A Maryland father was mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison. The administration called it an “administrative error.” Nick Miroff of The Atlantic joins to discuss. Farmers, a constituency that supported Trump, are worried about the impact of tariffs. The Wall Street Journal’s Kristina Peterson talks about how they’re feeling. Politico’s Alice Miranda Ollstein discusses a Planned Parenthood case that went before the Supreme Court. Plus, why you shouldn’t rush to buy gold, the similarities between the fault line that caused the Myanmar earthquake and the San Andreas Fault in California, and tips to reduce your suffering this allergy season. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Good morning. It's Thursday, April 3rd. I'm Shmeetha Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, some farmers start to fear the squeeze from Trump's tariffs. Planned Parenthood faces threats to its funding on multiple fronts. And why every allergy season feels worse than the last.
Chapter 2: Why was Kilmar Abrego Garcia sent to a Salvadoran prison?
But first, the Trump administration says they've deported a man from Maryland to El Salvador in error, but that they stand by the deportation and are powerless to bring him home. The man's name is Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. Atlantic reporter Nick Miroff was the first to report on the so-called error.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested in Maryland on March 12th. Within 48 hours, he was relocated down to an ICE deportation staging area in South Texas. And, you know, two days later, his wife recognized him in the photos released by the Salvadoran president showing all of these detainees arriving in that mega prison complex after the Trump administration's three deportation flights.
According to court filings, Abrego Garcia came to the United States almost 15 years ago as a teenager after fleeing gang violence in El Salvador, the very country where he is now detained. In 2019, Garcia received protected legal status after a judge determined that he could be a target if he were deported back to El Salvador.
In the years since, his wife, who is an American citizen, says Abrego Garcia attended regular check-ins with ICE, followed the rules, and is the family's main breadwinner, working five days a week as a sheet metal worker while also attending college classes. Abrego Garcia is the father of several kids, also American citizens, including his five-year-old son who has disabilities.
Despite never having been charged with a crime, the Trump administration alleges that Abrego Garcia ran a gang. His attorney says that that label is the result of an incident in 2019 where he and three other men were detained. One of the men allegedly said that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but didn't have proof. And Abrego Garcia maintained that he was not affiliated with a gang.
Here's his wife, Jennifer, speaking with CBS News.
He's not a criminal. My husband is an amazing person, an amazing father.
Abrego Garcia's attorney is pushing for the courts to order the Trump administration to bring him back to the United States and to even withhold payments to the Salvadoran government, which is charging the United States to imprison deportees. Miroff said there is a process to deport someone with protected status, but the administration isn't following that protocol here.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation?
They didn't even take the steps to reopen his case to try to introduce that evidence and get his withholding of removal status stripped from him. Right. That would be the due process. Instead, they just grabbed him. And within three days, he was out of the country and into this mega prison in El Salvador.
Miroff expressed concern about the kind of precedent Abrego Garcia's case could set.
I think we're heading to a potentially dangerous place where the government is just going to say somebody is bad or is a gang member, even though they don't have any criminal record or any refutable evidence. And then they're making these decisions and sending them off to a dungeon-like prison where who knows when they'll be able to get out.
Attorneys for other men who have been deported say their clients have also been wrongly accused of being gang members and are now languishing in one of El Salvador's harshest maximum security prisons. And yet, despite mounting reports of the questionable legality of some of these deportations, Immigration and Trump's handling of it is still his most popular policy.
A late March CBS News YouGov poll found when asked about the administration's program to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally, 58 percent said they approve. President Trump announced a new round of tariffs at an event at the White House Rose Garden yesterday.
In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world.
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Chapter 4: How are Trump's tariffs affecting American farmers?
A 10% tariff will be placed on all of the U.S. 's trading partners, with the exception of Canada and Mexico. Dozens of other countries will also see double-digit tariffs, with China taking a big hit, a 34% tariff on all goods. Meanwhile, in a vote late Wednesday, a handful of Republicans joined all Democrats in the Senate to pass a bill that would block some previously announced tariffs on Canada—
It's symbolic, but Politico notes it's a rare rebuke by some Republicans of one of Trump's signature agenda items. The Wall Street Journal recently checked in with one core constituency that has largely supported Trump in the past, but is now feeling nervous about how his tariffs might affect them, American farmers.
An average of 78 percent of voters in rural, farm-dependent counties backed Trump in the 2024 election. But the Journal's Christina Peterson, who joined us from the Capitol, reports that some have concerns now.
What's interesting about this moment is that they are not particularly happy with the actions that he and his administration are taking. They don't necessarily blame the president personally, but they are feeling the brunt of a variety of decisions.
In a survey cited by the Journal, 54 percent of farmers said they did not support Trump's use of tariffs as a negotiating tool. According to USDA research, Trump's trade policies in the first administration led to more than $27 billion in losses. But Peterson said even before these latest tariffs were enacted, farmers were struggling.
Commodity prices are so low and costs are so high that Congress authorized $10 billion in economic aid in December that's just going out now. So these are tough times for farmers already to be contending with new challenges.
Other major policy decisions impacting farmers have to do with federal spending. The Agriculture Department said that it was phasing out programs used to buy local produce for food banks and schools. There's also been some money frozen from a Biden-era climate project. That's having an impact on farmers like Jim Hartman in North Carolina, who Peterson spoke to.
When our photographer went to meet up with him, his forklift that he had hoped to replace and instead is just repairing wouldn't start. He can't finish a packing and processing facility that he was building to help him scale up. He can't buy a machine that would kind of parcel honey out into little packets to use to sell to school districts.
So it's really slowing his ability to scale up his operations.
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Chapter 5: What challenges are farmers facing due to federal policies?
The Agriculture Department cuts alone are costing just Hartman an estimated $100,000 in revenue. He told the Journal that despite being a lifelong Republican who voted for Trump in November, these policies are, quote, pushing him left.
The administration has said that they have farmers' backs, and Trump himself has talked about the upside of tariffs allowing for more agricultural products to be made in the U.S. But Peterson said there's one big wrinkle in that plan.
For farmers, there are constraints that don't exist elsewhere. For example, seasons and growing conditions. You can't just grow an avocado anywhere. Some U.S. companies grow tomatoes and avocados in Mexico because the growing conditions are so much more favorable there.
So one of the things they're saying is, you know, we support the president's goals, but just practically, it's really hard to do some of those things in the U.S. in April.
Let's turn now to the headwinds facing Planned Parenthood. Last month, the organization announced it would sell the historic building that houses its Manhattan Clinic, reducing the total number of Planned Parenthoods to just three total in the city. Meanwhile, the organization is caught in the middle of legal battles and threats to its funding from the administration and from states.
Just this week, Politico reports the Trump administration announced it would withhold tens of millions of dollars from nine planned parenthood state clinics across the country. Alice Miranda-Alstein is a senior health care reporter for Politico, and she told us these are dollars that come from the Title X family planning program.
It's a federal program, you know, more than $200 million per year that funds clinics around the country that provide contraception, STI testing, other sort of sexual and reproductive health services for low-income people that are free or subsidized.
Alstein reports these Planned Parenthood chapters received notices earlier this week saying their funding is being temporarily withheld.
the issues the Trump administration brought up as the reasons for this were that these organizations had made statements on their website or as part of their mission statement or some sort of public communication promoting diversity. And the Trump administration said, oh, that violates President Trump's executive order banning promotion of DEI.
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