Trump to talk tariffs with leaders of Canada and Mexico | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump will speak with the leaders of Canada and Mexico Monday after a tense weekend over tariffs. Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Jansen takes a look at some of the early Trump policies already breaking norms. Authorities say the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Washington, D.C. last week may have been flying higher than the maximum altitude for its training mission. Paste BN National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise talks about an undersea volcano off the West Coast, and why its imminent eruption matters to scientists. Beyoncé wins album of the year.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, February 3rd, 2025, this is the Excerpt.
Today, what's on the way this week when it comes to the tariff conversation, plus a look at some of the policies breaking norms early in this Trump administration, and a huge undersea volcano is getting ready to erupt.
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President Donald Trump warned there could be some pain after signing executive orders that placed tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, targeting three of America's key trade partners. He wrote in an all caps post on truth social yesterday morning, that this will be the golden age of America, but that there may be some pain. Set to go into effect tomorrow, the new duties include a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tariff against China. The move is intended, Trump has said, to incentivize these countries to clamp down on the flow of fentanyl and migrants traveling from their borders into the US. But some economists have warned that the measures could hike prices for American consumers and increase inflation. Products like wood from Canada and fruit from Mexico, are among the list of goods whose prices are expected to rise. Trump said he will talk to leaders from Canada and Mexico today. Within hours of his Saturday order, Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, hit back with tit-for-tat retaliatory, 25% tariffs on American goods. Mexico's president, Claudia Scheinbaum said she was considering tariff and non tariff measures, in defense of Mexico's interests. And China will challenge President Trump's tariff at the World Trade Organization, a symbolic gesture, though they'll also take unspecified countermeasures in response to the levy. According to China's finance and Commerce ministries.
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President Trump is already breaking norms with some of his first policy decisions of the term. I spoke with Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Jansen for more.
Bart, thanks for hopping on at the end of a busy and crazy week.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
I want to start with his just generally going after critics. This was a staple of his first term in office, it's been a hallmark of the entire Trump experience for years. How have we seen this play out Bart, early, this time around?
Bart Jansen:
One element would be canceling the security details for several of his own former aides, General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dr. Anthony Fauci, John Bolton, his former national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State. High level people who each have had security details because of threats against them. In the case of Bolton and Pompeo, it's threats from Iran, and Fauci faced death threats after Republican criticism of his handling of the pandemic. Trump said that basically these former government officials can't expect to have protection for the rest of their lives, and he also noted that they've made a lot of money since leaving office. So he said if they need security, they can just buy it themselves.
Taylor Wilson:
And Bart, another huge moment came when Trump's office of management and budget, temporarily froze federal grants, I know you were here on the show discussing this various times. What happened here and what's the latest. I know this issue was yo-yoing back and forth throughout the week.
Bart Jansen:
Yeah. OMB issued a memo to federal agencies to say, "Freeze the grants and loans that you might be putting out, until we have a chance to review them, to make sure that they match Trump's priorities." And some of the high level or the most prominent issues that he was raising was making sure that they don't spend money on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, he issued an executive order wiping out those programs across federal agencies, or climate provisions, such as incentives to buy electric vehicles. What the White House was arguing is that they were just trying to vet the spending, so that it would comply with Trump's priorities. The hitch is that Congress thinks they control spending priorities, lawmakers are saying, "Hey, the president can't just decide not to spend money that we've directed that he spend." So it became, well several, federal court cases, won by more than 20 states and another by advocacy groups for nonprofits, public health agencies, and small businesses, that stand to receive the grants and loans. A federal judge has temporarily halted the program while they took a look at the memo, to gauge its constitutionality. At that point, the Trump administration withdrew the memo, but President Trump and his White House press secretary, said that the policy is still going to be in place.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, and we knew immigration would be a huge part of the Trump platform, he's already gone after birthright citizenship. What happened here specifically Bart, and how else has he centered his immigration and border policy, during these first few days?
Bart Jansen:
Some of the big moves he made were to send 1,500 military troops down to the southern border, to assist Customs and border protection in strengthening the border, basically trying to prevent folks who don't have legal authorization from entering the country. In addition, there have been many raids by immigration and customs enforcement, which basically patrols the interior of the country. And they've been arresting thousands of people in raids in jurisdictions across the country. The birthright citizenship is a piece of this, he issued an order telling federal agencies not to recognize children as citizens, if they were born to two parents who are both in the country without legal authorization. Now, birthright citizenship has been US policy since just after the Civil War. His argument is, we don't grant citizenship to the children of ambassadors here in the US, and so we also shouldn't grant it to people who are here without legal authorization. A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily halted that interpretation, calling it blatantly unconstitutional. But Trump this week from the Oval Office predicted to reporters, that he would eventually win this court case. He's confident that a majority of the Supreme Court is going to side with him.
Taylor Wilson:
Well Bart, you mentioned the courts. This is clearly an unprecedented president with some unprecedented policies. Have any levers of power emerged really that can push back against some of Trump's more polarizing actions?
