The Headlines - How Trump Is Shaking Trust in the Economy, and Judge Orders ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Shut Down

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Plus, your Friday news quiz. On Today’s Episode:Trump’s Attacks on Institutions Threaten a Bulwark of Economic Strength, by Ben Casselman and Colby SmithImmigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades, by Miriam JordanJudge Orders That ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center Be Shut Down for Now, by Patricia Mazzei and David C. AdamsDivided Court Eliminates Trump’s Half-Billion-Dollar Fine in Fraud Case, by Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben ProtessGaza City and Surrounding Areas Are Officially Under Famine, Monitors Say, by Vivian YeeMenendez Hasn’t Been a ‘Model Prisoner,’ Board Says in Denying Parole, by Tim Arango and Matt StevensTune 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, August 22nd. Here's what we're covering. The United States has long had a reputation as being the safest place in the world for investors to put their money and for entrepreneurs to build their businesses. And that has given the U.S. a nearly incalculable, economic advantage. It's let the government borrowed more cheaply. It's let the economy grow more

quickly emerge from downturns more successfully than most of its peer countries around the world. And now President Trump may be chipping away at that advantage. Ben Castleman is the Times chief economics correspondent. He says economists are increasingly concerned that some of President Trump's recent moves are building into a more troubling pattern. They've watched this summer as he's tried to force out officials at the Federal Reserve when they refused his demand to cut interest rates, fired the commissioner in charge of labor statistics after her agency reported weak job growth, and leveraged the power of the federal government to pressure companies over their own business decisions. Ben says that when

economists look at all of that together, they see the Trump administration trying to expand its influence into areas that used to be more insulated from political meddling. And they're worried that he's attacking the institutions and norms that made investors trust the U.S. in the first place. He says economists are warning that over time, that could undermine the country's reputation as a stable, rules-based place to do business. Companies and investors could take their money elsewhere. The concern here is both for the possibility of gradual erosion of norms, gradual impacts on the economy more broadly, but also about the possibility of a crisis down the road. And the problem with a financial crisis, a budget crisis, is that you rarely know that you're in one until it's

too late. One thing to watch today? A speech from the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. He's speaking at a meeting of the world's leading economic policymakers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And people are waiting to see if he'll give any indication of the Fed's plans for interest rates, given Trump's intense pressure campaign to lower them. Now, three more updates from the Trump administration. A new study has found that for the first time in decades, more immigrants are leaving the U.S. than arriving. The analysis from Pew shows that the foreign-born population of the U.S.

declined by almost 1.5 million people between January and June of this year. That includes people who've left the country by choice or by deportation, a tactic the Trump administration has aggressively ramped up. Advocates who want to curb immigration say the shift is a good thing, that it'll lead to a tighter labor market which will benefit American workers. Though some immigration experts say the U.S. actually needs an influx of people to offset the country's falling birth rate and aging population. Meanwhile, a federal judge has hit pause on one of the most high-profile pieces of Trump's

immigration crackdown, the detention center in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz. Which is very appropriate because I looked outside and that's not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon. The judge ruled yesterday that the state and federal governments broke the law when they failed to do an environmental review before they set up the center on an old airstrip in the middle of the Everglades, which are protected wetlands. She ordered officials to stop all construction on the site and gave them 60 days to take down the tents and fencing and move out all of the detainees.

The state of Florida has said it will appeal the decision. And a New York appeals court handed President Trump a major victory yesterday, saying he does not have to pay the half a billion dollar fine that he faced for conspiring to commit financial fraud. While the court upheld the original ruling that Trump did inflate the value of his assets, it said the enormous penalty wasn't justified since Trump's false claims hadn't caused, quote, cataclysmic harm. Trump is now expected to appeal the entire case and try to get the fraud ruling thrown out altogether.

This morning, a group of international experts have declared that a major portion of Gaza is officially suffering from famine, with at least half a million people facing starvation, acute malnutrition, and death. The group, the IPC, is who the United Nations and other aid agencies rely on to monitor hunger crises around the world. And an official famine declaration like this is rare. In the past two decades, the IPC has only confirmed, three other famines in Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan. To reach that threshold in Gaza, the IPC said it had to verify a number of criteria, including how many children are acutely malnourished, and that there have been a rising number of deaths from starvation. The group says

that a number of factors tipped the situation in Gaza from a hunger crisis to a full-on famine, including Israel's intensifying attacks on the territory, and its tight control over food getting in. Israel has said it has been letting aid in, but humanitarian groups say it's still too hard to get supplies to the people who need them. They say that just a few miles away, right across the border in Israel, they have enough supplies stockpiled to feed Gaza's entire population for months. The head of the aid group Mercy Corps told the times, quote, what's missing is not the ability to respond, but the political will to allow it. Failure to do so will cost countless additional lives.

