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USA Today
3 days ago
- Health
- USA Today
A potential new treatment for Parkinson's shows early promise
A potential new treatment for Parkinson's shows early promise | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 29, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: Parkinson's is a disease that afflicts an estimated 90,000 Americans every year. Dr. Lorenz Studer and Dr. Viviane Tabar of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, joined USA TODAY The Excerpt to share more about a new stem cell-based therapy that creates nerve cells. The treatment is showing early promise. 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. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Karen Weintraub: Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub. Today is Thursday, May 29th, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. You've no doubt heard of the chemical dopamine. It's often referenced as part of the brain's reward system when we do something pleasurable. Dopamine, or a lack thereof, also plays a critical role in the onset of Parkinson's, a disease that afflicts an estimated 90,000 Americans every year. Treatment for Parkinson's focuses on managing its many symptoms, as there is no cure. But a new stem cell therapy developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for advanced Parkinson's is showing early promise. What's behind this incredible discovery and just how hopeful should patients be? Here to talk about this exciting new treatment and its impact on patients are the two physicians who helped make it a reality. Dr. Viviane Tabar and Dr. Lorenz Studer. Drs. Tabar and Studer, thanks so much for joining The Excerpt. Dr. Tabar, when someone is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, what exactly is happening to their brain and their body? Dr. Viviane Tabar: Well, we think that at the time an individual is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, they have already experienced degeneration or loss of a large number of their dopamine neurons. We are all born with a limited number of large, beautiful dopamine neurons that live in our brainstem and that project to multiple areas in the brain. They're involved in a lot of intricate activities, but an important element of their function is to modulate movement. So the individual very commonly will come to clinical attention because of movement difficulties, albeit there are other symptoms, loss of smell, gastrointestinal symptoms, difficulties with sleep, and it's a complex picture. But it's important to remember that at the time they receive this diagnosis, which today is still vastly made on a clinical basis, on an examination of the individual and listening to their symptoms, they have already lost probably 50% or more of their dopamine neurons and their projections. A potential new treatment for Parkinson's shows early promise A new stem cell-based therapy creates cells that make dopamine, a chemical that's critical to the disease. Karen Weintraub: And what are some of the everyday challenges your patients face? You mentioned motor control, cognitive issues also I think? Dr. Viviane Tabar: For the majority of patients, and keep in mind that Parkinson's is a disease that spans a variety of symptoms and spectrum of progression and intensity, for most patients it starts with manageable symptoms that they control well, could be a tremor, could be some stiffness in their gait. And for the majority, I would say cognitive change comes late, assuming a proper diagnosis of Parkinson's. So it becomes paradoxically even more problematic because it starts interfering with activities of daily living, your ability to get to and from your job. You're still high-performing, but you are impaired gradually. And you're fully cognitively there often, and so you're very aware of the slow degeneration that's essentially relentless. Karen Weintraub: And you mentioned jobs. Are people affected by Parkinson's primarily older, retiree age, or are there other groups at risk as well? Dr. Viviane Tabar: We didn't say necessarily retirees. Parkinson's, the sporadic form of it, which is the most common form, I mean by that the form that's not inherited, that happens commonly in the sixties or later. But nowadays, people in their fifties and sixties are considered at their prime still at work. Karen Weintraub: And others who are affected, we think of Michael J. Fox who is certainly younger when he started developing symptoms. Dr. Viviane Tabar: There are forms of Parkinson's that occur in a younger individual at a younger average age, and that is commonly related to specific mutations. And so the majority of Parkinson's disease occurs what we call sporadically, so without a hereditary or identified specific mutation that we are aware of. But some is related to a mutation, and those tend to occur at a younger age, but that's not the majority. Karen Weintraub: And is it clear what causes Parkinson's? You mentioned the neurons, but is there still some mystery there, and can the causes vary from person to person? Dr. Viviane Tabar: There is a lot of mystery. So in simple terms, we do not know the etiology of Parkinson's disease very specifically. Many things have been invoked, the environment, environmental toxins, a genetic predisposition outside of the genetic forms of the disease. And we can talk a lot about some exciting science trying to dissect what's going on, the role of inflammation, et cetera. But the short answer to your question is we're not able today to tell a patient what caused their Parkinson's, again, outside the relatively uncommon hereditary forms. Karen Weintraub: And can you walk us a little bit through how Parkinson's progresses over time? Is there a sort of a path, many paths, what does that look like? Dr. Viviane Tabar: So yes, there are many paths, but let's take an average situation. The patient would reach out to a physician, eventually come to the attention of a neurologist, they're examined, their brain scan is obtained. In the case of Parkinson's, often that scan is fine and normal to age and the symptoms are identified often, as we said earlier, motor symptoms. The common situation is that they get started on a form of dopamine that can reach the brain, and that makes them feel better and that is often referred to as the honeymoon period. And that goes on for a few years where the patient is almost back to normal but dependent on the medicine. And as time goes by, the disease process is such that they are losing more and more of their dopamine neurons. And at some point we start or the treating neurologist starts escalating the dose of the medication. And there are other medications that can support that. But essentially within a few years or several years depending, they reach a point where they're starting to experience side effects from the medication and a shortening of the periods where they are feeling okay and functioning. And that is where we start getting stuck in that there are no new medications that, I shouldn't say no new medications, there's always new medications, no formulations that try to extend the ability to help the individual. But you clearly plateau in terms of the effectiveness of pharmacological therapy for a lot of patients, not all. There are options that are surgical like inserting electrodes that is called deep brain stimulation, which will work for some patients. But we reach a point where the patient has lost most of their dopaminergic neurons and there is not much more that can be offered today to help the individual. Hence, the idea of what if we could replace those degenerated dopamine neurons? Karen Weintraub: Which brings us to Dr. Studer. Dr. Studer, when did you first think about using stem cells as a possible way to treat Parkinson's? Dr. Lorenz Studer: Well, it's really a very long story. In fact, it's I think nearly three decades when we first had the idea of doing so, which was the question, "Now, can we really replace cells in the brain and what will be the right source?" In fact, that was the goal of my laboratory starting 25 years ago, finding exactly what's the source of dopamine neurons. The challenge is how do you make this very, very specific nerve cell in the brain? And so that was a long journey, took us at least 10 years of basic research to understand, now what is the code of development? It's a little bit like trying to go through the steps that the cells go in normal development, but give them those signals one