Plus, meat raffles: like bingo, but with beef. On Today’s Episode:What We Know About the Toronto Plane Crash, by Tiffany May and Neil VigdorAs Trump ‘Exports’ Deportees, Hundreds Are Trapped in Panama Hotel, by Julie Turkewitz, Hamed Aleaziz, Farnaz Fassihi and Annie CorrealEducation Dept. Gives Schools Two Weeks to Eliminate Race-Based Programs, by Zach MontagueTop Social Security Official Leaves After Musk Team Seeks Data Access, by Alan Rappeport, Andrew Duehren and Nicholas NehamasThousands Gather on Presidents’ Day to Call Trump a Tyrant, by Minho Kim, Stephanie Saul and Winnie HuPalestinian Displacement in the West Bank Is Highest Since 1967, Experts Say, by Fatima AbdulKarim and Patrick KingsleyLike Bingo, but With Beef: Why Meat Raffles Are Blowing Up, by David AndreattaTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [email protected].
Chapter 1: What are the key highlights of today's episode?
From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 18th. Here's what we're covering.
Chapter 2: What details have emerged about the Toronto plane crash?
This is an active investigation. It's very early on. It's really important that we do not speculate.
Authorities have released only a few details about the dramatic crash landing of a Delta Airlines flight in Toronto yesterday. The small jet was carrying 80 people on a flight from Minneapolis when it tried to touch down amid heavy winds and drifting snow. As it landed, it flipped upside down, losing its tail and a wing. No one was killed, but 18 people were injured.
Chapter 3: How did passengers experience the Toronto plane incident?
There was no real indication of anything. And then, yeah, we hit the ground and We were sideways and then we were upside down, hanging like bats. And then everybody was just like, get out, get out, get out. We could smell like jet fuel.
And then we just crawled out the back of the airplane. Passengers described having to climb out of the overturned plane as part of it burst into flames.
It's not clear what caused the crash, but it's the latest in a series of recent airline disasters that has travelers on edge, including a deadly crash in South Korea in December where a plane slid off the runway, and the midair collision near Washington last month between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter.
Chapter 4: What is the current status of the U.S. deportation plan?
As the Trump administration tries to carry out its plan for sweeping deportations, it's faced a major challenge. Many migrants in the U.S. come from countries it's not easy to deport them back to for various reasons, like Afghanistan, Iran, or China. Now the administration has come up with an alternate plan. Send them to another country that is willing to take them. In the last week, the U.S.
military has flown hundreds of people who come from countries in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East to Panama. 350 of them are now locked in a hotel in Panama City. They've been told they're going to be sent to a camp near the jungle, then on to their home countries.
Chapter 5: What challenges are migrants facing in Panama?
The government of Panama is not allowing journalists to come and visit these migrants and interview them. But they're visible from their windows of their hotel. And they were able to get their messages out through holding up signs, such as one woman did, holding up a piece of paper that read Afghan.
Another family of Iranian asylum seekers who had fled for America wrote in lipstick on the window, help us.
My colleague Hamed Ali Aziz says the migrants have been stripped of their passports and barred from talking to lawyers. He was able to speak with one woman who held onto her cell phone.
My colleague and I were able to get a hold of one migrant in the hotel, an Iranian woman named Artemis Qasemzadeh. She's 27 years old, and she was a Christian convert in Iran. She had hoped to come to America to build a new life and be able to practice her religion, Christianity, freely. Of course, in Iran, converting from Islam is a crime punishable by death, so currently she is
Chapter 6: How are affected migrants responding to their situation?
very, very concerned about her future.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that none of the migrants told authorities they were scared to return to their home country. But Hamed says many feel they are in danger. And some people in the hotel described desperate attempts to escape. One man broke his leg trying. The plan to send migrants to other countries will soon extend beyond Panama.
Chapter 7: What are potential future developments in the deportation strategy?
Costa Rica announced yesterday that it will also accept deportees. A flight carrying around 200 people, originally from Central Asia and India, is expected to land there this week.
This is an indicator that countries that are hoping to come into the good graces of the United States are willing to do things like this, take on hundreds of migrants from countries across the world.
And the Trump administration has not been shy about saying that they will look for all avenues to deport people and that just because an individual is from a country that is hard to deport to, it will not prevent them from being removed from the United States. And this is an indication that they really mean that.
Three other quick updates on the Trump administration. The Education Department is warning schools they will lose their federal funding if they take race into account in any, quote, aspects of student, academic and campus life. The new directive could be especially disruptive to colleges and universities.
including those that have race-based scholarships and grants, or even housing, like sororities or fraternities intended for students of a specific background. It's the latest push by the administration to frame diversity and inclusion efforts as a form of racial discrimination, particularly against white and Asian students.
At the Social Security Administration, the agency's top official has abruptly resigned after refusing to give Elon Musk's team access to sensitive personal data about millions of Americans. Musk has claimed that the Social Security program is rife with fraud and waste, but a recent audit showed that less than 1% of payments were improper.
It's not clear if Musk's team did eventually get access to the Social Security systems, which include medical records and financial data.
And the events over the past month have been built to break our wills. But we are the American people. We will not break.
Thousands of people took to the streets across the country yesterday to protest the Trump administration. Many of them said they feel Trump is acting like a king, not a president. And they held signs with messages like, this is a coup and save democracy. The protests were largely organized by the 50-51 movement, which has been pushing back against what it says is Trump's overreach.
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