Seven Republican presidential hopefuls will gather at 9 p.m. Eastern to face off in the party’s second debate of the year. While the performances of the candidates are still expected to be deeply consequential, tonight’s event feels like a race for second place. That’s because Donald Trump, who is skipping the debate, is polling about as well as any candidate in the modern history of contested primaries.

“The race is starting to have some of the characteristics of a noncompetitive contest,” our chief political analyst Nate Cohn said, adding that Trump’s lead is “just as large as the one Joe Biden has over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

Instead of attending the debate, Trump is planning to deliver his pitch to blue-collar workers in a speech tonight at an auto parts factory outside Detroit. His appearance comes just one day after President Biden joined striking autoworkers on a picket line, offering the kind of split-screen campaigning that is more reminiscent of a general election.

However, Nate said, we’re not in a two-candidate race just yet. He pointed in particular to Trump’s legal woes, and the specter of a criminal trial in the middle of the Republican primary season.

Wall Street isn’t worried about a government shutdown

Members of Congress have just three more days to pass a spending bill before the federal government’s funding expires and it is forced to halt many of its operations. As each hour passes without a deal, it becomes increasingly likely that a shutdown will occur.

A brief shutdown, economists on Wall Street and inside the Biden administration have concluded, would be unlikely to slow the economy significantly or push it into recession. But a prolonged shutdown could eventually ease growth, dampen the mood of consumers and potentially even hurt Biden’s re-election prospects.

An American soldier was released from North Korea

After 70 days of imprisonment in North Korea, Pvt. Travis King was released into U.S. custody today. His release came after North Korean officials decided to expel him, saying that they had found him guilty of “illegally intruding” into their territory.

Officials said the U.S. had learned from Sweden several weeks ago that the North Koreans had decided to expel King, kicking off a period of indirect but intense negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea. Unlike on previous occasions, the North Koreans did not receive anything in return for King’s release, U.S. officials said.

El Paso has reached a ‘breaking point,’ its mayor said

Along the U.S. border with Mexico, a new wave of migrant arrivals, mostly from Venezuela, but also from other South American countries, Africa and elsewhere, is taxing the available services in cities and small towns from Texas to California. The strain has become particularly untenable in the West Texas city of El Paso, where thousands of migrants are arriving from Mexico each day. The shelters there are filled, and so too are the hotel rooms. The city is seeking millions of dollars in aid from the Biden administration.

More top news

Wes Anderson finally found a way to adapt Roald Dahl

For 15 years, the director Wes Anderson has been trying to bring Roald Dahl’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” to the big screen, without success. He could never quite find a way to faithfully translate the story of a wealthy, cheating gambler.

The breakthrough finally came when he decided to lift the author’s prose and put it in the mouths of the characters. In “Henry Sugar,” a 40-minute short that was released on Netflix today, the actors (including Benedict Cumberbatch and Dev Patel) talk directly to the camera, describing their actions as they happen. We spoke to Anderson about his process making the film.

The new ChatGPT can ‘see’ and ‘talk’

OpenAI boasted this week that its popular chatbot, ChatGPT, would soon be able to “see, hear and speak.” If you snap a photo of your refrigerator, for example, it will offer recipe ideas. If you ask it a question, it will offer responses delivered in a synthetic A.I. voice.

Our tech columnist Kevin Roose found the latter of those options the most intriguing. So much so that he ended up talking with the bot for several hours.

Las Vegas is reinventing itself again

A new attraction has been drawing the attention of those who have visited Las Vegas in recent months. The Sphere, a 360-foot-tall, high-tech amphitheater clad in 1.2 million LED screens, beams fireworks displays, rotating globes and other images on its surface, bringing traffic to a standstill.

But it’s not the only major newcomer on the Vegas Strip: There’s also a new football stadium and a Formula 1 racing track. The new splashy mega-venues are part of another reinvention of the city, which is trying to move past its reliance on casinos.

Have an electrifying evening.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Matthew

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.

We welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com.