by one in a culture dish. And so it's a little bit like a code that we need to decipher and then to apply to the cells. And by 2011, we could do that finally in a study that showed that we did a good job because when we implant those cells back into a mouse, in a rat or in a monkey model of Parkinson's disease, we see benefit in that model. And that really then opened up the whole next new step, now can we do that not just in a animal model, but maybe eventually in humans? That was what they call the proof of concept. But then obviously it was not a long journey to get to the ultimate clinical patient. Karen Weintraub: And how might the stem cell therapies transform the treatment landscape? What opportunities does this offer? And are there specific symptoms that you expect to get better or everything or certain symptoms? Dr. Lorenz Studer: The dopamine acts primarily on the movement-related symptoms. That's the area where we think we can make the biggest impact. Whether it's also going to affect all the symptoms, it's more questionable. Now, for example, again, we said the patients can have loss of smell, they can have problems with severe constipation, and at later stage of the disease, cognitive issues. And at this point we don't have a good reason to believe that this therapy will also help with those symptoms. This has to be tested. It could be indirect effects, but the main effect we expect is that the movement disorder should improve. Again, we don't want to overstate it, but in a dream scenario, it would be you have still Parkinson's disease, so you cannot cure Parkinson's disease, but maybe if it worked, ideally you could cure the movement disorder component of Parkinson's disease. And so I think that's really what we are trying to develop with this type of cell therapy. And maybe in the future this will open up the same approach for all the cell types that might affect all the symptoms as well. So it's also kind of opening up the door to many other cell therapies in Parkinson's itself and maybe in other diseases as well, because it's one of the first cases now where really you actually replacing nerve cells in the brain, which sounds like a little bit of a science fiction approach. But I think this is one of the first examples where we really tried to attempt that and hopefully opening the door now for applications in the future. Karen Weintraub: And you said we can't call this a cure, obviously it's early days, but what would it take to get to a cure? More cell types? Dr. Lorenz Studer: Yeah. I think, because again, Parkinson's has more than just a movement disorder. So all that's not just movement-related, there is late stages cognitive problems, gastrointestinal problems, sleep problems, and those are unlikely to be treated with this cell type. So what you can envisage is yes, well, maybe you would have additional cell types that can attack that, or ideally, you brought that up now, what causes Parkinson's disease, it'll be a complementary approach where you would give the cells back, because many dopamine cells are already lost by the time you're diagnosed. So you get that movement-related symptoms hopefully restored, but at the same time, you'll find, like the whole field, many thousands researchers try to do that, find a therapy that can slow down or stop the progression. So you would gain back the function that you've already lost, but you would maybe not get some of those later symptoms. That would be even bigger dream in the future. Karen Weintraub: I was going to ask, Dr. Studer, where the research goes from here? Dr. Lorenz Studer: We always talk about bench to bedside, but there's also a bedside to bench. So where you kind of try to figure out, so what could you do even better now with regard to the cells that they function maybe more quickly or they are more potent or they have some additional features like we discussed? How could it treat some of the other symptoms in the future? So I think that's a big area for Parkinson's disease itself. How can we get the most benefit out of this kind of an approach? But then the other part is really there's so many other very severe diseases now. We talk about Alzheimer's disease, we talk about ELS and other disorders. Each of them might need a different approach, quite different. So in some case we don't think we can just replace nerve cells, but we still learn that maybe other approaches could be used in those specific disorders. And it then gives us a lot of encouragement when we see some progress in one area that this might be not just kind of a one-time go, but we might have opportunities to now give some help to those very difficult to treat neurodegenerative disorders where even today, this has been kind of some of the value of this for many of the drugs. Now, very, very few new drugs came up in the context of neurodegenerative disorders, and I don't think cell therapy is alone going to solve all of that, but it's yet the new tool that is becoming actually clinically a realistic option to replace cells, and I think that's quite exciting. There's some examples, for example, for treating eye disorders, so-called people who get blindness, macular degeneration, where data look quite promising. There's some examples maybe in very severe seizures where [inaudible 00:12:35] could be useful. So I think this is one of the very, very first example now where we now go all the way to this phase three study, but in the lab now we are thinking, "What did we learn? Why did it take us 25 years, for example? How can you make it quicker and what would be some of the next targets?" Because from the stem cell side, we learned a lot. So by now we can pretty much make any cell type of the brain. So that's a language to make this as no longer limiting. What's limiting is now to know what's really needed in each individual patient, which is going to be quite distinct and will take, again, a couple of years, but pretty confident not another 25-year step. Karen Weintraub: Well, we will stay tuned for that very exciting work. Thank you both so much for being on The Excerpt. Dr. Lorenz Studer: Thanks so much. Dr. Viviane Tabar: Thank you for having us. Karen Weintraub: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
3 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Appeals Court allows Trump to keep tariffs while appeal plays out
Appeals Court allows Trump to keep tariffs while appeal plays out | The Excerpt On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY White House Reporter Zac Anderson has the latest on the trade whiplash around President Donald Trump's tariffs. A group of Deaf Americans is suing over a lack of sign language interpreters for White House events. USA TODAY Senior Congress & Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin takes a look at some provisions lurking in the GOP tax bill Americans should know about. Heavy smoke is expected to hit the U.S. as Canadian wildfires force evacuations. Faizan Zaki pulls off a dramatic win at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ 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. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, May 30th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest on tariffs after some court moves this week, plus a group of deaf Americans is suing Trump over a lack of sign language interpreters for White House events. We take a closer look at some lurking provisions in the GOP tax bill. ♦ Tariffs as imposed by President Donald Trump will continue for now. I spoke with USA TODAY White House reporter Zac Anderson about the latest chapter of trade whiplash. Hey there, Zac. Zac Anderson: Howdy. Taylor Wilson: All right, so starting with this, what did this appeals court decide? Zac Anderson: So the appeals court temporarily put on hold a ruling by a lower court that had blocked Trump from implementing his tariffs. Trump was trying to use a emergency powers law that was enacted in 1977 to implement these tariffs without going through Congress. He had declared a state of emergency, and this trade court had ruled that he couldn't use this law to push his tariffs, which have really been the centerpiece of his economic agenda. The Trump administration immediately appealed that ruling, and less than 24 hours later, the appeals court said, "We're going to allow you to continue to levy these tariffs while this appeal plays out." So really a lot of quick back and forth here, but the tariffs remain in place for now. Taylor Wilson: Well, this wasn't the only move in court. How else