The Mass Purge of Immigration Judges, and Melania Trump’s Surprise Epstein Remarks

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0:32From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, April 10th. Here's what we're covering.

0:43In the break room of a courthouse in Massachusetts, workers put up a sign decorated with balloons saying, we'll miss you. It was part of a goodbye party for an immigration judge. Then another judge was out and another. These are the judges who decide if someone gets asylum or gets deported. Soon, the courthouse was having so many goodbye parties, they'd just left the decorations up. It was all part of a massive wave of firings carried out by the Trump administration. Now, a new investigation from the Times shows just how the administration has gone after judges in its larger effort to reshape the immigration system.

1:19You know, these judges wear robes, but they are not part of the judicial branch. They are not independent. They work for the attorney general, and they can be fired. And so the Trump administration has used that lever of pressure. My colleague Nick Nehamas is part of the team who worked on the investigation. He says immigration courts have long had a reputation for being dysfunctional with a huge backlog of cases. That's something critics and supporters of immigration agree on. But he says the way Trump is approaching it has alarmed many judges who work in the system. They described being systematically pressured to deport more people and threatened with disciplinary action if they didn't.

2:00They also sent out memos to judges. One of the most prominent basically said, hey, it's come to our attention that some of you are, quote, exhibiting bias in favor of aliens and against the government. And the message was, you know, we're not telling you how to rule, but we think you're biased in favor of immigrants. And so judges took a pretty clear message from that, that they were supposed to rule more in favor of the government. Every president tries to bring the immigration courts in line with their own policies. But no president has moved as quickly or as comprehensively as Trump to fire so many judges, to change so many policies, and to really fundamentally transform how the courts work.

2:51The consequences have been fast and dramatic. We've seen the asylum rate drop to a record low. We've seen the number of deportation orders soar to a record high. We've seen more people locked up in detention centers and even more people deciding to give up their cases and accept being removed from the country rather than keep fighting from behind bars. In response to questions, the Justice Department did not explain how it chose which judges to fire. And a White House spokeswoman said, quote, The American people elected President Trump based on his promise to enforce federal immigration law. You can read the full investigation at nytimes.com.

3:42Now, on the war with Iran, a few things to know as we head into the weekend. Tomorrow, in Pakistan, a delegation from the U.S. is set to meet with Iranian officials to try and hammer out a longer-term peace agreement. The current ceasefire only runs for two weeks. The U.S. is sending Vice President J.D. Vance, along with Trump's Special Envoy Steve Whitcoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Veteran diplomats have raised concerns that Trump has sidelined skilled experts who normally would have helped with these kinds of talks. And he's putting diplomacy in the hands of a friend and family member instead whose backgrounds are in real estate.

4:19Also. Very few ships have yet passed through. who is the Strait of Hormuz open to if you say it is now open? To everyone. Anybody who communicates with the Iranian authority has got permission from this. In an interview with ITV News, Iran's deputy foreign minister insisted the Strait of Hormuz is open, though traffic is still just a trickle. Normally, 130 or so ships would pass a day. Yesterday, just a handful got through, according to global shipping data. And last update on the conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, even as those attacks put a huge strain on the shaky ceasefire with Iran.

5:02The U.S. and Israel have said Lebanon is not included in the temporary truce, while Iran and the leaders of several NATO countries insist it must be. Yesterday in Beirut, search and rescue teams were still combing through the wreckage of flattened department buildings, where people are still missing. According to Lebanese officials, the death toll from the Israeli attacks there this week has crossed 300.

5:32At the White House yesterday. Good afternoon. The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. First Lady Melania Trump summoned reporters so that she could give a surprise statement about Jeffrey Epstein. In a short six-minute speech, she said she wanted to clear, quote, my good name. I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. Melania specifically shot down rumors that she'd met her husband through the convicted sex offender, and she said she had no relationship to Epstein and no knowledge of his crimes. In files released by the Justice Department, though, there is email correspondence between someone named Melania and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's co-conspirator.

6:23Maxwell called the woman sweet pea, and the woman signed her note love. It's not clear why Melania chose to speak out about Epstein now. At the end of her remarks, she shifted the focus to his victims and called on Congress to hold a public hearing where she said the women could share their stories. Then, and only then, we will have the truth. Thank you.

6:57Across the country, America's furniture stores are struggling. Anyone who wants to go wander through and test out a couch or peruse end tables may have noticed the going-out-of-business signs and the everything-must-go sales. Over the last few years, a number of retailers have gone bankrupt and closed, like Khan's 550 stores around the U.S. or American Freight, which was based in Ohio, closing its 300-plus stores. The industry has basically been ravaged by high mortgage rates and home prices that have frozen the housing market. That's left fewer people looking to furnish new places or dropping thousands of dollars on a dining set or a sectional.

