New Details on Camp Mystic, and Trump’s Retribution Campaign

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

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Thursday, July 10th.

Here's what we're covering.

A new Times analysis of Camp Mystic, where at least two dozen young campers and staffers died in the recent flash flooding, has found that many of the cabins were built in a designated flood zone.

Some of them were in an area the county had deemed extremely hazardous.

The camp sits on the banks of the Guadalupe River in a region known as Flash Flood Alley, and camp managers and emergency officials had known the river posed a danger for decades.

In 1987, 10 teenagers at a different camp in the area were killed in flooding.

Since then, dozens more people in the region have died in flash floods.

But at Camp Mystic, the Times found some of the cabins sat so close to the river's edge that they were technically in the river's floodway, a type of area so at risk that many states severely restrict construction there.

And when the camp carried out a multi-million dollar expansion six years ago, local officials signed off on adding new cabins that were also in the flood zone.

One flood risk expert told the Times that was like pitching a tent in the middle of a highway.

Camp Mystic didn't immediately respond to questions about the construction of the cabins.

Just two days before the flood, the camp passed a state inspection.

The challenges that we face is a tremendous amount.

We're talking mounds of debris that is in the river.

Meanwhile, across the region, search teams are still digging through the muddy wreckage of the flash floods, which killed at least 120 people.

We are finding vehicles and RVs deep inside the debris that you can't even see from the outside.

More than 170 people are still missing, and no survivors have been found since Friday, suggesting the death toll could more than double.

The Trump administration appears to be taking steps to target officials who once investigated Donald Trump.

They've narrowed in on two men.

One is John Brennan, who led the CIA when it investigated the 2016 Trump campaign's connections to Russia.

The other is James Comey, who led the FBI during that time.

Trump repeatedly denounced the whole thing as, quote, the Russia hoax.

Now, the current CIA director has made a criminal referral of Brennan, accusing him of lying to Congress when he testified about the investigation.

The FBI is also scrutinizing Comey.

Both of these disgraceful individuals turned against our Constitution and our country.

And I'm sure they did, in fact, lie to Congress.

And it's up to the Department of Justice to investigate that.

While the FBI and CIA declined to comment, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt celebrated the developments in an interview on Fox News.

The deep state threw everything at him to prevent him from coming back to this big, beautiful White House behind me, and he prevailed.

I'm glad to see the Department of Justice is opening up this investigation.

Even if these initial steps do not lead to criminal charges, they're some of the most significant signs yet that the administration intends to carry out a retribution campaign against the president's perceived enemies.

In another indication of how closely the government is scrutinizing Comey in particular, the Times has learned that the Secret Service tracked him after he put up an Instagram post critical of Trump.

In May, Comey posted a picture of seashells that spelled out 8647, 86 being slang for dismiss or remove, 47 referring to Trump as the 47th president.

In response, Donald Trump Jr.

claimed Comey was, quote, casually calling for my dad to be murdered, which fueled an online flurry of accusations that Comey was plotting to assassinate the president.

Comey deleted the post, saying he didn't know it had any kind of violent connotation.

8647 and 8646, referring to President Biden, are such common taglines you can buy t-shirts with that on it from Amazon.

But the Secret Service tracked the location of Comey's cell phone and had him followed in unmarked cars before he was called in for an interview in Washington.

Former Secret Service officials tell the Times those methods would typically be used for someone considered an active threat.

And a former U.S.

attorney called it, quote, huge overkill.

At the White House yesterday, President Trump took his global trade war into new territory, using the threat of steep tariffs to intervene in a criminal trial in Brazil that he's called a witch hunt.

In a letter to Brazil's president, Trump said that he plans to put a 50% surcharge on all Brazilian imports, citing the ongoing prosecution of the country's former leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro faces possible prison time for allegedly attempting a violent coup back in 2022 after he lost his re-election campaign.

Trump has drawn parallels to the criminal charges he faced after losing re-election, saying, it happened to me times 10.

Beyond his apparent demand that Brazil end the prosecution, Trump said the new tariffs were also needed to level America's economic playing field with Brazil.

He claimed, incorrectly, that the U.S.

has a trade deficit with the country.

In response, Brazil's president said it will reciprocate with its own tariffs on the U.S., writing in a statement,

Brazil is a sovereign country with independent institutions that will not accept being abused by anyone.

An escalating trade war could have serious impact on the Brazilian economy.

The U.S.

is its second largest trading partner.

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the U.S.

has hit a grim milestone.

There have been more cases of measles this year than in any year since the virus was declared eliminated in the country back in 2000.

Nearly 1,300 people across dozens of states have had confirmed cases of the highly contagious disease, which can lead to serious long-term health issues, especially for kids.

Of those people, over 90% were either unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.

Public health experts say that growing skepticism has caused vaccination rates to slip across the country, creating a dangerous opening for measles to spread.

And efforts by local public health officials to get it under control have been hamstrung by the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., who's downplayed the outbreaks and offered only muted support for vaccines.

The spread of measles could be an early sign that other vaccine-preventable diseases, like whooping cough and meningitis, could also become more common.

One epidemiologist told the Times, quote, it's a huge red flag for the direction in which we're going.

And finally, The Times has announced two new chief restaurant critics who will be traveling the country, reporting on the changing landscape of american cuisine ligaya mashon will be based in new york and tajil rao will be based in california i moved to the united states as a teenager and my parents who are indian and east african asian they started shopping at mexican grocery stores so i was putting the leftover chicken curry made with tons of cumin and black pepper ginger garlic green chilies i would put that in a hot flour tortilla with some melted cheese and I would think that I was some kind of culinary genius.

Tajil says one of the things she'll explore is how food and history overlap, like in the mix of Mexican and Indian flavors she first encountered as a kid.

In fact, the cuisine has a surprising and mostly forgotten history in the U.S.

In the late 1800s, Punjabi Sikh and Muslim men immigrated from India and they were looking for work as farmers and loggers on the West Coast.

But after the Immigration Act of 1917 made it impossible for women from their communities back home to join them, hundreds of these men ended up marrying Mexican women and starting families together outside of Sacramento.

New kinds of cooking came from these Mexican Indian American homes in a really natural way because cuisines and ingredients and tastes and habits all collide in the kitchen.

This community had their own restaurants too.

They served roti quesadillas filled with cheese and onions and shredded beef and all kinds of South Asian curries with Spanish rice, a beef chile verde with paratas.

And years later, dining at restaurants, I've been seeing Indian Mexican food interpreted in really different ways and at so many different places.

And I love how a restaurant can kind of pick up a thread of history like this.

Those are the headlines.

Today on the daily, more on Trump's escalating global trade war.

That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.