have the courts been intervening over Tariffs Act? Zac Anderson: Two court rulings went against Trump on tariffs this week. One was the ruling that I just mentioned from a trade court. That case had been brought by a number of state officials and also some businesses. Trump's use of the tariffs was deemed invalid in that case. And then there was another lawsuit filed by a pair of toy companies in Illinois that had challenged the tariffs that Trump imposed. A judge also ruled in their favor and invalidated those tariffs, but he paused the impact of that ruling to give the governments two weeks to appeal that decision. So two cases that went against Trump. Both of them have been basically paused while the appeals go forward. Taylor Wilson: So how has the Trump White House addressing what has Zac, as you put it, really been trade whiplash? Zac Anderson: The White House has really come out swinging on this. They've gone after these court rulings. This has been a continuation of their efforts to criticize the judiciary, which has blocked a lot of what Trump has done during the first four months of his administration. They called these activist judges and they vowed to appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, and they said that they're going to continue with their policy here and find a way forward. Taylor Wilson: And Zac, I know Trump was asked a question about this TACO acronym earlier this week that some financial analysts are embracing. The acronym stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. What is this and how did Trump respond? Zac Anderson: It was coined by a Wall Street analyst and traders have talked about trading around Trump's tariffs, that basically when he implements the tariffs, the markets crash. But it's only for a short time period, and then they come back up, so that you can basically count on Trump chickening out and plan your trades around that. And that's really taken off in financial circles that Trump was asked about that at the White House the other day, and he really expressed a lot of indignation. Trump likes to be seen as strong and really project strength, and so being called a chicken really set him off, and he really said that he didn't like that question. Taylor Wilson: All right. Well, all eyes have been on the markets both domestically and really around the world since these tariffs were first announced a few weeks ago. How are markets reacting now this week, Zac? Zac Anderson: So after the tariffs were paused, you saw a little bit of a spike in the markets. Obviously, the threat of tariffs has led to some concerns about how that would affect the economy. There's been talk that that could increase chances of recession. U.S. stocks really showed little reaction to the appeals court decision having already pulled back from the rally sparked on Wednesday and Wall Street closed higher on Thursday, shrugging off the decision by the Federal Appeals Court. So I think the markets are still kind of taking a wait-and-see approach. Taylor Wilson: Well, Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, spoke with reporters after the appeals court ruling. Let's give a listen. Peter Navarro: Even if we lose, we will do it another way. And I can assure you American people, that the Trump tariff agenda is a alive, well, healthy and will be implemented to protect you, to save your jobs and your factories, and to stop ship and foreign wealth, our wealth into foreign hands. Taylor Wilson: Well, Zac, I want to ask you to predict the future, but what's next perhaps for this trade whiplash conversation going forward? Zac Anderson: Well, there's other court cases out there, so there could be other court rulings that impact this, but it does seem like this is going all the way up to the Supreme Court. Obviously, depending on what the appeals court decides, this is going to be a battle for a while now until the Supreme Court brings some certainty to this. I think we're going to see a lot of back and forth on this for some time to come. Taylor Wilson: All right, Zac Anderson covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thanks, Zac. Zac Anderson: Thank you. ♦ Taylor Wilson: A group of deaf Americans who previously forced the White House to provide American sign language interpreters during press briefings is asking a federal judge to again, intervene after President Trump halted their use in January. In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, the National Association of the Deaf argued that the Trump White House's removal of ASL interpreters at press conferences and briefings violates federal law. The same group previously forced the White House to provide interpreters for COVID-19 briefings during Trump's first presidency and former President Joe Biden expanded their use when he took office. Trump in March declared English to be the official language of the United States and rescinded an executive order from 2000 that encouraged the executive branch to make services available to people of limited English proficiency, including ASL speakers. ♦ There are some provisions in the GOP tax legislation that may not have top billing, but they could have a big impact on American's everyday lives. I spoke with USA TODAY Senior Congress and campaigns reporter Riley Beggin to learn more. Hello, Riley. Riley Beggin: Hey, Taylor. Taylor Wilson: So let's talk through some of these lesser-known provisions that are lurking in this tax bill, starting with making it easier to ignore court rulings. What can you tell us about this legislation? Riley Beggin: So this is something tucked into the bill relatively last minute. It's a provision that would essentially restrict judge's ability to hold people accountable for violating court orders. Of course, the context for this is it's coming as some judges are considering contempt rulings against President Trump for bypassing court orders, restricting the Trump administration's actions. So this legislation would bar judges from enforcing contempt rulings if they didn't first order a bond, which is usually set at zero or not ordered in cases when people are claiming the government did something unconstitutional. So Democrats have argued that this is clearly an attempt to go around the courts while Republicans say it's an incentive to stop frivolous lawsuits. Taylor Wilson: Well, amid constant headlines with AI, we know AI isn't going anywhere. This bill would allocate a healthy chunk of money toward AI. What might that mean and how else do they hope to tackle this? Riley Beggin: So we're in a place right now with AI where there's no federal regulation for AI. And so in the place of the lack of federal regulation, dozens of states have created AI regulations and overstride structures. The provision in this bill would block those states from enforcing the regulations they've already created and it would prevent states from creating new ones. So this is a little controversial. Tech industry leaders, of course, support this approach. They are wary of regulation, say it can get in the way of innovation, but Democrats and some Republicans have said, this is not a good idea. We want to make sure that we are protecting people as AI is developed. Taylor Wilson: And this bill would also create new savings accounts for children, Riley, am I understanding that correctly? Riley Beggin: Yes. These are newly dubbed Trump accounts, and they are essentially savings accounts that will be created for children. If your baby was born between January of 2025 and January of 2029 and you opened a Trump account in their name, the U.S. Treasury Department would put a one-time payment of a thousand dollars in the account, which would then be invested in stock funds. Parents would be able to contribute up to $5,000 a year as well, so it would grow with the stock market. And then when the child turns 18, they can use a portion of it for things like education, apprenticeships and training or buying their first house. And then once the child reaches age 30, they could use the full amount for whatever they want. Taylor Wilson: All right. How about some lurking provisions here as it pertains to Pell grants and student loan changes? Riley Beggin: Pell grants are of course support for low-income students who want to go to colleges and universities. Right now, students who are on Pell grants are considered full-time and they qualify for the maximum amount of aid if they take 12 credits per semester. This bill would amp that up a little bit, change that full-time requirement to 15 credits a