How Pam Bondi Got Fired, and a Flood of Deadly New Drugs

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0:35From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, April 3rd. Here's what we're covering.

0:46Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea of what was coming. President Trump had been complaining privately about her for a while, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. He'd been venting about how she'd mishandled the Epstein files and how she hadn't been able to prosecute his political enemies like he wanted. She also wasn't as good on TV as he would have liked. So when Trump dropped Kristi Noem from her job as Secretary of Homeland Security last month, Bondi told a friend she could be next. Then, this Wednesday, Trump had Bondi hop in the car with him for a ride from the White House.

1:22There, Trump told her it was time for a change. He made it official yesterday morning on True Social. We love Pam, he wrote, but she will be transitioning to an important new job in the private sector. He didn't say what. Her dismissal came despite the fact that she spent her time as attorney general repeatedly going to bat for the president. All of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump, you all should be apologizing. That was on full display at her most recent appearance in front of Congress when she was called to answer questions about the administration's handling of the Epstein files and kept deflecting.

1:59The Dow, the Dow right now is over$50 ,000. I don't know why you're laughing. As attorney general, Bondi shook up the whole Justice Department trying to fulfill Trump's demands. She purged longtime lawyers who had worked on cases involving the president. She installed Trump loyalists with little experience in top prosecutorial jobs around the country, and she launched investigations trying to indict some of his political opponents. But judges and juries repeatedly rejected those efforts. In the process, Bondi surrendered much of the Justice Department's historic independence from the White House, and she oversaw the exodus of so many career officials, it's left key parts of the DOJ weakened and demoralized.

2:45As for what's next for the department, my colleague Tyler Pager, a White House reporter, says Trump is still formulating a plan and has asked Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to step up for now. In elevating Blanche, he's choosing someone who he's deeply familiar with. Blanche, before he joined the administration, was the president's personal lawyer and represented him in multiple criminal trials. And so he deeply understands the president's desire for revenge. And he's been a key part of the effort to run this retribution campaign from the Justice Department since day one. Tyler has more on Bondi's firing on today's episode of The Daily.

3:32A few other quick updates now, also from Washington. In another firing yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed the Army's chief of staff, General Randy George. Military officials told the Times the move seemed to be about personnel issues and grievances Hegseth has with Army leadership. The two men had been at odds for months over Hegseth's highly unusual move to block the promotions of four Army officers, two of whom were Black and two of whom were women. That had prompted some senior Pentagon officials to question whether Hegseth was singling them out over their race or gender. General George, along with the Secretary of the Army, had objected to Hegseth's plan and refused to go along with it.

4:16Also, Mr. President, I move to table the House message. The question is on the motion. In the latest tangled chapter of what is now the longest partial government shutdown on record, House Republicans chose not to move forward with a bipartisan plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Far-right members of the GOP have slammed the deal for not setting aside new money for immigration enforcement. Now, DHS will likely continue to go without full funding until at least April 13th, when lawmakers return from spring break. And we have to take care of one thing, military protection. We have to guard the country.

4:52As the White House prepares to unveil its 2027 budget today, President Trump is making his spending priorities clear. And I actually said to them, I said to Russell, don't send any money for daycare because the United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. While a president's budget is effectively just a suggestion to Congress, Trump is underscoring his focus on defense spending over things like expanding the social safety net. It's a stark contrast to when he first ran for office and sharply criticized the federal government for pouring trillions into foreign wars. Analysts say the cost of the war on Iran so far is around$30 billion.

5:34According to one estimate, that's roughly what a year of universal preschool for American three - and four-year-olds would cost. Administration officials have said the price tag of the war is worth it because, quote, there is no prosperity without security.

5:53In Iran yesterday, the U.S. hit a major highway bridge near Tehran, killing eight people and wounding nearly 100 more, according to Iranian state media. A U.S. defense official told The Times the bridge that was hit was part of a supply route for the Iranian military. A local Iranian official, though, said that there was, quote, absolutely no military activity on the bridge and that the casualties were people from a nearby village who were out picnicking. President Trump celebrated the attack on social media, warning that if Iran doesn't make a deal to end the war, there would be, quote, much more to follow.

6:31He's threatened to strike Iran's infrastructure and destroy all of its power plants. Some experts in the laws of armed conflict say targeting infrastructure like that, which would have a devastating effect on civilians, could violate the Geneva Conventions. The International Criminal Court, for example, has charged Russian commanders for ordering strikes on the power grid in Ukraine.

6:59Nearly two years into this reporting, what I understand is that this is without question the most unpredictable and dangerous time to use illicit drugs that there has ever been. When you get a drug on the street, I don't even think the dealers know all the time what they're putting in this stuff. And certainly as a user, you've got no idea. My colleague Matt Richtel has been covering how the drug market is being totally transformed by secretive chemists who are churning out a dizzying array of synthetic substances. While the most infamous synthetic drug is fentanyl, hundreds of other new psychoactive substances have been recorded in the past decade.

