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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, August 25th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today marks two weeks since President Trump announced he was sending more than 1,000 National Guard members and federal law enforcement agents into the streets of D.C. to fight what he called out-of-control crime.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Soldiers have been patrolling the National Mall. Are you proud of what you're doing? Protests have sprung up at improvised security checkpoints, where agents have been stopping and searching cars. Stop! And videos have spread online of people being pulled from their vehicles or wrestled to the ground and detained.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House has celebrated this operation as producing hundreds of arrests. So last week, I went to the federal courthouse to see exactly what types of cases are being created by this crackdown.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Devlin Barrett covers federal law enforcement for The Times. He says that most of the arrests have been immigration-related, and those go to immigration court, where reporters aren't allowed to observe.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: But the cases he could see suggest things are operating very differently than they did before Trump's crackdown. Sitting in federal court, I was struck by how many federal agents and cops are being used to make single arrests for relatively minor crimes.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: In some cases, it appears that they're having 12 agents and cops arrest a single individual who's either sitting in a car with an open container of alcohol or who's vandalizing a streetlight. That's not something that a federal agent would normally get involved in.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: But when you send, for example, a dozen federal agents to arrest a guy for an open container of beer, and then while he's in handcuffs, he supposedly resists arrest and he's charged with a felony assault or resisting of a federal officer. What started as a pretty mundane arrest is now a case that carries a possible eight-year prison sentence.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: Devlin says that to many defense lawyers and even some prosecutors, the push to charge what might have been low-level misdemeanors as serious federal crimes may artificially inflate the effectiveness of the crackdown.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump recently said he wants to use his show of force in D as a model for what he do in other parts of the country including Chicago and New York City
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, a few other quick updates on the Trump administration. Good morning, Ms. Maxwell. How are you?
--:-- Ghislaine Maxwell: Good morning.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Good. The Department of Justice has released a recording of the Deputy Attorney General's recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, who's behind bars for helping him traffic underage girls.
--:-- Ghislaine Maxwell: The meeting, which took place last month, came as the administration was trying to tamp down a surge of allegations that it wasn't being transparent enough in the Epstein case.
--:-- Ghislaine Maxwell: The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.
--:-- Ghislaine Maxwell: In the interview, Maxwell claimed that there were no dark secrets about President Trump, who once considered Epstein a close friend.
--:-- Ghislaine Maxwell: She also said there was no so-called client list of powerful people who could be implicated in the trafficking.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Epstein's victims and their families objected to the interview happening at all, saying Maxwell had a strong incentive to tell the government what it wanted to hear.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She's been lobbying to get her 20-year sentence reduced or overturned altogether. And shortly after the interview, Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also, you're saying there's no meeting planned right now. Kristen, Kristen, I am awfully sorry you're not listening. There is no meeting planned.
--:-- Kristen Welker: In an interview on NBC on Sunday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, dealt a blow to President Trump's efforts to end the war in Ukraine, saying there is no current plan for Russia to sit down with Ukraine.
--:-- Kristen Welker: Trump had suggested that a Russia-Ukraine summit was imminent after he met with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky separately.
--:-- Kristen Welker: But Lavrov's comments underscore just how far the two sides are from reaching any kind of peace deal.
--:-- Kristen Welker: Last week, for example, Russia insisted that it needs to play a role in keeping Ukraine secure after the war is over, a condition many Ukrainian and European officials see as absurd.
--:-- Kristen Welker: And the Transportation Department put out a directive last month that all crosswalks in the U.S. should be kept free of, quote, distractions.
--:-- Kristen Welker: The department specified what that meant but last week in Orlando Florida officials painted over a rainbow crosswalk commemorating the 49 people killed in a mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in 2016
--:-- Kristen Welker: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy then wrote on social media quote taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets not rainbow crosswalks
--:-- Kristen Welker: Orlando's mayor condemned the move as callous and cruel. Protesters have since repainted the memorial crosswalk, though it's not clear how long that will last.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the past few decades, China has developed a vast influence network around the world, which is aimed at swaying public opinion.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This has played out in countries like Canada and Australia. And my colleagues and I were surprised to find that it's actually here in New York City as well, where the Chinese government and people working at their behest have influenced elections.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: Michael Forsyth is an investigative reporter at The Times. He's been tracing how the Chinese government has specifically leveraged a network of ethnic Chinese community groups in the city.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: The groups host dinners and parades and welcome newcomers to the U.S., just like Irish or Italian community groups have always done.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: But the Chinese consulate has become increasingly involved with dozens of these organizations, sometimes putting pressure on their leaders to back Beijing's political agenda, and even going so far as to have them take oaths to defend Chinese interests.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: And while many countries, including the U.S., have meddled in foreign elections, Michael says the Chinese effort is one of the most expansive and effective.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: Consular officials will often meet with the leaders of these groups and sometimes pass the word on about supporting or opposing certain candidates.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: And our investigation focused on three candidates at three levels of government, the city council level, the state senate level, and the U.S. Congress.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: In all these instances, the candidates held positions that were counter to the Chinese government positions, such as more civil liberties in Hong Kong or sympathy for Taiwan and its democracy.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: And in each of those three instances, the Chinese government influenced community groups in New York City to defeat those candidates.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: Experts tell us there's two reasons why the Chinese government does this. One is to control the narrative in the diaspora community, quashing dissent so that any opposition does not spread back home into China.
--:-- Michael Forsyth: Another reason is to cultivate officials in the Chinese community who someday might have a future in higher levels of government
--:-- Michael Forsyth: Maybe one of these candidates that they support on the local level can someday rise to Congress Senate or even the presidency
--:-- Michael Forsyth: A spokesman for the Chinese consulate general denied it had influenced U.S. elections and said it strongly rejected, quote, any malicious accusations and smears.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can find the full investigation at nytimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, an anonymous prankster put up a website recently claiming he'd gotten access to some truly high-level intel, some very personal stuff.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Like that Vice President J.D. Vance puts on the Backstreet Boys when he's making dinner.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Or that House Speaker Mike Johnson loves a little Cyndi Lauper.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is an Ed Sheeran fan.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The website claimed all of this data could be easily scraped from Spotify, that you could find the listening habits there of not just politicians, but billionaire CEOs, celebrities, and other public figures.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The music pics of two New York Times tech reporters were even included on the site.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, not all of the leaked playlists have been confirmed as accurate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A dozen or so of the tech and media figures listed on the site told The Times they were real, but most of the politicians didn't respond.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has since talked with the prankster, the man behind the site.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's a 23-year-old engineer who said he used bots to collect the data.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said it was simple. You just type someone's name into the search bar, and there you go.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Many users, especially with older accounts, may not realize their real name or email can be publicly attached to their account.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Overall, the playlist dust-up has underscored how many people don't know what they're really sharing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A Spotify spokeswoman said all playlists have always been public, by default.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To hide your past playlists, you'd have to go to each one and flick the switch to private, one by one.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines, today on The Daily. Inside the AI hiring war, that has companies offering quarter-of-a-billion-dollar packages to snap up top talent.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
