An Alarming New Study About Brain Injuries in Football, and How States Are Paying Millions for Rain

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**Tracy Mumford** (0:32)
From the New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 25th. Here's what we're covering.
An alarming new study about head injuries in football has found that at least one in four NFL players gets the brain disease known as CTE. The new research published this morning in the journal, the BMJ, was based on examinations of the brains of hundreds of players. CTE is caused by repeated hits to the head, and symptoms can include memory loss, mood swings, and erratic behavior.

**John Branch** (1:10)
It's hard to remember what I did yesterday. Like I can't even tell you what I ate for dinner last night.

**Tracy Mumford** (1:15)
For years, there's been growing concern about the condition, especially amid a series of suicides by players.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:21)
He told me he loved me very much and that he felt there was something wrong with his brain. And for me to please get it to the NFL.

**Tracy Mumford** (1:29)
CTE can only be diagnosed after death, and some players or their families have been donating their brains to science so the disease can be studied. For the new study, researchers considered every NFL player who died between 2016 and 2021, about 900, some old, some young. The scientists were able to examine the brains of more than 200 of them, and found that almost every single one had signs of CTE.
The researchers said that if they'd been able to examine all the players' brains, that number would have almost certainly been higher, meaning that the one in four estimate is potentially a significant undercount.

**John Branch** (2:10)
The figure is haunting because we can look at the NFL rosters, we can look at the teams that are playing on Sunday, and if we extrapolate this to today's NFL, that tells us that hundreds of current players will end up with this disease.

**Tracy Mumford** (2:23)
John Branch covers sports for The Times and has reported on CTE extensively. He says that while the NFL downplayed the risks of repeated head trauma for years, the new data might be hard to ignore for both the multibillion-dollar league and for its fans.

**John Branch** (2:39)
Football is part of American culture. Millions of people watch games every weekend. It brings people together. There's a lot of good about football and these researchers will say the same thing.
What I think is interesting and what I think it's caused me and a lot of people I know to do is really to start having these conversations about what can we do to limit the numbers? Should football be banned? That's one end of the spectrum. Should we do nothing? That's the other.
What can we do in the middle to make football safer so that fewer families are going through the repercussions of CTE as their loved ones get older?

**Tracy Mumford** (3:13)
John says, according to the lead author of the study, there are ways to make football safer that wouldn't change the game. Like keeping young kids from playing tackle football and reducing hits during practice at all levels since the risks of CTE build up over a lifetime. In a statement in response to the study, the NFL, which has paid more than $1.5 billion in claims related to brain injuries, said that it, quote, continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts.
Now, two quick updates from my colleagues covering the Trump Administration. First, in an emergency opinion yesterday, the Supreme Court said the administration can move forward with its efforts to restrict mail-in voting, including a plan to let the United States Postal Service limit which voters it will deliver ballots to. The justices said this was not a final decision about whether President Trump's efforts quote will necessarily be lawful, but it means that plans for the new restrictions can move forward while a lower court considers the case. At this point, more legal challenges are likely, and when you consider that there's barely two months to go until the midterms, Time's political reporter, Nick Kourosanidi, says the Supreme Court has left a lot up in the air.

**Nick Kourosanidi** (4:44)
The decision comes as the administration of elections, the very minutiae of how votes are cast and counted, has become exceptionally polarized, a core of the political debate right now. Injecting more uncertainty or even potential confusion or chaos will only add to that doubt and that swirling distrust.