--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. Today's Wednesday, March 19th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. In the past 24 hours, President Trump and his administration have faced a flurry of pushback from the courts. There have been three significant updates.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: First, a federal judge ruled that Elon Musk's efforts to shut down USAID likely violated the Constitution in multiple ways. In the ruling, the judge said that Musk was acting as a government official without being properly appointed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He also said it was Congress's right to oversee the foreign aid agency, and Musk was stepping on that authority. The order appears to be the first time a judge has tried to directly rein in Musk himself.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The judge ordered Musk and his team to stop all work related to the shutdown of USAID and for its operations to be partly restored.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's likely to have limited impact since the agency has already been stripped down to a skeleton staff and nearly all of its contracts have been canceled.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also yesterday, another federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from pushing transgender people out of the military.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Department of Defense, following President Trump's lead, had adopted a policy saying trans people were not fit to serve because they were not living honorable, truthful lives.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The judge forcefully rejected that argument, saying the administration had used derogatory language to target a vulnerable group.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She also said that the data the Defense Department used to try and justify the ban was cherry-picked and, quote, totally grossly misleading.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the moment, about 0.2% of the armed forces identifies as transgender.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The ruling means that, for now, they will be able to continue serving, though some of them have said that since Trump took office, they already been denied medical care sent home from deployments or put on administrative leave.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to directly rebuke President Trump yesterday after he lashed out at a lower court judge.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump had called the federal judge who's been in a showdown with the administration over recent deportation flights a, quote, radical left lunatic and said he should be impeached.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Hours later, Roberts put out a public statement saying that, quote, impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Chief Justice John Roberts issues public statements very rarely, and only when he is apparently really upset.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for the Times. Roberts wasn't taking sides over an important dispute.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: What he was saying, though, was that there's a right way and a wrong way to express your displeasure with a judicial decision that you lose.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The right way, he says, is to appeal it. The wrong way is to try to impeach the judge whose decision you disagree with.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We had a great call. It lasted almost two hours. talked about a lot of things and toward getting it to peace. And we talked about other things also.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump had a call with Vladimir Putin yesterday in which the Russian president said he is open to pausing some of his military strikes on Ukraine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said Russia would stop hitting energy infrastructure, like power plants or oil fields, as long as Ukraine does too.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But Putin did not agree to a broader ceasefire that the U.S. and Ukraine had been pushing, saying that he was for it in principle but didn't agree with all the terms.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The reason he's packaging it that way is because he wants to continue the warm relations with Donald Trump and with this White House.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And so the easiest thing for him to do is to say, yes, absolutely, I agree with you, but here are some conditions that you'd have to take into account for me to sign on to this.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Paul Soni covers Russia for The Times. He says the conditions that Putin is demanding are ones that he knows Ukraine will reject.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And that may be the point. I think the broader fear here is that Putin is playing for time right.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That he is trying to keep these talks going while he presses his advantage on the battlefield and while relations sour between the United States and Ukraine, which will make Ukraine weaker over time.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Social Security Administration has announced that people who want to file for benefits or make updates to how they get their payments will no longer be able to do that over the phone.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As of the end of the month, they'll need to go online or visit a Social Security office in person.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The agency said the change is intended to help protect against fraud.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For the past few months, President Trump and Elon Musk have frequently repeated false claims about dead people collecting benefits.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The change will likely make it harder for older Americans or those with disabilities to access services.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're often not as mobile or struggle with technology.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And it could add new stress to a system that's already in demand.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The average callback time to make an in-person appointment is more than two hours.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the waiting list for those appointments is over a month long.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Social Security staffers tell The Times that the situation may only get worse.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration has plans to cut more than 10 percent of the agency's workforce when staffing's already at a 50-year low.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Fewer staff could mean that people's payments get disrupted or delayed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Dragon capsule just minutes ago was going over 17,000 miles per hour and now gently coasting to a soft splashdown.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After a much longer trip to space than anyone expected, astronauts Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore have finally made it home.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And splashdown, Crew 9 back on Earth.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The pair landed safely last night off the Gulf Coast of Florida after technical troubles kept them on the International Space Station for over nine months.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some harnessing being placed around the capsule.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Wow we got a cute little pod of dolphins.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It wasn't just one or two.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Their craft was briefly swarmed by a group of curious dolphins as the recovery team took a boat out to meet them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The astronauts were lifted onto gurneys.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Their bodies are still readjusting to gravity.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Then they were flown to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for medical evaluation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: NASA said they'd be reunited with their families as soon as possible.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, convictions have come down in the case of a stolen solid gold toilet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The toilet was a conceptual art piece made of 18-karat gold, and it was on display at a palace near Oxford, England, when it was nabbed in 2019.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Prosecutors say the thieves smashed into the palace one early morning, dislodged the toilet, rolled it to their car, and placed it in the trunk.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It weighed over 200 pounds.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Security footage from the scene shows one of the thieves carrying just the solid gold toilet seat as he heads back to the getaway car.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, a jury found two defendants guilty of stealing, dismantling, and selling off parts of the toilet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A third man had previously pleaded guilty after police found his DNA at the scene, as well as hundreds of gold fragments on a pair of his sweatpants.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The artist who made the toilet is Maurizio Catalan, the same mind behind that banana duct-taped to a wall that sold for $6 million recently.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Of the toilet, Catalan said it was intended as an absurd statement on inequality.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Before it was stolen, the toilet was functional.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of the men found guilty yesterday admitted that he'd gone to the palace to see it on display and used it, as visitors were permitted to.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When asked what it was like, he said, quote, Splendid.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines today on The Daily.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: More on President Trump's showdown with the courts. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
