--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Monday, February 17.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. President Trump is pushing forward with his plan for the U.S. to negotiate directly with Russia over an end to the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, top American officials are set to have face-to-face meetings with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia. So far, it's not clear if Ukraine will be involved in the talks at all, even though it's said that it will not accept a peace deal that it doesn't help negotiate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The plans for a U.S.-Russia meeting come after Trump shocked Ukraine and much of Europe by having a 90-minute call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who the West had tried to isolate for years, ever since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump is rethinking the entire dynamic here. That has some people uncomfortable.
--:-- [Sound of a news clip plays in the background]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Fox News yesterday, Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, defended the president's approach to the war.
--:-- Mike Waltz: Look, the Ukrainian people have fought valiantly. The United States and Europe has supported this effort, but the United States unquestionably has borne the brunt of that support over the years.
--:-- Mike Waltz: The U.S. is open to supporting Ukraine going forward, but that it needs something in return. He doubled down on a proposal by the administration to have Ukraine give the U.S. 50 percent of its mineral rights, including for lithium, uranium and graphite, if it wants the U.S. to keep sending military aid.
--:-- Mike Waltz: Ukraine's president has rejected that demand, but Waltz suggested the U.S. will keep pushing them to accept that kind of deal.
--:-- Mike Waltz: The American people deserve to be recouped deserve to have some type of payback for the billions that they have invested in this war.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile Trump direct outreach to Russia and sidelining of Ukraine have sent European leaders scrambling.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Paris, leaders from France, Germany, Britain, Italy and other countries are gathering for an emergency meeting to discuss if Europe can continue to rely on the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, my colleague Anton Troianovsky explains how Trump has shaken the U.S.-European alliance.
--:-- Anton Troianovsky: They obviously knew that the Trump presidency was going to be different from Joe Biden, but they were not expecting such a dramatic departure from American post-World War II consensus about foreign policy, which was America is committed to NATO, committed to the defense of Europe, and committed to protecting democracies that find themselves threatened.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The first legal case testing how President Trump has been trying to reshape the federal government has reached the Supreme Court.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The case centers on how his administration fired the head of a watchdog agency that protects whistleblowers and enforces ethics rules.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The law says that the head of the agency, who was confirmed by Congress for a five-year term, can only be removed by the president for, quote, inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But the Trump administration fired him in a one-sentence email without giving any reason, and he sued.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After legal challenges in lower courts, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, which it's expected to do in the next few days.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The question will be whether Congress has the power to pass laws limiting who the president can fire.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Precedent says it does, based on a Supreme Court ruling from the 1930s But in recent years the conservative justices on the court have called that an unconstitutional limit on the president power and have already laid the groundwork for overturning it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has learned that the Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a member of Elon Musk's team access to millions of American-sensitive data.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That includes tax returns, banking details, social security numbers, and other private information.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The IRS is expected to let the employee, a young software engineer, have broad access to the agency's systems.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A White House spokesman said it was part of an effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and that it, quote, takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's the latest move by a member of Musk's so-called Department of Government efficiency team to get an unprecedented view into government systems.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've been going beyond what is typical, including their recent push to dig into the United States Treasury system that directs all payments across the federal government.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That effort has faced legal challenges. The new move to access the IRS data could also end up in court.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is one of the most serious weather events we've dealt with in at least a decade.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Kentucky, severe rainstorms have flooded parts of the state, stranding residents and leaving at least nine people dead.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Tens of thousands of residents have lost power, and Governor Andy Beshear said rescue efforts could last all week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This may be a record, but portions of more than 300 state roads and federal roads are currently blocked due to flooding, slides, or damage.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Again that means we have this type of damage and disruption statewide It yet another severe weather event for a state that has been battered by storms mudslides and numerous floods in recent years
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And as climate change drives up the risk of flooding, the state is trying to find long-term solutions.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In one effort, they've been trying to move entire communities up to higher ground.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars reclaiming old mining sites on top of cleared mountains to build housing there.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For now, people in Kentucky are already bracing for more intense weather.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the coming days, another storm could dump up to six inches of snow.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, if you have ever forgotten your password, your PIN number, your friend's birthday, this is not going to make you feel better about yourself.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This month, the Memory League World Championship crowned a new winner, Vijva Rajkumar, who was able to memorize a string of 80 random numbers after looking at them for only 13.5 seconds.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 80 numbers, all of them, in 13 and a half seconds. Rajkumar is a 20-year-old college student from India.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said he cried when he won, and he shared his winning strategies with the times.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His big advice is to use the memory palace technique.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There's a lot of variations of that, but it generally involves visualizing a large house, and then you assign different bits of information and memories to each room.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When you want to remember something, you mentally walk through the house and check the rooms.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Rajkumar essentially stashed numbers in his mental kitchen and bedroom and bathroom and then sprinted back through it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His other tip for memory is maybe easier to pull off, and that is hydration. Just drink a lot of water.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
