The Headlines - Trump’s $47 Billion-Dollar Border Wall Plan, and Why a Tupac Murder Trial Is Starting After 30 Years

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Plus, inside the scramble to track cyclospora.  Here’s what we’re covering: Border Construction in Big Bend Is Halted After Drawing Criticism, by J. David Goodman It’s Crunchtime Again for Canada to Avoid New U.S. Tariffs, by Matina Stevis-Gridneff Trump Votes by Mail Again in Florida, by Chris Cameron How Cyclospora Evaded the U.S. Food Safety System to Sicken Thousands, by Christina Jewett and Julie Creswell Why Is a Trial Happening 30 Years After the Shooting?, by Julia Jacobs Can You Hear the Theaters Ka-Ching? A Battered Industry Turns to ‘Les Miz.’, by Michael Paulson Tune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 18th. Here's what we're covering. I just landed in Texas, headed to Big Bend National Park. Last night, I put a pause on all activity in that park as far as construction goes until I can get down there and do a personal evaluation. The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that the Trump administration is temporarily stopping work on a controversial border security project that cuts through a national. Park in Texas. For months, environmentalists, local officials, and lawmakers from both parties

have criticized the administration's plans to cut through the pristine desert wilderness. Several local sheriffs have opposed it, too, calling it unnecessary, since in recent months, authorities have encountered fewer than six migrants a day in the whole area. Amid the backlash, the administration scaled back its plans for a 30-foot wall, but But this month, bulldozers and excavators started tearing up the landscape for a new patrol road and other security measures, setting off a fresh wave of anger. Now, the CBP says that work has been paused too. The fight around Big Ben National Park comes as the administration has been trying to fill in the gaps of the border wall, which has been a signature priority for President Trump for years. In his first term, work on the wall mostly involved replacing existing barriers.

But now, efforts to extend the wall are accelerating, boosted by about $47 billion in dedicated funding that Congress approved as part of last summer's one big, beautiful bill. Construction is underway in all four border states with some 1,200 miles of new barriers planned, even as illegal crossings at the southern border have fallen to historic lows. Now, two other quick updates on the Trump administration. Question for the Prime Minister. Do you expect to speak with the U.S. President before Wednesday's tariff deadline? And if so, what will your message be for President Trump? Short answer is yes. Canada is scrambling to try and avoid new 50 percent tariffs on hundreds of Canadian goods

that the White House says will go into effect at midnight tonight. Canadian officials stayed in D.C. over the weekend to continue negotiations with the U.S. And Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has told them to try and offer targeted concessions. He's hoping to both keep the new tariffs from kicking in and ease existing levies on Canadian products that President Trump has already put in place. If no deal is reached and the new U.S. surcharges kick in, that could push Canada to retaliate, further escalating economic tensions between the U.S. and one of its largest trading partners. And President Trump has cast his vote ahead of Florida's Republican primary today using a method that.

that he has long railed against. Never allow mail-in ballots, because if you do, there'll be massive cheating. Voting by mail. Anytime you have mail-in ballots, you have cheating. People don't want mail-in ballots because you have crooked elections. It guarantees a crooked election. Trump has criticized mail-in voting for years, using it to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

But this is at least the third time he's used mail-in-voting himself, casting ballots in Palm Beach County, home to Marlago. In response to questions, a White House spokeswoman downplayed Trump's choice, saying that, quote, this is a non-story. Across the country, the cyclospora outbreak is now waning, after becoming the largest of its kind in U.S. history, with almost 25,000 confirmed or suspected cases. Some food safety experts the Times spoke with said they feel comfortable eating salad again. But my colleagues have learned, details about how in the early days of the outbreak, officials struggled to pinpoint the source of the contamination. Back on July 1st, state health officials in Michigan, where there were a lot of cases, had homed in on a common thread.

