--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, March 21st.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. A power plant's on fire. Crazy. A giant fire at a power station outside London has shut down Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Blaze knocked out electricity to the airport and some of its backup generators, bringing operations to a standstill. It's expected to stay closed all day, throwing travel worldwide into disarray.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Heathrow handles around 1,300 flights every day, and some planes that were en route had to be diverted mid-flight, and people who were already at the airport were told to leave.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In all, almost 300,000 passengers could be affected, and airport officials warned it could take several days to get that number of travelers rebooked.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has learned that Elon Musk was scheduled to get a briefing at the Pentagon today about how the U.S. would handle any potential future war with China.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Two officials confirmed the plan for Musk's visit, saying it was going to be held in the tank, a secure conference room typically used for high-level gatherings of military leaders.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Giving Musk access to some of the nation's most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of Musk's already expansive role in the administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It would also fuel more questions about his conflicts of interest. As the head of SpaceX and Tesla, he's a leading supplier to the Pentagon, and the details in this kind of meeting would be incredibly valuable for any defense contractor.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He also has deep financial interests in China. Tesla's biggest factory is there, and the company's received billions in loans from Chinese lenders.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And while Musk has a top-secret security clearance, a previous Times investigation into SpaceX found that Musk and the company repeatedly failed to comply with federal protocols aimed at protecting state secrets.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After the Times reported that the meeting was going to happen, Department of Defense officials and President Trump denied that Musk's visit to the Pentagon would be about China.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Secretary of Defense said it would be a, quote, informal meeting. It's now not clear if the meeting will go ahead as originally planned.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, President Trump followed through on his promise to try and close the Education Department. By law, that's something only Congress can do, and Trump urged lawmakers to join him in the effort.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And I hope they're going to be voting for it because ultimately it may come before them, but everybody knows it's right.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The attempt to shutter the department tracks with a years-long push by conservatives to minimize the federal government's role in public education and direct more money to private schools and homeschooling.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At this point, it's unclear how a closure would affect students, since the administration has said some of the department's core responsibilities could be reassigned to other agencies.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For example, its main job of distributing money to college students through grants and loans could go to the Treasury Department.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But some of the agency's other duties may be cut back significantly or disappear altogether, including its enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in schools and its nationwide testing program that tracks how students are doing academically.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In D.C., the federal judge overseeing the case challenging the Trump administration's recent deportation flights says the government has continued to stonewall him.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The judge has repeatedly asked for a timeline of the flights to see whether they continued even after he ordered them to stop.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Thursday, the judge wrote that the answers the government has supplied were, quote, woefully insufficient.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's now given government lawyers until next week to provide additional information.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, more details are coming to light that call into question the administration's justifications for the deportations.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump claimed that some of the Venezuelans on the flights were members of a violent gang, Trende Aragua.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He claimed the gang was an invading force controlled by the Venezuelan government, which he said gave immigration authorities the power to deport the migrants without due process.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But the Times has learned that a U.S. intelligence assessment appears to undercut that claim about the gang.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a document circulated by the CIA and NSA, among others, intelligence officials said they were moderately confident that Trente de Aragua is not tied to Venezuela's leadership and that it's not committing crimes at its direction.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also, lawyers for some of the Venezuelans that the administration deported say they not gang members at all.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One deportee lawyer said her client was accused because of a tattoo and a hand gesture that he was making in a picture on social media.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But the tattoo is a version of a soccer team logo. He is a soccer player. And the gesture he was making was the common rock and roll hand symbol.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Multiple other lawyers say their clients were also targeted in part because of common tattoos like images of a crown and a rose.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Well, the president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages, there would be all hell to pay.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House press secretary says the Trump administration stands with Israel as it carries out a new wave of attacks in Gaza.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And he fully supports Israel and the IDF and the actions that they've taken in recent days.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, Israel expanded its operations on the ground in the territory, following massive airstrikes that it launched earlier this week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The renewed attacks have killed over 500 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And on Thursday, Hamas hit back, firing multiple rockets at Tel Aviv.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There were no reports of casualties.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A senior Hamas official told The Times that the group had waited a few days to retaliate to try and give mediators time to convince Israel to halt its new attacks.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But he said as the operations continued, Hamas had to show it was capable of responding.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The new wave of violence marks the collapse of a months-long ceasefire in Gaza.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration had been working to help broker an extension of that truce, but there's no indication that the two sides will be able to reach an agreement anytime soon.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally...
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is my father's kingdom. A place of fairness. But the queen changed everything.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The live-action remake of Snow White comes out in theaters today.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's an update of the 1937 Disney classic that was the world's first-ever feature-length animated film.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's a human. What did you think I was? Nothing. Ghost.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This film, more than any in Disney's 102-year history, has just been plagued by problem after problem after problem.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Brooks Barnes covers Hollywood.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He says the film hit multiple production roadblocks during the pandemic.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Then executives kept asking for redos of the visual effects.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And there was a controversy around whether human actors would play the seven dwarves.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They ended up using CGI.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The film's biggest drama has centered on its star.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When Disney first started making this, Disney and Hollywood in general was really under pressure to diversify its casting.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And so with Snow White, they found an actress, Rachel Ziegler, who they really loved.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She wowed them with her voice. They loved her screen presence. And she also happened to be a Latina.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But almost immediately, there was backlash from the right.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Why is a Latina playing a character that has classically been white, snow-woke, trended?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It kind of simmered in the background until Diggler started becoming very outspoken in interviews and on social media about topics that had nothing to do with the film.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She posted in support of Palestinians repeatedly.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She attacked Donald Trump after he won re-election.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And those things really fueled pushback around the film and also around her and the casting.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So what had been sort of a simmering controversy became a full inferno.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: By the time you get to the premiere last weekend, Disney was pretty freaked out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It curtailed media access to the red carpet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It increased security.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There were protesters on the curb.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the whole promotion and press tour of the movie was impacted.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So this movie really arrives in theaters as a test.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To what degree will all of these controversies over years of production impact ticket buyers?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Will they care? Or will this movie do what so many other Disney movies have, which is, you know, provide some babysitting on a Saturday for the family?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, how President Trump's trade policies have rattled the U.S. economy and why Trump isn't backing down.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in The New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Sarah Diamond, Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Kate Lowenstein, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
