8.6.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the reading of the New York Times for
August six. As a reminder, Radio Wiser Reading service intend
for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
make it difficult to read printed material. Your reader for
today is Chris Greco. We'll start today's reading with the
Merriam Webster word of the day larges lair ge sse.

(00:25):
It's a now largest. What it means largest is a
somewhat formal word that refers to the act of giving
away money, or the generosity of a person who gives
away money. It can also refer to the money that
is given away. The community has benefited greatly from the
largess of its wealthiest family. The local business owner is

(00:47):
a philanthropist known for his largesse in context. Over the years,
Shelter Box USA and outgrowth of the Rotary Club, has
named for the relief boxes it distributes, has helped nearly
three million people in some of the world's worst disaster zones.
It hands out basic survival needs, tense tools, and household supplies. Twice,

(01:11):
the organization has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize
for its life preserving largest that was the only from
Texas Enterprise twentieth of March twenty twenty five. Again Word
to the day largest Now we read the front page
headlines from today's edition. Inside Trump's new tactic to separate
immigrant families, A look inside Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan Layer, Columbia

(01:38):
and Brown to disclose admissions and race data in Trump deal.
Hiroshima's pacifist cause is losing believers. Hiroshima and the end
we refuse to imagine. California Democrats looked to redraw house
map to counter Texas GOP. A GOP congressman faced hometown voters.

(02:01):
It wasn't pretty. The first article from the front page
of today's edition is entitled Inside Trump's new tactic to
separate immigrant Families by Hamad Alaziz. Avgenny and Avgenia faced
an excruciating choice. Immigration and Customs enforcement officers told the

(02:23):
couple they could leave the United States with their child
and return to their native Russia, which they had fled
seeking political asylum, or they could remain in immigration detention
in the United States, but their eight year old son, Maxim,
would be taken away and sent to a shelter for
unaccompanied children. In the end, they chose the agony of
limbo in the United States over a return to a

(02:44):
place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any
future for their family. Interior separation is approved, ICE officials
concluded in writing after the couple insisted that they could
not return to Russia. The last time Evgeny and Avgenia
saw Maxim was on May fifteenth, in a room at
Kennedy International Airport in New York City, as ICE agents

(03:05):
led them back to detention in New Jersey a few
days right. Maxim begged his parents that day a few
days the couple, who asked to be identified only by
their first names out of fear for their family back
in Russia, said they tried to keep their son calm.
Maxim pleaded with his father, who told the boy what
he wanted to hear. I said, yes, yes, it will

(03:26):
be just for a few days, av Jenny said, recounting
the moment in an interview. Their case is an example
of a little known tactic the Trump administration is using
to pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the United States. Officials
have begun separating children from their families in small numbers
across the country in what appears to be a more
targeted version of one of the most explosive policies of

(03:48):
President Trump's first term. The New York Times has uncovered
at least nine cases in which parents have been separated
from their children after they refused to comply with the
deportation orders. According to internal government documents, case files, and interviews.
The practice is not as widespread as the zero tolerance
policy of mister Trump's first term, when thousands of children

(04:10):
were systematically taken from their parents as they crossed the U. S.
Mexico border and sent to shelters in foster homes, but
the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to
use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances,
to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful
deterrent for those who might come to the United States illegally.

(04:31):
Tritia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security,
insisted that ICE does not separate families and place the
onus on the families themselves, saying that the parents have
the option of staying with their children by leaving the
country together, the parents had the right and the ability
to depart the country as a family and wilfully choose

(04:52):
to not comply, she said. She denied that there was
any new policy on family separations. Previous administration and separated
undocumented families for reasons including national security concerns, public safety,
and child endangerment. But Claire Trickler MacNulty, a former ICE
official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, said

(05:14):
that previous administrations, to her knowledge, did not use the
threat of family separation as leverage to get people to
leave the country. I'm not aware of ICE previously using
family separation as a consequence for failure to comply with
deportation orders, Miss Trickler MacNulty said. Instead, she said, past
administrations typically would have released such families into the United

(05:36):
States with ankle monitors to track them as they awaited
court dates, a practice that has contributed to enormous backlogs
in the immigration system. The notion of choice touches on
a key difference between the separations from the first Trump
administration and now. During mister Trump's first term, immigration agents
would separate families at the southern border as they crossed

(05:58):
into the United States. Adults were criminally charged with illegally
entering the country and imprisoned while their children, some of
them babies just months old, were taken away. The family
separation policy was enormously divisive. Wrenching images of children being
pride from their arms of their parents at stirred global outrage,
but administration officials argued privately that was the whole point.

