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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, May 29th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm ecstatic. President Trump's order that I got states, I hereby designate, direct, and empower the attorney general as my representative.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump has issued a flurry of pardons and commutations this week, granting clemency to more than two dozen people who had been convicted of a wide range of crimes, from theft to murder to tax fraud.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The president himself called me to let me know that my family was coming back together.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Among the most high-profile were pardons for real estate moguls Julie and Todd Chrisley, who starred in the reality TV show Chrisley Knows Best.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They'd been convicted of evading taxes and defrauding banks of more than $30 million to support their lavish lifestyle.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Their daughter Savannah, who celebrated their release from prison yesterday, had championed their case at the Republican National Convention last year, framing it as political persecution.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'll never forget what the prosecutor said before an Obama-appointed judge. He called us the Trumps of the South.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Chrisley's case underscores how Trump has redefined the presidential pardon power, turning it from a formal vetted process into a tool to reward his supporters and incentivize loyalty.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of Trump's advisers leading the pardon process posted this week, quote, no MAGA left behind.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House has not released a full list of its latest pardons, but The Times has identified a number of them, including a former Republican state senator from Arkansas who was convicted of accepting bribes, and a major Republican donor from the 2016 campaign who violated lobbying and campaign finance laws.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also on the list, Larry Hoover, who used to run one of Chicago's most notorious gangs, the Gangster Disciples, which raked in more than $100 million a year in drug sales.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Hoover had been sentenced to over 200 years in prison for murder. But after years of lobbying from his supporters, including celebrities like Kanye West, his federal sentence is now commuted, though he's expected to remain in prison for the rest of his life since he was also convicted at the state level.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In another twist, President Trump has tariffs many of which were rolled out only for the president to suspend them days later.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A panel of federal judges has now ruled that some of them are illegal.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The ruling applies to some of the steepest tariffs Trump issued, including ones on China, Canada, and Mexico.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To put them in place, Trump invoked an economic emergency law from the 1970s.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He argued that the U.S. trade deficit is an emergency, giving him the power to act.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That was a novel interpretation since the law doesn't even mention tariffs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade said the surcharges, quote, exceed any authority granted to the president.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's not exactly clear if or when tariff collection will grind to a halt.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The ruling gave the White House 10 days to comply.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration has already said it will appeal, and a White House spokesman criticized the court, saying, quote, it is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, two other quick updates on the Trump administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last night that the administration will, quote, aggressively revoke the visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in what he called critical fields.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The short announcement, with little detail, could upend the lives of some of the quarter million Chinese students in the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're the second-largest international student group after India.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Until now, family members of even the most high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials could attend American universities.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The daughter of China's president, Xi Jinping, graduated from Harvard in 2014 under a pseudonym.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And American universities have long benefited from enrolling Chinese students, both financially from their tuition and at research laboratories, where they've been able to recruit some of China's most talented students.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also, Elon Musk, who once called himself President Trump's first buddy, officially confirmed his time as a government employee is ending.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For the first few months of Trump's term, Musk had so much influence with the president that White House aides told The Times they felt he was basically holding the administration captive as he carried out a slash-and-burn campaign on federal programs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Eventually, though, complaints from lawmakers and cabinet members about Musk became too much for Trump to tune out, and the two have been operating at a distance.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Musk has also faced backlash from the public, which hurt profits at his electric car company, Tesla.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said he now go back to focusing on his companies.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As Musk announced his exit, he also took a swipe at Trump's signature domestic policy legislation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and I remind the work that the Doge team is doing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In an interview with CBS, Musk bemoaned the fact that the bill will drive up government spending after he and his team were brought on to cut it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When asked about Musk's criticism, Trump declined to respond directly.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In France, recently, two weeks ago, a young mother with her baby was on a street in the 11th Rondissement in Paris, and a van squealed up.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A bunch of men in black with masks jumped out and tried to haul her into the van.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's the latest example of these brazen kidnapping attempts of people who are either related to crypto entrepreneurs or are themselves in the crypto world.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Catherine Porter has been reporting on the recent string of kidnappings related to cryptocurrency.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the past six months, the attacks have grown brutal, from the daylight attempt on the young mother, to dousing a crypto influencer's father in gasoline and shoving him in a car trunk, to kidnappers cutting off victims' fingers, all to try and scare up million-dollar ransoms.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is happening around the world, but there seems to have just been an explosion in France, and why there's this explosion in France.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You know, police are not fully clear yet. They're still investigating.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But from what we can tell and some of the theories that have been put out is that they believe the organizers of this are drug criminals that contract out younger men who are looking for quick money and are often in gangs to do their dirty work and do quick contract jobs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Catherine says officials think crypto heists are basically the new bank robberies.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And they're concerned that the digital nature of crypto makes it a prime target, since getting a password may seem easier than drilling into a vault.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some crypto experts, however, say that's a misconception.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Crypto may have started as the digital wild west, but it's become increasingly secure.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In one recent case where a ransom was paid, authorities were able to freeze and recover almost all of it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, in the U.S., this past week, police in New York arrested three people in connection with an alleged crypto kidnapping.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The victim was held and tortured for nearly three weeks in a Manhattan apartment in an attempt to get access to his Bitcoin wallet before he managed to escape.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, The Times is remembering the lives of two master Hollywood craftsmen whose names you probably don't know but whose work you've almost certainly seen.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Bruce Logan, aka the man who blew up the Death Star in Star Wars, has died at 78.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He was the special effects designer behind the iconic explosion, which he had to pull off before CGI was really a thing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Great shot, kid. That was one in a million.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To get the shot, Logan had to set off a series of mini homemade bombs full of gasoline, titanium chips, and napalm.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And I do remember kind of wiping some burning napalm off my arm after one of the explosions as I was walking in a way.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Logan also worked on Tron, Airplane, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And Greg Canham died earlier this month at 73.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's the Oscar-winning makeup artist who made Robin Williams into the white-haired, rosy-cheeked nanny Mrs. Doubtfire.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And transformed a whole generation of other stars.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He gave Jim Carrey his freaky green face in The Mask.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Broken!
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He turned the Waynes brothers, two black actors, into white chicks in White Chicks.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You are a girl, and you better start acting like one or you're going to be an unemployed girl.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And in what Canham described as the highlight of his career, he reverse-aged Brad Pitt from an old man to a baby in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A lot of the movie magic Logan and Canham were able to pull off is now done with computers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But they did it with foam, paint, silicone, and that touch of napalm.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, a look at how Harvard's battle with the Trump administration is escalating.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
