--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, February 13th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. We had a great call, and it lasted for a long time, over an hour. President Trump said he had a productive call with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday about how to end the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I think I can say with great confidence he wants to see it ended also. That's good. And we're going to work toward getting it ended and as fast as possible.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Their conversation marks a dramatic break from how the U.S. had approached Russia as an adversary that needed to be isolated. Trump is now taking a different tack.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he'll come here and I'll go there. The idea that the U.S. and Russia might be the ones deciding how the war ends has raised concerns in Ukraine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Biden administration had previously said it would follow Ukraine's lead for any peace talks. Now Ukraine could be sidelined. Trump didn't call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky until after he'd talked with Putin.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For the moment, it's unclear what a deal to end the war would look like. But Putin suggested on Wednesday that Russia won't stop fighting without some concessions, and Ukraine will likely have little leverage.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's insisted that it wants to regain all the territory Russia has seized going back to 2014. But yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called that unrealistic.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As part of its promised crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has now flown nearly 100 migrants to Guantanamo Bay.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some are being housed in an empty wing of the prison complex built to hold terrorism suspects after 9-11 and are being guarded by troops.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Officials say many of the migrants are violent gang members from Venezuela but they haven released their identities or any evidence of their connections to criminal activity.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has only been able to find out who half of them are. Keeping the names quiet makes it harder for lawyers to challenge their detention and keeps the migrants families in the dark about where they are.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One woman only found out that her brother was there when she saw him in a photo online. Just a couple of days ago, she was scrolling through TikTok, as one does, when she suddenly saw a picture of her brother that had been posted by the Department of Homeland Security.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Julie Turkowitz spoke with Yajira Castillo, whose brother Luis Alberto Castillo was shown in a photo at the base with his head down, being led by a man wearing camo and latex gloves.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: So I said to her, you know, the U.S. government has said that your brother is among the worst of the worst.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: The U.S. government says that he is a member of the criminal group the Tren de Aragua. Is this true?
--:-- Yajira Castillo: Cual criminal, que criminal. She says, my brother is not a criminal. And she says he's the father of one. He's from Venezuela.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: He had been living in Colombia trying to make a living, wasn't making very much money, went to the U.S. to make a better life and somehow got wrapped up in this.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: Julie says people familiar with Castillo's arrest told her officials suspected him of gang activity because he has a Michael Jordan tattoo on his neck.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: But a Jordan tattoo isn't necessarily a clear indicator since basketball has been incredibly popular in Venezuela for decades.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: When asked, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security first told the Times that officers couldn't determine whether Castillo was a gang member, saying, he may very well be, he may not be.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: In a follow-up, she said they had new information that he was but did not share it.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: I think that what this case tells us is that we have the Department of Homeland Security telling the American public that it is sending the most violent criminals, members of this criminal group, the Tren de Aragua.
--:-- Julie Turkowitz: But we don't really have any evidence to back up what the government is saying. So we really have no clue who could be sent to Guantanamo Bay in the future.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here four other brief updates on the Trump administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of Trump most divisive cabinet picks Tulsi Gabbard has now been sworn in as director of national intelligence.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She'll oversee America's spy agencies and give the president his daily intelligence report.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There were bipartisan concerns that she's been too supportive of authoritarian leaders like Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But only one Republican senator voted against her confirmation, Mitch McConnell, who said she showed, quote, a history of alarming lapses in judgment.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Wednesday, the White House got the green light to move forward with its plan to pay federal workers to resign.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A judge ruled that the unions who challenged the offer didn't have the legal standing to do so.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 75,000 government employees have already volunteered to leave their jobs in exchange for getting paid through September.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's about 3% of the federal civilian workforce.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over at the State Department, documents show that officials are planning a massive contract with Elon Musk's company, Tesla.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The agency says it will spend $400 million on armored vehicles this year, likely souped-up versions of the sci-fi-looking Cybertruck.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Musk was one of the Trump campaign's biggest donors, and he's been leading the administration's efforts to reduce government spending.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And across the country, some Republican lawmakers have been working to keep federal dollars flowing to their districts, even as they publicly cheer on Trump's drastic cuts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've been quietly asking for carve-outs and special exemptions.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For example, Republicans from states with a lot of farming have been scrambling to save a foreign aid program that bought huge amounts of crops from American farmers to distribute overseas.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For the past few years, people taking wildly popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic have been reporting an unexpected side effect.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They were drinking less. Now new research is backing that up.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A study published yesterday in the journal JAMA followed adults who struggled to control their alcohol consumption.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the course of the research the group who was given the key ingredient in Ozempic, semaglutide, drank noticeably less than others who were given a placebo.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Researchers think that since the drug impacts reward pathways in the brain, it can make alcohol less enticing in the same way it makes food less appealing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The caveat? The new study was small, with less than 50 people.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And doctors warned that more data is needed before the drug could actually be prescribed for treating substance abuse disorders.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, which everybody totally remembered, right?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It is the day of a million bouquets, and the Times Climate Desk has been looking into the environmental impact of the flower trade.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's actually a rough time of year to have a flower-centric holiday. Not a lot blooms in the U.S. in the winter.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Definitely not millions and millions of red roses.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So, right now, whole loads of fresh flowers are being flown into the country on refrigerated planes from Colombia and Ecuador.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But anyone looking for something grown closer to home, potentially with a smaller carbon footprint, can look for tulips.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The U.S. used to rely on the Netherlands for those, but over the last decade, a bunch of American growers have gotten into the business.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Tulips are now the only flower mass-grown in the U.S. in the winter on such a scale that you can find them at most local shops.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And for anyone who is feeling less sentimental, less romantic, a reminder, there's a lot of other ways to mark Valentine's Day, including a fundraiser at a Texas zoo where they will name a cockroach after your ex, feed it to a possum, film the whole thing, and then send that video to your ex.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, the rise of bird flu in the U.S. and why the government may not be prepared to get it under control.
--:-- 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. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.
