Hundreds dead after large-scale Israeli airstrikes in Gaza | The Excerpt
On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Hundreds are dead after large-scale Israeli airstrikes, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Jansen discusses the timeline surrounding the Trump administration's deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. A Tuesday Trump call with Russian President Vladimir Putin will cover a possible Ukraine ceasefire. Trump plans to release unredacted JFK assassination files Tuesday. With an executive order, Trump slashes funding for Voice of America, the largest U.S. international broadcaster. Paste BN National Correspondent Dinah Voyles Pulver explains what happened during a deadly weather event over the weekend.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Tuesday, March 18th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, deadly Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, plus the latest on a legal and political showdown after the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador, and we take a closer look at what happened during severe weather in recent days.
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Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 200 people according to the Gaza Health Ministry as attacks hit dozens of targets earlier today. The incident ends a weeks-long standoff over extending the ceasefire that halted fighting in January. Strikes were reported in multiple locations in both Gaza's north and south. For its part, Israel said it hit dozens of targets and added the strikes would continue for as long as necessary and would extend beyond airstrikes, raising the possibility that Israeli ground troops could resume fighting.
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We saw a legal and political showdown yesterday after the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador over the weekend in apparent defiance of court orders. The administration says the Venezuelans are members of a gang called Tren de Aragua and that they are being deported on national security concerns. Lawyers for the Venezuelan deportees say they have not been given due process. I spoke with Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Jansen to get a better sense of what's happening. Bart, hello, sir.
Bart Jansen:
Hello, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, good. Thanks for hopping on another busy one, Bart. So let's just step back for a bit if we could at the top. What actually happened here and what do we know as of now about the timeline of events?
Bart Jansen:
Well, we had a hearing in federal court about whether the government defied the judge's order from Saturday blocking deportation flights for Venezuelans named under President Donald Trump's proclamation to start deporting members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.
So Trump issues this order, seems to have been on Friday or Saturday, although in court they couldn't even really nail that down. It sounds as though two flights took off during a Saturday hearing while they were debating whether there was going to be a block on this new series of deportation flights. The planes apparently took off between an oral order from the judge saying, do not have these flights and the written order saying do not have these flights, just temporarily while they litigate the case.
And so the dispute is, as alleged by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward Foundation who are representing Venezuelans in the case, did the government defy the judge's order? Government lawyers insist they didn't violate the written order, but the open question is did the flights potentially violate the oral order? And that's what the hearing on Monday was supposed to start to delve into.
Taylor Wilson:
Bart, we also heard some strong language from a lawyer for the ACLU. What can you tell us here?
Bart Jansen:
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the ACLU who's representing the Venezuelans, said that there'd been a lot of talk during the last several weeks about a constitutional crisis, which would be if the Trump administration did defy a court order, then there'd be a dispute between the two branches of government. Nobody's saying that it's gotten that far yet, but Gelernt said he thinks that we're getting very close to it at this point.
Taylor Wilson:
So Bart, while we have that open question, what's the latest on these men themselves? Did they make it to El Salvador and just what's the latest there?
Bart Jansen:
El Salvador's president announced that something like 238 Venezuelans arrived on a flight on Saturday. The US government refuses to discuss how many flights left on Saturday, how many people were on them, and where they went. They say those are national security secrets and the subject of sensitive foreign relations negotiations with both El Salvador and the Maduro regime in Venezuela.
And so that's part of what the judge, James Boasberg asked for in this hearing. He said he wanted just factual information, how many flights were there? How many people were on the flights? Where did they go? When did they take off and when did they land? Government lawyers refused to provide that information during the open court session on Monday evening. The judge ordered them to provide the information in writing by noon, Tuesday. And that'll be at least confidentially to the judge to start and then the judge will have to decide whether he wants to make it public. It's not clear how soon it might be made public. The government contends that it cannot be public.
Taylor Wilson:
So then another scheduled hearing later this week, Bart? Is that where we go from here?
Bart Jansen:
Well, we've got a couple of other hurdles to cross before we get there. We have to see how Judge Boasberg might respond to the government's filing by noon on Tuesday. In addition, the government has appealed that block on their flights under the Alien Enemies Act, and so the court of appeals set deadlines of 5:00 PM, Tuesday for the government to file its arguments, and 5:00 PM, Wednesday for the lawyers representing the Venezuelans to file their arguments.
Then separately from those appeals filings, Judge Boasberg has scheduled a Friday hearing on motions in the case, assuming the court of appeals doesn't take it away from him. So there's a lot of moving parts still, but we should start getting more answers about whether these flights will continue or be blocked through actions at the court of appeals and at the district court level through the end of the week.
Taylor Wilson:
Lots still to chew on here. Bart Jansen covers the White House for Paste BN. Thank you, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Trump plans to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine and the outline of a possible peace deal with Russian president, Vladimir Putin in a call later today. A Kremlin spokesperson confirmed yesterday that a call between the leaders was set marking their second known conversation since Trump took office in January. Conversations about bringing the war to an end have sped up over the past several weeks as Western leaders visited Washington, including Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte. In an Oval Office meeting last Thursday with Rutte, Trump said concepts of land and Ukraine's entry into NATO were being discussed.
