Trump’s $47 Billion-Dollar Border Wall Plan, and Why a Tupac Murder Trial Is Starting After 30 Years

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0:34Julie Creswell:From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 18th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45I just landed in Texas, headed to Big Bend National Park. Last night, I put a pause on all activity in that park as far as construction goes.

0:54Julie Creswell:The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that the Trump administration is temporarily stopping work on a controversial border security project that cuts through a national park in Texas. No roads! No roads! No walls! No walls! No way! No way! For months, environmentalists, local officials, and lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration's plans to cut through the pristine desert wilderness. Several local sheriffs have opposed it, too, calling it unnecessary, since in recent months, authorities have encountered fewer than six migrants a day in the whole area. Amid the backlash, the administration scaled back its plans for a 30-foot wall in the park.

1:40Julie Creswell:But this month, bulldozers and excavators started tearing up the landscape for a new patrol road and other security measures, setting off a fresh wave of anger. Now, the CBP says that work has been paused. The fight around Big Ben National Park comes as the Trump administration has been trying to fill in the gaps of the border wall. In President Trump's first term, work on the wall mostly involved replacing existing barriers. But now efforts to extend it are accelerating, boosted by about$47 billion in dedicated new funding. Construction is underway in all four border states, even as illegal crossings have fallen to historic lows.

2:26Julie Creswell:Now, two other quick updates on the Trump administration. Question for the prime minister. Do you expect to speak with the U.S. president before Wednesday's tariff deadline? And if so, what will your message be for President Trump? Short answer is yes. Canada is scrambling to try and avoid new 50 percent tariffs on hundreds of Canadian goods that the White House says will go into effect at midnight tonight. Canadian officials stayed in D.C. over the weekend to continue negotiations with the U.S., and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has told them to try and offer targeted concessions. He's hoping to both keep the new tariffs from kicking in and ease existing levies on Canadian products that President Trump has already put in place.

3:09Julie Creswell:If no deal is reached and the new U.S. surcharges kick in, that could push Canada to retaliate, further escalating economic tensions between the U.S. and one of its largest trading partners. And President Trump has cast his vote ahead of Florida's Republican primary today using a method that he has long railed against. Never allow mail-in ballots, because if you do, there'll be massive cheating. Voting by mail. Anytime you have mail-in ballots, you have cheating. People don't want mail-in ballots because you have crooked elections. It guarantees a crooked election. Trump has criticized mail-in voting for years, using it to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

3:52Julie Creswell:But this is at least the third time he's used mail-in voting himself, casting ballots in Palm Beach County, home to Mar-a-Lago. In response to questions, a White House spokeswoman downplayed Trump's choice, saying that, quote, this is a non-story.

4:16Julie Creswell:Across the country, the cyclospora outbreak is now waning, after becoming the largest of its kind in U.S. history, with almost 25 ,000 confirmed or suspected cases. Some food safety experts the Times spoke with said they feel comfortable eating salad again. But my colleagues have learned new details about how, in the early days of the outbreak, officials struggled to pinpoint the source of the contamination. According to emails reviewed by The Times, back on July 1st, state health officials in Michigan, which had a lot of cases, had identified that many people who'd gotten sick had eaten at Taco Bell.

4:54Julie Creswell:So they wrote to the company asking for its supply chain records. But it took multiple emails and almost two weeks, during which time the FDA also got involved, before the government finally got all the paperwork it needed to identify lettuce from a facility in Mexico as a source of the outbreak. Notably, a federal rule that was supposed to take effect this year would have required companies like Taco Bell to send those records in 24 hours. But the Trump administration delayed implementation of that until 2028, saying companies needed more time to prepare. Food safety experts say the postponement hindered the response to the Michigan outbreak, which was the largest cluster in the U.S.

5:37Julie Creswell:In response to questions from the Times, the acting deputy commissioner for food at the FDA, disputed that the 24-hour rule would have made a major impact in this outbreak. And Taco Bell said it responded to all requests from health officials in a timely manner.

5:58Julie Creswell:In Nevada, a criminal trial is now underway about one of pop culture's most notorious unsolved crimes, the murder of Tupac Shakur. It's been nearly 30 years since the hip-hop artist was killed in a drive-by shooting, and there have been endless theories about who was responsible. Now, let's be clear. Dwayne Davis did not pull the trigger. But what he did do was plan the retaliation. In opening remarks yesterday, prosecutors laid out their case against Dwayne Keith Davis, accusing him of orchestrating the murder. And while cold cases are often revived after decades because of fresh leads or surprising new evidence, that's not the case this time.

6:42Julie Creswell:Davis has been talking about his role in the shooting for years. As far back as 2008, Davis told detectives that he and other gang members had chased after Shakur, and he said that his nephew, who has since died, had opened fire from the car they were in. Prosecutors didn't pursue charges at that point because he'd struck a deal in order to talk to them. But over the years, Davis continued to share his story on TV, podcasts, in a memoir, some of which is now featuring in his trial. Now what the state has just told you what they believe is the evidence of this case. But really, at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself if what they're saying is really truth or fiction.

7:23Julie Creswell:Davis's lawyers, though, say that his memoir was fiction and that he has a long history of embellishing the truth. They claimed he wasn't charged years ago because police, quote, knew he was full of crap. The trial, which will likely dredge up a lot of hip-hop history and infamous rivalries, is expected to last about a month.

7:53And finally. So this morning, I drove 100 miles north out of Las Vegas into a remote part of southern Utah. I'm here in this spectacularly beautiful canyon, but I'm not here to hike. I'm here to see a show. It's one that I've seen a number of times before.

8:11Julie Creswell:Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men? My colleague Michael Paulson covers theater for The Times, and he's been looking at how productions of Les Mis are popping up everywhere, even 40-plus years after the musical about a French rebellion first hit the stage.

8:34Julie Creswell:There's the elaborate production that he went to see at the Tuakon Center for the Arts in Utah. But productions are also opening in Arizona, California, Colorado, two in Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, the list goes on. Michael says the Les Mis surge is being driven by two key things. One, a long-running national tour of the show just ended, which has freed up the license for regional theaters to perform it. And two, theaters are really hungry for a hit. This production is coming in the middle of a pretty serious financial crisis facing regional theaters in the U.S. And they're turning to this show, remembering how popular it was, knowing that there's an eagerness to see this title again, and hoping that by staging it again, they're going to draw large crowds that will not only love the show, but will also bolster the theater's finances.

9:29Julie Creswell:Michael says some theaters have seen their production costs go up 50 % or more since the pandemic. So they're banking on a big, flashy classic that some superfans might even go see more than once. Basically, the hope across the country is that they'll go see it, and then go see it one day more. One day more. Another day, another destiny. This never-ending road to Calvary These men seem to know why crime is falling apart Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily. He's just gotten more and more, like, exhausted. Nobody enters his life expecting it to be fun. This is a whole other level. A look at the deteriorating conditions on one of the U.S.

10:17Julie Creswell:Navy's aircraft carriers in the Middle East, which has now been deployed for months longer than planned. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you are not a Times subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to everything we publish when you download the Times app now. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.