Reuters World News - 'Liberation Day', Wisconsin, health layoffs and a deportation ‘error’

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff plan has investors and countries on high alert. Mass layoffs begin at U.S. health agencies. A liberal wins the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in a setback for Trump and Elon Musk. And a Maryland man was deported to El Salvador by mistake. *This podcast was updated to include an introduction to Reuters Economics Editor Dan Burns.   Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, how will Trump's sweeping tariffs unfold? A liberal wins the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, despite Musk's millions. Mass layoffs begin at U.S. health agencies, including the FDA and the CDC. And the Trump administration admits a Maryland man was deported and sent to prison in El Salvador by mistake. It's Wednesday, April 2nd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need. to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Sharon Rish Garson in New Jersey, and I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. April 2nd, reciprocal tariffs kick in. This afternoon,

President Trump will slap a broad set of tariffs on imports that will be more extensive than any in recent U.S. history. And while they're a central part of his economic policy agenda, he's also using them as a foreign policy tool. He argues that they'll count. counteract the impacts that decades of free trade deals have had on American workers and manufacturers. Our economics editor Dan Burns is here to lay out what to expect on what Trump is dubbed Liberation Day. So the White House has scheduled a big event in the Rose Garden. It's been billed for weeks as reciprocal tariffs, which suggests that this would be countermeasures against individual countries. if you've got a 25% tariff on U.S. goods, you're going to get a 25% tariff on your goods.

But it's not completely clear that that's, in fact, what will be announced. It's an enormous undertaking on a very short timeline. So that's led to a lot of confusion. And how would you characterize the impact that this could have on the global economy? Already, big policymakers at the global stage are expecting that these are, measures that are going to slow global growth. At a time when up till now, the U.S. economy in particular had been performing well, been outperforming its peers. But there had been in some indications that after a bit of a slump, places like Europe, we're starting to get back on their

feet. It is a moment where after this, it is expected to be a bit of a drag on growth. And there are outfits like Goldman Sachs who have substantially raised their probabilities of a U.S. recession resulting from all of this. On markets, investors are hunkering down awaiting details of the tariffs. They're not betting big on anything in case they get caught out by a potentially volatile reaction. Everyone agrees the announcement in the Rose Garden will be pivotal, but they're just not sure which way prices will swing.

Wisconsin voters have dealt the Trump administration a setback. I never could have imagined. that I'd be taking on the richest man in the world. Electing Susan Crawford to the state's Supreme Court. For justice in Wisconsin, and we won. It's a blow, Elon Musk. He poured millions into her conservative rivals race, helping to make it the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history.

Her victory means the court maintains its four-three liberal majority. And in Florida, two Republicans have won their special elections to fill House vacancies, by Trump's cabinet picks. The victories give Republicans a House majority of 220 to 213. These are not normal times in America. It was a record-breaking speech on the Senate floor. In an address that began on Monday evening and ended 25 hours later,

Democratic Senator Cory Booker accused President Donald Trump of recklessly challenging the nation's Democratic institutions. His marathon speech also condemned Trump and Elon Musk's effort to slash government agencies, which we'll get into later in the program. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangioni. Mangioni is accused of shooting and killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of a United Health Group Insurance Division in New York last year. He has pleaded not guilty.

Israel has announced a major expansion of its Gaza military operation. Parts of the enclave will be seized and added to Israeli security zones. There will also be large-scale evacuations of Gazans. Val Kilmer, the actor known for Star Enrolls in Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died. He was 65. The cause of death was pneumonia, according to the New York Times. The US says it mistakenly deported a Maryland man to a prison in El Salvador, and can't bring him back.

Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmer Abrago-Garcia, is married to a US citizen. He's one of hundreds of men, labeled as gang members and deported last month by the Trump administration, with no chance to contest the allegations in court. Dozens of the men have active asylum cases in the US. Abrago-Garcia's lawyers have filed a suit against the US government, saying that he's not a member of the MS-13 gang and demanded his return. immigration reporter Ted Heson is following the case. He had a status known as withholding of removal,

which essentially said that he could not be removed to his home country, El Salvador, due to possible fear of persecution. And what ISIS recognized, or U.S. immigration and customs enforcement, recognized in a court filing, was that he still had that valid status when they put him on a plane on March 15th and deported him to El Salvador. What they're saying now is, is that he's out of U.S. jurisdiction. He's in the custody of El Salvador, and they don't have the power to bring him back because it's now another government's decision on what should be done with him.

What are the criteria for deporting people? We've tried to get a sense of what the Trump administration is doing to make these gang determinations. In court, they're saying that this is a state secret, and they're not able to share any details on the deportations. But what we have seen is the American Civil Liberties Union have introduced some government forms and guides into evidence, including what appears to be a U.S. government form that was used by the Trump administration. And it was essentially a checklist, maybe 15 or items or so. And each one had a different point value. And it said that if you gained enough points that you could, you should be labeled an alien enemy, it didn't rule out necessarily labeling someone. that, even if they came up with no points on the list, but it said that this is kind of a rubric to moving forward. There's still a lot of questions about it. I mean, tattoos obviously have come up. We've seen that many of the people who were included on those deportation flights, other family members said they had tattoos and that they may have been flagged for that reason. So there are really a lot of questions about the level of intelligence and information that went

into this. The Trump administration began laying off thousands of federal workers on Tuesday. Some employees were turned away at building doors just hours after having received dismissal notices. The cuts at the FDA, CDC, and the National Institutes of Health have been described by health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as essential to streamlining a bloated bureaucracy. Health reporter Julie Steenheisen is here to lay out how the situation, is unfolding. I woke up this morning to a text message from a source of mind within the NIH who said our RIF notices, which are like these, you know, firings, emails firing individuals started at 520 and she was among them and it sort of, you know, rolled out from there. And who are the people

who received these notices? There are going to be scientists left in the divisions by the head of HIV prevention. at the CDC, received one of these letters. At the FDA, the head of their Center for Tobacco Products, was fired. Peter Stein, the director of the FDIA's office of new drugs in its Center for Drug Evaluation of Research. He resigned as a result of, you know, all this turmoil. Those are people who have, you know, take with them deep knowledge about science and about

how to evaluate a new treatment. We've heard 17 people in the communications team has been cut. And, you know, that seems like, well, that's just a support job. But who do you think writes, you know, the warnings when there's a product to recall or, you know, a safety issue or, you know, maybe some restaurant is being investigated for, you know, a foodborne outbreak? And so these are deep cuts and they will be noticed. And for today's recommended read, an update to chatGBT has made it easy to simulate the hand-drawn style of Japanese animation studio Ghibli,

flooding social media with memes and straining the AI company's servers. It's also led to questions about potential copyright violations. There's a link to the story in the pot description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the research. Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.