The Headlines - Trump’s Call with Putin, and Ozempic’s Effect on Drinking

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Plus, the hidden cost of a Valentine’s bouquet. On Today’s Episode:Trump Says Call With Putin Is Beginning of Ukraine Peace Negotiations, by Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Anton TroianovskiSome Migrants Sent by Trump to Guantánamo Are Being Held by Military Guards, by Carol Rosenberg and Charlie SavageFamily of Venezuelan Migrant Sent to Guantánamo: ‘My Brother Is Not a Criminal,’ by Julie Turkewitz and Hamed AleazizGabbard Sworn In as Top Intelligence Official, by Julian E. Barnes and Robert JimisonTrump’s Federal Resignation Program Moves Ahead After Court Win, by Chris Cameron, Karoun Demirjian and Madeleine NgoState Dept. Plans $400 Million Purchase of Armored Tesla Cybertrucks, by Jack EwingRepublicans Love Trump’s Spending Cuts. Just Not in Their States, by Maya C. Miller and Catie EdmondsonOzempic Can Curb Drinking, New Research Shows, by Dani BlumHow Can My Valentine’s Flowers Show the Earth Love, Too?, by Selena RossTune 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 Thursday, February 13th. Here's what we're covering. No, we had a great call and it lasted for a long time, over an hour. President Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday about how to end the war in Ukraine. I think I can say with great confidence he wants to see it ended also.

That's good. And we're going to work toward getting it ended and as fast as possible. The conversation marks a dramatic break from previous efforts by the Biden administration and other Western leaders to isolate Putin since he launched the invasion. Trump is taking a different tack. We ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he'll come here and I'll go there. The president's announcement that he'll work with Russia

on a ceasefire deal and even meet with Putin personally about it has raised concerns in Ukraine that the country could be sidelined in any peace talks. Trump didn't speak with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky about any kind of deal until after his call with Putin. And it's unclear what that deal could ultimately look like. Putin suggested on Wednesday that Russia won't stop fighting

without some concessions and Ukraine will likely have little leverage. It's insisted that it wants to regain all the territory Russia's seized going back to 2014. But yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called that unrealistic. As part of its promised crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has now flown nearly 100 migrants to Guantanamo Bay. Some are being housed in an empty wing of the prison complex built to hold terrorism suspects after 9-11 and are being guarded by troops. Officials

say many of the migrants are violent gang members from Venezuela, but they haven't released their identities or any evidence of their connections to criminal activity. Keeping the names quiet makes it harder for lawyers to challenge their detention and keeps the migrants' families in the dark about where they are. One woman only found out that her brother was there when she saw him in a photo online. Just a couple of days ago, she was scrolling through TikTok, as one does, when she suddenly saw a picture of her brother that had been posted by the Department of Homeland Security. My colleague Julie Turkowitz spoke with Yehira Castillo, whose brother Luis Alberto Castillo

was shown in a photo at the base with his head down, being led by a man wearing camo and latex gloves. So I said to her, you know, the US government has said that your brother is among the worst of the worst. The US government says that he is a member of the criminal group, the train de Aragua. Is this true? And she says over and over again in the conversation, cual criminal, que criminal? She says, my brother is not a criminal. And she says, he's the father of one, he's from Venezuela, he had been living in Colombia,

trying to make a living, wasn't making very much money, went to the US to make a better life and somehow got wrapped up in this. Julie says, people familiar with Castillo's arrest told her officials suspected him of gang activity because he has a Michael Jordan tattoo on his neck. But a Jordan tattoo isn't necessarily a clear indicator, since basketball has been incredibly popular in Venezuela for decades. When asked, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security first told The Times that officers couldn't determine whether Castillo was a gang member,

saying, he may very well be, he may not be. In a follow-up, she said they had new information that he was, but did not share it. I think that what this case tells us is that we have the Department of Homeland Security telling the American public that it is sending the most violent criminals, members of this criminal group, the Tren de Aragua. But we don't really have any evidence to back up what the government is saying, so we really have no clue who could be sent to Guantanamo Bay in the future. Here's four other brief updates on the Trump administration.

One of Trump's most divisive cabinet picks, Tulsi Gabbard, has now been sworn in as director of national intelligence. She'll oversee America's spy agencies and give the president his daily intelligence report. There were bipartisan concerns that she's been too supportive of authoritarian leaders like Bashar al-Assad of Syria. But only one Republican senator voted against her confirmation, Mitch McConnell, who said she showed, quote, a history of alarming lapses in judgment.

On Wednesday, the White House got the green light to move forward with its plan to pay federal workers to resign. A judge ruled that the unions who challenged the offer didn't have the legal standing to do so. Seventy-five thousand government employees have already volunteered to leave their jobs in exchange for getting paid through September. That's about three percent of the federal civilian workforce. Over at the State Department, documents show that officials are planning a massive contract with Elon Musk's company, Tesla. The agency says it will spend $400 million on armored vehicles this year, likely souped up versions of the sci-fi looking Cybertruck. Musk was one of the Trump campaign's biggest donors, and he's been leading the administration's efforts to reduce government spending.

And across the country, some Republican lawmakers have been working to keep federal dollars flowing to their districts, even as they publicly cheer on Trump's drastic cuts. They've been quietly asking for carve-outs and special exemptions. In Alabama, there's been a push to keep hundreds of millions of dollars going to projects run there by the National Institutes of Health. And Republicans from states with a lot of farming have been scrambling to save a foreign aid program that bought huge amounts of crops from American farmers to distribute overseas. For the past few years, people taking wildly popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic have been reporting an unexpected side effect. They were drinking less.

Now, new research is backing that up. A study published yesterday in the journal JAMA followed adults who struggled to control their alcohol consumption. Over the course of the research, the group who was given the key ingredient in ozempic, semaglutide, drank noticeably less than others who were given a placebo. Researchers think that since the drug impacts reward pathways in the brain, it can make alcohol less enticing in the same way it makes food less appealing. The caveat? The new study was small, with less than 50 people, and doctors warned that more data

is needed before the drug could actually be prescribed for treating substance abuse disorders. And finally, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, the day of a million bouquets. The Times climate desk has been looking into the environmental impact of the flower trade. It's actually a rough time of year to have a flower-centric holiday. Not a lot blooms in the U.S. in the winter. Definitely not millions and millions of red roses. So right now, whole loads of fresh flowers are being flown into the country on refrigerated planes from Colombia and Ecuador

But anyone looking for something grown closer to home potentially with a smaller footprint can look for tulips The US used to rely on the Netherlands for those but over the last decade more and more tulip farms have popped up in New Jersey, Virginia and Washington State Tulips are now the only flower mass grown in the US in the winter on such a scale that you can find them at most local shops. And for anyone who is feeling maybe less sentimental, less romantic, a reminder that there are a lot of other ways to mark Valentine's Day, including a fundraiser at a Texas zoo where they'll name a cockroach after your ex and feed it to a possum. Those are the headlines today on The Daily, the rise of bird flu in the U.S.

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.