Trump issues new ultimatum to Hamas | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump issues a new ultimatum to Hamas. President Trump agrees to temporarily exempt automobiles imported from Canada and Mexico from newly imposed tariffs. Paste BN Congress Reporter Riley Beggin explains why some Congressional lawmakers are visiting Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court won't block a judge's order requiring the Trump administration pay foreign aid groups. Paste BN Wellness Reporter Charles Trepany talks about the rise of suicide rates in kids with autism.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Thursday, March 6th, 2025. This is the Excerpt. Today Trump issues a new ultimatum to Hamas, plus automobiles will be temporarily exempt from new tariffs, and we discuss the suicide risk for kids with autism.
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President Donald Trump has issued a new ultimatum to Hamas after meeting with former Israeli hostages yesterday. He posted on social media writing quote, "I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job. Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say," unquote. Trump previously called on Hamas to release hostages by February 15th. This time, Trump is describing his ultimatum as the last warning. Also, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the administration had entered into direct discussions with Hamas officials, potentially bypassing Israel in its efforts to secure the release of the remaining American hostages. Leavitt said Israel was consulted, but did not say whether that happened before or after talks. The move broke with a decades old policy against negotiating with groups that the US brands as terrorist organizations.
During his address to Congress on Tuesday, President Trump boasted about his tariffs impact on America.
Donald Trump:
That along with our other policies will allow our auto industry to absolutely boom, it's going to boom. Spoke to the majors today, all three the top people, and they're so excited. In fact, already numerous car companies have announced that they will be building massive automobile plants in America.
Taylor Wilson:
But not all the auto industry leaders are as excited as Trump suggested on Tuesday night. The three largest US automakers requested an exemption on new tariffs. And in response, Trump agreed to exempt automobiles from newly imposed tariffs on the imports from Canada and Mexico for the next month. The move comes after Trump's 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico ignited a trade war, and sent the stock market tumbling for two straight days while stoking anxiety for consumers about higher costs. Trump has argued the tariffs are in retaliation for a lack of border security from Canada and Mexico that has allowed fentanyl produced in China to flow into the US. He's also said the tariffs are needed to boost domestic manufacturing in key industries, and to bring in new tax revenue, but economists warn that tariffs are passed down to consumers through higher prices. In addition to the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump has also placed an additional 10% tariff on imports from China.
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Trump is pushing Congress this week to provide his administration with the resources it needs to carry out mass deportations. The administration is seeking money for detention beds and repatriation flights as it ramps up an effort to remove migrants who are in the country without legal permission. The president met with House Freedom Caucus members yesterday about his budget request. Meanwhile, a bipartisan delegation from Congress plans to inspect Trump's migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay as soon as tomorrow amid mounting questions surrounding the facility. For more on that, I spoke with Paste BN Congress reporter, Riley Beggin. Hello, Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Hello.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping back on the show, Riley. So let's just backtrack here first if you don't mind, before we get to this trip. How has the Trump administration used Guantanamo Bay as part of its immigration policy over these first few weeks in office?
Riley Beggin:
In late January and early February, President Trump announced that they would be using the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center that's in Cuba to hold migrants, detention centers are in high demand under this administration as they seek to ramp up their mass deportation campaign. There have been several migrants who have been sent to Guantanamo since then, and complaints about some of the conditions there. What we know as of now is that there are at least 24 migrants who are still held at Guantanamo Bay as of today.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so tell us then Riley, about this plan from Congress to go and inspect how things are going there.
Riley Beggin:
So this is a bipartisan delegation that's going to be visiting, what we're hearing is tomorrow though, these things can often change. They're going to go, they're going to check out this facility, and both side has their own interest in pursuing this. Republicans want to really tout the successes of Trump's immigration crackdown, and show that the facility does meet Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention standards. Democrats, of course, are interested in conducting oversight of this administration, seeing whether there is anything to the claims, and doing sort of their due diligence in getting boots on the ground and seeing how things are going.
Taylor Wilson:
I'm curious, Riley, will they actually have full access? Will there be any part of the facility that they're not able to kind of get a peek at? Do we know any of the specifics there?
Riley Beggin:
So I do not know those specifics, actually. We have the confirmation this trip is happening, but not a lot of information on the details of it. What I can tell you is that members of Congress who go to Guantanamo, in fact, anybody who is visiting Guantanamo has to go through the US military to get there, they're not going to be chartering a private flight to this naval base, so they will be with members of the US military. This will be, of course, a pretty highly orchestrated trip just based on what we understand about access to Guantanamo writ large.
Taylor Wilson:
You touched on this Riley, but what are the tangible concerns, really from activists about just generally housing migrants there? And how does the Trump administration defend these actions so far?
Riley Beggin:
The ACLU and other organizations have sued the administration, alleging that migrants who are detained there don't have access to attorneys, to see their family, or that they're really getting due process to litigate their claims to enter the country. The Trump administration has said that this Guantanamo detention facility is going to be saved for the worst of the worst criminal migrants. What we have read is that there is, or at least a few dozen of the people who have been taken there have no criminal history besides illegally being inside the United States. So that's kind of what I can tell you about what I know about the allegations.
