Bloomberg News reports on Harvard University’s pushback to demands from the Trump administration and the resulting retribution. CNN examines how other universities have responded. And Wesleyan president Michael Roth talks about his own approach. The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov joins to discuss how some U.S. allies are hedging their bets in a trade war with China. As the White House and El Salvador have declined to help return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, PBS Newshour looks at conditions inside the prison in which he is being held. CBS’s 60 Minutes finds that a large majority of individuals deported from the U.S. to that prison do not have criminal records. Plus, Trump looks to rescind public-media funding, another Columbia student is detained by ICE, and how some Californians knew an earthquake was coming seconds before it hit. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: Who is Shumita Basu and what topics does she introduce?
Good morning. It's Wednesday, April 16th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, how U.S. allies are recalibrating after the tariff ramp up and roll back. What we know about conditions at the mega prison in El Salvador, where many deportees have been sent. And how many people in California knew an earthquake was coming seconds before it hit.
Chapter 2: What is Harvard's response to the Trump administration's demands?
But first, to President Trump's escalating attacks on colleges and universities. Harvard President Alan Garber announced Monday that the university will, quote, not surrender its independence to comply with Trump's demands to change its hiring, admissions, and curriculum. Federal officials moved swiftly to punish the school.
Trump threatened Harvard's tax-exempt status, and the government says it's freezing over $2.2 billion in contracts and grants. a move that will most likely impact research at Harvard and the university-affiliated hospital system. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in the country, which gives it some unique leverage that other schools don't have.
And it's now the very first school to hold its ground against the administration's demands. The administration is targeting schools that it claims allowed anti-Semitism to go unchecked at campus protests last year against Israel's war in Gaza, and is pressuring these schools to do things like get rid of DEI initiatives.
Chapter 3: How is the Trump administration targeting universities over anti-Semitism accusations?
At least seven universities have been threatened with federal funding cuts in recent weeks, but the full list of schools under government scrutiny is actually much larger. A total of 60 received letters from the U.S. Department of Education last month warning them of potential federal action.
Notably, Columbia University agreed to the administration's demands in an attempt to preserve some federal funding. Columbia's interim president, who has since resigned, put new restrictions on face masks on campus, gave more power to security officers to remove or arrest people, and changed leadership of its Middle Eastern Studies department.
Chapter 4: What actions did Columbia University take and how did faculty respond?
The administration paused $400 million in funding anyway. Professors at Columbia held a rally on Monday, demanding that the school do more to stand up to Trump. Here are professors Adina Bargad and Joseph Hawley speaking at that rally.
We risk turning this university from a place of discovery into a tool of political ideology and enforcement.
So now we need to ask our leadership, why can't you show the same kind of backbone and principles as the leadership at Harvard and Princeton?
But Harvard's decision could shift the tone in how higher ed institutions respond to the administration's threats moving forward. I reached out to Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, who has been very outspoken about pressures from the Trump administration on higher ed. And he told me why federal funding is so critical to these institutions.
Since the Second World War, at least, the government has recognized that by subsidizing research, the country as a whole benefits through the discovery of vaccines, through the discovery of new technologies that will be used in commerce, through the discovery of new drugs that can be used for the treatment of diabetes or cancer.
Roth also told me he finds the Trump administration's claims that anti-Semitism is running rampant on college campuses to be in extremely bad faith.
As one of the most out-Jewish presidents in a secular institution in the United States, I find it extremely distressing to see the legitimate efforts to stamp out antisemitism joined to these other efforts to actually make people align with the ideology or the whims of the leader. And I think it's really an abuse of anti-antisemitism.
And he says the public should be concerned as more and more students and academics who have been vocal against Israel's war in Gaza are getting detained by immigration authorities and student visas are being canceled.
If you have an opinion that the Secretary of State disagrees with, that's not a threat to national security. The threat to national security is becoming a country that people from other countries are afraid to visit. The idea that these students are serious threats to the foreign policy of the United States is absurd.
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Chapter 5: What are Michael Roth's views on federal funding and anti-Semitism claims?
And what's really a threat to the foreign policy of the United States is when people see how inconsistent and how lawless the government's been acting.
