Officials Reveal a Secret Ruse to Evacuate Trump, and the F.D.A. Takes On a Food Safety Loophole

0:28Some see borders.

0:32Zolan Kanno-Youngs:From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 11th. Here's what we're covering.

0:43Why aren't you flying the new plane home? Say what? Why aren't you flying on the new Air Force One home? It's flying to Europe, to one of the big bases, two or three of the big bases, where we can show it to the people.

0:54Zolan Kanno-Youngs:Last month, President Trump and his team announced a last-minute switch as he was leaving the NATO summit in Turkey. Instead of getting on the new Qatari-donated Air Force One that he'd taken to get there, he got onto an older Air Force One amid reports that there were security concerns and that the newer plane hadn't been outfitted with the same defensive capabilities. His boarding was kind of rushed, and reporters who got on the older plane with him were told to pull their window shades down before takeoff. The plane then flew to a military base in Britain, landed, and about 40 minutes later, Trump walked down the steps.

1:32Do you know why they had us close our window blinds? That was not usual. Well, yeah, because you're probably on a dangerous flight.

1:42Zolan Kanno-Youngs:But the Times has now learned this was all part of an elaborate deception. Two senior U.S. officials say that Trump didn't fly on the older Air Force One. Instead, after he boarded, he was then hidden in a large catering container that was lowered down from the other side of the plane and whisked away. They say he was actually flown to the U.K. base in a third plane. At that point, to complete the deception, Trump re-boarded the old Air Force One out of sight and proceeded to step out through the main door as he usually would. Reporters on that older plane were left to think they had been traveling with the president all along, making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them, along with the White House staff who was on board, to serve as unknowing decoys.

2:32Zolan Kanno-Youngs:The plan appears to have been developed in a matter of hours after officials determined that there had been a credible threat against the president from Iran, which borders Turkey. While it's an unusual case of the public being deceived about the president's whereabouts, one former Secret Service agent, who worked in protective details for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said the agency has used decoy motorcades and flights in the past. In response to questions from the Times, the White House reissued the same statement it gave immediately after Trump's trip back from Turkey. But it made a slight change.

3:10Zolan Kanno-Youngs:It initially said there were many threats against the president and, quote, we use every tool at our disposal, including distraction and misdirection, to address those threats. When it reissued the statement yesterday, it removed the distraction and misdirection language.

3:33Zolan Kanno-Youngs:In Washington yesterday. The food industry continues to develop novel compounds and chemical combinations that do not exist in nature. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed a new rule to close what experts have called a longstanding loophole in food safety. We don't even know exactly how many chemicals are in the food that Americans eat every day. Since the 50s, food companies have been allowed to bypass requirements to get new ingredients reviewed by the government by saying that they are, quote, generally recognized as safe, a designation known as grass. That workaround was originally intended to apply to common ingredients like vinegar or baking soda.

4:19Zolan Kanno-Youngs:But over the decades, companies have used it to quietly introduce at least a thousand substances into their products. Things like thickeners, extracts and flavorings, with little evidence that they are safe. Now, under the Trump administration's new proposed rule, companies would have to tell the FDA about any new ingredients they plan to use and submit safety data. Food policy experts welcomed the effort to boost oversight of food manufacturers, with one telling the Times, quote, it's been the Wild West for them for long enough. But experts also say that the proposed changes leave a lot of wiggle room.

4:57Zolan Kanno-Youngs:For example, companies would still be allowed to decide for themselves if they think an ingredient is safe. And they wouldn't necessarily be required to submit any safety data for ingredients they're already using. Kennedy has been promising to take on the food industry ever since being appointed as health secretary, arguing that many Americans' diets have led to higher rates of obesity and chronic diseases. Federal health officials are also moving closer towards releasing an official definition of what qualifies as an ultra-processed food, a move that could help shape federal food policy when it comes to things like school lunches and dietary guidelines.

5:43This is Julie Turkwitz. I live in Bogota and I woke up this morning, sat on my couch and my apartment began to shake. I evacuated my building and soon realized that Colombia had just experienced a 7.4 magnitude earthquake.