(06:22):
The policy was meant to deter people from making a
dangerous and illegal journey. Mister Trump ultimately relented to pressure
and ended the policy in twenty eighteen. The Biden administration
later agreed to a settlement that blocked family separations at
the border, with some exceptions, including if children were in danger. Now,

(06:42):
with illegal crossing is notably low, the Trump administration is
focusing on immigrants who are in the United States and
have been ordered to leave. For the most part, immigrants
under the deportation orders are sent home on ICE flights,
but in certain cases, including those involving citizens of Russia,
the United States will send peace people on commercial flights instead.

(07:02):
If they do not agree to board, ICE agents present
them with a choice. The Trump administration insists that it
is simply enforcing the law. Mister Trump has made aggressive
enforcement a key part of his deportation campaign, and says
the American people elected him in part to get tough
on immigration. To be clear, refusing a judge's deportation order

(07:22):
is a crime. Miss McLaughlin said, if law enforcement pulled
an American citizen over with kids in the back seat
and they chose to not comply with lawful orders, the
parents would be arrested and the children would be placed
in safe custody. Still, deporting families has always been a
struggle for presidential administrations Republican and Democratic alike. Children, for

(07:45):
the most part, cannot be law, cannot be law remain
in federal custody for more than three weeks. That means
officials are under pressure to deport families quickly, or the
United States would have to spend money and resources to
track them. At that point, the deportation challenge only grows.
Ice agents would have the difficult task of arresting people

(08:07):
with established ties to communities, who have been working or
going to school, and building lives in the United States.
During the Biden administration, officials considered various ideas, including arresting
one parent or finding families who refused to comply with
deportation orders, although they never put those policies in place.
A former U S official, said. Abgenia, speaking through an

(08:29):
interpreter from ice detention, said her family traveled to the
Mexican border in hopes of getting an appointment under a
Biden era program that allowed people to enter the United
States at a port of entry after registering with a
government app Mister Trump canceled that programme on January twentieth,
so she and her husband decided that driving to a
port of entry and asking for asylum was the only
way to reach safety. They were immediately put into detention.

(08:54):
The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating the legality of
the separations. Said Lee Element, a lawyer for the group,
that the Trump administration has found a new form of
family separation is hardly surprising, given that they have yet
to acknowledge the horrific harm caused by the original policy
and are now blatantly breaching provisions of the settlement designed

(09:14):
to provide relief to those abused families, many of whom
to this day still remained separated. He said. The court
settlement banning separations specifically referred to the practice at the
southern border. Now, however, the separations are not happening at
the border. They are happening inside the country, so there
may be legal wiggle room, and at least one of

(09:36):
those cases, ICE officials wrote that the separation fell outside
the scope of the settlement, saying there were no implication
requirements when it comes to the court case. Miss McLaughlin,
the Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said immigrants were taking
advantage of the system and in some cases creating a
public disturbance. We have seen recently illegal alien families have

(10:00):
started to use a tactic where they refused to board
a commercial flight, often lashing out, imposing a threat to
the safety of their own children, she said. As a result,
Miss McLaughlin added, the authorities must ensure the children are
safe and not in harm's way until the family can
be soon removed from the country. Regarding the case of

(10:22):
Evgenia and Avgenia specifically, McLaughlin said the couple were acting
so disruptive and aggressive they endangered the child's well being.
The couple denied those allegations, and there was no mention
of such a disturbance in the internal case file describing
the separation, which was obtained by The Times. The file
says that since there is no other option to enforce

(10:43):
the removal order in a safe manner as a family
unit interior separation is approved. A separate document a referral
of Maxim's case to the agency that oversees custody of
unaccompanied migrant children. Said subject was separated from his family
on Fire fifteen, twenty twenty five, due to his parents'
refusal to board an aircraft for removal from the United

(11:06):
States and violation of US law. Av Janny said he
was trying to save his son from a longer separation
in Russia because of what he believed to be a
sure prison sentence there. I was explaining to them, to
the officers that our lives are in danger and our
livelihood would be in danger, he said, and at some
point I kind of lost my bearings and started to cry.

