--:-- Host: Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 18th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is an active investigation. It's very early on. It's really important that we do not speculate. Authorities have released only a few details about the dramatic crash landing of a Delta Airlines flight in Toronto yesterday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The small jet was carrying 80 people on a flight from Minneapolis when it tried to touch down amid heavy winds and drifting snow. As it landed, it flipped upside down, losing its tail and a wing. No one was killed, but 18 people were injured.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There was no like real indication of anything. And then, yeah, we hit the ground and we were sideways and then we were upside down, hanging like bats. And then everybody was just like, get out, get out, get out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We could smell like jet fuel. And then we just crawled out the back of the airplane. Passengers described having to climb out of the overturned plane as part of it burst into flames.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's not clear what caused the crash, but it's the latest in a series of recent airline disasters that has travelers on edge, including a deadly crash in South Korea in December where a plane slid off the runway and the midair collision near Washington last month between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As the Trump administration tries to carry out its plan for sweeping deportations, it's faced a major challenge. Many migrants in the U.S. come from countries it's not easy to deport them back to for various reasons, like Afghanistan, Iran, or China.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now the administration has come up with an alternate plan. Send them to another country that is willing to take them. In the last week, the U.S. military has flown hundreds of people who come from countries in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East to Panama.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 350 of them are now locked in a hotel in Panama City. They've been told they're going to be sent to a camp near the jungle, then on to their home countries.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The government of Panama is not allowing journalists to come and visit these migrants and interview them but they visible from their windows of their hotel and they were able to get their messages out through holding up signs, such as one woman did holding up a piece of paper that read Afghan.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Another family of Iranian asylum seekers who had fled for America wrote in lipstick on the window, help us.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Hamad Ali Aziz says the migrants have been stripped of their passports and barred from talking to lawyers. He was able to speak with one woman who held onto her cell phone.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague and I were able to get a hold of one migrant in the hotel, an Iranian woman named Artemis Gossamzadeh. She's 27 years old, and she was a Christian convert in Iran.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She had hoped to come to America to build a new life and be able to practice her religion, Christianity, freely. Of course, in Iran, converting from Islam is a crime punishable by death, so currently she is very, very concerned about her future.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that none of the migrants told authorities they were scared to return to their home country. But Hamad says many feel they are in danger, and some people in the hotel described desperate attempts to escape.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One man broke his leg trying. The plan to send migrants to other countries will soon extend beyond Panama. Costa Rica announced yesterday that it will also accept deportees.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A flight carrying around 200 people, originally from Central Asia and India, is expected to land there this week. This is an indicator that countries that are hoping to come into the good graces of the United States are willing to do things like this, take on hundreds of migrants from countries across the world.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the Trump administration has not been shy about saying that they will look for all avenues to deport people. And that just because an individual is from a country that is hard to deport to it will not prevent them from being removed from the United States.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And this is an indication that they really mean that Three other quick updates on the Trump administration The Education Department is warning schools they will lose their federal funding if they take race into account in any, quote, aspects of student, academic and campus life.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The new directive could be especially disruptive to colleges and universities, including those that have race-based scholarships and grants, or even housing, like sororities or fraternities intended for students of a specific background.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's the latest push by the administration to frame diversity and inclusion efforts as a form of racial discrimination, particularly against white and Asian students.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the Social Security Administration, the agency's top official has abruptly resigned after refusing to give Elon Musk's team access to sensitive personal data about millions of Americans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Musk has claimed that the Social Security program is rife with fraud and waste, but a recent audit showed that less than 1% of payments were improper.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's not clear if Musk's team did eventually get access to the Social Security systems, which include medical records and financial data.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the events over the past month have been built to break our wills. But we are the American people. We will not break.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Thousands of people took to the streets across the country yesterday to protest the Trump administration. Many of them said they feel Trump is acting like a king, not a president.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And they held signs with messages like, this is a coup, and save democracy. The protests were largely organized by the 50-51 movement, which has been pushing back against what it says is Trump's overreach.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the Middle East, the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold, but Israel's military has been ramping up its operations in the West Bank.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A weeks operation by the Israeli military there has forced about 40 Palestinians from their homes It the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory in over 50 years.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Residents tell the Times that soldiers used megaphones to order them out of their houses and threatened to shoot them if they didn't leave.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Israel says its goal is to root out militant groups to prevent them from attacking Israelis, and that it never ordered any evacuations.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The military has demolished scores of buildings, used armored bulldozers to rip up roads, and destroyed water pipes and power lines, adding to the damage from previous raids in the territory.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally... It's the meat! Everybody loves meat, and you can get good meat! Meat raffles are really blowing up, depending on where you live.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're pretty much exactly what they sound like. You buy a raffle ticket, you hope you win some meat. For a dollar, maybe five dollars, you could win a nice steak, a pork tenderloin, I won a ham once.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The events have been kicking around Minnesota and Wisconsin for over 100 years. Now they're spreading to other states.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also states with cold weather, where people want to pack inside in the winter and cross their fingers for a rack of ribs. Some churches and kids' sports teams rely on them as fundraisers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Organizers say they can raise $5,000 to even $15,000 a night, depending on the turnout. One woman who runs meat raffles in western New York says they've really taken off.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She now runs 100 of them a year. For some, the appeal is obvious. A snowplow operator who went to a raffle at a VFW in a suburb of Buffalo told The Times, You can win meat. You don't have to go to the grocery store. How can you go wrong with that?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines today on The Daily. An interview with one of President Trump's key economic advisors on how he thinks tariffs can change America's relationship with China. 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.
