--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, February 27th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The United States economy is starting to show signs of strain under President Trump's aggressive agenda. It's still the strongest economy in the world, but economists warn that the relative calm that Trump inherited could be in jeopardy.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When he took office last month, there was stable growth and inflation was easing. Three of Trump's big policy moves could shift that. First, there's the widespread funding freezes. They've thrown billions of dollars of projects focused on infrastructure and clean energy into limbo, rattling businesses and states that had already started working on them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And U.S. farmers took a hit when the crops they export for foreign aid programs got caught up in the spending pause. On the tariff front, Trump's plans to put hefty surcharges on America's biggest trading partners, China, Canada, and Mexico, could cause prices to rise at home and trigger trade wars.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Consumers are watching warily. A recent survey of consumer sentiment showed the largest monthly decline in four years. And the flood of government layoffs is also contributing to the unease.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The dismissed federal workers are a small percentage of the overall American workforce. But tens of thousands of people losing their jobs at once could affect what has been a historically strong labor market.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump has acknowledged that his policies could bring some initial pain. His plan is that cutting taxes and government spending, as well as other initiatives, will offset that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But even some of his biggest supporters have expressed concern about where the economy is headed. Last week, Larry Kudlow, a Fox business host who served in the first Trump administration, said, quote, At least for now, the economic signals are flashing slower growth and higher inflation. Not good.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, we have to get the prices down, not the inflation down, the prices of eggs and various other things. Eggs are a disaster.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of the biggest economic issues that Trump ran on, the price of groceries, is still front and center for many Americans, especially egg prices. The bird flu outbreak has pushed those prices to record highs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump acknowledged the situation in his first cabinet meeting yesterday and... All right, y'all want to talk eggs? Yeah. Let's do it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His new secretary of agriculture Brooke Rollins said the U was looking at temporarily importing eggs But we talking to three or four countries right now about getting between 70 and 100 million eggs into the country in the next month or two which of course will help with supply and demand
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Turning to imports may only have a limited impact on the market since the U.S. consumes billions of eggs each month. Rollins said the administration will also be funding measures to fight bird flu, including developing vaccines for chickens.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also at yesterday's cabinet meeting. Is anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, we'll throw him out of here.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump dismissed growing criticism of Elon Musk that's been coming from both inside and outside of the federal government.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I have a lot of respect for Elon and that he's doing this. And some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's not only happy, they're thrilled.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As Musk's Department of Government Efficiency continues to fan out across federal agencies, looking for what to cut and who to fire, the Times has been looking at who is on that team.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House has not disclosed most of the names of the staffers, and Trump issued an executive order that effectively shields the group from open records laws.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When some of the Doge staffers have gone into federal agencies to grill employees about their work, they've even declined to share their own last names.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has now compiled a list of known Doge staffers. One big theme is how many ties these folks have to his private companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, X, and a bunch of his other enterprises.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They have worked at his companies and clearly were recruited through that network. My colleague Nick Nehamas has been digging into who works at Doge.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He says few of the staffers have any government experience. One of the Doge aids really exemplifies what's happening is a young man, a software engineer named Luke Farreter, who dropped out of college, is a prize-winning computer scientist, 23 years old.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And we have seen him play a key role across at least half a dozen federal agencies, including shutting down USAID.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Nick says many federal workers have told him they're concerned about the young team's inexperience. They're having to walk DOGE staffers through how their agencies work, step by step.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And in some cases, staffers have been fired and then quickly unfired when it became clear that their work was more essential than DOGE aides realized.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I think what we learned is that this group is extremely empowered to break things in their words inside the federal government and keep moving fast and keep moving forward
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Chief Justice John Roberts has given the Trump administration its first Supreme Court victory in its attempts to slash government spending.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Late last night, Roberts said the government does not have to immediately pay more than $1.5 billion for foreign aid work that's already been completed.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That includes AIDS relief programs and other life-saving humanitarian efforts. The government had been facing a midnight deadline set by a lower court to make those payments, but government lawyers asked the Supreme Court for more time, saying the payments posed a logistical issue.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Robert's order is only temporary. The full court is expected to consider the matter soon.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: There are more than 100,000 people waiting for an organ transplant in the United States. It's a life or death issue for them. They have faith in the organ transplant system, which was designed to prioritize fairness.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And increasingly, it is, in more and more cases, a lie. My colleague Brian Rosenthal, along with a team of Times investigative reporters, has discovered that strict federal guidelines for organ donations are being regularly ignored.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The system is supposed to work like this. For every organ that becomes available, nonprofit groups called procurement organizations turn to a computer-generated list of possible recipients.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They're supposed to prioritize the sickest patients. But there's been a shift, and the procurement organizations are now leapfrogging over hundreds and sometimes thousands of people.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Brian says that's in large part because in the past few years, the federal government made a well-intentioned push to make sure no organs go to waste.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But under that increased pressure, the system started to warp. If the organ is at risk of becoming unusable, the procurement organization can use something called an open offer.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And that is when they just pick a hospital, they call them, and they say, here we have this organ, put it into any of your patients.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The organ procurement organizations say they give these open offers only as a last resort, but we found that these procurement organizations are increasingly using open offers just to cut staffing costs and save money and sometimes just steal organs to preferred hospitals
--:-- Tracy Mumford: These practices are exacerbating disparities in healthcare We found that when organizations use open offers transplants disproportionately go to white patients, Asian patients, patients with college degrees, and patients who are healthier.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Earlier this month, the Times took its findings to the federal contractor that oversees the transplant system.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The contractor said that procurement organizations should not be allowed to ignore the waiting lists, and said it had ordered increased oversight of the process.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The full investigation is at nytimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, Gene Hackman has died at 95. The Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead yesterday afternoon in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: According to police, no foul play is suspected. Hackman had a 40-year career in Hollywood.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: His breakout role and his first Academy Award came with the 1971 crime film The French Connection.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Let me hear you say it. Come on. Have you ever been to Poughkeepsie? You've been to Poughkeepsie, haven't you?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yeah. Let's do it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He became the go-to everyman who could play a little bit of everything. A thief, a president, a submarine commander, a sheriff.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You got a stupid smile, you know that, pal. Can you see it?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Hackman joked it was because he looked just average. He said he resembled your everyday mine worker.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At one point, he was considered the hardest working man in Hollywood, churning out as many as four films a year.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He did psychological thrillers, westerns, comedies. One of his last movies, before he unofficially retired, was the Royal Tenenbaums, where he played the absentee father of three child prodigies.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Everyone's against me. That's your fault, man. Yeah, I know, but dammit, I want this family to love me.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In an interview with GQ magazine, Hackman was once asked to sum up his life in a single phrase. He replied, quote, he tried.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I think that'd be fairly accurate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines today on The Daily. How Trump's firing spree at the Pentagon, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has rocked the military.
--:-- 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.