And finally, in California this week, a grisly murder case that became a national obsession is back in the spotlight, as Eric and Lyle Menendez have come up for parole. In 1989, the brothers burst into their families Beverly Hills Mansion with shotguns and killed their parents and their trial, which was one of the first ever to be televised, helped basically kick off the phenomenon of true crime as entertainment. The brothers accused of the murder of their wealthy parents in Beverly Hills. It was like an incredible soap opera. Recently, a new wave of docudramas, podcasts, and YouTube deep dives have fueled new interest in their

case. You guys, Eric and Lyle Menendez. That's a hot topic today. It's also earned them a younger generation of loyal followers who came to believe that they were mistreated by the criminal justice system and deserved to sympathies. for abuse they'd faced from their father. Earlier this year, testimony from some of their family members saying that they'd turn their lives around in prison helped them get resentenced from life in prison to having a chance at parole. But yesterday, a California State Parole Commission

ruled that Eric should stay in prison for at least three more years, in part because he'd used drugs while incarcerated and had a contraband cell phone. Lyle's hearing is today. If the board recommends that he is released on parole, California's governor, Gavin Newsom, will have the final say on the matter. On Thursday, Newsom told reporters that he has held back from watching any of the documentaries or TV shows about the brothers, saying he wanted the facts to speak for themselves, quote, not what's on TikTok or what's on YouTube. Those are the headlines, but stick around. We've got the Friday News Quiz for you after the credits. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.

Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Katie O'Brien, Adam Razgon, and Paula Schumann. Now for the quiz. We've got questions about a few stories the Times has covered this week. Can you answer them all? First up. Well, thank you very much.

It's a great honor. Have you here? This week, President Trump hosted talks at the White House focused on ending the war in Ukraine. He later gave an interview to Fox News, where he talked about one particular reason that he's so motivated to stop the fighting. He's made it extremely clear that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. But it's not that. He actually revealed he has set his sights even higher. We'll play a clip of it for you here with the key word missing.

What did Trump say he's angling for? You know, if I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that's a pretty, I want to try and get the impossible. I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get that, this will be one of the reasons. Well, I think I saved a lot of hours. We'll play that last part again. I hear really at the bottom of the totem pole.

But if I can get that, this will be one of the reasons. Well, I think I saved a lot of lives. The answer? He said he wants to get through those pearly gates. The president said on Fox News this morning that he's partially seeking peace in order to get to heaven. Was he joking or is there a spiritual motivation behind his peace deals here? I think the president was serious. I think the president wants to get to heaven, as I hope we all do in this room as well.

It's unclear who he can call to make that happen for him, but he did reportedly make a call about the Nobel situation to Norway's finance minister when they were supposed to be discussing tariffs. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Norway every December. Okay, next question. We have breaking news as it pertains to our network. The cable news network MSNBC announced this week it's changing its name to MSN now. It's all part of a big media reorg.

Its parent company Comcast is separating the left-leaning network from its NBC brand, so it's got to drop those last few letters. Your question, what did the first? first part of MSNBC originally stand for. I'll give you a hint. It started as a collaboration in the 1990s with a major American tech company. The answer? MSNBC was at one point a partnership between NBC and Microsoft with its MSN internet portal. The network's new name, MSN now, apparently stands for my source news opinion world.

The new acronym has triggered some snarky backlash, people calling it word salad. But look, corporate name changes are hard. You kind of have to just hope everyone will forget and move on. That tactic has worked for some big brands. eBay used to be auction web. Pepsi Cola started out as Brad's drink, named after the founder. And the brains behind Google first named their search engine after the way links point back to other websites.

They called it, and I am not kidding, back rub. And last question. Recently, a group of countries got together to speak up about what they say is a big issue. Their continent looks too little on the map that most of the world uses. They've got a problem with what's known as the Mercator map, which dates back to the 16th century. when it was first drawn to help sailors navigate at sea. The map enlarges areas at the polls to create straight lines of constant bearing or geographic direction.

But it distorts the relative size of nations and continents. Are you saying the map is wrong? This is not a new grievance. The TV show The West Wing was talking about the flaws of the Mercator map all the way back in the early 2000s. But your question is, now, countries on which continent are formally pushing for the United Nations and other organizations to use a different map. The answer? Africa. If you look at a Mercator map, probably the one you had in school, you will see what the countries are talking about. On that, the continent of Africa looks

really not that much bigger than Europe, when in fact it's several times larger. The 55 countries that make up the African Union say they want people to adopt what's known as the equal Earth map instead, which shows every part of the globe in its actual proportion. I'm just going to say that if the change is made, people will finally see the true size of Greenland. Sorry, Greenland. All right, that is it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did or what you think about the quiz, you can always email us at the Headlines at NYTimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. The headlines will be back on Monday.

Thank you.