The Headlines - Trump Won’t Rule Out a Recession, and a Crackdown on Campus Protests

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Plus, the Oscar film that pets are watching. On Today’s Episode: Trump Declines to Rule Out Recession as Tariffs Begin to Bite, by Luke Broadwater, Colby Smith and Ana SwansonBanker Mark Carney Wins Race to Lead Liberal Party, and Canada, by Matina Stevis-GridneffImmigration Authorities Arrest Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia, by Eliza ShapiroWhite House Cancels $400 Million in Grants and Contracts to Columbia, by Sharon Otterman and Liam StackChaos Sweeps Coastal Syria, by Christina Goldbaum and Reham MourshedThe Oscar-Winning Movie That Pets Can’t Stop Watching, by Esther ZuckermanTune 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, March 10th. Here's what we're covering. Are you expecting a recession this year? I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. President Trump has declined to rule out the possibility that his economic policies, including

waves of aggressive tariffs, could trigger a recession. Our country's been ripped off for many decades, for many, many decades, and we're not going to be ripped off anymore. In an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News, the president said that he was stopping America from being taken advantage of in trade, but acknowledged that his moves could take some time to pay off. His willingness to put tariffs on America's closest trading partners, even if he's then paused some of them, has been sending shockwaves through the stock market. And forecasts from Wall Street giants like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs say a recession

in the next 12 months has become more likely. Still, Trump has promised more tariffs as soon as this week, and other countries have responded in turn. Today, China's retaliatory tariffs on a lot of American farm products kicked in. Chicken, wheat, corn, soybeans, and more will now face a 10 to 15 percent levy. And that could deal a blow to U.S. farmers. China is their biggest overseas market. Meanwhile, in Canada...

I know that these are dark days. Dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust. Trump's tariffs were a central focus this weekend, as Canada's Liberal Party chose Mark Carney as its new leader. He'll now replace Justin Trudeau as the country's prime minister. My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect. Carney's never been elected to office.

His background's in banking. He led the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Federal elections in a few months will determine whether Carney will keep the prime minister post. Some Canadian voters have said that a crucial question for them going into that election is who will be the best choice to stand up to Trump? This weekend, immigration authorities arrested a recent graduate of Columbia University who played a prominent role in last year's campus protests against the war in Gaza.

The pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil holds a green card and is a legal permanent resident of the United States. But a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he led activities aligned with Hamas, which the US has designated a terrorist organization. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media, quote, we will be revoking the visas and or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so that they can be deported.

Khalil's lawyers told the Times that they haven't been able to find out where he's being held and said his arrest is part of a broader attack on activism and free speech. For the Trump administration, it's a significant escalation in its crackdown on what the president has called anti-Semitic

campus activity. On Friday, the administration canceled $400 million in grants and contracts for Columbia in response to what it said was the school's failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. A statement from four federal agencies said that those cuts are just the beginning and that more will follow. In Syria, the country's facing the biggest flare-up in violence since the fall of its authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad. Assad was thrown out of power back in December, but in the past few days, his loyalists have attacked the new government's security forces

along the country's west coast. And those forces have responded with a bloody crackdown. More than 1,000 people have been killed, according to an independent monitoring group. The majority of them have been civilians. Syria is very on edge right now. The roads leading into the coast have been closed down. There are new government checkpoints manning those roads. Very few people there have been leaving their homes

for fear of what could happen if they do. They've heard many stories now of violence targeting civilians and others in more rural areas where most of this violence has been happening, have also taken up arms to guard their homes and their communities for fear of what could happen. My colleague Christina Goldbaum has been reporting from Syria. Most people on the coast do not support the armed uprising by these Assad loyalists, but many people there are from the same sect as Assad. And so they're worried that they could be caught up in this violence, even targeted by government forces as they try to squash that armed rebellion. And people are very worried that this could spiral into another civil war after this three-month period of relative calm.

So right now has become this critical test for the country's new leaders about whether they are able to manage the situation, reestablish control, or if this becomes a broader conflict. And finally, when the movie Flow won the Oscar last week for best animated feature, it was a bit of a surprise. The scrappy little movie about a black cat who survives an epic flood triumphed over big studio hits from Pixar and Dreamworks. And now Flo has been finding a new fan base in people's pets. People have been posting videos of their cats and dogs totally entranced by Flo. Fishbone, a cat, was so engrossed, wrote one person,

and Samson, a golden retriever, was very invested. One of the producers and writers of Flo told The Times that he thinks all the animal attention is because the movie used real animal sounds in production. That's actually all the sound there is. The movie doesn't have any dialogue, just a cat, a dog, a lemur, a bird, and a capybara. Prime pet viewing.

There is, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, a lot of content already out there for pets to watch. Dog TV is a whole channel, and YouTube has a lot of mouse videos for your couch potato cat. But now there is finally an Academy award winning option if your pet is more of a movie snob. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how President Trump wants to both dismantle and weaponize the Department of Education. That's next in the New York Times audio app,

or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.