--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 12th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. Are you worried this is going to be a complete disaster? I'm going to work every day to make sure it's not a complete disaster. Let me put it that way.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Trump speaking]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser says she's going to be closely watching to see how President Trump's promised crackdown on the city will play out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump announced yesterday that he's seizing federal control of the city's police force and sending hundreds of National Guard troops to fight what he called totally out of control crime.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Trump speaking]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past that we're totally surprised.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Trump speaking]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is Liberation Day in D.C. and we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Trump speaking]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At a press conference yesterday, Trump painted a picture of D.C. as an urban hellscape and said he was invoking a 1970s law that gives the president the power to take over the district's police department for up to 30 days.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Trump speaking]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people. And we're not going to let it happen anymore. We're not going to take it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump's apocalyptic description of D.C., though, ignored the fact that violent crime there has dropped sharply since the pandemic and is now at a 30-year low. And as of earlier this year, the level of homelessness has also declined.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Details of the president's plan were still being worked out even as he made his announcement. And it's not clear, for example, what will happen to the homeless people Trump vowed to clear out or where exactly in D.C. the National Guard troops will be deployed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The president also suggested that he could turn his attention to other Democrat-led cities next.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Earlier this summer, Trump deployed nearly 5,000 National Guard troops, along with active-duty Marines, to L.A. after protests erupted over immigration raids there.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Political scientists and military experts The Times interviewed said the deployments Trump has ordered show how he increasingly drawing the country armed forces into partisan political issues
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One expert told The Times that Trump sees the military as a, quote, one-size-fits-all solution as he tries to accomplish his domestic political priorities.
--:-- [Audio clip of Shira Frankel speaking]
--:-- Shira Frankel: Meanwhile, The Times has been looking at how the Pentagon under President Trump has been strengthening its ties to Silicon Valley.
--:-- Shira Frankel: The U.S. Army has created a new unit, Detachment 201, that it says will, quote, fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.
--:-- Shira Frankel: And this summer, four current and former executives at Meta, OpenAI, and the data giant Palantir were sworn in at a ceremony to serve in the unit.
--:-- Shira Frankel: For years, a close partnership between the military and Silicon Valley was really out of the question. They put language into their terms, which specified that they would not do work with the military.
--:-- Shira Frankel: So you really saw a turning away from the defense establishment.
--:-- Shira Frankel: Shira Frankel covers the tech industry for The Times. She says now the tech world has instead plunged headfirst into the military-industrial complex.
--:-- Shira Frankel: OpenAI is making anti-drone tech. Meta is making virtual reality glasses to train soldiers for battle. And companies like Google, which used to have specific policies banning the use of its AI and weapons, have dropped those.
--:-- Shira Frankel: There isn't one specific reason that these companies are now rushing towards defense tech, but a few different factors are involved.
--:-- Shira Frankel: The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which relied heavily on new technology like AI-backed military systems and drones, have shown that new defense technology will be crucial for any modernized military.
--:-- Shira Frankel: The Trump administration has said they want to invest heavily in new defense technology. And the new budget that was recently passed earmarks over a trillion dollars, much of it for new defense tech.
--:-- Shira Frankel: Silicon Valley has always been about chasing what's new on the scene, and right now that's defense technology.
--:-- Shira Frankel: None of these companies, from the really big ones like Meta and Google, to the smallest startups, want to be left behind.
--:-- Shira Frankel: Shira says the new focus on military technology is in many ways a return to Silicon Valley roots The Defense Department was the first major backer of tech companies in the region stretching back to the Cold War
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, two more updates on the Trump administration. President Trump is buying more time as his negotiators try and reach a deal with the country's largest trading partner, China.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He signed an executive order late last night extending a trade truce with the country. That'll keep tariffs on most Chinese goods around 30 percent.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's still much higher than when he took office, but nowhere near the eye-popping levels that he originally threatened.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump said the negotiations have been going, quote, quite nicely, though there are still a number of sticking points, including the president's last-minute demand that China quadruple its purchase of American soybeans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The talks are now set to continue for another 90 days until the new deadline in early November.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also, President Trump has announced his new pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just weeks after he fired the previous commissioner when the agency published data showing weak job growth.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump called the report rigged. The firing set off a wave of criticism from economists, who warned that officials could now feel pressure only to release data that makes the White House look good, and that could erode the agency's credibility.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump's new nominee for the position is E.J. Antony, who's currently chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025 and other right-wing initiatives.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Announcing Antony's nomination, Trump wrote, Our economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the numbers released are honest and accurate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Antony will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Across the country, a handful of state and local governments are trying to help tackle a little-known issue affecting Americans who show up for jury duty.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: People who are called up and sit for days or weeks of a trial can often be exposed to deeply disturbing information.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're asked to listen closely to testimony about horrific experiences and to scrutinize sometimes grisly photos and videos.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They also can't talk about what they're going through with anyone while the trial is ongoing. not even their fellow jurors.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One woman, who was an alternate juror on a case involving the murder of two children in New York told the Times quote all I could do was go to the movies after the day ended sit in a dark theater and cry
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the course of trials mental health experts say jurors can develop secondary traumatic stress also known as vicarious trauma.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One study found that as many as 50% of jurors who served on difficult cases experienced symptoms like anxiety, sleep issues, or feeling emotionally drained.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For some people, those symptoms lasted years.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Jurors in federal trials can qualify for free counseling, but now lawmakers at the state and local levels are trying to expand those kinds of services.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Philadelphia, for example, recently rolled out a post-trial counseling program for jurors that draws on the same techniques used to provide emotional support to emergency medical workers after they've encountered a traumatic situation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally It was fiery orange with a blue tail And just coming straight down
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Earlier this summer, people in the southern U.S. reported a mysterious fireball It lit up the sky over South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some witnesses say it felt like an earthquake
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Scientists scrambled to figure out what it was
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They ultimately determined it was a meteor
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And it turns out one Georgia resident got a really up-close look.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A fragment of the space rock about the size of a cherry tomato punched through the roof of his house south of Atlanta.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A geologist at the University of Georgia who's been studying the sample since it was recovered just announced the space rock that hit the house appears to be older than the Earth itself.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The debris apparently missed the homeowner by about 14 feet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He told the geologist he's still finding specks of space dust around his living room.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And while that may have been a close call, there have been closer.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In 1954, a nine-pound meteorite went through the roof of a home in Alabama.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It bounced off a large radio and struck a woman, leaving her with bruises, but nothing worse than that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's believed to be the only documented collision on record of a meteor actually hitting a human.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, more on what President Trump's plans for D.C. could mean for other cities across the country.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can find that in the Listen tab of the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