semester, which of course, if you continue to take 12 credits, it estimated a loss of around $1,500 in benefits for those students. And advocates who are concerned about this, say that that could create challenges for students who either are working or caretaking for siblings or parents. So it could certainly impact students here. Taylor Wilson: As for migrants, there are some provisions dealing with new immigration fees and charging foreign workers. What can you tell us about these moves? Riley Beggin: So one of the ways that this bill is seeking to offset the cost of tax cuts is by implementing new fees primarily on immigrants. So one thing that really popped out at us is a series of new fees for people who are trying to immigrate to the United States. So for example, $1000 to request asylum, $550 payments every six months for work authorization, $500 for temporary protected status, $1000 for undocumented immigrants who are paroled into the country, and $3,500 for people to sponsor unaccompanied children who are immigrating into the country. And those are just a handful of them. There are many more. The other thing I'll mention is people who move to the United States to work and send money back to their home country could certainly see a chunk of their funds being taken out here. The bill would implement a new 3.5% tax on these transfers that are known as remittances, when people send money to a foreign country. That tax be paid by the person who's sending the money, there will be an exemption for people who are U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals that are sending money abroad. Taylor Wilson: Riley Beggin covers Congress and campaigns for USA TODAY. Thanks, Riley. Riley Beggin: Thank you. eclaircissement Taylor Wilson: Thousands of people in Canada are being evacuated as active wildfires have charred hundreds of thousands of acres in the country, officials said. The blazes also threaten to waft heavy smoke over the Northern U.S. Some Americans could face poor air quality from the fires as soon as today. Active blazes have burned nearly 700,000 acres in Saskatchewan and nearly 200,000 acres in Manitoba, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. A total of nearly 1.5 million acres have burned across the two provinces so far this year, according to the fire center. Smoke from the blazes is expected to fall heavily over Midwestern states, in particular, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, and cut across the country to reach the Carolinas by the weekend. That's according to FireSmoke Canada, a team of forecasters at the University of British Columbia. You can read more with a link in today's show notes. ♦ Faizan Zaki won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last night. The win comes after he lost last year in the spell off and became just the fifth runner-up to later win the bee. He sealed the deal by nailing the word, eclaircissement, running out of breath, and then collapsing to the floor as confetti fell on him and the crowd erupted. You can read more about the big win from our friends over at USA TODAY Sports. ♦ Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. As always, you can also email us at podcasts at I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
USA Today
4 days ago
- Science
- USA Today
Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them here?
Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them here? | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 28, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: We need rare earth minerals for use in items we rely on for modern life. New tech holds possibilities for mining at home for them. Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology, joins The Excerpt to dive into the details. 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. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. And this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Most electronic devices you use, your phone, laptop, earbuds to name a few, require certain materials called rare earth minerals to function. These minerals also power a wide range of other things critical to our lives like cars, aircraft engines, medical equipment. The US imports most of its supply of rare earth elements from China, which given the current climate of global trade, has led experts to wonder, any way we get more of these minerals here at home? We're diving into the question today with Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology. Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Scott. Scott McWhorter: Thank you, Dana. Glad to be here. Dana Taylor: Can we start by explaining to those of us who aren't familiar, what are rare earth minerals and why are they so important in modern life? Scott McWhorter: Rare earth minerals are just a group of minerals that are naturally found, but they have certain properties, typically magnetic properties or strength to performance properties, that really enhance what we do in certain products. That's really the importance of these minerals that we find every day. Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them in the US? We need rare earth minerals for use in items we rely on for modern life. New tech holds possibilities for mining at home for them. Dana Taylor: They're called rare earth minerals. Are they in fact rare? Scott McWhorter: That's a misnomer. They're found just about in most soils that we have. They're not found in places that we can go dig up and extract and so that's why they're typically rare. Dana Taylor: Scott, where in the country have we started mining rare earth minerals? And generally, can you tell us more about the process being utilized? Scott McWhorter: Yeah. So in the US for rare earths in particular, there's two places. There's Mountain Pass in California and that's the main source of rare earths in the US. Now, the rare earths that are extracted there are light rare earths, but all of those are taken out, they're extracted. Some are pre-processed there in California and then they're shipped to Asia for further processing in other countries. Because we typically don't have that middle processing, the acid leaching and means of extracting and purifying those rare earth metals in this country because of some of the environmental regulations due to the old processing techniques. The other place that we find rare earth or we're mining rare earths today is in Georgia and in my backyard. So where we find a lot of sand mining that occurs and they're looking for zinc and titanium and things of that nature. But they have rare earths that are byproducts of that process and those aren't processed here in the US. Dana Taylor: Are there approaches that minimize financial and environmental costs or harm? How is that being explored? Scott McWhorter: There are several companies that have come up with ways to use what I would call more elegant processing that we don't typically associate with mining. And we should think of mining as elegant separations. It's a very complex problem with several metals that are very much alike chemically, so they're hard or difficult to separate. So what we've learned over time is that we can use technologies that really were developed that came out of things like genomics or proteomics. When we think of those technologies, we think, wow, that's really elegant, clean separations. But we can use proteins actually to bind to those metals very specifically and separate those out based on precipitation or other methodologies. And then we've learned how to really control the precipitation of these minerals in aqueous solutions. So we don't have to use acid or strong acids to really drive the dissolution of these metals from these crystals any longer. So there are technologies, they're in the research phase, some are in the piloting stage, but we should see those come online in the next one to two years. Dana Taylor: What are some of the biggest barriers to expanding these efforts across the country? Scott McWhorter: The largest barrier is funding, attracting funding to this industry when you don't have stable markets. The pricing markets are typically controlled by China. China has invested in that middle processing for the last 40, 50 years and that's where it's mostly done in China. And so it is government-backed, they can control and they can manipulate the pricing to really control that market. So I think from a policy standpoint, we can stabilize that market, create a stable base price for these minerals so that the