(11:27):
I was explaining that I could not be deported because
I will face grave danger in Russia, he said. The
couple had crossed the border with another Russian family, Pavel
Senager and his eleven year old son Alexander. They too
were hoping for political asylum in the United States after
mister Snegger's wife was locked up in Russia for her
political views, he said. But after several weeks in border

(11:50):
custody together, mister Snegger and his son were transferred to
ICE custody in May and taken to an airport in
San Diego. There, he was told he could take Alexander
to New York City for a court hearing, But once
they got to the airport, mister Snegger refused to board
the plane, having become convinced that he would be deported
to Russia once he got to New York. Later that day,

(12:11):
after the flight had left, and ICE official told him
he would be separated from his son because he refused
to be deported. I'm not giving my son away, mister
Snegger said, moving to shield Alexander. The ICE official, mister
Snegger recalled, told him that he would be taken to
the ground, handcuffed and taken away if he did not relent.
I did not move, I did not agree to do

(12:32):
what she was asking, and everything she promised happened, he
said of the ICE official. Alexander, who had witnessed his
mother being arrested in Russia, appeared to be in shock.
Mister Snegger recalled. He was asking why after several weeks
of separation, mister Snegger was visited by an ICE official
who offered him another option, go with your son, or
we will deport you by yourself and you might not

(12:54):
see him again. This time, mister Sneger agreed to go
back to Russia with his son, but in a twist,
the next day, it emerged that mister Snegger had passed
a protection screening for his claim of fearing torture in Russia.
That means he can still be deported, just not to Russia.
For now, ICE is trying to deport him to a
third country, but none have agreed to take him yet,

(13:15):
according to internal agency documents. Until then, the two are
being held separately, the father in ICED attention and the
son in a shelter for unaccompanied children. As it turns out,
Evgeny and Avgenia also pass their protection screening, which means
the United States has determined that they too cannot be
deported to Russia. But as they wait for their next step,

(13:36):
they remain in ICED detention and Maxim is now in
a foster home. It's terrible, that's what I can say.
Evgenia said, I wouldn't wish it even to an enemy.
It's a constant grief and longing. She is allowed to
speak on the telephone to her son, but she has
no real answers to the first question he asks her, Mamma,
when are you going to take me out of here?

(13:57):
I try to explain to him that we're trying to
do that. Evgenia said, we're talking to the officers, were
trying to convince them. It was very hard for him
to hear this information. He is crying all the time.
Before the family came to the United States, the longest
she and her husband had been separated from their little
boy was one week. Now it has been months. When
he first arrived at the foster home, Maxim fastidiously counted

(14:20):
the days he was apart from his parents, but recently
he told his mother he had stopped counting. What's the
point of counting days? We will not be united, his
mother recalled him, saying, Recently, Trump officials say the goal
is not to keep the children separated from their parents indefinitely.
ICE will try to reunify children with their parents in
the country of origin or in a third country, an

(14:41):
agency official said, But for some parents the danger is
too great. An Indian couple who were separated from their
three children after they refused to board a commercial flight
decided in the end to go back to India without
the children. According to internal ICE records and their lawyer,
the couple asked not to be identified, but their case
records showed that the first attempt to deport the family

(15:03):
as a group had failed. The family unit or f
a m U, refused to board the removal flight commercial.
The record went on to state that the family's failure
to comply with the deportation orders was a clear violation
of law and hindrance to execute the removal order. This
is an interior enforcement separation, it continued. After several weeks,

(15:27):
the couple were deported to India. In response to a
request for comment, an ICE officials said the agency was
working to send the children back too. For the families
who are still in the United States, like Evgeny and Avdevna,
mister Snagger and their children, the path ahead is uncertain.
But inside her ICE detention facility of Genia tries to
think of a hopeful future. I'm imagining how I will

