Trump's New Tariff Twist, and a $250 Million A.I. Job Offer

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Friday, August 1st.

Here's what we're covering.

President Trump has set off another wave of uncertainty in global trade, announcing sweeping new tariffs and a new deadline.

The president had insisted that August 1st was a firm deadline, but obviously he has a history of kicking the can down the road when it comes to tariffs.

And this order does again delay that deadline for seven more days.

My colleague Ana Swanson has been covering Trump's trade policy.

She says that late yesterday, just hours before many of his tariffs were set to kick in, Trump signed an executive order setting new tariff rates of 10 to 41 percent for dozens of countries.

But he pushed them back to August 7th.

It implies that countries can still come to the United States to finalize negotiations.

That's probably not practical for more than a handful of countries listed in these tariff lists, but we'll see how many are able to close deals over the next week.

A number of countries, including the UK and South Korea, have already reached agreements with the U.S., sparing them from some of the highest surcharges Trump had threatened.

When it comes to the U.S.'s largest trading partners, though, a lot of things are still up in the air.

Trump boosted tariffs on a slice of Canadian products effective immediately, escalating his attacks on a country that has long been a close U.S.

ally.

He announced that Mexico will get 90 more days to negotiate its tariffs.

And this week, the White House said it will continue separate talks with China, likely pushing back any new deal on that front until fall at the earliest.

President Trump has said the tariffs are crucial for rebalancing America's trade partnerships, though economists have warned that his aggressive use of them has already led to higher prices for American consumers.

Special Envoy Witkoff and Ambassador Huckabee will be traveling into Gaza to inspect the current distribution sites.

The White House is sending two top U.S.

officials into Gaza today as global outrage grows over starvation in the territory.

President Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, along with the U.S.

Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, will visit an aid site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

The GHF sites, which are mostly run by American contractors, have come under intense scrutiny since they were opened in May.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed near them, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, when Israeli soldiers guarding the sites have opened fire.

Trump has said he expects more food distribution sites to be set up in Gaza, but it's unclear what role, if any, the U.S.

will play in that.

Meanwhile, both Israel and Hamas are coming under increasing political pressure to end the fighting in Gaza.

In the past week, three Israeli allies, France, Canada, and the UK, have all broken with Israel in saying that they're open to recognizing Palestine as a state.

Their goal is to pressure Israel to reach a ceasefire deal and to allow in more humanitarian aid.

At the same time, a group of 22 Arab countries signed a UN declaration calling on Hamas to disarm, release any remaining hostages, and end its rule in Gaza.

It's the first time the countries have made made this kind of unanimous call.

Arab leaders have been reluctant to break publicly with Hamas, in part because many of their citizens are deeply supportive of Palestinians.

Notably, Qatar, which is home to Hamas's political office, was one of the countries that signed on to the declaration.

It's not clear whether either pressure campaign will have an effect.

Hamas didn't directly respond to the call for it to disarm, and Israeli leaders have insisted that they won't end the war until Hamas is completely destroyed.

We've been watching ICE flights, and we've seen just in the past 24 hours at least half a dozen.

The Times has been on the ground in Louisiana looking at how the state has become the center of the Trump administration's deportation efforts.

People arrested by immigration authorities in places as far away as California and New York have been sent there.

My colleagues Brent McDonald and Campbell Robertson went to Alexandria, Louisiana, where since Trump took office, more more deportation flights have taken off from than anywhere else in the U.S.

This is the first facility where they held people right there on the tarmac.

There's an actual holding facility.

They can hold up to 400 people and they can take them right out to the plane and deport them right there.

There's no other facility like it in the country.

The holding center in Alexandria predates President Trump, but his administration has supercharged its use.

The infrastructure there functions like a hub-and-spoke model.

Detainees get routed through Alexandria, the hub, and then sent outward, either on deportation flights or to one of the many nearby detention centers.

The logistics of it have been compared to how FedEx sorts and delivers packages, and that is not a coincidence.

What we came to discover is that there is a big system there.

I mean, they were talking in Louisiana in the ICE office about modeling this on FedEx years before Trump even came into office the first time.

Louisiana was just a frictionless place to do this.

A lot of these centers are in sort of remote rural parts of the state where they really need the jobs.

Labor was cheap, real estate was cheap, judges were friendly, state politicians were friendly, and a lot of these facilities were already built.

With tens of billions of dollars in new funding now directed toward ICE, Louisiana is seen as a potential model for expanding operations in other states.

In July, the federal government ordered up a 5,000-bed facility in Texas that's expected to be similar to what Louisiana has.

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that vaccination rates among American kids have dropped again.

The percentage of children starting kindergarten this past fall with their measles, polio, and whooping cough shots slipped to about 92 to 93 percent.

For years, that had been closer to 95 percent.

Crucially, 95 percent is the rate that health experts say, for example, you need to stop measles from spreading in a community.