Many of the people who'd gotten sick had eaten at Taco Bell. So they emailed the company asking for its supply chain records. They emailed again on July 3rd, and again on July 6th, according to emails the times obtained. That day, Taco Bell provided some records to the state, but it wasn't until July 13th, once the FDA was also involved, that the government finally got all the paperwork it needed to identify lettuce from a facility in Mexico as a source of the outbreak. Notably, a federal rule that was supposed to take effect this year would have required companies like Taco Bell to send those records in 24 hours. But the Trump administration delayed implementation of that until 20. 2008, saying companies needed more time to prepare.

Food safety experts say the postponement hindered the response to the Michigan outbreak, which was the largest cluster in the U.S. Public health experts also pointed to other recent cuts at the FDA that they say are generally making the country's food supply less safe. That includes cutting a program focused on cyclospora tracking. In response to questions from the Times, the acting Deputy Commissioner for Food at the FDA, disputed that the 24-hour rule would have made a major impact in this outbreak. And Taco Bell said it responded to all requests from health officials in a timely manner.

In Nevada, a criminal trial is now underway about one of pop culture's most notorious unsolved crimes, the murder of Tupac Shakur. It's been nearly 30 years since the hip-hop artist was killed in a drive-by shooting, and there have been endless theories about who was responsible. Now, let's be clear. Dwayne Davis did not hold the jury. But what he did do was plan the retaliation for the beating of his nephew. In opening remarks yesterday, prosecutors laid out their case against Dwayne Keith Davis, accusing him of orchestrating the murder. And while cold cases are often revived after decades because of fresh leads or surprising new evidence, that's not the case this time. Davis has been talking about his role in the shooting for years.

As far back as 2008, Davis told detectives that he and other gang members had chased after Shakur and that he was in the car when his nephew opened fire. Prosecutors didn't pursue charges at that point because he'd struck a deal in order to talk to them. But over the years, Davis continued to share his story on TV, podcasts, and in a memoir, some of which is now featuring in his trial. Now what the state has just told you what they believe to be the evidence in this case. But really at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself

if what they're saying is really true or fiction. Davis's lawyers, though, say that his memoir was fiction and that he has a long history of embellishing the truth. They claimed he wasn't charged years ago because police, quote, knew he was full of crap. The trial, which will likely dress up a lot of hip-hop history and infamous rivalries is expected to last about a month. And finally.

So this morning, I drove 100 miles north out of Las Vegas into a remote part of southern Utah. I'm here in this spectacularly beautiful canyon, but I'm not here to hike. I'm here to see a show. It's one that I've seen a number of times before. the people sing, singing the song of angry men. Le Miserables. My colleague Michael Paulson covers theater for the times, and he's been looking at how productions of Le Miz are popping up everywhere,

even 40-plus years after the musical about a French rebellion first hit the stage. There's the elaborate production that he went to see at the Tuocon Center for the Arts in Utah, which even includes live goats. But productions are also opening in, Arizona, California, Colorado, two in Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, the list goes on. Michael says the lay-miz surge is being driven by two key things. One, a long-running national tour of the show just ended, which has freed up the license for regional theaters to perform it.

And two, theaters are really hungry for a hit. This production is coming in the middle of a pretty serious financial crisis facing regional theaters in the U.S. And they're turning to this show, remembering how popular it was, knowing that there's a eagerness to see this title again and hoping that by staging it again, they're going to draw large crowds that will not only love the show, but will also bolster the theater's finances. Michael says some theaters have seen their production costs go up 50 percent or more since the pandemic.

So they're banking on a big, flashy classic that some sort of. superfans might even go see more than once. Basically, the hope across the country is that they'll go see it and then go see it one day more. One day more. Another day, another destiny. It's never-ending road to Calvon. Those are the headlines. Today on the Daily. He's just gotten more and more like exhausted.

Nobody enters his life expecting it to be fun. This is a whole other level. a look at the deteriorating conditions on one of the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers in the Middle East, which has now been deployed for months longer than planned. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you are not a Times subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to everything we publish when you download the Times app now. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.