7:37Some are far more powerful and more addictive. Matt says that most of the new drugs come from a kind of science-to-street pipeline, where illicit chemists are able to riff off mainstream medical research that gets published in scientific papers, and then develop and produce their own products. One of the big revelations for me over the last few years is how easily these novel psychoactive substances can be made and modified. They are molecules and increasingly through know-how available on the internet and through easily accessible chemistry techniques, one part of the molecule can be substituted for another.

8:17One can be added or subtracted and that changes what that compound is. It changes whether law enforcement can detect it. It changes how it works inside the brain, making it hard to know when someone shows up at the emergency room what's even in their body. There might not be a test for that thing yet. Matt says one place that's getting totally swamped by these new mysterious drugs is America's prison system. For example, Cook County Jail in Chicago was hit with a wave of overdose deaths, six in one year. Authorities eventually realized that dealers on the outside were spraying cocktails of synthetic drugs on paper.

8:57Then it would be smuggled in, disguised as letters, legal documents, and even fake shipments that looked like they were books from Amazon. The inmates would smoke the paper without even being able to tell what was on it or what it could do to them.

9:21And finally. Hershey doing this to the ingredients, they need to not be able to get away with it without anybody noticing. This year, the grandson of the man who invented the Reese's peanut butter cup has been on a tear. He's been criticizing Hershey's, which makes Reese's, for swapping out milk chocolate and putting in cheaper substitutes that are chocolate flavored. He said he bit into a Reese's Mini Heart for Valentine's earlier this year, and blech, it was disgusting, he said. He called it a betrayal of his family's legacy. While Hershey's has kept milk chocolate in its classic peanut butter cup, it's been using a substitute in spinoff shapes like hearts and eggs.

10:02With the price of cocoa rising, several candy brands have been reformulating like that. But now Hershey's has backtracked. It announced at an investor meeting this week that it's returning to classic milk and dark chocolate recipes in all its products by 2027. The company said they were not shamed into it by the Reese's heir, who has never worked there, but were responding to consumer preferences.

10:30Those are the headlines. If you'd like to play the Friday News Quiz, stick around. It's just after these credits. This show is made by Will Jarvis, Margaret Kadifa, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Sam Dolnik, Miles McKinley, and Zoe Murphy.

10:51Now, time for the quiz. Every week, we ask you a few questions about stories The Times has been covering. Can you get them all? Here we go. This week, there's been a dust-up in the Army over a controversial use of military aircraft. Footage posted to social media showed two Apache attack helicopters flying so close to a celebrity's house near Nashville that it looked like they almost could have touched down in his infinity pool while he stood there saluting. Whose house was it? Little hint, here he is describing the encounter. Man, I was sitting right there just having like kind of Saturday morning beer.

11:34And I see the choppers start coming. I was like, man, it looks like military. The answer? Kid Rock, the very pro-Trump musician. The Army opened an inquiry into the whole situation, as the helicopters also appeared to be the ones that had flown close to a no-Kings protest that day, which some demonstrators said felt like an act of intimidation. The flight crews were suspended, but almost immediately, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reversed that decision, posting, no punishment, no investigation, carry on, patriots. That was despite the fact that even President Trump himself said that the crews, quote, probably should not have been doing it.

12:20Next question. Ladies and gentlemen, you'll see that the founding documents have arrived, and they will now be boarded onto the Freedom Plane. As part of the celebrations for the country's 250th anniversary this year, the National Archives has sent about 10 priceless documents from U.S. history on a cross-country tour aboard a specially outfitted 737. One document that's staying behind in D.C., though, is the Declaration of Independence. To see that, you still have to go to the National Archives, where it's kept under bulletproof glass. It turns out the Declaration has actually only left Washington one time in the past 150 years.

13:02Your question, when was it moved and why?

13:10A hint, it was not for any kind of celebration.

13:17the answer the declaration was last moved out of washington in 1941 after the attack on pearl harbor when it was rushed to a vault at fort knox along with the constitution and the gettysburg address it was kept there for a few years for safekeeping that is until nicholas cage got involved. Okay, last question. Three, two, one, booster ignition and lift off. This week, I'm sure you heard, the Artemis II mission took off to circle the moon. It's a test run, basically, to try and get humans back on the lunar surface in the next few years, since no one has set foot up there since 1972. So do you know how many humans total have ever walked on the moon's surface?

14:07Is it six, nine, or 12?

14:17The answer? 12. All of them American. They left their boot prints on the moon's surface where there's no wind or rain to ever wipe them away. And they've also left a surprisingly long list of other stuff up there. Two golf balls, a small Bible, a family photo, dozens of bags of human waste, charming, and my favorite, a cache of$2 bills. The Apollo 15 astronauts brought the money up there intending to sell the bills as collector's items when they got back down to Earth. but they accidentally left some of it behind. That is it for this week's news quiz, but a little bonus challenge for you here.

14:58The Artemis astronauts are decked out in orange spacesuits for the trip. It's actually a very particular orange. Not tangerine, not traffic cone. It has a specific name. If you know it, or even if you just want to guess, send us an email at theheadlinesatnytimes.com. I'm Tracy Mumford. The show will be back on Monday.

15:26This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size.