Taylor Wilson:
Where did the numbers stand, just kind of writ large when we're talking about migrant crossings and deportations? And how do things compare, say to the Biden era so far?
Riley Beggin:
What we know is that the Trump administration has deported almost 38,000 people, either to their country of origin, or other parts of the world during his first month in office, so that's just since January 20th. That's below the monthly average of 57,000 removals in the last full year of the Biden administration. What we do know as well is that, that number is lower in part because border crossings themselves plunged. Recent migrants are the easiest for the government to remove. The other thing we can say is that in 2024, February, comparatively there were around 190,000 migrant encounters on the border, and we don't really know how that compares with February of this year yet.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Riley Beggin covers Congress for Paste BN. Thank you, Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Supreme Court yesterday rejected the Trump administration's request to block an order that set a deadline for the administration to pay foreign aid organizations for work already performed for the government. Because an original deadline has lapsed, the Court said the judge should clarify how the government should comply with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines, but did not overturn the order. The decision was a divided one with four of the high court's conservative judges dissenting. Soon after taking office in January, Trump froze foreign assistance, criticizing certain past spending choices. Some of the organizations that received grants or contract with the government to run public health and other programs in other countries sued, including asking a federal judge to immediately step in because the sudden loss of funding plunged them into, what they said was, financial turmoil.
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Youth suicide has been on the rise in recent years. And for kids with autism, it's even more common. I spoke with Paste BN wellness reporter, Charles Trepany for more.
Thank you so much for carving out some time on this great piece.
Charles Trepany:
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So would you just start by telling us about this really tragic story from Anthony, and just what happened here?
Charles Trepany:
I spoke with two parents, Neil and Samara, who live in southern California, and they lost their 16-year-old son, Anthony to suicide last year. Anthony was a great kid, he was really determined, really smart. His parents told me that he had an entrepreneurial spirit, he was very hard-working. And when he set his mind to something, he wouldn't stop until he accomplished it. He was super social, he had so many friends. He loved hosting parties and poker nights. He cared passionately about fitness and health, he ran marathons, he did Spartan races. And so Anthony's suicide came as a real shock to these parents. And they knew that he was struggling, but like most stories of parents who've lost children to suicide, the severity of what went wrong is only really clear in hindsight.
And they're raising awareness specifically about the risk of kids with autism and suicide because Anthony was diagnosed with autism when he was 7 years old. The statistics on kids dying by suicide who have autism is quite staggering, studies I found said that teens with autism and children with autism have about a 5% higher rate of suicidal ideation, they're twice as likely to attempt suicide than their non-autistic peers. And the statistics are even more staggering for kids that are autistic and highly intelligent. A group called Twice Exceptional, a 2023 study from the University of Iowa found that kids who fall into this category are nearly six times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-autistic kids. So it's this huge issue, and one of the problems is that there isn't a whole lot of research being done about it.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, someone kind of on the front lines, I would say, Charles is this Dr. Gupta figure who you spoke with for this piece, a psychiatrist who has seen some patterns here as well. What has his experience been with patients?
Charles Trepany:
Dr. Gupta is a psychiatrist in Pittsburgh, and he's really one of the mental health leaders sounding an alarm about this along with parents. He started noticing a pattern, specifically among his patients around 2015. One of the patient groups that he sort of specializes in are children and teenagers who had a serious suicide attempt, but had no previous apparent risk factors for suicide. And from talking to them, he noticed that a lot of them had similar quirks, similar behavioral patterns, similar ways of thinking that would come out as he would speak to them. He noticed, basically, that a whole lot of them had either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed autism. He estimates that the suicide rate of patients in this setting is about five times higher than the general population, so it's a huge issue that's been overlooked. Because so many of these kids have undiagnosed or misdiagnosed autism, it just compounds their mental health issues and makes things more challenging for them because they don't have the language or the tools to understand why they're experiencing life the way that they do.
Taylor Wilson:
Charles, these parents who you spoke with, where do they want the conversation to go from here for other families and kind of what experts say, where do we go from here?
Charles Trepany:
I think they want more research and more awareness done. Because autism is a spectrum, a lot of the signs of it can be very nuanced and they can get easily missed. I think that in our culture, we sometimes have a very kind of specific idea of what autism looks like, or what an autistic person looks like, but this misses a large swath of people. So I think they want other parents to be more keyed into the signs, more aware of it, and they want more research to be done on how to treat people who are autistic and suicidal. Because it's one thing to understand some of the reasons why an autistic person may be at higher risk for suicide, and then it's another thing to sort of look at, okay, and what are the best treatment options? But I think the good news is that people are starting to take it seriously.
Taylor Wilson:
Heartbreaking but vital story, Charles. Charles Trepany covers wellness for Paste BN. Thank you, Charles.
Charles Trepany:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Could the ocean capture even more carbon in our atmosphere to fight climate change? Scientists are investigating the possibility.
Jaime Palter:
Whereas an acidified ocean can be corrosive to coral reefs and shellfish and the like, increasing the alkalinity should have the reverse effect.
Taylor Wilson:
You can hear a conversation between Jaime Palter, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, and my co-host Dana Taylor on this exciting new technology starting at 4 PM Eastern time today, right here on this feed.
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And 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.