(15:50):
hug him when we meet again, she said of Maxim.
I even saved a couple of candies because that's what
I was planning to give him when I see him again,
That's what I imagine. The next article from the front page
of today's edition is entitled A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein's
Manhattan Layer by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver Greenberg,

(16:15):
and Steve Adair. As a gift for Jeffrey Emstein's sixty
third birthday, friends sent letters in tribute to the wealthy
financier and convicted sex offender. Several shared a common theme,
recounting the dinner gatherings that mister Epstein regularly hosted at
his palatial townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Ahoed baroque

(16:35):
former Prime Minister of Israel and his wife noted the
great diversity of guests. There is no limit to your curiosity,
they wrote in their message, which was compiled with others
in January twenty sixteen. You were like a closed book
to many of them, but you know everything about every one.
The medium mogul Mortimer Zuckerman suggested ingredients for a meal

(16:56):
that would reflect the culture of the mansion, a simple
salad and whatever else would enhance Jeffrey's sexual performance, and
the director Woody Allen described how the Dinners reminded him
of Dracula's Castle, where Lugosi has three young female vampires
who serviced the place. But mister Epstein's prize property was
no gloomy Transylvania fortress. He had spent years turning the

(17:18):
seventh story, twenty one thousand square foot townhouse into a
place where he could flaunt and deepen his connections to
the rich and powerful, even as hints of his dark
side lurked within, according to previously undisclosed photos and documents
showing how he lived in his later years. Since mister
Epstein's death and federal custom custody in twenty nineteen, which

(17:40):
was ruled a suicide, many mysteries about his life have
remained unsolved. How did he amass a nine figure fortune
and why did so many powerful men continue to fraternize
with him long after he became a registered sex offender.
The White House pledged to release details about the federal
investigations into mister Epstein and his associates, but this summer,

(18:01):
the Trump administration backpeddled. The ensuing right wing outrage has
threatened to splinter the Make America Great Again movement, for
whom mister Epstein is a central figure in conspiracy theories
and has put mister Trump on the defense of like
few other issues. Seeking to quell the backlash, the Justice
Department dispatched the top official to meet with Gislaine Maxwell,

(18:22):
mister Epstein's longtime associate who was serving a twenty year
prison sentence for sex trafficking. On Friday, Miss Maxwell was
moved to a lower security facility that fueled speculation that
mister Trump might commute her sentence or even pardon her
in return for her cooperation. For years, Miss Maxwell was
a fixture in mister Epstein's New York townhouse, where she

(18:42):
had an office, but she and mister Epstein had split
by the mid twenty tens. A framed photo in the
townhouse showed mister Epstein with mister Trump and his then girlfriend,
Melanie News was cropped to exclude Miss Maxwell. At least
one other magluminary also visited the townhouse. Stephen K. Bannon,
a former advisor to mister Trump and an all on

(19:03):
line media personality who has said that he videotaped hours
of interviews in the mansion with mister Epstein. In twenty nineteen,
framed photos of mister Bannon, including a mere selfie snapped
by mister Epstein, were kept in at least two rooms
in the mansion. The townhouse was one of five properties
around the world owned by mister Epstein after his release

(19:24):
in two thousand and nine from a Florida jail where
he served thirteen months for soliciting prostitution from a teenager.
The mansion served as both a personal hideaway and a
salon where he could hold court with accomplished intellectuals, scientists,
and financiers. According to legal records and interviews with people
who frequented the home, the visitors considered mister Epstein fun, smart,

(19:45):
and curious. Another perk getting to mingle with the young,
attractive women who roamed the property and worked as his assistants.
The townhouse, a stone's throw from Central Park, was sold
to mister Epstein in nineteen ninety eight by Leslie H. Wexner,
the billionaire owner of a L Brands. Mister Epstein renovated
and redecorated the mansion in an centric style. Dozens of

