The Headlines - Trump’s Attack on Foreign Aid, and Disappearing Bird Flu Data

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Plus, New Orleans’ Super Bowl makeover.  On Today’s Episode:Trump Administration to Lay Off Nearly All of U.S. Aid Agency’s Staff, by Karoun Demirjian and Aishvarya KaviJudge Delays Program Offering Federal Workers Incentives to Quit, by Zach Montague and Madeleine NgoFederal Election Commission Chair Says Trump Has Moved to Fire Her, by Chris CameronN.C.A.A., Following Trump’s Order, Excludes Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports, by Juliet MacurSenate Confirms Russell Vought as Office of Management and Budget Director, by Alan RappeportC.D.C. Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Spread Between Cats and People, by Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily AnthesAfter Attack, New Orleans Is Rattled but Ready for the “Biggest Show on Earth,” by Rick RojasTune 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, February 7th. Here's what we're covering. Elon Musk bragged this week about putting USAID, the agency that disperses billions in foreign aid, into the woodchipper. Exactly what that means in practice is now becoming clear. The Trump administration plans to cut the agency's 10,000-plus workers down to just 290. Its staff was told to expect to be let go or put on leave by today. The agency has been around since the 1960s, delivering health services and disaster aid

worldwide. It's done humanitarian work in Ukraine, HIV prevention in Uganda, and helped contain outbreaks of Ebola. Global health experts say those efforts helped the U.S. keep a friendly presence overseas and build allies in developing countries. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will now oversee what's left of USAID, said the agency is wasteful. It's come under fire in the past for spending money on botched projects. He also accused the agency of insubordination and pushing a liberal agenda counter to President

Trump. We're not being punitive here, but this is the only way we've been able to get cooperation from USAID. I have preferred not to do it this way. At a press conference, Rubio defended the drastic moves. The United States will be providing foreign aid, but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest. The staff cuts at USAID come on top of a spending freeze that had already paralyzed most of the agency's programs.

That includes multiple clinical trials the agency was funding around the world. My colleague Stephanie Nolan, who covers global health, has been trying to track down what's been stopped. Normally, what I would have done is go to the USAID website and start looking there, but the website's been taken offline. And my next step would have been that I would have called the communications department, but there isn't one anymore. What I had to do was just think about all the researchers I'd ever met. And I started just sending mass emails and text messages. Did you have a trial underway that had USAID funding? Do you have

a colleague who does? Do you know of one that might be affected by this? Stephanie found that at least 30 studies have been frozen, including trials of cholera treatment and a vaccine study for HIV. She says there may be more, but all of the public records are now gone, and the staff is prohibited from speaking to the media. Stephanie says some scientists, who talked to her on the condition of anonymity, say stopping the trials before they're finished has left them in what feels like an impossible spot.

Conversations that I had with researchers when I tracked them down were really extraordinary and just described feeling completely trapped. You know, they're trapped between these explicit orders that they've been given and their ethical obligation as scientists to care for people. They had real concerns in some cases for the safety of these people.

People who, for example, have been given an experimental malaria vaccine. Someone's supposed to be checking them every couple of days for adverse health effects, and now they're cut off from those people completely. They're watching 20, 30 years of work just evaporate. There isn't a way for them to continue the work that they've been doing on a lot of these things. And it was, you know, one of them said to me, I watched my 36 year career vanish

in a four line email from someone who doesn't even understand what it is I do. In other news from Washington, a federal judge hit pause on the Trump administration's payout offer for two million federal employees hours before midnight deadline. Judge will hear arguments over whether the plan is legal on Monday. And just a day after President Trump signed an executive order to push trans women out of women's sports, the NCAA followed his lead. It reversed its previous policy, which had left it up to individual sports, volleyball, rowing, etc., to decide who could compete. Trans women will now be banned from all women's college sports. Also on Thursday, the head of the country's top election watchdog agency said President

Trump tried to illegally fire her. Ellen Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, posted a letter she got from Trump that said she was hereby removed, but she can only be fired after a replacement is nominated and confirmed by the Senate. And yesterday on Capitol Hill. This man is incredibly dangerous to the foundations of our republic. Democrats tried and failed to block Russell Vogt from becoming the next head of the Office of Management and Budget.

Vogt helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint for Trump's second term. He's advocated for expanding the power of the presidency and is a fierce critic of federal workers saying they should be, quote, viewed as villains. He was confirmed in a 53 to 47 vote along party lines. This week, the CDC posted new data about bird flu to its website and then quickly took it down. Scientists are now calling for the agency to release more information as soon as possible. The data, which seemed to have been mistakenly shared in an unrelated report, showed that

bird flu may have spread from cats to humans and vice versa. It cited two examples. To experts, the findings are not unexpected. Cats are highly susceptible to the virus, but there had not been any previous documented cases of cats passing it to people. And scientists want the full findings released now. One virologist told the Times, quote,

"'Given the number of cats in the US and the close contact with people, there's definitely a need to understand the potential risk. Over the last few years, bird flu has infected a growing range of mammals, giving the virus more opportunities to mutate in ways that could make it easier to spread to humans. The CDC used to release relevant data

on bird flu in weekly reports, but a communications ban the Trump administration put into place has disrupted that schedule. And finally, now that the stage is set, we're ready once again to serve as backdrop for the ultimate show. Tens of thousands of football fans are making their way to New Orleans this weekend for Super Bowl 59, and they'll arrive in a city that officials say

is ready for the spotlight. Around Bourbon Street, they've beefed up security after the deadly attack there on New Year's. And parts of the city near the Superdome have been revamped. Years of grime have been power washed off of City Hall, they've paved roads, planted trees, painted murals, and installed millions of dollars of new lights and sidewalks. New Orleans has invested tons of money in improving infrastructure and beautifying the

core of the city ahead of the Super Bowl. But the question is, who is ultimately going to benefit from it? My colleague Rick Rojas has been reporting from the city and talking to people who live there about the makeover. Once you kind of step outside the footprint of the Super Bowl, the grittiness is still there. The potholes are still there. The broken traffic lights, the problems with storm drainage.

And so it's not so much that people are angry that these investments have been made, but it's more the sense of, okay, well, what about us? This is a familiar tension for the city. The economy in New Orleans is really underpinned by tourism. It provides jobs, it sustains businesses, it gives the city a cultural cachet that allows it to punch above its weight, but it also can perpetuate income inequality because a lot of the work is service oriented. It's contributed to a shortage of affordable housing and it's not an us versus them kind of situation, but there is this feeling that sometimes

the powers that be in New Orleans are more concerned about tourism than investing in the people that live there and work there. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Kendrick Lamar versus Drake, the rap battle that has consumed the music world and sparked a legal fight. That's next in the New York Times audio app or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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, Elion Peltier, and Paula Schuman. The headlines will be back on Monday.