--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. Today's Tuesday, April 1st.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Two elections today in two different states could offer the clearest view yet of how American voters are feeling about Donald Trump's presidency so far.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: First, in Wisconsin, there's an election to fill a seat on the state Supreme Court, which will determine whether the court keeps its liberal majority or flips conservative.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The outcome could have national impact, since the court will likely oversee key election-related cases in the battleground state.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The race has now become the most expensive judicial race in American history.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The candidates and their supporters have spent nearly $100 million.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A huge portion of that money has come from Elon Musk and groups tied to him, as the billionaire has thrown his support behind the Trump-backed conservative candidate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Let me first hand out two $1 million checks in appreciation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the weekend, Musk took to the stage at a rally in support of the candidate, Brad Schimmel, and handed out two oversized checks to voters, the same stunt he used during the presidential election.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the same time... I'm working hard to make sure that voters understand that they should not stand for this, that we should not allow a seat on our Supreme Court to be bought.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, and her campaign have been calling out Musk's involvement and trying to mobilize voters who are upset with the drastic government cuts he's carried out under President Trump.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I spent several days traveling through a handful of towns in western Wisconsin.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And to a person, when you stop Wisconsinites to talk about this local race, you will get an earful about what has been happening in D.C. over the first couple of months of the Trump administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Ernesto Londoño has been reporting on the race.
--:-- Ernesto Londoño: He says that for some supporters of the conservative candidate, a vote for Schimmel is a way to also show their support for what Musk and Trump are doing in Washington.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On the other hand, I also found liberals think Trump has gone too far in eroding core Democratic norms.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You get a real sense of indignation, outrage, and fear.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And they see this election as a way to send a strong message from one of the battlegrounds of presidential races.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The second key race to watch today is a special election in Florida.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The House seat that Michael Waltz used to hold is up for grabs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He vacated it to become President Trump's national security advisor.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's a majority Republican district, and the Republican candidate is expected to win, but the Democrat has been picking up momentum.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As of a few weeks ago, he'd outraised his opponent 10 to 1, and the surge of support has Republican leaders nervously watching what the final margin will be.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A close race could be a warning sign for the GOP that concerns over Trump's presidency could be eroding Republican support down the ballot.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration announced yesterday that it has sent another plane of deportees to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On social media, President Trump shared a video, produced like a trailer for an action movie, showing a U.S. Air Force plane landing, troops marching, and handcuffed men being led away.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The men are then shown kneeling in the prison while their heads are shaved.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House says all 17 men, who they described as gang members, were deported under standard U.S. immigration law.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The administration supplied a list showing they'd either been accused or convicted of a crime that would make them eligible for deportation, including murder, assault, and theft.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Notably, the administration did not cite the Alien Enemies Act, the rationale it gave for its previous deportation flights to El Salvador.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That justification has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For far too long, we allowed standards to slip, and different standards for men and women in combat arms jobs. That's not acceptable.
--:-- Pete Hegseth: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he's eliminating the lower physical fitness requirements that had been in place for women in some combat roles.
--:-- Pete Hegseth: He announced the requirements must now be standardized for everyone.
--:-- Pete Hegseth: I'm signing this memorandum today.
--:-- Pete Hegseth: The services will review, and soon we will have nothing but the highest and equal standards for men and women in combat.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When the military first opened up all combat roles to women back in 2015, some branches set separate fitness standards for things like push-ups, sit-ups, and distance runs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the Marines for example, where men had to complete 34 push-ups in two minutes, women had to complete 15.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some officials saw that as essential for recruiting and retaining female soldiers but it also sparked a heated debate over whether that was compromising the readiness of combat units.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Hegseth has a history of saying women should not be in combat roles at all, though he softened that during his confirmation hearing, where he essentially previewed this approach of allowing women to serve only if they meet the same standards as men.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The most elite units in the military, like the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, have always required all members to pass the same physical tests.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Hegseth has ordered military leadership to implement the new standards by the end of October.
--:-- Dani Bloom: Recently, online searches for the drug ivermectin have been spiking, and doctors say they're fielding more and more questions about it, fueled in part by misinformation.
--:-- Dani Bloom: The drug is primarily used as a treatment for parasites in humans and animals, but it became a household name during the pandemic when people claimed it could treat COVID.
--:-- Dani Bloom: Research has shown it does not, though claims it can treat other illnesses are still spreading, particularly among right-wing influencers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Earlier this year, the actor Mel Gibson went on the Joe Rogan podcast and said he had friends recover from stage 4 cancer after taking ivermectin and other drugs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A video of that episode got 10 million views.
--:-- Dani Bloom: The problem is that ivermectin is, as far as we know now, not a miracle drug, and that there are a number of things people are trying to use it for that just have not been proven.
--:-- Dani Bloom: There is very early research into ivermectin and cancer.
--:-- Dani Bloom: The problem is that that research currently is mostly in animals or in Petri dishes.
--:-- Dani Bloom: We don't have large clinical trials done in humans.
--:-- Dani Bloom: What we do know for sure is that if you take ivermectin in high doses, it can have these pretty devastating effects on the central nervous system.
--:-- Dani Bloom: It can cause people to go into comas.
--:-- Dani Bloom: It can lead to seizures.
--:-- Dani Bloom: It can even be fatal.
--:-- Dani Bloom: A number of doctors that I spoke with expressed concern that people would turn to these unproven treatments without much input from a doctor.
--:-- Dani Bloom: And this doctor I spoke with said that he has seen patients with early stage highly treatable tumors who forego cancer drugs and instead take ivermectin and come back months later with cancers that have spread.
--:-- Dani Bloom: And so doctors are really getting concerned about not only the risks from the drug itself but also people having this sort of do approach to medicine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Dani says even as health providers are warning about the dangers of people taking ivermectin on their own, lawmakers in multiple Republican-controlled states are trying to make it easier for people to get the drug.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Last week, the governor of Arkansas signed a law allowing it to be sold over the counter.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's one of the trends of the swinging 60s to find dining rooms in the clouds.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The rotating restaurant, an architectural novelty from the 1960s and 70s, is making a comeback.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When you walk in, you can barely tell it's moving at all, but once you sit, you really feel it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's those glass-walled circular dining rooms at the very top of skyscrapers that spin slowly around so you can take in the whole view.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The first one opened in the U.S. in 1961.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That was La Ronde, perched above a shopping center in Honolulu.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Then everybody wanted one.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There's a rotating restaurant on top of the Space Needle in Seattle.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: St. Louis, Indianapolis, Houston, and Detroit all had one.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They sprang up in an age when construction in cities was booming, and people wanted to see the changing skylines up close.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But over the decades, the trend faded.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The machinery got old.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Maintenance costs soared, and there were safety concerns.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Many of the restaurants stopped spinning or closed entirely.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, though, what goes around comes back around.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The revolving bar and restaurant on top of the New York Marriott Marquis is spinning again, as are sky-high restaurants in Atlanta and San Francisco.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In New York, they had to add a trick to make sure that diners don't get disoriented.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Often, when people get up to use the bathroom, they have trouble finding their seat again because everything outside of the windows has shifted.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So they've added a bunch of highly visible landmarks inside the restaurant to help people find their way.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, more on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and how Elon Musk has put himself at the center of it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We'll be back tomorrow.