(20:07):
frame prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway. A sculpture of a
woman wearing a bridle gown and clutching a rope was
suspended in the central atrium. In the ground floor dining room,
mister Epstein entertained a rotating cast of celebrities, academics, politicians,
and businessmen. The food could be mundane, sometimes nothing more
than a buffet of Chinese takeout, but mister Allen's letter

(20:30):
noted that the events were anything but. Photos showed that
guests sat in leopard print chairs around a large rectangular table. Occasionally,
attendee set in interviews, a magician performed. Sometimes a chalkboard
was wheeled out so a guest could sketch a diagram
or write a mathematical formula. Epstein preserved a map of
Israel drawn on a chalkboard with mister Barock's signature, according

(20:53):
to a photo reviewed by The New York Times. Up
a grand staircase was mister Epstein's wood paneled office, saturing
a massive desk. Photos show a taxidermy tiger lounging on
a lush rug in the office. According to photos reviewed
by the Times, mister Epstein showcased a green first edition
of Lolita, the nineteen fifty five novel in which an

(21:13):
intellectual develops a sexual obsession with a twelve year old
girl and repeatedly rapes her. Atop a wooden sideboard were
more frame photos, including one of mister Epstein with Saudi
Arabia's crown prints Mohammed bin Sulman. Another flight up on
the third floor was mister Epstein's Sanctum, a suite that
included his bedroom, the mansion's infamous massage room, and a

(21:35):
cluster of bathrooms. Several of mister Epstein's victims have said
that the mansion was outfitted with a network of hidden
video cameras. In the massage room were paintings of naked women,
a large silver ball and chain, and shelves stocked with lubricant.
According to photos reviewed by The Times, mister Epstein regularly
directed teenage girls, some recruited from middle schools in Queen's

(21:57):
to massage him while he was naked. He masturbated in
front of them. According to court records and interviews with victims,
sometimes he raped or assaulted them. No surveillance cameras were
visible in the photos of the massage room. An earlier
collection of letters presented to mister Epstein in a leather
bound album for his fiftieth birthday in two thousand and
three reflected an era of his life before he was

(22:20):
first arrested. That book included contributions from mister Trump and
mister Clinton, among dozens of others. The Wall Street Journal
reported mister Trump has denied report in the Journal that
he contributed to sexually suggestive Node and drawing. He assued
the news organization for defamation. Mister clinton spokesman has said
the former president was unaware of mister Epstein's crimes, but

(22:43):
by twenty sixteen, as mister Epstein's reputation as a sexual
predator became increasingly hard to ignore, his social network was shrinking.
Three years later, he would die in a Manhattan jail
while waiting prosecution on federal sex trafficking charges. This review
reviewed seven birthday messages given to mister Epstein in twenty sixteen.

(23:05):
In addition to those from mister Zuckerman, mister Allen, and
mister Brock, there were letters from the linguist Noam Chomsky
and his wife, Joija Eto, an entrepreneur who later would
resign from mit in the board of The New York
Times Company because of his ties to mister Epstein and
Lawrence M. Krause, a prominent physicist Martin Noak, a Harvard biologist,
contributed to science themed Poto. Mister Zuckerman, mister Allen, mister Eto,

(23:30):
mister Noak, and mister Bannon did not respond to request
for comment. Mister Barack declined to comment. Mister Chomsky's wife
responded on his behalf and declined to comment. Doctor Kraus
said he didn't recall the letter, but attended several lunches
with very interesting discussions with scientists, authors and others at
mister Epstein's home. In their type letter, mister Brock and

(23:50):
his wife, Neelie Priel, hailed mister Epstein as a collector
of people. The letter concluded, may you enjoy long and
healthy life, and may all of us your friends enjoy
your time table for many more years to come. The
next article from the front page of today's edition is
entitled Columbia and Brown to disclose admissions and race data

(24:10):
in Trump deal by Sharon Otterman and Anemona Harticolis. As
part of the settlement struck with two Ivy League universities
in recent weeks, the Trump administration will gain access to
the standardized test scores and grade point averages of all applicants,
including information about their race, a measure that could profoundly

(24:31):
alter competitive college admissions. That aspect of the agreements with
Columbia and Brown, which goes well beyond the information typically
provided to the government, was largely overlooked amidst splashier news
that the universities had promised to pay tens of millions
of dollars to settle claims of violations of federal anti
discrimination laws, including accusations that they had tolerated anti semitism.

