The Headlines - A State Department Shake-Up, and Musk Pivots as Tesla Profits Plunge

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Plus, YouTube turns 20.On Today’s Episode: Critics Call Rubio’s Overhaul Plan a Blow to U.S. Values, by Michael CrowleyTrump Says Undocumented Immigrants Shouldn’t Get Trials Before Deportation, by Luke BroadwaterGlobal Growth Expected to Sputter Amid Trade War Fallout Fears, by Alan RappeportElon Musk Vows to Spend Less Time in Washington as Tesla’s Profit Drops 71%, by Jack EwingBirthrates Languish in Record Lows, C.D.C. Reports, by Azeen GhorayshiYouTube at 20: From ‘Lazy Sunday’ to ‘Hot Ones’, by Amanda HolpuchTune 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 Wednesday, April 23rd. Here's what we're covering. To deliver on President Trump's America first foreign policy, we must make the State Department great again. The Trump administration has rolled out a plan to make major cuts to the State Department, potentially drastically reducing America's diplomatic engagement around the world.

The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America's core national interests. A State Department spokeswoman said the agency needs to be trimmed back to be more nimble. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued the overhaul will root out what he framed as left-wing activists. Under the new plan, about 700 positions will be eliminated, and many of the State Department's offices and bureaus will be closed, including a prominent one focused on promoting democracy and human rights.

More changes could be coming soon. Rubio has instructed senior officials to prepare to cut hundreds more staff, and the administration is considering closing more than two dozen embassies and consulates. Democratic lawmakers have warned that a retreat from the global stage by the U.S US will let other major powers fill the diplomatic void. If the State Department goes through with the proposed consulate closures, for example, the US would have a less diplomatic presence in Europe than China does. We're getting them out and I hope we get cooperation from the courts because we have

thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can't have a trial for all of these people. In the Oval Office yesterday, President Trump said undocumented immigrants should not be entitled to a trial before they're deported. A judge can't say, no, you have to have a trial. The president claimed he needed to bypass the constitutional right to due process to quickly expel migrants, falsely stating that many of them are criminals intentionally sent to the U.S. by other countries.

It's the second time this week he's insisted he should be able to go around the courts to carry out mass deportations. He previously wrote on social media, "'We cannot give everyone a trial because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.'" In response, one Democratic congressman called Trump's comments, dictator talk, adding that, quote, "'D due process isn't optional because it's inconvenient. Meanwhile, the Times has been looking into the cases of the more than 200 migrants the Trump administration already did send out of the country

without a trial. The government claimed it was justified in doing so because it said the migrants were violent gang members. A team of us reporters and researchers dedicated weeks to understanding the criminal backgrounds of these individuals. And of the 238 men sent to El Salvador, we were only able to find serious criminal accusations or convictions for 32 of them. Today on The Daily, my colleague Julie Turkowitz explains how they investigated the

government's claims and what they ultimately found. We're entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset. The International Monetary Fund has issued a stark new projection of what President Trump's trade war will mean for the global economy. It says that worldwide economic growth is now expected to slow, in large part because of Trump's aggressive tariffs and the economic backlash they've set off. Before Trump took office, growth was expected to hold steady.

The IMF also projected that the economic turmoil will cause inflation to rise in the U.S. this year. And it said the chance of a recession in the U.S. has jumped. It was about 25% last fall. Now it's 40%. Hello, everyone. Well, it's never a dull moment these days. Elon Musk got on a call with Tesla investors last night to try and calm the waters after the electric carmaker announced its profits have plunged. As some people know, there's been some blowback for the time that I've been spending in government

with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The company's profits dropped 71% in the first three months of this year compared to last year. The brand's popularity has taken a major hit as Musk, Tesla's CEO, has become one of the most prominent figures in the Trump administration, slashing the federal budget and embracing far-right causes. But starting next month, I'll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla. On the call, Musk said he'll soon cut back to just one or two days a week in Washington, ceding to investors' demands that he refocus on the company.

But my colleague Jack Ewing, who covers the automotive industry, says Tesla's also facing broader issues in the EV market. The company is really in a crisis. It's losing market share. It's facing much stiffer competition from established car makers in China, as well as in the United States and Europe. established car makers in China, as well as in the United States and Europe. Jack says Tesla's latest vehicle, the Cybertruck, is increasingly looking like a flop by the sales numbers, and the company hasn't rolled out any other new models yet to attract customers. Just Elon coming back to the company is not going to instantly solve all of its problems. Some of them are pretty deep.

There's been a lot of permanent damage to the brand. And he also acknowledged the tariffs are a problem for Tesla. It's one of the most American-made vehicles. It gets most of its parts from within the United States, but Tesla is still going to be hurt by tariffs. And Mr. Musk said he's tried to talk the president out of tariffs, but really hasn't succeeded. So there's no miracle cure for Tesla at the moment. New data released from the CDC this morning shows that the birth rate in the US remains

near a record low. 3.6 million babies were born in the US last year, barely up from the rock bottom level set in 2023. Breaking that out, the fertility rate per woman is about 1.6 births. That's well below the 2.1 needed to maintain the country's population through births alone. Part of the decrease in recent decades is about who is having children. Up through the early 2000s, teen pregnancies were helping boost the national birth rate, but growing access to birth control has driven those numbers down. The birth rate for women in their 20s has also fallen off, especially since the Great Recession, starting around 2007.

One demographer told the Times that economic conditions, like student debt and childcare costs, as well as a sense of instability in the world, likely play a role, saying, quote, People don't have kids when they don't feel good about their own futures. The low birth rate is widely seen as a growing problem for the country, which could find itself in the coming decades with fewer young workers to support an aging population. And finally. All right, so here we are in front of the elephants. Exactly 20 years ago today,

this video titled Me at the Zoo became the first ever video posted to YouTube. And that's cool. The whole thing is 19 seconds, and it's not particularly compelling. But it kicked off what's now become a cornerstone of the internet that's fundamentally changed what and how we watch.

Is this real life? Yeah, this is real life. Within a year of launching, YouTube had become the place to watch viral videos. And when Google swooped in to buy it, that supercharged the platform. Ow, Charlie! That really hurt! Over the years, it's made stars out of ordinary people, sometimes in their cringiest of moments.

It's Friday, Friday. And it's elevated whole art forms like the ASMR video. Or the hours of people unwrapping stuff. We're going to be unboxing the black and white iPhone 3G units. It's also created a whole industry of full-time YouTube personalities who make millions off the platform. I recreated every single set from Squid Game in real life. platform. As of today, 20 years in, the most viewed YouTube video ever with a jaw-dropping 15.8 billion views is, and I'm very sorry to ruin the rest of your morning like this,

Baby Shark. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.