The Headlines - Senator Visits Wrongly Deported Man, and Trump’s ‘Kill List’ for Regulations

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Plus, meat is making a comeback. On Today’s Episode:Maryland Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Man in El Salvador, by Robert JimisonInside Trump’s Plan to Halt Hundreds of Regulations, by Coral DavenportDOGE Guts Agency That Organizes Community Service Programs, by Aishvarya KaviMilwaukee’s Lead Crisis: Flaky Paint, Closed Schools and a C.D.C. in Retreat, by Julie BosmanWhat We Know About the Florida State University Shooting, by Patricia MazzeiThey Endured the Parkland Shooting. Then Came Florida State, by Neil Vigdor and Adeel HassanGoogle Broke the Law to Keep Its Advertising Monopoly, a Judge Rules, by David McCabeMeat Is Back, on Plates and in Politics, by Kim SeversonTune 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 Will Jarvis, in for Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, April 18th. Here's what we're covering. In El Salvador, the man at the center of a fierce debate over the Trump administration's immigration policies was seen for the first time since being wrongfully deported. Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia was temporarily released from the high-security prison where

he's been held for weeks and met with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Van Hollen, a Democrat who's been trying to spotlight Abrego-Garcia's case, shared a photo of the two men talking in a hotel, though he didn't immediately give details about their conversation. I do intend to keep at this until we ensure that Mr. Obrego Garcia has his rights to due process. At a press conference before the meeting, Van Hollen said he will continue to push to get Obrego Garcia released and brought back to the U.S. He had entered the country illegally more than a decade ago, but had permission from

a judge to stay. And government lawyers have acknowledged that his sudden deportation was an administrative error. We need to make sure that the court system works and due process works because if you take it away for any individual, it's a very short road to taking it away for every American. short road to taking it away for every American. For the moment, both American and Salvadoran officials have refused to take steps to release Abrego Garcia, accusing him of being a violent gang member, though he's never been charged or convicted of that. And in a social media post, El Salvador's

president seemed to mock concerns about his detention in the mega prison, which has a history of human rights abuses. He wrote that Abrego Garcia had quote, miraculously risen from the death camps and was sipping margaritas in tropical paradise. The photo he posted from the hotel showed two glasses with cherries and salted rims. The Times learned that one of his aides had placed the drinks there to try and stage the photo. The clock is ticking on a major new push by the Trump administration to overhaul the federal

government. The White House wants to assemble essentially a kill list of regulations from across the federal government to eliminate. This would be rules from agriculture, environment, labor, transportation, commerce. All the agencies are kind of combing through a lot of rules that are being targeted to probably be put on this list.

My colleague Coral Davenport is covering the effort. She says the White House has given government agencies a deadline of this weekend to add to the kill list. Elon Musk even built an AI tool to comb through more than 100,000 pages of federal regulations in search of cuts. Once the administration completes the list, Coral says it has a two-part plan to slash the rules. For some of them, it will try to use a novel legal strategy to avoid the standard lengthy repeal process that past administrations have followed. And for the rest of the rules, it will simply stop enforcing them. Some examples.

There's a rule that establishes minimum staffing requirements in nursing homes that they're looking at eliminating. Rules on mining safety that are intended to protect miners from lethal dust. There are many rules that affect which employees are eligible for minimum wage or overtime or sick leave. Dozens of environmental rules to protect drinking water, wetlands. The list of potential rules goes on and on. A lot of experts say there probably is a lot of red tape and deadwood that

could be eliminated, but it's important to understand that this approach is radically new. These rules really serve as a safety net for American society and this approach of immediately and rapidly ripping that out could have profound effects all throughout American society on millions of people in a way that we haven't seen before. Now two other quick updates on the Trump administration. The effort to slash government spending has reached AmeriCorps, the agency that organizes community service work around the U.S. This week, almost all of its federal staff were placed on administrative leave and told

not to return to the office. A Trump administration official said the agency's billion-dollar budget was targeted in an effort to eliminate government waste. The cuts could gut AmeriCorps disaster response efforts, as well as volunteer work around environmental protection and wildfire prevention. Also, officials in Wisconsin say cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are undermining

their effort to tackle a lead paint crisis in Milwaukee public schools. In recent months, four students in the city were found to have been exposed to dangerous levels of lead, which can damage kids' brains and nervous systems. Investigators say they found flaking lead paint and lead dust in at least seven schools, some of which have been closed. Parents have focused most of their frustration on the local government,

saying the school district's response has been slow and inefficient. But local health officials say the situation was made worse when the CDC recently fired the two lead experts advising Milwaukee, and a recent request for more federal assistance was formally denied. In the past, cities with lead problems have received extensive guidance from the CDC. This is a tragic day for Florida State University. We're absolutely heartbroken by the violence that occurred on our campus earlier today. In Tallahassee on Thursday, a student at Florida State University opened fire on campus, killing

two people and injuring six others. Police arrested the 20-year-old gunman and identified him as the son of a local sheriff's deputy and a member of the Sheriff's Office Youth Advisory Committee. Officials said he used his mother's gun in the attack, a former service revolver she'd been allowed to keep for personal use. We kind of just heard there was like a commotion. I thought it was like a fight breaking out or something. But we just heard people yelling and stuff. And then everybody just and ran We didn't really know what's happening as shots rang out students scrambled to shelter in place Barricading classroom doors with tables and chairs for some it wasn't their first time going into lockdown for a school shooting Several said they were students in Parkland, Florida in 2018 when a gunman opened fire at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School Killing 17 people.

Google is facing a kind of reckoning over its online dominance as two separate legal cases threaten to break up the internet giant. Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that Google acted to illegally maintain a monopoly in advertising technology, the tech that it uses to put up almost 90% of all online ads. And on Monday, Google will be back in court in front of another federal judge for a hearing about the company's online search tool. Last year, the judge found that Google also acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in that field. In both cases, the government is asking the courts to force Google to sell

off parts of its business as part of a broader antitrust effort to limit the power of big tech. And finally, after years of Americans eating less beef, pork and chicken, a recent report has shown that meat consumption has hit an all-time high in the U.S. For a while, foods like grain bowls and plant burgers were having a moment as people turned to veggies to try and eat healthier and fight climate change. But now, meat is back. Sweet green is now serving steak.

Are you serious? Grass-fed grass-fed... Restaurants are adding more meat to their menus. All right, I'm here at Fogada Jal Brazilian Steakhouse. Steakhouse chains are expanding, and even just the flavor of meat seems to be in right now. We finally found the late-night sizzling cheeseburger Doritos. Experts say a big reason for the comeback is Americans' growing obsession with protein,

as food trends like the carnivore diet and keto diets have gone big. There are also many Americans who are trying to build back muscle they've lost while taking weight loss drugs like Ozempic. And on average, the number of Americans who say they're trying to eat less meat has slipped to just 22 percent, the lowest level in years. But maybe the most telling stat is this, for years, Olive Garden was the top casual dining restaurant in the country, now it's the steakhouse chain,

Texas Roadhouse. Those are the headlines. This show is made by Jessica Metzger, Tracy Mumford, Jan Stewart, and me, Will Jarvis. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann. The Headlines with Tracy Mumford will be back on Monday.