investment community understands what they're investing into and the profit that they could potentially make, and that it will not go below that point. That will really spawn tremendous investment in that market domain when we can control those prices or we have some barrier or floor on those prices. Dana Taylor: As we mentioned, China supplies a lot of what's mined globally, with the US importing 70% of its annual needs. With trade talks between our two nations uncertain and global supply side issues always at risk, is this perhaps an opportunity to invest in domestic mining and processing? Scott McWhorter: I truly believe it is. The US is really set in the technology domain to have a renaissance in mining. And when I say a renaissance, it is that middle processing that we need. As I mentioned, all the resources that are out there from in my backyard, in Georgia, there's kaolin mining. We mine millions of tons of kaolin and there's tons and tons of kaolin mine tailings that are on the ground. So we're set to process that, we can get that going at the drop of a hat, permits are already there, we don't need to re-permit these. The technologies need to be scaled and tested, we need government investment, we need private investment. But those are the ways we stabilize our economy because we are a mineral-based economy now, we have shifted to that from solely a fossil-based economy. So we're really going to have to think differently and invest in mining. Dana Taylor: Scott, I understand there are vast stores of these minerals under the ocean floor. What's the potential for us there? Scott McWhorter: It's rich in minerals. The infrastructure required and the access is going to take a lot of investment. And the permitting and regulatory aspects of that are going to be difficult. I would say there's going to be lots of disturbances. So I would say that's a long-term solution, but it could be a viable option. Dana Taylor: I'm going to circle back to this. What's on the horizon in terms of new technology for finding, mining or processing these materials? Scott McWhorter: We can use AI and machine learning to really expedite that process and pinpoint where we need to go. So it lowers the burden on drilling and getting into certain areas. That could be where in the past we might've harmed more of the environment, now we can pinpoint and go in and mine in certain areas. In terms of understanding where we are in drilling, there are sensors and AI and machine learning that go into that as well as you're drilling that tell you, are you drilling in the right location? Are you moving throughout there? So data, AI, machine learning will lower that cost and speed up the process for those aspects. Dana Taylor: What's next for you and your team? What are you most excited about? Scott McWhorter: We've pulled together a large group in Georgia and there's a lot of excitement from the mining community to the end-use community because we have to have all parties to create that supply chain. So we're very interested in demonstrating how we in Georgia could create this model for the US of how to use those waste resources to stabilize the innovation market. So how we can supply these materials, these minerals for magnets, for EVs to support all of those different energy markets today that are going to be required for the next generation of markets that we see from data centers and such that are coming online. So we're going to need all of these different materials to do that. But first it starts with a supply chain, identifying the feedstock components, the mining and all the distribution and processing in between. But then connected, you've got to have those end-use agreements. Who's going to buy those materials? And who's going to use those materials? So you really have to do that to create that market demand. And that's what we're really interested in is creating that middle processing and demonstrating those technologies, but then creating that whole end-to-end supply chain. Dana Taylor: Thank you, Scott. It was good to have you on The Excerpt. Scott McWhorter: Thank you, Dana. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
4 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Trade court blocks Trump's tariffs
Trade court blocks Trump's tariffs | The Excerpt On Thursday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: A federal court has ruled President Donald Trump can't use an emergency-powers law to impose tariffs on foreign countries. Elon Musk leaves the Trump administration. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Bart Jansen takes a look at the Trump-Vance approach to crypto. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the United States will be "aggressively" revoking visas of Chinese students. USA TODAY Government Accountability Reporter Erin Mansfield discusses exclusive findings that chapter leaders allegedly mishandled over $100,000 in a major federal union's funds. The Oklahoma City Thunder are in the NBA Finals. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ 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. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Thursday, May 29th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, a trade court has blocked Trump's tariffs. Plus, we take a closer look at the administration's approach to crypto. And leaders at a chapter of the second largest union representing federal employees allegedly mishandled union funds. ♦ A federal court has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot use an emergency powers law to impose tariffs on foreign countries, dealing a blow to his trade agenda. The three-judge panel on the US Court of International Trade unanimously found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which Trump invoked to enact duties on foreign goods, does not authorize the tariffs and ordered them halted. The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal minutes after the ruling. Tariffs are a centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. He's imposed steep levies on goods from foreign countries, igniting international tensions and disrupting the global economy. Trump announced big reciprocal tariffs on a slew of nations last month, and he later paused most of them while he negotiated trade deals. ♦ Elon Musk has officially left the Trump administration. Musk had already scaled back his role with the Department of Government Efficiency announced his departure in a post on X yesterday. It comes as his designation as a special government employee, which allowed him to stay on the job for 130 calendar days a year, has ended. As the head of DOGE and a senior White House advisor, Musk led a controversial effort to rapidly gut the government of what he called waste and fraud and reduce the federal workforce. DOGE, which is manned by more than a hundred government employees, is set to continue operating without Musk in charge, but it's unclear how much power the group will maintain without its famous leader. You can read more with a link in today's show notes. ♦ Vice President J.D Vance told 35,000 attendees of the Bitcoin 2025 conference that the Trump administration would support them, building the industry of digital assets, which he said would protect against bad policies and inflation. Vance, at the conference yesterday, vowed the Trump administration would not try to kill the industry through regulation as he alleged the Biden administration had. I caught up with USA TODAY White House correspondent Bart Jansen for more on the Trump administration's stance on crypto. Thanks as always for joining me, Bart. Bart Jansen: Thanks for having me. Taylor Wilson: Vance's speech came days after President Trump's social media business announced it would raise $2.5 billion to invest in cryptocurrency. What can you tell us about this part? Bart Jansen: The company that owns Truth Social said that it was going to try to raise $2.5 billion to invest in cryptocurrency. Again, a big support for the industry. I guess they also think that this would be a profitable way to invest funds through that company that up to now had been more of a social media company. So I guess it's unclear to say what they might do with that stockpile if they pull together $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, but it at least shows support for the industry by investing in cryptocurrency that would keep the price up, and I'm sure they hope for future growth. Taylor Wilson: Well, Trump also had this dinner with crypto investors last week. Did