(24:55):
The release of such data has been on the wish
list of conservatives who are searching for evidence that universe
are dodging a twenty twenty three Supreme Court decision barring
the consideration of race and college admissions, and will probably
be sought to the future from many more of them.
But college officials and experts who support using factors beyond
test scores worry that the government or private groups or

(25:16):
individuals will use the data to file new discrimination charges
against universities and threaten their federal funding. The Trump administration
is using every lever it can to push elite college
admissions offices towards what it regards as merit based processes
that more heavily weigh grades and test scores, arguing that
softer measures such as asking applicants about their life challenges

(25:39):
or considering where they live may be illegal proxies for
considering race. The additional scrutiny is likely to resonate in
admissions offices nationwide. It could cause some universities to reconsider
techniques like recruitment efforts focused on high schools whose students
are predominantly people of color, or accepting students who have
outstanding qualifications in some way but subpart test scores, even

(26:02):
if they believe such actions are legal. The Trump administration's
ambition here is to send a chill through admissions offices
all over the country, suggestin Driver, a Yale Law schoup
professor who just wrote a book about the Supreme Court
an affirmative Action, who said he believed that the administration's
understanding of the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision was wrong.

(26:22):
They are trying to get universities to depress black and
brown enrollment. The Trump administration has celebrated getting this data
as part of its war on woke university policies such
as an affirmative action and diversity equity and inclusion programs
that it says discriminate based on race. Because of the
Trump administration's resolution agreement with Brown University, aspiring students will

(26:45):
be judged solely on their merits, not their race or sex.
Lynda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, said when the Brown
deal was announced, echoing similar comments she has made about Columbia,
woke is officially dead at Brown. President Trump proclaimed on
troth truth social and announcing the deal. The public release
of race related data on admissions could also be valuable

(27:08):
to conservative groups who have become the self appointed enforcers
of the Supreme Court decision. If this information were obtainable
by a Freedom of Information Act request or made public,
it would be of great interest, said Adam Ortara, one
of the lawyers for the Students for Fair Admissions, the
plaintiff in the Supreme Court affirmative action case. If we
could get this and analyze, we would. We would because

(27:30):
we are constantly vigilant in looking out for those who
seem not to have gotten the message. Columbia and Brown
will have to maintain merit based admissions policies according to
their settlements, which codify the administration's broader aims in legally
binding language. The universities may not be by any means
unlawfully preference applicants based on race, color, or national origin,

(27:53):
and admissions throughout its programs. Both agreements state and identical language.
No proxy for racial admision will be tolerated. The admission's
disclosures will provide the government with data on accepted and
rejected applicants, broken down by race, color, grade point average,
and performance on standardized tests. While it is not clear

(28:13):
what Brown and Colombia's data will reveal, general data shows
that admission systems that are focused on standardized tests typically
help Asian students and harm the chances of Black students.
Of the high school graduates who scored between fourteen hundred
and sixteen hundred on the SAT in twenty twenty four,
the highest possible scores, one percent were African American and

(28:36):
twenty seven percent were Asian. According to the College Board,
the private organization that administers the test, about twelve percent
of students taking the test were black and ten percent
were Asian. Some experts consider the test to be unfair
because there are score gaps by racing class. Student demographics
at Columbia and Brown had already started to shift as

(28:57):
the twenty twenty three Supreme Court decision took up effect.
Among first year undergraduates entering Colombia in fall twenty twenty four,
thirty nine percent were Asian and twelve percent were Black.
In the fall of twenty twenty three, that are entering
class was thirty percent Asian and twenty percent Black. White
and Hispanic enrollment dropped slightly from twenty twenty three to
twenty twenty four. At Brown, Asian and white first year

(29:21):
enrollment went up from fall twenty twenty three to fall
twenty twenty four, while Hispanic and Black enrollment decreased. Not
all Ivy League universities, however, showed the same effect. Applicants
to Columbia have the option of not submitting standardized test scores,
complicating any analysis. According to the National Center for Education

