. It's just it's hard

to exaggerate, you know, just how wary

they are in spite of the fact that they

very much want to go to talks and make a

deal.

As the war stretches into its eighth

week, the headlines is taking your

questions about the conflict on the

negotiations, the straight of Hormuz,

what it means for the Gulf, what it

means for the world. You can send us

them at the headlines at NY Times.com.

On April 21st, vote no on partisan

gerrymandering.

In Virginia, voters have been getting

bombarded by messaging around

redistricting, redrawing the state's

election map.

Free and fair elections are the

cornerstone of our democracy. But right

now, they are under threat.

The political battle has been

supercharged with even former President

Obama weighing in, urging Virginiaians

to support a Democratic redistricting

effort that's up for a vote today. This

is all an escalation of the map fight

that President Trump kicked off last

year when he urged red states to redraw

districts to give the GOP a boost.

Lawmakers in Texas, Missouri, and other

states did that. And since then,

Democrats have been fighting fire with

fire. In Virginia, for example, if their

referendum passes, Democrats could

potentially pick up four extra seats in

Congress. Nationwide, it's not clear

where the dust will settle. It's

possible with all the tit fortat that

the number of shifting seats will come

out as a draw for the two parties. What

the high-profile redistricting fight has

done though is change the conversation

around gerrymandering. Even Obama

himself criticized it in the past, but

now many lawmakers and voters are

calling it a necessary evil.

Essentially, if the other side's going

to do it, so are we.

Apple announced yesterday that its CEO

Tim Cook will step down after nearly 15

years running the company. During which

time he helped make the iPhone

absolutely ubiquitous. With Cook at the

helm, Apple became the first public

company worth $1 trillion. That number

is now 4 trillion. But he could never

quite get out of the shadow of the

company's legendary founder, Steve Jobs.

and he faced years of questions about

whether Apple would be able to follow up

the iPhone with other revolutionary new

products. In recent years, the company

has grown by leaning more into services

like Apple Pay and iCloud along with

raising the prices of its devices.

Investors have also worried about its

long-term strategy for AI. The company

has largely stayed on the sidelines as

the rest of Silicon Valley has gone

allin on the technology. Cook will

officially move into a new role at Apple

in September, executive chairman, and

the company has chosen John Turnis to

take over as CEO. He's the head of

hardware engineering at Apple and a

relative unknown outside the company.

The same pressures that Cook faced to

create something new and big are set to

follow Turnis into the role with one

former longtime Apple employee telling

the Times he will have to quote find a

way to have Apple make products that

make a dent in the universe again.

And finally,

I'm just here to let you know that I am

now in charge of Infowars. It's an honor

to take over the reigns and uh chart a

new path towards the future.

The Onion, the satirical news outlet,

has a new plan to take control of

Infowars, the right-wing conspiracy

website. The fate of Infowars has been

in limbo since its founder, Alex Jones,

was ordered to pay over a billion

dollars in defamation suits for falsely

claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting

was a hoax. He declared bankruptcy,

leading to the selloff of assets. At

that point, The Onion, best known for

headlines like study reveals babies are

stupid, or wealthy teen nearly

experiences consequences, put in a bid

to take over the Infowars brand. Jones

has been fighting that ever since. He's

continued to operate the website and

host its flagship program, the Alex

Jones show. But now, The Onion's got a

licensing deal in the works with the

courtappointed administrator of the site

that would give it the Infowars domain

and the name. The Onion wants to

relaunch it as a platform that skewers

the kind of fringe conspiracy theories

that Jones became famous for, and it

plans to share proceeds with the Sandy

Hook families. The chief executive of

The Onion's parent company said, quote,

"We are excited to lie constantly for

cold, hard cash, but this time in a cool

way, and we'll make sure some of it gets

back to the families."

Those are the headlines. Again, we are

taking your questions about the war with

Iran. You can send them to us at the

headlines at ny times.com.

I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back

tomorrow.