Bart Jansen:
The legislative branch is going to be a difficult place to challenge Trump, because both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans who are allies of President Trump. So a lot of attention is going to start turning to federal courts, as we've already seen with the federal grants' policy, the birthright citizenship wound up in federal court, and I think the expectation is there'll be as many more lawsuits as contentious policies that he adopts. And I think he's thinking that with six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, three of whom he appointed, out of the nine members, that his chances are pretty good for cases that eventually reached the high court.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, a couple of weeks into the second Trump presidency, Bart Jansen covers the Justice Department, for Paste BN. Thank you, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks so much for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
A Blackhawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Washington DC last week, may have been flying higher than the maximum altitude for its training mission, authorities say. National Transportation Safety Board investigators have determined, that the CRJ-700 airplane, was at 325 feet, give or take around 25 feet, at the time of impact. The information was based on data recovered from the jet's flight data recorder, that tracks the aircraft's movements speed and other technical information. Just before impact, the crew aboard the American flight had a verbal reaction, according to the plane's cockpit voice recorder, and flight data shows the plane's nose began to rise.
The plane's altitude suggests the army helicopter was flying above 200 feet, the maximum altitude for the route it was using. Yet the control tower's radar apparently showed the helicopter at 200 feet at the time of the accident, though that information has not been confirmed. Yesterday, DC Fire chief, John Donnelly said, officials have positively identified 55 of the 67 people killed in the crash. The Army Corps of Engineers, is surveying and preparing to begin significant salvage operations today to remove wreckage from the river. The army over the weekend identified the final soldier aboard the helicopter, as twenty-eight-year-old Captain Rebecca Lobach. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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A huge undersea volcano off the west coast, may be getting ready to erupt. I chatted with Paste BN national correspondent, Elizabeth Weise, to learn more.
Beth, hello. How are you today?
Elizabeth Weise:
I love my job, I learn something new every day
Taylor Wilson:
Well we learn something when you're here on the show. So let's talk about volcanoes and this Axial Seamount. What is it, Beth, and what are some of the signs that it's really likely going to erupt soon?
Elizabeth Weise:
I mean, I'm from Seattle, I've been covering earthquakes for a really long time up and down the coast. I had no idea there was this huge undersea volcano off the Oregon Coast, but there is, and it's called the Axial Seamount. And seamount is just a nice word for a undersea mountain. It's 300 miles off the Oregon Coast, kind of off Cannon Beach, if you know where that is. And even the tip of it, is almost a mile underwater, so it's way deep out there. And it is probably the most active volcano in the Pacific Northwest, which was a surprise to me.
Taylor Wilson:
So there are signs that it might erupt soon, is that correct, Beth?
Elizabeth Weise:
Yeah. So this puppy erupts a lot, it last erupted in 2015. So when it erupts, it belches out all this lava and the caldera deflates, and it's starting to bulge out again. And they've got a lot of stuff down there to measure it, so folks at the University of Washington are watching it. Just last week, it had as many as 250 earthquakes per hour, and these are the signs that it's getting ready to blow.
Taylor Wilson:
So it's a mile underwater. What actually happens when it erupts? What does that look like?
Elizabeth Weise:
Well, yeah, that's actually the good news here, is that it's a mile underwater and so it's not going to hurt anybody. And in fact, if you were on a boat above it, you probably wouldn't even know it was erupting. Though, if you were a whale or a fish under the surface, you'd hear it, because there'd be a lot of noise, so you wouldn't see anything. I mean, that said, it's going to spew out a ton of lava, back in 2015, it was 5,500,000,000 cubic feet of lava.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So as you write in this piece, Beth, this does give us maybe a nice research opportunity, even if it doesn't impact humans on land. But why do scientists care if it's a mile underwater? What can they learn here?
Elizabeth Weise:
So the volcanologists I talked to, I mean this is kind of the perfect thing, it's close enough to shore that they can get instruments out there, they can watch it, whatever happens, it's not going to hurt anybody. And it gives them a chance to test their assumptions, like, "Okay, if it does A, and B, do we know that it's going to erupt?" They've actually had pretty good luck predicting these eruptions in the past, and they're hoping this year they're going to get even more clarity. And that will help us for land-based volcanoes where, one, we really want to know when they're going to erupt and be able to warn people, but two, you just can't say, "Oh gosh, I don't know, it might erupt or it might not in the next year." Because what's everybody going to do, move? So it's a really great chance for them to test their assumptions and get some useful data that can help those of us who are on land.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with Paste BN.
Thanks, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
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Taylor Wilson:
Beyonce grabbed the headlines at the Grammy Awards last night, winning the night's highly coveted prize, album of the year, for her country effort, Cowboy Carter. Only three other black women have won the album of the Year award in Grammy history, Natalie Cole in 1992, Whitney Houston in '94, and Lauryn Hill in 1999. The recognition comes after the Country Music Association last year, declined to nominate her album for any awards. Her win came after getting the Grammy for best country artist earlier in the evening, an award she received from Taylor Swift. Following recent devastating wildfires in Southern California, the night also featured a fundraising effort and onstage salutes to firefighting heroes. You can check out more from music's big night with a link in today's show notes.
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Thanks for listening to the Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for the Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of the Excerpt from Paste BN.