--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, February 7th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. Elon Musk bragged this week about putting USAID, the agency that disperses billions in foreign aid, into the wood chipper. Exactly what that means in practice is now becoming clear.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration plans to cut the agency's 10,000-plus workers down to just 290. Its staff was told to expect to be let go or put on leave by today.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The agency's been around since the 1960s, delivering health services and disaster aid worldwide. It's done humanitarian work in Ukraine, HIV prevention in Uganda, and helped contain outbreaks of Ebola.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Global health experts say those efforts helped the U.S. keep a friendly presence overseas and build allies in developing countries.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will now oversee what's left of USAID, said the agency is wasteful. It's come under fire in the past for spending money on botched projects.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He also accused the agency of insubordination and pushing a liberal agenda, counter to President Trump.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We're not being punitive here, but this is the only way we've been able to get cooperation from USAID. I had preferred not to do it this way.
--:-- Marco Rubio: [at a press conference] The United States will be providing foreign aid, but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The staff cuts at USAID come on top of a spending freeze that had already paralyzed most of the agency's programs. That includes multiple clinical trials the agency was funding around the world.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Stephanie Nolan, who covers global health, has been trying to track down what's been stopped.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: Normally what I would have done is go to the USAID website and start looking there, but the website's been taken offline.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: And my next step would have been that I would have called the communications department, but there isn't one anymore.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: What I had to do was just think about all the researchers I'd ever met. And I started just sending mass emails and text messages. Did you have a trial underway that had USAID funding? Do you have a colleague who does? Do you know of one that might be affected by this?
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: Stephanie found that at least 30 studies have been frozen, including trials of cholera treatment and a vaccine study for HIV.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: She says there may be more, but all of the public records are now gone, and the staff is prohibited from speaking to the media.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: Some scientists, who talked to me on the condition of anonymity, say stopping the trials before they're finished has left them in what feels like an impossible spot.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: Conversations that I had with researchers when I tracked them down were really extraordinary and just described feeling completely trapped.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: You know, they're trapped between these explicit orders that they've been given and their ethical obligation as scientists to care for people.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: They had real concerns in some cases for the safety of these people, people who, for example, have been given an experimental malaria vaccine.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: Someone's supposed to be checking them every couple of days for adverse health effects. And now they're cut off from those people completely.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: There isn't a way for them to continue the work that they've been doing on a lot of these things.
--:-- Stephanie Nolan: And it was, you know, one of them said to me, I watched my 36-year career vanish in a four-line email from someone who doesn't even understand what it is I do.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In other news from Washington, four quick updates.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: First, a federal judge hit pause on the Trump administration's payout offer for two million federal employees hours before midnight deadline.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The judge will hear arguments over whether the plan is legal on Monday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Two, just a day after President Trump signed an executive order to push trans women out of women's sports, the NCAA followed his lead.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It reversed its previous policy, which had left it up to individual sports — volleyball, rowing, etc. — to decide who could compete.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trans women will now be banned from all women's college sports.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Three, the head of the country's top election watchdog agency said yesterday President Trump tried to illegally fire her.
--:-- Ellen Weintraub: [in a letter] I hereby remove you from your position as chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ellen Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, posted a letter she got from Trump that said she was hereby removed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But she can only be fired after a replacement is nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Four on Capitol Hill, This man is incredibly dangerous to the foundations of our republic.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Democrats tried and failed to block Russell Vogt from becoming the next head of the Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Vogt helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint for Trump's second term.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's advocated for expanding the powers of the presidency and is a fierce critic of federal workers, saying they should be, quote, viewed as villains.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He was confirmed in a 53 to 47 vote along party lines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, the CDC posted some new data about bird flu to its website and then quickly took it down.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And scientists are now calling for the agency to release more information as soon as possible.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The data, which seemed to have been mistakenly shared in an unrelated report, showed that bird flu may have spread from cats to humans, and vice versa.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To experts, that's not unexpected. Cats are highly susceptible to the virus.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But there had not been any previous documented cases of cats passing it to people, and scientists now want the full findings released.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One virologist told The Times, quote, Given the number of cats in the U.S. and the close contact with people, there is definitely a need to understand the potential risk.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the last few years, bird flu has infected a growing range of mammals, giving the virus more opportunities to mutate in ways that can make it easier to spread to humans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The CDC used to release relevant data on bird flu in weekly reports, but a temporary ban on communications that the Trump administration put in place has disrupted that schedule.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, Now that the stage is set, we're ready once again to serve as backdrop for the ultimate show.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: New Orleans is getting ready to welcome tens of thousands of football fans for this Sunday's Super Bowl 59.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And they'll arrive in a city that officials say is ready for the spotlight.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Around Bourbon Street, they beefed up security after the deadly attack there on New Year's Eve.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And parts of the city near the Superdome have been revamped.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Years of grime have been power washed off City Hall. They repaved roads, planted trees, painted murals, and installed millions of dollars of new lights and sidewalks.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: New Orleans has invested tons of money in improving infrastructure and beautifying the core of the city ahead of the Super Bowl.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But the question is, who is ultimately going to benefit from it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Rick Rojas has been reporting from the city and talking to people who live there about the makeover.
--:-- Rick Rojas: Once you kind of step outside the footprint of the Super Bowl, the grittiness is still there.
--:-- Rick Rojas: The potholes are still there, the broken traffic lights, the problems with storm drainage.
--:-- Rick Rojas: And so it's not so much that people are angry that these investments have been made, but it's more this sense of, okay, well, what about us?
--:-- Rick Rojas: This is a familiar tension for the city.
--:-- Rick Rojas: The economy in New Orleans is really underpinned by tourism.
--:-- Rick Rojas: It provides jobs, it sustains businesses, it gives the city a cultural cachet that allows it to punch above its weight.
--:-- Rick Rojas: But it also can perpetuate income inequality because a lot of the work is service-oriented.
--:-- Rick Rojas: It's contributed to a shortage of affordable housing.
--:-- Rick Rojas: And it's not an us-versus-them kind of situation, but there is this feeling that sometimes the powers that be in New Orleans are more concerned about tourism than investing in the people that live there and work there.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake, the rap battle that has consumed the music world and sparked a legal fight.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Elian Peltier, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford.