(29:42):
and Statistics, a federal statistical agency, about sixty one percent
of first year Columbia undergraduates in fall twenty twenty three
had submitted test scores. Brown has returned to requiring test
scores from applicants. In a letter to the campus, Christina H. Paxson,
the present of Brown, said that the federal government was
already entitled to the new data from Brown or any

(30:05):
other university as part of compliance with civil rights laws.
She said she was not worried about releasing the material,
saying it would demonstrate the strong academic qualifications of the
classes we admit, while remaining committed to welcoming students from
a wide range of backgrounds. Columbia also explained in a
recent fact sheet that the data would be anonymised and

(30:25):
that it had an obligation to comply with the law.
We have agreed to provide data to which the government
is entitled and is currently requesting from scores of institutions,
including Hours Claire's Shipman, Columbia's acting president, said when the
deal was announced. The Trump administration already appears to be
asking for similar data under subpoena. In March, Attorney General

(30:48):
Pam Bondi directed the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division
to review admissions policies at Stanford University and three University
of California institutions, UCLA, Berkeley and Irvine. The Department of
Justice will put an end to a shameful system in
which someone's race matters more than their ability. Chad Mozel,
the acting Associate Attorney General said in March, every college

(31:11):
and university should note that illegal discrimination and admissions will
be investigated and eliminated. The language used in the settlements
with Columbia and Brown Hammer's Home contested assertions about the
Supreme Court admissions case that the Trump administration has been
making since February. It insists that the decision goes beyond
admissions and bars any consideration of race in university life.

(31:34):
Many legal experts disagree with this interpretation and point out
that the decision pointedly said that colleges could still consider,
on a case by case basis, an applicant's discussion of
how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration,
or otherwise. The law is clear treating students differently on
the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity,

(31:56):
racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under cons
controlling Supreme Court precedent. The Department of Education's Office for
Civil Rights argued and an official guidance letter to all
educational institutions in February. Under this thinking, colleges could not
lawfully eliminate the use of standardized testing and emissions if
doing so was part of an effort to achieve a

(32:17):
desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity. Federal law
would also not allow allow race to be considered in hiring, promotions, scholarships,
or housing decisions. If an educational institution treats a person
of one race differently than it treats another person because
of that person's race, the educational institution violates the law.

(32:38):
The February letter said enforcene of that guidance. Document was
put on hold in April because of a legal challenge.
Last week, Miss Bondi made another attempt to make her
interpretation of the Supreme Court decision enforceable, providing similar guidance
that applies to all entities receiving federal funding. Miss Bondie's
guidance states that even seemingly race neutral critters, such as

(33:00):
asking an applicant about cultural competence or lived experience, or
targeting recruitment based on geography, violates federal law if it
is designed or applied with the intention of giving an
advantage to applicants based on protected characteristics such as race.
Even a scholarship program that targets underserved geographic areas or
first generation students would not be legal if those criteria

(33:23):
are chosen to increase participation by specific racial or sex
based groups. The Guidan the states. I think transparency is
a good thing, and if Columbia is not using racial preferences,
they should have nothing to hide, said Richard Callenberg, director
of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute,
a left of center think tank. Mister Callenburg is pushed

(33:44):
for class conscious rather than race conscious college admissions, but
the date of the government is demanding could be misused,
he said, to suggest that any attempt to create racial diversity,
even by race neutral means, is problematic. The next article
from the front page of today's edition is entitled Hiroshima's

(34:05):
pacifist cause is Losing Believers by Hannah Beach In Hissako, Yueno,
there is a piece boulevard, a piece bell, and a
piece memorial park. On a recent summer afternoon, at the
Children's Peace Monument near the Flame of Peace Elementary school,
students in cotton hats and crisp uniforms folded origami cranes.

