Trump Dangles $5,000 Payments if Republicans Win, and Deportees Are Stranded in Haiti

0:00This podcast is supported by TNT's new limited series, High Value Target, The Hunt for Saddam. Inspired by the memoir Debriefing the President, this political thriller stars Joel Kinnaman as John Nixon, the first CIA officer to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his capture in 2003. John Nixon's relentless pursuit of truth during the invasion of Iraq comes to the screen for the first time in High Value Target, The Hunt for Saddam. The two-night premiere event starts September 13th at 9 on TNT. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, September 10th. Here's what we're covering.

0:44If we lose, you're going to lose your border. You're going to lose your tax cuts. You're going to lose your safety and security. You're going to lose your wealth. Last night in Dallas, President Trump kicked off the GOP's first of its kind midterm convention as his party stares down the possibility of major losses in November. So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. In a primetime made-for-TV speech, Trump repeatedly urged Republican voters to turn out the same way they have when he's been a candidate. And he also tossed out a new idea to try and get people to the polls.

1:26If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get$5 ,000. It will be called the Trump dividend. Trump claimed he would send a$5 ,000 check to every American adult if Republicans keep control of Congress. Now all we have to do, now all we have to do is win under my leadership. The president has made similar promises in the past to send out cash, which haven't actually happened. This plan would likely cost more than a trillion dollars and would need sign-off from Congress. In all, over the nearly two-hour speech, the president largely dismissed the issues that had been weighing down his party in the polls.

2:09He said the U.S. is winning the war with Iran, which has been largely unpopular with voters. And he shrugged off concerns about affordability, high gas prices, the rising cost of groceries, etc., as, quote, fake. This historic midterm convention is rallying Republicans at the perfect time because so much is on the line this November. In addition to Trump, a whole list of Republican candidates and lawmakers also took the stage. They largely avoided talking about the war as well, instead going on the offensive. We face the most dangerous, radical, and frankly, weird Democrat candidates in American history.

2:55Maybe the most surprising moment of the night was when one prominent Democrat made an appearance. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes in socialism and that anti-American way of life. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. In a minute-long video, Fetterman appeared to undercut his own party and echoed Republicans' rhetoric that Democrats have become increasingly extremist. In recent months, Fetterman has been amping up his connections to Republicans while consistently denying rumors that he's on the brink of switching parties. The convention will continue in Dallas tonight.

3:40Now, two quick updates on the Trump administration, from cash gifts to White House staff to a proposal that could upend the census. First, financial disclosure forms from the White House show the president gave$45 ,000 each to his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two other close aides. Each payment was recorded as a, quote, cash gift for the holidays last year and is equal to about a third of the staffer's salaries. The disclosure raises questions about whether the gifts violate the federal government's policy against political appointees getting bonuses. That policy exists, one ethics expert told the Times, to prevent even the appearance that a federal employee would feel more beholden to the person giving them cash than to the public.

4:29In addition to HAARP, the group who received cash gifts from Trump includes Chamberlain Harris, his former receptionist who he installed on a federal commission where she greenlit his ballroom project and pushed for a gold coin with his face on it. In a statement posted on social media, the White House said the gifts were allowed because they, quote, have nothing to do with any of these individuals' official government duties. And the Trump administration is proposing overhauling the census by no longer counting immigrants unless they have green cards. Historically, the census has counted all U.S.

5:08residents. The 14th Amendment lays that out, calling for the counting of, quote, the whole number of persons in each state. Those numbers get used to determine how many congressional seats states get and where billions of dollars of federal money are allocated. While the proposal is likely to face legal challenges, if it goes through for the 2030 census, areas with more immigrants, which tend to vote Democratic, could lose representation and funding. The administration also wants to remove questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation from the census, which could have major implications for anti-discrimination policies and civil rights protections.

5:49The White House referred questions about the changes to the Commerce Department, which oversees the census. The department did not respond. In his first term, Trump made a similar effort to change the census by adding a question about citizenship, and a federal court rejected that.

