The Headlines - Supreme Court Considers Trump’s Power, and Musk’s Team Wants Access to I.R.S. Records

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Plus, how to remember everything.  On Today’s Episode:Left Out of Ukraine Talks, Europe Races to Organize a Response, by Andrew E. KramerFirst Test of Trump’s Power to Fire Officials Reaches Supreme Court, by Adam LiptakMusk Team Seeks Access to I.R.S. System With Taxpayers’ Records, by Alan Rappeport, Andrew Duehren and Maggie HabermanAt Least 10 Dead in South After Rainstorm Pounds the Region, by Tim Balk, Amanda Holpuch and Austyn GaffneyMeet the Champion Who Memorized 80 Numbers in 13.5 Seconds, by Michael S. RosenwaldTune 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 Monday, February 17. Here's what we're covering. President Trump is pushing forward with his plan for the U.S. to negotiate directly with Russia over an end to the war in Ukraine. This week, top American officials are set to have face-to-face meetings with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia. So far, it's not clear if Ukraine will be

involved in the talks at all, even though it's said that it will not accept a peace deal that it doesn't help negotiate. The plans for a U.S.-Russia meeting come after Trump shocked Ukraine and much of Europe by having a 90-minute call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who the West had tried to isolate for years, ever since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. President Trump is rethinking the entire dynamic here. That has some people uncomfortable. On Fox News yesterday, Mike Walz, Trump's national security adviser, defended the president's

approach to the war, including separate talks with Ukraine. The Trump administration has been pushing the country to effectively compensate the U.S. for its support. It said that Ukraine should give the U.S. a 50 percent interest in its mineral rights for lithium, uranium, and graphite, among other resources, if it wants the U.S. to keep sending military aid. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected that demand, but Walz suggested that the U.S. will keep pushing them to accept that kind of deal.

The American people deserve to be recouped, deserve to have some type of payback for the billions that they have invested in this war. Meanwhile, Trump's direct outreach to Russia and sidelining of Ukraine have sent European leaders scrambling to rethink how much their countries can rely on the U.S. In Paris, leaders from France, Germany, Britain, Italy and other countries are gathering for an emergency meeting to discuss how Europe should respond. Today on The Daily, my colleague Anton Trojanowski explains what Trump's presidency means

for the future of the U.S.-Europe alliance. The first legal case testing how President Trump has been trying to reshape the federal government has reached the Supreme Court. The case centers on how his administration fired the head of a watchdog agency that protects whistleblowers and enforces ethics rules. The law says that the head of the agency, who was confirmed by Congress for a five-year term, can only be removed by the president for, quote, inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance. But the Trump administration fired him in a one-sentence email without giving any reason, and he sued.

After legal challenges in lower courts, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, which they're expected to do in the next few days. The question will be whether Congress has the power to pass laws limiting who the president can fire. For decades, the Supreme Court has ruled that they do, as a way of effectively shielding independent agencies from politics. But in recent years, the conservative justices on the court have called that an unconstitutional limit on the president's power, and have already laid the groundwork for overturning it.

The Times has learned that the Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a member of Elon Musk's team access to millions of American sensitive data. That includes tax returns, banking details, social security numbers, and other private information. The IRS is expected to let the employee, a young software engineer, have broad access to the agency's systems. A White House spokesman said it was part of an effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and that it, quote,

takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it. It's the latest move by a member of Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency Team to get an unprecedented view into government systems. They've been going beyond what is typical, including their recent push to dig into the United States Treasury system that directs all payments across the federal government. That effort has faced legal challenges. The new move to access the IRS data could also end up in court. This is one of the most serious weather events we've dealt with in at least a decade. We've certainly had our share. In Kentucky, severe rainstorms have flooded parts of the state, stranding residents and

leaving at least nine people dead. Tens of thousands of residents have lost power, and Governor Andy Beshear said rescue efforts could last all week. This may be a record, but portions of more than 300 state roads and federal roads are currently blocked due to flooding, slides, or damage. Again, that means we have this type of damage and disruption statewide. The storms are yet another severe weather event for a state that has been battered by tornadoes, mudslides, and numerous floods in recent years.

And as climate change drives up the risk of flooding, the state has been trying to find long-term solutions. In one effort, they've been trying to move entire communities up to higher ground. The state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars reclaiming old mining sites on top of cleared mountains to build housing there. For now, the state is already bracing for more intense weather. In the coming days, another storm could dump up to six inches of snow on Kentucky. And finally, if you have ever forgotten your password, your pin number, your friend's birthday, this is not going to make you feel better about yourself.

This month, the Memory League World Championship crowned a new winner, Vijval Rajakumar, who was able to memorize a string of 80 random numbers after looking at them for only 13.5 seconds. 80 numbers, all of them, in 13 and a half seconds. Rajkumar is a 20-year-old college student from India. He said he cried when he won, and he shared his winning strategies with the times. His big advice is to use the memory palace technique. There's a lot of variations of that, but it generally involves visualizing a large house, and then you assign different bits of information and memories to each room. When you want to remember something, you mentally walk through the house and check the rooms.

Rajkumar essentially stashed numbers in his mental kitchen and bedroom and bathroom and then sprinted back through it. His other tip for memory is maybe easier to pull off and that is hydration. Just drink a lot of water. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.