--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, March 27th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is very exciting. So we're signing an executive order today that's going to lead to tremendous growth in the automobile industry. President Trump has announced a new round of tariffs, saying he will impose a 25 percent surcharge on imported cars and car parts starting next week.
--:-- River Akira Davis: (identified as a Times economics reporter) It's ridiculous. Trump said the tariffs are meant to force car companies to dismantle their global supply chains and move all of their manufacturing to the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's really hard to overstate the extent to which these tariffs will impact not only automakers and their profits, but entire economies of countries across the world and consumers across the U.S.
--:-- River Akira Davis: It would cost carmakers billions of dollars to relocate their operations, a move that could devastate the countries where a lot of that work happens now, like Canada and Mexico. And at least in the short term, all of the upheaval and the tariffs themselves will likely lead to higher price tags for anyone shopping for a car.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the months ahead, analysts expect consumers in the U.S. to be paying potentially thousands of dollars more for cars. And that's not only for foreign brands, it's also for American brands as well that rely on importing parts.
--:-- River Akira Davis: I've already spoken to car dealers. Most recently, I spoke with a car dealer in Maine who said that already his business is being significantly impacted because consumers are essentially panic buying vehicles in anticipation of future price hikes that would be caused by these tariffs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the Capitol yesterday, things got heated in two separate hearings.
--:-- Representative (identified as a House member): It is completely outrageous to me that administration officials come before us today with no acceptance of responsibility, excuse after excuse after excuse.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the House Intelligence Committee, Trump administration officials faced another day of grilling about the Signal group chat where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of an airstrike that was about to be carried out.
--:-- Tulsi Gabbard: (identified as the director of national intelligence) This is not OK. Communicating these sorts of things in Signal is not OK. Targets, times, those kinds of things are absolutely classified, and we all know it.
--:-- Representative (identified as a Democrat): Democrats argued the messages were vulnerable to interception by America's adversaries and could have endangered American troops if the details fell into the wrong hands.
--:-- Tulsi Gabbard: Ideally, these conversations occur in person. However, at times, fast-moving coordination of an unclassified nature is necessary where in-person conversation is not an option.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On their part, most Republican lawmakers followed the lead set by President Trump of downplaying the incident and denying its seriousness.
--:-- Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene: For far too long, federal taxpayers have been forced to fund biased news. This needs to come to an end and it needs to come to an end now.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Republicans, led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, laced into the leaders of PBS and NPR. Greene accused the public media networks, which served news and educational content to tens of millions of Americans, of promoting propaganda and indoctrinating children with LGBTQ programming.
--:-- PBS Executive: (identified as a public media executive) PBS is one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry, all while taking taxpayer money.
--:-- Representative (identified as a Democrat): Democrats in the hearing, though, mocked the idea of questioning the motives of classic children's programs on PBS like Arthur or Sesame Street.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The American people want to know, is Elmo now or has he ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?
--:-- PBS Executive: (identified as a public media executive) The Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly canceled more than a billion in grants that states were using for a range of urgent health issues, from addiction treatment to tracking infectious diseases.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The funds were originally allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic, but starting last year, states were allowed to put any remaining money toward other health issues.
--:-- State Health Official: (identified as a state health official) In Texas, for example, the grants were supporting the state's response to the ongoing measles outbreak there. But this week, state health departments began getting notices the funds were terminated, effective immediately, and that all work should stop.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A statement from the Department of Health and Human Services said, quote, the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.
--:-- State Health Official: (identified as a state health official) Some state health officials tell The Times they were always planning for the funds to expire, but the abruptness of the decision has caused chaos. There are half-finished projects that cost millions of dollars that may now never be completed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One health official said, quote, this is just like throwing money out the window. It's a total waste.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, the Trump administration has also canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The goal of the projects was to have vaccines and drugs ready to go if a new pandemic hit, rather than spending months having to develop them from scratch.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Massachusetts, surveillance footage shows immigration officers arresting another university student who participated in pro-Palestinian activism.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the video captured earlier this week, agents approach Rumesa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen who's in the U.S. on a student visa attending Tufts University.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Where are the police? Where are the police? Yeah, you don't look like me. Why are you hiding your faces?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Plainclothes officers in masks then detain Ozturk on the sidewalk outside her home while bystanders ask what's happening.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She was then handcuffed and driven away in an unmarked car.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Ozturk had acted in support of Hamas and said that that was grounds for revoking her visa.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper last year asking Tufts to, quote, acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration has said it can start deportation proceedings against any non-citizen that it's deemed a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests, even if they're in the country legally.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It made a similar claim earlier this month when it detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Massachusetts attorney general called Ozturk's arrest disturbing, saying this isn't public safety, it's intimidation that will and should be closely scrutinized in court.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, scientists are saying goodbye to a spacecraft that changed how we understand the universe.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Gaia was launched back in 2013. It's a powerful space telescope that was sent up to build a precise three-dimensional map of billions of stars.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In all the data that it gathered, astronomers found hints of new planets and black holes, including the black hole that's the closest known one to Earth.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Scientists also used data from Gaia to help measure how fast the universe is expanding.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After more than a decade of documenting space, the telescope closed its eyes to starlight this January.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's low on fuel, and today mission specialists will switch it off and set it to go orbit around the sun. Essentially sending it to that big graveyard in the sky for spacecraft.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Scientists who've worked on the project say while they're sad to see Gaia go, it's not actually the end of their work.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The spacecraft collected so much data, they've only been able to go through about a third of it so far.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, the Trump administration has released thousands of documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy.
--:-- Julian Barnes: (identified as a Times reporter) Times reporter Julian Barnes explains what we did and didn't learn from them. That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