6:13In Haiti, deportation flights from the U.S. that used to land once a month are now landing once a week, as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to expel some of the 300 ,000-plus Haitians who, until recently, had temporary protected status. Since July, hundreds of people have been put on planes and sent to the city of Cap-Haitian. I went to Cap-Haitian last week. The flights arrive on Thursdays, and after the people are processed at the airport, they go to the local police station for background checks. So I spent a few hours there talking to dozens of people who were just kind of in shock.

6:54My colleague Frances Robles covers Haiti, where she said violent gangs still control portions of the country, though the Trump administration has deemed it safe enough to send people back. A lot of them were very, very upset because many of them did not have their belongings. When their belongings were returned to them upon arrival in Haiti, the bags often were missing the most valuable items. So people's cell phones, their passports, jewelry. Other people lost money. Like maybe they had cash on them when they were arrested by ICE and it gets put on some kind of debit card. But then the debit card was not given to them, was not provided.

7:32So some people lost thousands of dollars. A lot of other people told me they were arrested with such little notice, they didn't get to go home. They didn't get to go home and pack their things. They didn't get to go to the bank and withdraw their money. So they were kind of stranded with no money. And these people in their U.S. government-issued sweatpants and white T-shirts were basically sleeping on the floor. They said that they didn't even have a bathroom to use. And the Haitian government kind of acknowledged it. They acknowledged that they weren't ready, and they're really concerned that these people are going to wind up homeless in their city.

8:08The police official said to me, he said, go outside. You're going to find them outside the police station. They'd have nowhere to go. After interviewing the migrants, Frances says she asked Haitian immigration officials and the Department of Homeland Security about why some deportees' belongings had gone missing. The Haitian officials didn't respond to the request for comment, and the DHS said the migrants' property had been returned upon their arrival.

8:39And finally. This year in London, the hottest art show by miles is the bio tapestry at the British Museum, which opens today. You wouldn't really expect a historical artifact to generate as much hype as this has. But here, it seems like the entire nation has been gripped by biofever. All the tickets are sold out through the end of the year. It really is the one thing everyone wants to see. My colleague Alex Marshall covers culture for The Times. He says people are losing their minds for a tapestry, yes, a tapestry, because this one is nearly 1 ,000 years old and stretches more than 200 feet long.

9:22And while a lot of surviving medieval tapestries are just faded fragments, this one is shockingly intact. In a series of scenes that seem straight out of Game of Thrones, it shows William the Conqueror rampaging through Britain. We're talking arrows through eyeballs and heads getting chopped off, all delicately embroidered on the tapestry. Despite depicting a key moment in British history, it has been kept in Bayou, France, where it gets its name for centuries, and people thought it would never make it back to Britain. Alex says it took a huge feat of diplomacy to get it on loan to the British Museum, and an elaborate secretive effort to make sure that the very fragile artifact would survive the trip.

10:07Normally when you move an artwork, you put it in the back of the truck, and then you just drive it from one museum to the other. Maybe it has one person accompany it. But for this, it had an army of people involved. They first had to get it off display in France, which involved 100 technicians lined up just a few centimetres apart along the entire length of the tapestry to gently lift it and put it into a foldable case specially built for this embroidery so that it could be stored securely. and that took hours. Once it was in this case, that was then put into the back of a truck. It was surrounded by all these vibration dampening springs that are usually used in earthquake zones.

10:53They then had to do test runs to work out where the sort of biggest potholes would be and the biggest bumps so they could try and counter those. And then once they got it to Britain, they had to then do an equally delicate operation to get it out of all its casing and to get it onto a display table. Around the Tapuji's loan, there's been this big split among conservators about whether this was a good thing. Lots of people were opposed to the loan almost as a matter of principle. They say, well, masterpieces should not be moved. If there's any risk, it could damage them. You're going to lessen the life of a part of world history.

11:31And because of that, you should just keep it where it is, almost under lock and key. But many people say the purpose of conservation is to ensure these artworks can be seen and in fact can be seen by the most people possible who will be excited by it. And in that case, doing this loan to a museum where it might be seen by over a million people in just a few months is the best thing that can happen to this tapestry.

11:59Those are the headlines today on The Daily. A look at the contentious new question dividing courts and couples across the country. If you break up, who gets custody of your embryos? 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 with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.

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