anything surprise you there, Bart? Stand out from that dinner? I mean, what was your big takeaway there? Bart Jansen: Well, what's provocative is that he basically rewarded people who invested in his meme coin by holding a dinner with 220 of the top investors. So they got to schmooze and get in close contact with Trump as at least a reward for investing in the coins. They had invested something in the neighborhood of $148 million. So these were affluent folks who got a chance to basically have a private dinner with the president. The White House insisted that this was just a private dinner in his private role, but Trump spoke from behind the presidential seal and he's made no bones about supporting the industry and saying that he doesn't want regulations that would restrict the growth of cryptocurrency. Ethics, watchdogs contend that it was a horrible conflict of interest, basically rewarding people who had given him money. So it remains an ethical quandary, but he was unapologetic. And the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that he has shown that he is working just for the purpose of the American public. So any criticism of it is unwarranted. Taylor Wilson: Right. I mean, on that conflict of interest point, even before some of this recent news, several Democrats questioned financial regulators last month about how they would oversee what they called an extraordinary conflict of interest. Can you just talk through some of what we heard from Democratic lawmakers last month on this point? Bart Jansen: Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of the leaders in that, basically saying if the Trump family is going to be involved in these different crypto options such as meme coins, such as becoming Bitcoin producers and having a platform called World Financial Liberty that offers a stable coin, that how can US financial regulators be thought to be regulating those things with an even eye if they know the president basically is behind several of these opportunities. So they wrote a letter in April to Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman and acting Comptroller of the Currency, Rodney Hood, to ask, "How are you going to do this?" And I don't know if we've heard an answer on that yet. Taylor Wilson: But I guess we can read between the lines. But really what is the broader strategy, the broader goals for this administration as it pertains to crypto? Bart Jansen: Trump and others have said they want to encourage the growth of the industry. They want the industry basically to be headquartered or to draw its framework and its guidelines in the United States rather than helping foreign countries build what is still just a very young industry. Of course, the problem with trying to rein this in or contain it in any way is that the advantage to cryptocurrency is that it isn't tied to a specific country. It's not like the dollar tied to the United States or the British pound. So the value of it is its independence. And that's what Vance reinforced in his speech on Wednesday, was that if perhaps you have trouble getting financial services through a traditional bank because of your political views, he cited people who support Second Amendment rights, and so if you can't get a bank loan, that perhaps you could get financial services through digital assets and basically still be able to raise money even if you couldn't through a traditional bank. So it's the independence of the industry that is most intriguing to the Trump administration, but that is also what makes it difficult to basically regulate and make sure that they're not cheating people or running basically a scheme where it's just trying to gather people to contribute money without anything really to show for it. So Trump and Vance are trying to say that the administration would like to shepherd the industry to greater growth, greater benefits through guidelines, and framework that are negotiated with the industry, with the people who would be regulated. And it's a work in progress. Taylor Wilson: Great breakdown for us as always. Bart Jansen covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thanks, Bart. Bart Jansen: Thanks for having me. ♦ Taylor Wilson: Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday announced the US will be aggressively revoking visas of Chinese students. The announcement came days after President Trump demanded the names and countries of international students from Harvard University. Rubio said the State Department will be revising visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Chinese students were being targeted, which areas of study were being considered crucial, and how many visas were expected to be revoked. The Trump administration has paused scheduling new visa interviews for international students at US embassies and consulates worldwide as the State Department prepares to expand social media vetting of foreign students according to an internal cable seen by Reuters earlier this week. The administration had also announced it would revoke visas for all foreign students at Harvard, though that measure was immediately blocked by a judge. You can read more with a link in today's show notes. ♦ A union representing some 150,000 federal workers faces allegations of financial improprieties. I spoke with USA TODAY government accountability reporter Erin Mansfield to learn more about her exclusive findings. Thanks for joining me, Erin. Erin Mansfield: Thank you for having me. Taylor Wilson: So in terms of the basics here, what is alleged about mishandled funds at this union? Let's start there. Erin Mansfield: So there's a union chapter based in San Francisco. It's part of the National Treasury Employees Union. But the title can be confusing because this chapter is mostly employees with Department of Health and Human Services. And what is alleged is the current president, he is saying that over a hundred thousand dollars is unaccounted for from this chapter. And he blames previous leadership. And there were three specific people who he alleges were involved. Taylor Wilson: Those folks, who are they? Erin Mansfield: So they're the former chapter president, a man named Michael Roberts, former FDA employee, a woman named Betty White, former treasurer, and a gentleman named Randy Plunkett. Full disclosure, we did reach out to them and did not get a response. The gentleman who's making the allegations, his name is Brandon Bruce. He's a lawyer. He worked for the FDA for a while. And he basically started getting involved in his union in California, was suspicious of some of the practices, and he went out and got an auditing firm to look into problems. They found issues like people signing checks to themselves, three different iPads in a matter of a few years approved for the union president, about $12,000 spent on a storage unit. The checks were made to public storage, including checks that seemed to be made out to someone with the same last name as Betty White, to a company we couldn't find. A lot of different issues here that all come down to money not really being accounted for. Taylor Wilson: Erin, you touched on this, but can you just help us understand a little bit more about this union, the National Treasury Employees Union, and just why it's significant? Erin Mansfield: Yeah. So in this news cycle, we have heard a lot about federal employees. And the key people going to bat for federal employees are their unions. No doubt about it. The largest is a union called American Federation of Government Employees. And the second largest is the National Treasury Employees Union. They obviously get their title from representing people who work for the Department of Treasury. They represent a lot of IRS agents. They represent a lot of people from Customs and Border Patrol, but they also are the main union for people who work at the Department of Health and Human Services. Taylor Wilson: And how is the union approaching this on a national level, Erin? Erin Mansfield: I looked at Department of Labor Records because they sent out a report pretty much every year where they show criminal enforcement actions against different chapters. They've had eight, going back to 2001, as far back as I think that web page goes. The National Union declined to comment on an ongoing investigation. But it should be noted that going back to 2001, I was able to find eight cases. The most recent was actually a little less than a year ago, where in upstate New York, police alleged that there was over $56,000 that went missing from a Customs and