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In an executive order last week, President Trump outlined seven federal agencies to be reduced in size, including the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America. The reduction was made to agencies Trump saw as unnecessary the order states. In an email sent to Agency for Global Media employees obtained by Reuters and The New York Times, the agency's human resources director told employees they were being placed on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until notified otherwise. Funded by Congress, the Agency for Global Media oversees all non-military international broadcasting. In addition to Voice of America, the agency operates Radio Free Europe and other outlets. Across all of its networks, the agency provides news in 64 languages to more than 427 million people.
The Trump administration today will release all the government's classified files on the assassination of former president, John F. Kennedy. President Trump said there will be about 80,000 pages of unredacted records available to the public for the first time. The release of the files comes after Trump signed a day-one executive order back in January, aimed at fully releasing government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother and presidential candidate, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights icon, Martin Luther King Jr. While millions of government records related to the Kennedy assassination have been previously released, some information remains classified and redacted. Trump said he instructed his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the release of the remaining files.
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A major storm over the weekend left at least 42 people dead across the country. I caught up with Paste BN, national correspondent, Dinah Voyles Pulver to learn more. Thank you so much for giving me a few minutes on this, Dinah.
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Thanks. Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
What happened with this violent storm system that spread across really a number of states over the weekend?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Well, there was this big Pacific storm off the West Coast last week that just looked so impressive on satellite photos. And that system just moved over the West Coast and it dumped a couple of feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada. And as it moved across the Rockies, it enters this classic setup that we have in the United States that the reason we're the number one tornado capital in the world is because of this evolution that happens to storms when they cross the Rockies and they move over the Great Plains where there's this lots of flat terrain and there are warm winds coming in off the desert from the Southwest and there are very moist conditions coming in north from the Gulf of Mexico.
All these factors just come together. They're influenced by the jet stream, which has been dropping low to some degree this spring. And the combination of all those factors, the low pressure system, the jet stream, the moisture off the Gulf of Mexico, the hot, dry weather happening in the Southwest, all combined to make this a much more intense storm system than typical for this time of year.
Taylor Wilson:
And ultimately, in terms of the tornadoes that we did see, Dinah, just how severe were these tornadoes relatively speaking?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
These tornadoes were surprisingly severe. At this point, they've counted more than seven or eight EF-3s and EF-4s, and they're still out doing surveys. The EF-3 and EF-4 tornadoes can have winds that can be potentially devastating even to site-built homes. The storm winds in some of those storms yesterday and some of the tornadoes yesterday were as much as 145 miles an hour or even more than 166 miles per hour in the EF-4. And when you think about that, an EF-4 has greater winds than a Category 5 hurricane.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. I know we've been seeing some extreme fire behavior nationwide as well, Dinah. How did the storm impact ongoing wildfire threats?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Any wind at all can make a big difference in how the fire behaves. Wildfire can be driven very much by how dry the brush is, how hot it is, how long the brush has been dry, how long temperatures have been baking the moisture out of the vegetation. But wind is an entirely different factor that can influence a situation like that, sending any flames that start moving at a much quicker rate, which makes them harder to fight. Fires can encourage embers to flame up from a fire and travel great distances and catch new areas on fire. So when you were getting the kind of intense winds that were happening this week, up to 80 miles an hour or more in some locations, those kinds of winds can really quickly turn a fire into a big disaster.
Taylor Wilson:
Dinah, I think we've heard that several dozen people have been killed in the wake of this weather. Why were these events so deadly?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
I think there are a whole combination of factors at play in these deaths that occurred this week. One of them was just so out of the blue, this humongous pileup on the interstate in Kansas involved 70 vehicles and eight people died in that wreck. And those sorts of collisions happen from time to time, but when you think of 70 cars piling into each other on the freeway, that's a pretty massive event and no real way for people to plan for a disaster like that.
Some of the other factors were just the size of these tornadoes. These were massive tornadoes with high winds moving quickly, and sometimes it's just difficult for people to get the communication they need. It's one of the ongoing challenges for the emergency management community is how to notify, how to make sure that people are paying attention and taking heed when they receive warnings.
Taylor Wilson:
Dinah, I know as part of your beat, you cover climate. I'm just always curious when we see whether events like these, what role maybe the broader climate conversation is playing here, if any.
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Climate change and tornadoes is really a fascinating subject. There are a lot of researchers taking an intense look at this, trying to figure out how climate change may be influencing these big convective storms that produce tornadoes. The prevailing school of thought is that the climate change is changing tornado occurrences in some ways. For example, there are fewer tornadoes in some of the traditional states that were thought of to have the most tornadoes, and there are more tornadoes occurring in parts of the Deep South.
Researchers are beginning to believe part of that is connected to this moisture again that's coming off the Gulf of Mexico, that the moisture is feeding into these more convective storms. The warming temperatures may also be playing a role in the timing of tornadoes because tornadoes now happen more outside of some of the traditional seasons that they used to happen.
Taylor Wilson:
Great breakdown for us as always. Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate and the environment for Paste BN. Thank you, Dinah.
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
You're welcome. Thanks.
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Taylor Wilson:
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 back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.