6:08Zolan Kanno-Youngs:Julie is the Times' Andes bureau chief, who's been covering a powerful quake that hit Colombia on Monday, the strongest quake there in the past 10 years. While the earthquake took place in a rural area, there were sort of major population centers affected. This includes Cali, the third largest city in the country. So far, we know that more than 100 people are dead. Buildings were flattened. I, just a couple of weeks ago, was covering the earthquakes in Venezuela. We saw many of the same scenes starting to play out in these cities in Colombia. People digging for their loved ones, civilians, rescue workers coming to the buildings and sort of trying with everything that they could to get survivors out.

6:57And one of the things that makes these earthquakes particularly devastating is that some of the same people that I met covering the Venezuela quakes had now moved to Cali, a place that they thought that they would be safe. And, of course, experienced this horrifying event once again.

7:24here in Taiwan on Monday millions of people lost their usual internet access on their phones it meant that for 30 minutes they weren't able to download images whatsapp wouldn't work many other social media would not work but all of this was deliberate it was a deliberate shutdown by the government to give people some sense of what it would be like if China attacked Taiwan's telecommunications grid and tried to shut down communications on the phone and internet.

7:51Zolan Kanno-Youngs:My colleague Chris Buckley covers Taiwan and China for The Times. He says the simulated internet slowdown yesterday was part of annual exercises to prepare for a potential future Chinese attack. China has long insisted that the self-governed island of Taiwan is part of its territory. And while Chinese President Xi Jinping has said he hopes to absorb Taiwan peacefully, he has not ruled out taking it by force. We spoke to Taiwanese officials beforehand about the drill, and they laid out two expectations that they hoped would come out of this exercise. First of all, it was very much a psychological exercise to remind Taiwanese people that easy access to 5G could easily be disrupted if China ever attacked Taiwan's telecommunication systems, including its undersea cables.

8:41The other less spoken part of the exercise was probably to test the telecommunication systems themselves. How did they respond when there was a slowdown? Did the emergency backup systems work as promised? So it was two levels, I think, testing the public reaction and also testing the system reaction.

8:58Zolan Kanno-Youngs:Chris says that Taiwan is highly aware that in the past few years, China's been ramping up its military capabilities and expanding its fleet of warships. In response, Taiwan's been trying to take a lesson from Ukraine. It's watched as Ukraine has waged a kind of David and Goliath defense against Russia, specifically by going all in on drones. The relatively cheap, easy-to-build technology has in some cases helped them hold their own against a much larger adversary. The Taiwanese government says that in the next five years, it wants to boost its drone production to 100 ,000 drones per month. But it is, of course, an arms race, and military analysts say China is investing heavily in technology to detect and jam drones, with one expert telling The Times, quote, remember, the Chinese are also watching everything the Ukrainians are doing.

9:58Zolan Kanno-Youngs:And finally, a few years ago, a project manager for a new electricity cable went on the news to talk about some work that was underway, technical stuff. Crews were preparing to run an underwater cable to connect the electricity grids of Britain and Ireland. What he didn't realize was that he was about to unleash the deep, deep feelings of Harry Potter fans. The plan he was talking about called for running a cable under a beach in Wales, right where fans have built a shrine to Dobby the house elf, the loyal little sock-loving creature from the fantasy series. In the second-to-last Harry Potter movie, Dobby dies in Harry's arms, and they filmed his burial at the same site the electricity company was eyeing.

10:44We got hundreds of calls. I mean, hundreds of calls. I said, well, Tom, what are they on about? And they said, well, look, apparently we're going to go straight through Dobby's grave. And I said, Dobby? Who's Dobby?

10:55Zolan Kanno-Youngs:The project manager, who just revealed the whole story of what happened on the podcast Energy Revolution, said after hearing from hundreds of people, including some children, they rerouted the multi-million dollar project. I think you've got to be flexible, agile and thoughtful. And sometimes, you know what, a 10-year-old girl, she's right. The company's CEO said there were some other factors at play too. They also had to dodge some actual archaeological remains from the Bronze Age near the site. This is not the first time that people's strong feelings for the house elf have caused an upset. Local officials previously flagged the fact that fans kept coming to the beach in Wales and leaving socks at the Dabi Shrine.

11:38Zolan Kanno-Youngs:The socks thing makes sense in the books, I swear. And they had to ask people, as an environmental concern, to please stop leaving all those socks.

11:50Zolan Kanno-Youngs:Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how the war with Iran has left the United States with a dangerously low supply of munitions. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.