The Headlines - A China War Briefing for Musk, and London’s Heathrow Shuts Down

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Plus, one of the most problem-plagued movies in Disney history. On Today’s Episode:Pentagon Set Up Briefing for Musk on Potential War With China, by Eric Schmitt, Eric Lipton, Julian E. Barnes, Ryan Mac and Maggie HabermanTrump Signs Order Aimed at Eliminating Education Department ‘Once and for All’, by Michael C. Bender, Erica L. Green and Alan BlinderAdministration’s Details on Deportation Flights ‘Woefully Insufficient,’ Judge Says, by Alan FeuerIntelligence Assessment Said to Contradict Trump on Venezuelan Gang, by Charlie Savage and Julian E. BarnesIsrael Expands Gaza Ground Offensive as Hamas Fires Rockets at Tel Aviv, by Aaron Boxerman, Adam Rasgon and Patrick KingsleyFire Halts Operations at London’s Heathrow Airport, Throwing Global Travel Into Disarray, by Megan Specia, Qasim Nauman, John Yoon and Joy DongSnow White and the Seven Kajillion Controversies, by Brooks BarnesTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, March 21st. Here's what we're covering. The Times has learned that Elon Musk was scheduled to get a briefing at the Pentagon today about how the U.S. would handle any potential future war with China. Two officials confirmed the plan for Musk's visit, saying it was going to be held in the tank, a secure conference room typically used for high-level gatherings of military leaders. Giving Musk access to some of the nation's most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of Musk's already expansive role in the administration. It would also fuel more questions about his conflicts of interest.

As the head of SpaceX and Tesla, he's a leading supplier to the Pentagon, and the details in this kind of meeting would be incredibly valuable for any defense contractor. He also has deep financial interests in China. Tesla's biggest factory is there, and the companies received billions in loans from Chinese lenders. And while Musk has a top-secret security clearance, a previous Times investigation into SpaceX found that Musk and the company repeatedly failed to comply with federal protocols aimed at protecting state secrets. After the Times reported that the meeting was going to happen,

Department of Defense officials and President Trump denied that Musk's visit to the Pentagon would be about China. The Secretary of Defense said it would be a, quote, informal meeting. It's now not clear if the meeting will go ahead as originally planned. will go ahead as originally planned. In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the Federal Department of Education once and for all.

Yesterday, President Trump followed through on his promise to try and close the Education Department. By law, that's something only Congress can do, and Trump urged lawmakers to join him in the effort. And I hope they're going to be voting for it because ultimately it may come before them, but everybody knows it's right. The attempt to shutter the department tracks with a years-long push by conservatives to minimize the federal government's role in public education and direct more money to private schools and homeschooling.

At this point, it's unclear how a closure of the department would affect students, since the administration has said some of its core responsibilities could be reassigned to other agencies. Its main job, distributing money to college students through grants and loans, could go to the Treasury Department. And administering funds for low-income and disabled loans could go to the Treasury Department, and administering funds for low-income and disabled students could go to the Department of Health and Human Services. But some of the agency's other duties may be diminished or disappear altogether, including

its enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in schools and nationwide testing of student performance. testing of student performance. In DC, the federal judge overseeing the case challenging the Trump administration's recent deportation flights says the government has continued to stonewall him. The judge is repeatedly asked for a timeline of the flights to see whether they continued even after he ordered them to stop. On Thursday, the judge wrote that the information the government had supplied was woefully insufficient. He's now given government lawyers until next week to answer his questions. Meanwhile, more details are coming to light that call into question the administration's

justifications for the deportations. President Trump claimed that some of the Venezuelans on the flights were members of a violent gang, Trende Aragua. He claimed the gang was an invading force controlled by the Venezuelan government, which he said gave immigration authorities the power to deport the migrants without due process. But the Times has learned that a U.S. intelligence assessment appears to undercut that claim about the gang. In a document circulated by the CIA and NSA, among others, intelligence officials said

they were moderately confident that Trende Aragua is not tied to Venezuela's leadership and that it's not committing crimes at its direction. Also, lawyers for some of the Venezuelans that the administration deported say they're not gang members at all. One deportee's lawyer said her client was accused because of a tattoo and a hand gesture that he was making in a picture on social media. But the tattoo is a version of a soccer team logo, he is a soccer player, and the gesture he was making was the common rock and roll hand symbol. Multiple other lawyers say their clients were also targeted in part because of common tattoos

like images of a crown and a rose. In the Middle East, Israel and Hamas seemed to be sliding back towards full-scale war. Yesterday, Israel expanded its ground operations in Gaza, following its massive airstrikes earlier this week. The renewed attacks have killed over 500 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. And on Thursday, Hamas hit back, firing multiple rockets at Tel Aviv. There were no reports of casualties. A senior Hamas official told the Times the group had waited a few days to respond to

try to give mediators time to convince Israel to halt its new attacks. But he said as the operations continued, Hamas had to show it was capable of responding. The new wave of violence marks the collapse of a months-long ceasefire in Gaza. There's no indication that the two sides will be able to agree to any new pause in the short term. One of the world's busiest airports, London's Heathrow International, has shut down for the whole day, throwing travel worldwide into disarray. The closure was caused by a fire at a nearby power station that brought operations to a halt at the airport early this morning.

Heathrow handles around 1,300 flights every day. Some of the planes that were on their way to the airport had to be diverted mid-flight. In all, almost 300,000 passengers could be affected. And finally, the live-action remake of Snow White comes out in theaters today. It's an update of the Disney classic that was the world's first ever feature-length animated film back in 1937. It's a human. What did you think I was? Nothing.

Ghost. This film, more than any in Disney's 102-year history, has just been plagued by problem after problem after problem. My colleague Brooks Barnes covers Hollywood. He says the film hit multiple production roadblocks during the pandemic. Then executives kept asking for redos of the visual effects. And there was a controversy around whether human actors would play the seven dwarves. They ended up using CGI.

But the film's biggest drama has centered on its star. When Disney first started making this, Disney and Hollywood in general was really under pressure to diversify its casting. So Disney had, in a lot of these remakes, empowered the heroines, but also emphasized diversity in casting. And so with Snow White, they found an actress, Rachel Ziegler, who they really loved.

She wowed them with her voice. They loved her screen presence. And she also happened to be a Latina. But almost immediately, there was backlash from the right. Why is a Latina playing a character that has classically been white, snow woke, trended? It kind of simmered in the background until Tegeler started becoming very outspoken in interviews and on social media about topics that had nothing to

do with the film. She posted in support of Palestinians repeatedly. She attacked Donald Trump after he won reelection. And those things really fueled pushback around the film and also around her and the casting. So what had been sort of a simmering controversy became a full inferno. By the time you get to the premiere last weekend, Disney was pretty freaked out. It curtailed media access to the red carpet, it increased security, there were protesters on the curb, and the whole promotion and press tour of the movie was impacted.

and the whole promotion and press tour of the movie was impacted. So this movie really arrives in theaters as a test. To what degree will all of these controversies over years of production impact ticket buyers? Will they care? Or will this movie do what so many other Disney movies have, which is, you know, provide some babysitting on a Saturday for the family? Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how President Trump's trade policies have rattled the U.S. economy and why Trump isn't backing down. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This show is made by Sarah Diamond, Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Kate Lowenstein, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schuman. The headlines will be back on Monday.