7:38More recently, President Trump's tariffs have added pressure to the already strained market, with 25 % levies on imported furniture and cabinets, and more increases set for next year. The chief executive of RH, the upscale furniture retailer formerly known as Restoration Hardware, told investors on a conference call this month that the furniture industry had never seen fallout like this before. And quote, there's going to be a lot of competition that's not going to make it through these times.

8:14And finally, a study from researchers at Harvard Medical School has found that on days with big album releases, like Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny, traffic fatalities go up. They looked at crash data from 2017 to 2022, the last year that had full stats when they started their analysis. And they overlaid that crash data with the release dates of the 10 most streamed albums in that period, Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Harry Styles, etc. They found that traffic fatalities increased nearly 15 % on the days when the albums dropped. To try to ensure it wasn't an anomaly or related to something else, They did things like compare crash data on each release date to randomly selected dates, or the same date, different year.

9:01They also ruled out seasonal or holiday travel as a contributing factor. One of the researchers said he would bet the danger on release days is because of the physical task of listening to a new album. Unlocking the phone, opening an app, scrolling through a track list, tapping a specific song. Those are all things that could distract a driver. There has been previous research into things like this, whether certain days can correlate to more danger on the road. Past studies, for example, have shown that traffic deaths have been higher than usual on tax day, which is next week, possibly because of stress and distractions.

9:39Those 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 Dolnick, Gillian Igoe, Miles McKinley, Zoe Murphy, and Claire Waheed.

10:01Now, time for the quiz. Every week, we ask you a few questions about stories The Times has been covering. Can you get them all? First up. There exists a person who has eluded the CIA, the NSA, and the best private investigator. For years, there's been an enormous mystery swirling about the true identity of the creator of one of the most influential inventions of the 21st century. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym. This week, the Times published a new investigation with evidence suggesting that the figure who went by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto is a 55-year-old British man named Adam Back.

10:40Your question, what is the invention?

10:50The answer? Bitcoin. Yeah, despite the fact that it's become a trillion-dollar-plus industry, the inventor of it has never claimed credit, which has led to all the speculation. If Bak is in fact Satoshi, which he denies, he could quietly be one of the richest people on Earth, potentially holding a stash of Bitcoin worth nearly$80 billion.

11:15And second question. Recently, footage hit the press of a classic parenting moment, a dad teaching his daughter to drive. Except the vehicle in question was a tank, and she's driving it while her adoring father, a world leader, looks on. The video is widely being interpreted as a sign that the girl, who's believed to be about 13, is being groomed to eventually take over from her father and lead the country. What country is it?

11:50The answer?

11:55North Korea. The tank video is one of several recent public appearances that the girl, Kim Jue, has made with her father, Kim Jong-un, standing with him at a missile test launch or even firing a sniper rifle. In a you-cannot-make-this-up moment, the wider world only learned about the existence of Kim Jue after Dennis Rodman, the former NBA player, came back from a trip to North Korea in 2013, saying he had just met and even held Kim's then-baby daughter.

12:28And last question. As of this morning, early Friday, NASA's Artemis II mission is in the home stretch with the astronauts set to splash down in the Pacific. To mark their journey, we're going to ask you about some of our other favorite big space sagas fictional ones. See if you can name these three space movies. We'll play some short clips. First up, total classic, you got this. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. Next one. Prepare ship for light speed. No, no, no, light speed is too slow. Light speed too slow? Yes, we're going to have to go right to ludicrous speed.

13:10Ludicrous speed. And one more. You're going out there to destroy them, right? Not to study, not to bring back, but to wipe them out. Here they are again. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. We're going to have to go right to ludicrous speed. You're going out there to destroy them, right? That was... In Order. Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001 A Space Odyssey, the Mel Brooks space spoof Spaceballs, and the absolutely scarring Aliens. Now, not to be picky, but not a single one of those was actually filmed in space. At one point, Tom Cruise had a plan to film a movie up on the International Space Station, though that reportedly got scrapped.

13:56It's a feat Russia actually did pull off, though. A couple years ago, they sent an actress and a director up there to shoot a feature film. That's it for the news quiz. Before we go, here's the answer to our bonus question from last week. The very specific color of NASA's spacesuits is international orange. A lot of you wrote in to guess tang orange, which was a solid guess since the orange powdered drink has been an in-flight refreshment for astronauts. I'm Spacey Mumford. The headlines will be back on Monday.

14:34Most careers don't follow the path we're told to expect. So how do the best leaders actually make decisions when the stakes are high and the answers aren't clear? Work Life from Ted is back with a new host, Molly Graham. She goes inside real careers, the trade-offs, hidden truths, and hard lessons that shaped how today's leaders work and lead. Start with her first episode, A Conversation with Adam Grant. Available wherever you get your podcasts.