--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, April 11th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. The chaos that President Trump's tariffs unleashed on the stock market is not over yet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A day after the biggest rally since 2008, stocks resuming their sell-off. Despite initially soaring after Trump said he was pausing most of his tariffs, stocks then tumbled again yesterday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can see the big red arrows there for the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 as well, each down by at least 4 percent.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's a sign that investors are still unnerved by all of the back and forth, and that they're concerned about a big part of Trump's trade war that he hasn't backed down from, his standoff with China.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The president's now pushed tariffs on China to 145 percent, while he's been repeating his claim that the country's ripping off the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And China has retaliated with its own steep surcharges that have now reached 125 percent.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They can raise their tariffs, but so what? Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Besant brushed off the escalating tariffs this week, saying China will be the one to lose out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: No one wins in a war, but it's proportionality, and the proportionality for the Chinese is going to be much worse.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The now sky-high tariffs will likely lead to higher prices on the hundreds of billions of dollars of goods the U.S. imports from China.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And China's tariffs, in turn, could be a huge blow to U.S. farmers, many of whom are in red states, potentially hitting voters who helped elect the president.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: China is America's largest foreign market for agriculture.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: During Trump's trade war with China in his first term, American farmers growing crops like soybeans and corn lost billions of dollars in revenue.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And ultimately, Trump handed out massive subsidies to try and stabilize the situation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has learned about an extraordinary and unorthodox new tactic the Trump administration is deploying in its crackdown on immigration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For years, the federal government has given Social Security numbers to migrants who have temporary permission to live in the U.S.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's allowed them to work and, in some cases, to receive benefits.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But this week, the Social Security Administration started moving thousands of migrants to its so-called "death list" the record it keeps of people who are supposed to be deceased and thus shouldn't get any benefits.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: To do that the agencies even had to enter fake dates of death for the migrants.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That data often then gets shared with banks and other financial institutions.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The head of the agency told staff that they were making this move because he wants the migrants' financial lives to be, quote, terminated.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Our reporting is showing that there's an aim here from the government that's pretty explicit, which is about President Trump's kind of edict to try to get people to self-deport.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The idea is that if you make their lives difficult enough, you make it clear that they're not going to be able to get access to their banks, their mortgages are going to cancel, their landlords might evict them, there are all kinds of problems they're going to have.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's really to scare people and to convince people to leave.
--:-- [Guest Alexandra Berzon joins the conversation]
--:-- Alexandra Berzon: The administration claims that the first group of people that it's added to the death list are convicted criminals or suspected terrorists.
--:-- Alexandra Berzon: But I can tell you that group includes a 13-year-old boy and seven other minors, raising concerns about how carefully the names were selected.
--:-- Alexandra Berzon: Every year there are already mistakes that are made and people mistakenly end up on this list and it can be an incredible difficulty to try to get off of it and really upend a person's life.
--:-- Alexandra Berzon: Now add to that more possibility you could end up with American citizens or immigrants who are not intended to be on the list.
--:-- Alexandra Berzon: And it could really wreak incredible financial havoc and disruption to people's lives.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In other immigration news, the Supreme Court has sided with the man that the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The justices unanimously said that the government needs to take steps to bring him home, though they didn't go so far as to order that he be brought back immediately.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Since they said there are unresolved questions about the role the courts can play in foreign affairs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This means for the moment, his return is still up in the air.
--:-- [Guest Farnaz Fasihi joins the conversation]
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: Do you have any idea what's happening for him or to him right now?
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: Have you had any contact?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Nothing.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: In an interview on MSNBC earlier this week, the man's wife rejected the government's claims that her husband is a violent gang member, and she said she'll keep fighting to bring him back to the U.S.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: I want to know when they will bring him back because my kids ask, when is he coming?
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: And I don't have an answer.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the Middle East this weekend American officials will sit down for talks with Iran as they try and rein in the country's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's the first time both sides will engage in nuclear talks since 2018 when President Trump pulled the U.S. out of a previous agreement.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Under that deal, the U.S. had dropped some of its economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on the country's stockpile of nuclear material.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: After that, relations between the two countries devolved, Iran raced forward with its nuclear program, and the U.S. put some of its crippling sanctions back in place.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the last word in all state matters, has said he really doesn't trust the United States.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He's called negotiations with the U.S. idiotic and unwise.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But he really doesn't have a choice.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: Farnaz Fasihi covers Iran for The Times.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: He conceded to talks because Iran is facing a cascade of crises.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: There's a shortage of energy, there's power cuts, there's shortage of water, the economy's tanking, the currency's plunging, there's widespread discontent among the population.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: And in order to be able to resolve all their problems, they need to have sanctions relief and they need to negotiate with the United States.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: The other major incentive for Iran and Mr. Khamenei to agree to talks is that they understand that if they don't negotiate, there's also the threat of war.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: President Trump and Israel have both clearly said that if negotiations fail, they will have to stop Iran's advancement in its nuclear program with military strikes.
--:-- Farnaz Fasihi: And agreeing to come to talks is one way to try to avoid that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Farnaz says that the two countries are far apart as they head into the talks this weekend.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump has said Iran can't be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But a former negotiator for Iran told The Times that any push to fully shut down the country's nuclear program would be a, quote, deal breaker.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the Dominican Republic, authorities announced they have ended their search for victims in the rubble of a collapsed nightclub there.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The roof of Jet Set, one of the most popular clubs in the country's capital city, came crashing down after midnight on Tuesday during a concert.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the head of the fire department there said some of the rescue workers stayed on site for 53 hours straight digging through the debris.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: By the time they ended their search yesterday the death toll had climbed to 221.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The club had been a go-to destination for live music for decades, popular with politicians, athletes, and bankers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A Dominican governor died in the collapse, as did two former Major League baseball players, and the celebrated merengue singer who was performing, Ruby Perez.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The tragedy has overwhelmed the local morgue.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some family members told The Times they spent days camped out there trying to claim their loved ones.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The morgue said it has identified most of the victims and is, quote, working tirelessly to finish the process.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, for every jaw-dropping car crash and fight scene and motorcycle flying off a cliff in the movies, there's a whole stunt team behind it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now the Academy Awards will recognize those unsung heroes who've mastered exactly how to get lit on fire and make it look good.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Starting with movies released in 2027, there will be a new Oscars category for achievement in stunt design.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For people in the industry, it's a long time coming.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ryan Gosling called out the lack of recognition that stunt teams get at the premiere of his movie Fall Guy last year, in which he plays a stuntman.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There's this sort of accepted dynamic where they come on set, they do all the cool stuff, they risk everything, and then they disappear into the shadows.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And we all pretend as though they were never there.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the time, Gosling joked that the movie was basically a giant campaign to get the Oscars to recognize stunts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: All of the details about eligibility and how exactly the stunt award will work haven't been released yet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But it's not the only change coming to the Oscars.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Next year, the Academy will give out its first ever award for casting for the people who pulled together a film's ensemble.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That will be the first new category for the awards in 20 years.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- 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, Alyssa Moxley, Zoe Murphy, Paula Schumann, and Chris Wood.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The headlines will be back on Monday.