Across the country, vaccination rates have been in sharp decline since the pandemic, and that's helped fuel a resurgence in childhood diseases, including a measles outbreak that started in West Texas and has killed three people this year.

Pediatricians and infectious disease experts the Times talked with have said they're particularly concerned about the drop-off because it's a sign of growing skepticism around vaccination, and that skepticism's now being amplified by some top U.S.

health officials.

One member of the American Academy of Pediatrics said the messaging from Health Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

has been, quote, specifically designed to sow distrust in vaccines.

And finally, the biggest companies in the world of AI, Meta, OpenAI, Google, are now locked in an all-out hiring arms race.

There are so few people who have the experience and expertise to work on the most advanced AI systems that the top researchers are now being recruited like they're professional athletes.

And the Steph Curries and LeBron Jameses of AI are being wooed with nine-figure compensation packages.

We are live from the TVPN Ultra Dome, the Temple of Finance.

The Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital.

There's even a tech show online that takes an ESPN-like tone, treating people being poached from different tech companies as if they're covering major sports trades.

Zuckerberg continues to be on a tear.

Meta snatches Apple's AI chief.

They went and poached from OpenAI, plus pay packages, the rumor.

There are obviously a few key differences in this analogy.

As far as we know, no engineers have been asked to dunk.

Another big difference, unlike professional sports teams, tech companies don't have a salary cap.

The Times has learned that when Mark Zuckerberg decided he wanted to hire a 24-year-old researcher away from an AI startup, Meta promised him him $125 million in stock and cash over four years.

He turned it down.

So, Zuckerberg met with him personally with a revised offer of $250 million,

$100 million of that in the first year alone.

He took the deal.

After it was announced, the CEO of his old company posted on social media saying they'd miss him, but that, quote, we look forward to joining Matt on his private island.

Those are the headlines.

But stick around, we've got the Friday News quiz for you after the credits.

This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.

Original theme by Dan Powell.

Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Katie O'Brien, and Paula Schuman.

Okay.

Now for the quiz.

We've got questions about a few stories the Times covered this week.

Can you answer them all?

First up.

We're good at building.

I'm good at building things, and we'll get it built quickly and on time.

It'll be beautiful, top of the line.

President Trump announced an approximately $200 million renovation project for the White House yesterday, rolling out plans for something he said the building's really been missing.

We're going to play you a bit of his announcement here with the key word, beeped out.

Do you know what he has planned?

So we've been planning it for a long time.

They've wanted a b at the White House for more than 150 years, but there's never been a president that was good about

really good.

In fact, I looked at one that we just built in Turnbury.

The answer?

I always said I was going to do something about the ballroom because they should have one.

So we'll be leaving it.

It'll be a great legacy project.

Trump announced that donors will cover the cost of a new 90,000 square foot ballroom and that he'll chip in two.

Construction will start next month.

When it's done, it'll be able to fit three times the number of people of any other room in the White House.

And that'll mean that large events like state dinners will no longer have to take place in a tent on the lawn.

Okay, next question, also about the president.

I love this country.

My mother was born in, as you know, my mother was born in Scotland, and it's an incredible place, a beautiful place.

On Tuesday, Trump got back from a visit to Scotland where he met with European leaders to talk about trade.

But he also got some personal business in.

What other big item did he have on his agenda?

I'm going to give you a little hint.

Listen.

The answer.

President Trump was celebrating the opening of a new 18-hole golf course at one of the two resorts he owns in the country.

Also on the trip was the traditional exchanging of gifts, as world leaders do.

Scotland's leader gave Trump a framed Scottish census document from the 1920s that listed his mother's name from when she lived there as a child.

Trump, meanwhile, gave the Scottish leader a figurine of an American bald eagle.

Fancy, but it really is hard to top the one time that President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod.

And last question: Though I am but a figure of an ancient tale, I stand among gods and heroes in these gardens.

This summer, one major tourist destination in Europe started using generative AI to make its extensive collection of statues talk.

Using an app, you can have a conversation with them.

You can ask them about the history of the place, who carved them, or even how they feel about the pigeons pooping on their heads.

My dear, I bear no resentment.

Nature moves as it will.

So, your question?

Where is this happening?

Your hint?

Hey, statue, give him a riddle.

A home of mirrors and gilded halls, where gardens stretch with sculpted walls.

A king's bright symbol lights the way.

Where am I where the sun had sway?

The answer?

The Palace of Versailles, outside of Paris, which is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette once lived.

Statue, one more question.

Can you remind me what happened to them?

I must stay focused on the story of this sculpture.

If you'd like to know more about how I ended up.

All right, so some topics are off limits.

That is it for the news quiz.

If you want to tell us how you did or what you think about the quiz, you can always email us at the headlines at nytimes.com.

The show will be back on Monday.