Border Patrol Union up near the border of Canada. The union was tipped off about issues about two years ago. In July 2023, Brandon Bruce, he's the gentleman who brought these allegations, he got a response saying, "We've conducted an investigation" and going through his allegations point by point. Among them was the idea that two people were signing checks even though they didn't really have an official position with the union, and they had an actually paid dues in a while. Taylor Wilson: As far as how common this is, Erin, can you put this in historical context for us? Erin Mansfield: It was really common in the first half of the 20th century really. And in the late '50s, Congress passed a law requiring better financial disclosures. So one of the fun things about this story was learning about these financial disclosures I've never even heard of before. But unions have to file disclosures with the Department of Labor, and this is above and beyond what they file with the Internal Revenue Service. And so the Department of Labor audits them on a pretty regular basis, and you can find those audits on their website. And the Department of Labor audited this chapter. In 2018, they found record keeping violations. Some of the same people involved. They decided to counsel them and they wrote in it how the problem had been solved, but among the issues was payments to officers. Taylor Wilson: Folks can go find this full story with a link in today's show notes. Erin Mansfield covers government accountability for USA TODAY. More great journalism from you, Erin. Thanks so much. Erin Mansfield: Thank you. ♦ Taylor Wilson: The Oklahoma City Thunder are heading to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012. They punched their ticket after a dominant win over the Minnesota Timberwolves last night. In the finals, they'll face either the Indiana Pacers or New York Knicks, with the Pacers just one win away. As always, you can follow along with USA TODAY Sports. ♦ A stem cell based therapy initially developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center may lead to a new treatment for advanced Parkinson's disease, involving creating neurons. That's according to results from a phase 1 clinical trial reported in nature. Dr. Lorenz Studer: You cannot cure Parkinson's disease, but maybe if it worked, ideally you could cure the movement disorder. And so I think that's really what we are trying to develop with this type of cell therapy. And maybe in the future, this'll open up the same approach for all the cell types that might affect all the symptoms as well. Taylor Wilson: That was Dr. Lorenz Studer, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He and his colleague, Dr. Viviane Tabar, sat down recently with USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub to talk through a promising new development in the treatment for advanced Parkinson's disease. You can hear that conversation right here beginning at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time today. ♦ And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you want to email us, you can find us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
USA Today
5 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in deportations to third countries
Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in deportations to third countries | The Excerpt On Wednesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to intervene in its effort to rapidly deport migrants to "third countries." USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe discusses the high court's move to take another look at whether a police officer who partially blinded a teenager during the 2020 George Floyd protests can be sued. USA TODAY Education Reporter Zach Schermele has the latest on President Trump's feud with Harvard. The Trump administration halts scheduling of new student visa appointments. SpaceX's Starship rocket breaks up again. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ 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. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene in deportations to third countries. Plus, the high court orders another look at whether a police officer who partially blinded a teenager during the George Floyd protests can be sued. And where do things stand on Trump versus Harvard? ♦ The Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court yesterday to intervene in its efforts to deport migrants to countries other than their own, without the opportunity to raise claims that they fear being persecuted, tortured, or killed there. The Justice Department requested that the justices lift a U.S. judge's injunction requiring that migrants be given the chance to seek legal relief from deportation before they're sent to third countries while litigation continues in the case. The Department of Homeland Security had moved in February to determine if people granted protections against being removed to their home countries could be redetained and sent to a third country. Immigrant rights groups mounted a class-action lawsuit seeking to prevent rapid deportation to newly identified third countries without notice and a chance to assert the harms they could face. ♦ A police officer partially blinded a teenager amid George Floyd protests five years ago, and the Supreme Court is weighing in. I spoke with USA TODAY's Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe to learn more. Hey, Maureen. Maureen Groppe: Hey, how are you? Taylor Wilson: Good. Good. Thanks for hopping on today. So, let's go back to 2020. What happened here as it pertains to this police officer and this teenager during the George Floyd protests? Maureen Groppe: Yeah, so in the days after George Floyd's murder in a protest, Minneapolis police officer shot a nineteen-year-old in the face with a chemical-filled projectile, and he shot him at close range, and that left the teen legally blind in one eye, among other injuries. The officer said he was trying to stop an assault on another cop, and he used a method less lethal than a gun to do so. But the teenager said that response was excessive, and he is trying to sue the officer. Taylor Wilson: All right. What had the lower courts ruled on this case? Maureen Groppe: Well, there's a high bar for suing police officers, and the officer, in this case, said that that bar had been cleared, and he wanted the lawsuit dismissed before it went to trial. The federal district court judge and the appeals court both disagreed. They said a jury could reasonably conclude that the teenager had not been an immediate threat to police when he was hit in the face. Taylor Wilson: Fast-forward to the Supreme Court. How is the high court now getting involved, Maureen? Maureen Groppe: Well, so the police officer appealed to the Supreme Court and, instead of taking up the case themselves, the justices said the lower court should reconsider its decision that allowed the lawsuit to move forward. So they threw out that decision, and depending on what the lower court now does, the case may or may not come back to the Supreme Court. Taylor Wilson: Maureen, there was a recent Supreme Court decision about a fatal traffic stop dealing with police deadly force. What happened there? And does that move mean anything for this case? Maureen Groppe: Yeah, and that's why the Supreme Court acted now. They had held onto this appeal from the Minneapolis police officer until they reached a decision on this other case from Texas that involved a fatal traffic stop where a man was stopped because a car he was driving showed there were some unpaid tolls connected with this car, which happened to be a rental car. And in the encounter with the police officer, as the man's car started to roll, the officer shot him and killed him. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the family of the man who was shot. They said the lower court should have looked at everything that led up to the officer thinking his life was in danger when he made that decision to fire into the car. And, in this case, the Supreme Court said the same standard should be applied. So, while that standard didn't help the officer in the traffic stop case, it helps the man who was shot in this case, looking at the bigger picture could help the officer avoid a lawsuit. Taylor Wilson: Maureen, the timing here is interesting. We're just a days past the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder and the Justice Department just days ago said it's dropping negotiations for a court-approved settlement with Minneapolis, a separate situation. Remind us what happened last week there. Maureen Groppe: So, during the Biden Administration, the Justice Department launched a number of investigations into police departments for such things as excessive use of force or racially-motivated policing. But they hadn't reached binding court agreements with the police departments they were investigating before the change in administrations. So last week, the Justice Department under Trump said it's dropping the negotiations that were underway for settlements with both the Minneapolis and the Louisville police agencies. They said these agreements threaten local control of policing and that they are often motivated by what they called an anti-police agenda. Taylor Wilson: Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for A Today. Thanks as always, Maureen. Maureen Groppe: Thanks for having me. ♦ Taylor Wilson: President Trump's feud with Harvard has reached new heights in recent weeks. Ahead of the summer months, I caught up with USA TODAY education reporter, Zach Schermele, for the latest. Thanks as always for joining me, Zach. Zach Schermele: Thanks, Taylor. Taylor Wilson: So you know, Zach, we've seen a lot of twists and turns here. What happened yesterday in this latest chapter of Trump's feud with Harvard? Zach Schermele: So, days after the President attempted to ban the Ivy League School from enrolling international students, a move that a federal judge immediately blocked, by the way, the General Services Administration, which is a federal agency, directed all other federal agencies to explore ways to cut their remaining contracts with Harvard. That's according to a Senior Administration Official. Taylor Wilson: Well, Zach, this is really the latest in a series of moves the White House has taken recently aimed at punishing the Harvard community. What else have we seen, especially in recent weeks? Zach Schermele: As you said, Taylor, this is just the most recent battle in a broader war that the Trump Administration is waging against Harvard. That feud has escalated on an almost daily basis; it's halted major research trials at the university. It has frozen billions of dollars in their funding and prompted several high-stakes lawsuits. And the reasons why Trump is targeting Harvard are kind of complicated. So, he and members of his administration have roundly criticized the school and its Jewish President, Alan Garber, for creating a campus environment that Trump and critics of the university say is really rife with anti-Semitism, especially since protests broke out in response to the Israel-Hamas war. But the Ivy League school has really long been a punching bag for conservatives, many of whom view it as kind of a ground zero for liberal ideology. And more recently, Trump has complained in an increasingly forceful way about Harvard enrolling too many students from other countries. Taylor Wilson: Zach, we're entering the summer months with the spring semester behind us. This is often a time when international students might travel to their home countries or elsewhere. I'm just curious what this moment is like for them, and what are they actually doing? Zach Schermele: There's a lot of fear. There is a lot of anxiety. Harvard's foreign students really spent the final days of their spring semester not knowing what the future held for them, particularly those that weren't graduating and might have a year or two or three left in their time at Harvard. So, the Trump Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and secretary Kristi Noem told them, just a week before graduation ceremonies for some of them were meant to start, that they need to transfer to another institution or risk losing their ability to remain in the U.S. The only thing that really kept that threat at bay was a federal court order. The change was supposed to go into effect immediately, but Harvard sued the following morning, accusing federal officials of violating multiple laws, and hours after the university filed the lawsuit, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, keeping the change from going into effect. Taylor Wilson: And Zach, there are also escalating tensions, of course, over federal funding as it pertains to Harvard. What's the latest on this front? Zach Schermele: The first major threat to Harvard's funding came in March when a task force of several agencies said they would be reviewing roughly $9 billion in contracts and grants to the school. And they made a list of really unprecedented demands to the university to halt that review. When Harvard would not comply with those demands, the Trump Administration froze roughly $2.2 billion of the school's federal funding. The university filed an initial lawsuit against the White House on April 21st to try and restore that federal funding. And in the week since, federal agencies have deemed Harvard ineligible for any new federal research grants, they've yanked an additional $450 million in funding from the school. And they're still considering cutting off even more government support. Taylor Wilson: Just talking about huge sums of money and big stakes there. Trump also said earlier this month that the IRS would strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status. Can they do this act? Will they do this? And how is Harvard pushing back? Zach Schermele: The university could lose hundreds of millions of dollars from this change by some estimates, but typically there's sort of an apolitical process that the IRS follows to try and strip nonprofits like universities of their tax-exempt status. The executive branch is prohibited by federal law from influencing IRS audits and investigations. So, Harvard says that there's no legal basis that the Administration could take to rescind that tax exemption. Taylor Wilson: We're talking as the Trump Administration just yesterday put a stop to the scheduling of new student visa appointments. What can you tell us about this move, Zach? Zach Schermele: Right. So multiple news outlets, including Reuters, are reporting that Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has ordered embassies and consular sections to stop scheduling new appointments for student visa applicants. This is still pretty fresh news because, up until now, visa interviews really seem to be keeping pace with normal years, but we're just going to have to see how that change coupled with the Trump Administration's broader targeting of international students at institutions like Harvard is going to potentially influence whether or not foreign students feel welcome in the U.S. Taylor Wilson: All right, Zach Schermele covers education for USA TODAY. Great insight for us as always, Zach. Thanks so much. Zach Schermele: Appreciate it, Taylor. ♦ Taylor Wilson: SpaceX's Starship rocket made it to space yesterday, but then spun out of control about halfway through its flight, almost an hour after it took off. After two test flights ended in dramatic explosions earlier this year, the company's ninth test of its Starship vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly as confirmed by SpaceX on X. That's the same language used when Starship's January and March flight test unexpectedly exploded in the sky. The incident meant that the rocket's team was unable to achieve some of its most important testing goals and the recent setbacks point to SpaceX's struggles to overcome complications to Starship's multi-billion-dollar development. But the company's engineering culture is built on a flight testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then works on improvements through repetition. You can read more with a link in today's show notes. ♦ We need rare earth minerals if we want our electronics and many other products that we use regularly to work properly. Getting these minerals requires mining, but the technology in use now has changed the process in major ways. Scott McWhorter: There's sensors and AI and machine learning that go into that as well as you're drilling, that tell you: are you drilling in the right location? Taylor Wilson: Scott McWhorter is an engineer focused on energy innovation at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spoke with my colleague, Dana Taylor, about how we're getting these minerals in Georgia and California. You can hear that conversation right here on this feed today, beginning at 4 P.M. Eastern time. ♦ And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and as always, you can email us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