Let's turn now to tariffs and their impact on international alliances. As the Trump administration's exact targets and numbers change frequently, their highest tariff remains on China at 145%. And China has grown more aggressive in its response to the United States, responding with retaliatory tariffs of 125%.
This conflict could have repercussions on other negotiations with China, from TikTok to fentanyl and more. If the White House's aim by pausing the so-called reciprocal tariffs on other countries but upping China's was to isolate the Chinese government in global trade talks, it hasn't appeared to work yet. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has said that the U.S.
could reach a deal with allies and then approach China as a group to address trade. But so far, at least, The Wall Street Journal reports that key American allies are not lining up to join this fight alongside the United States. or at least they're hedging their bets.
Yaroslav Trofimov is chief foreign affairs correspondent at the Journal, and he told us that a lot of allies are still trying to regain balance after the tariff announcements earlier this month.
If you looked at the initial slew of tariffs that were imposed by President Trump, they made no distinction between longtime friends and allies that have fought side by side with the U.S. in all the recent wars, like nations in the European Union and South Korea, and outright enemies or rivals, like, for example, Iran, which received a lower tariff, let alone China.
And so in the beginning, this seemed to be like a trade war against the entire world.
Given all of this, some European leaders have signaled an openness to different policy with China. For example, an EU-China summit is set to take place this summer, and talks have restarted over a dispute regarding Chinese electric vehicle imports.
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Chapter 6: How are U.S. allies reacting to Trump's tariff policies?
Though at the same time, they have their own issues with Chinese market practices and what they see as the country's support of Russia during its war in Ukraine.
Some politicians are asking themselves, well, if the U.S. is no longer our ally, if we're going to trust the U.S., if the U.S. maybe seeks to divide Europe together with Russia, well, China is our only salvation, no matter how much we realize the nature of the Chinese regime not being a fellow democracy.
The White House has dismissed concerns about the possibility of alienating allies, saying they're too reliant on American markets to survive without U.S. trade. But many are trying to figure out how to operate in this world of uncertainty.
Chapter 7: What insights does Yaroslav Trofimov provide on international trade tensions?
It's not just the American intentions that aren't clear, but also the entire decision-making process is so haphazard with decisions made and reversed and changed in a very unpredictable fashion. That makes it very hard for nations to place their trust in the United States being a part and an ally in the long run.
Now to some updates on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador last month. Despite a unanimous ruling from the Supreme Court saying the Trump administration should facilitate his release from custody in El Salvador and his case should be handled as it would have been if he hadn't been improperly deported.
The government has said it's powerless to intervene in the matter since Abrego Garcia is already in El Salvador. The justices also said that the government's argument that U.S. courts can't grant relief once a deportee crosses the border is, quote, plainly wrong.
Yesterday, a federal judge rebuked the Trump administration and said she would compel Trump officials to answer questions detailing what steps they have taken so far to resolve the matter, saying, quote, there will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding.
And in a court filing yesterday, the DOJ said if Abrego Garcia manages to return to the U.S., he will be detained and removed from the country. Frustrated with the administration's response so far, some Democratic lawmakers say they're planning to travel to El Salvador.
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen says he'll travel there today and hopes to visit Abrego Garcia at the mega prison Cicat, where he's being held, and, quote, check on his well-being. In this prison, Abrego Garcia and more than 235 other men who were deported by the Trump administration against a judge's order last month are being held in the same conditions as convicted gangsters.
That's what Secott's prison director recently told CNN. And I'll remind you, Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in the U.S. or in El Salvador. When 60 Minutes investigated the criminal records of this group at large, it found no criminal records for 75 percent of them.
We know very little about the specific conditions this group is being subjected to, but we know there are close to 40,000 people detained at Sakat in all. They're put in communal cells that can hold up to 100 people each. There's no privacy. The toilets are open. The lights are on 24-7.
People are not allowed any personal possessions, any visitors or phone calls, and they're not allowed to go outside. And some of the people detained there, like Abrego Garcia, are not supposed to be there. That's because in 2022, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency in El Salvador to respond to a surge in gang violence.
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