(34:26):
They were honoring a little girl who had tried to
overcome the effects of a little boy as the atomic
bomb used in the world's first nuclear attack, was code
named by folding one thousand paper birds, a Japanese tradition
for good fortune. She died of radiation poisoning anyway. Hiroshima
was bombed by the American military on August sixth, nineteen
forty five, causing the deaths of about one hundred and

(34:47):
forty thousand residents by the end of the year and
bringing to a close Japan's imperial rampage across Asia in
the world's deadliest war. Today, the Japanese city stands synonymous
with peace. From the ashes of news clear devastation, Hiroshima,
along with the city of Nagasaki, which was bombed three
days later, was rebuilt and regenerated. Burned and sickened by radiation,

(35:10):
many of Hiroshima's survivors forgave. They wove pacifism into their DNA,
the vanguards of a vanquished nation that cast off doubts
of imperialism. Ever since nineteen forty nine, when the Peace
Memorial City Construction Law was enacted, Eroshima has hosted conferences, concerts, musicals,
and mind performances, all in the name of peace. In

(35:31):
twenty twenty four, a group representing Japanese atomic bomb survivors,
was awarded the Noble Peace Prize to honour its campaign
to eradicate nuclear weapons. But eighty years after the world's
only nuclear attacks, Japan does not entirely add peace. Three
of its closest neighbors possessed nuclear weapons, China, Russia, and
North Korea. The world at large, from Ukraine to Gaza,

(35:52):
is klee by conflict. In the Pacific. China is flexing
its power just as American influence seems to be waning.
Time is running out too. The last major arms control
treaty between the US and Russia is set to lapse
early next year, bound by an American imposed constitution that
renounces war and prevents it from having a military except

(36:13):
for defensive purposes. Japan has fractured between those who defend
pacifism as a national virtue and those who think the
country must abandon its submissive stupe Even the awarding of
the Noble Peace Prize last year felt like an anachronism,
a vestige of a time when a world without nuclear
weapons could be imagined. We are now at a turning point,

(36:33):
said Noriaki Kawano, the director of the Center for Peace
at Hiroshima University, referring to a growing feeling in Japan,
particularly among young people, that peace for peace's sake is
no longer enough. Hiroshima is Hiroshima, but if Japan is
to face reality, Hiroshima may become isolated. The number of
Japanese students who believe in nuclear deterrence, the notion that

(36:55):
countries with nuclear weapons were less likely to wage war
on each other, has increased in res years, according to
surveys by the Center for Peace. The phrase in Japanese
used to explain why the country needs to re arm
is shogani, roughly translated as it can't be helped. It
can't be helped that China is acting assertively in regional waters,

(37:16):
claiming territory and flaunting a powerful navy. It can't be
helped that the US Japan security partnership feels frey, particularly
as President Trump has called upon Japan to shoulder more
of its defense. It can't be helped that memories of
Hiroshima's horrors are fading. The survivors of the atomic bombings
August sixth, that Hiroshima and August ninth and Nagasaki are

(37:36):
now eighty years old or more, this anniversary will likely
be the last major remembrance to include first hand accounts
of what splitting uranium and plutonium atoms wrought flayed flesh,
irradiated babies, magan infested burns, and diseases of radiation induced disease.
Even as Hiroshima sells Peace branded mochi treats and hand towels,

(37:58):
the nearby port town exists in counterpoise, once home to
the largest Imperial Navy base and arsenal jure as a
beneficiary of Japan's current military expansion, the country's largest warship
docks here in a former steelyard, is slated to become
another naval facility. At a military history museum, origami cranes

(38:20):
from Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park are recycled into paper fans
emblazoned with Yamato, Japanese, Japan's unsinkable World War II battleship,
which was eventually torpedoed by the Americans. People are realizing
that peace will not come just by praying, said Maasnari Tade,
the son of a Hiroshima survivor who died at fifty.

(38:41):
Like many who suffered, mister Tade's father refused official status
as an atomic bomb victim. Mister Tada is now the
hiroshimahead of Nippon Kaigi, an ultra nationalist political block that
wants to revise the constitutional clause banning a conventional military.
The lack of peace, the lack of nuclear non prolification
in and out of itself. This is proof that the

(39:02):
symbol of Hiroshima as a peace city has failed, he said.
Eighty years ago, chi Echo Karayake was a high school
student in Hiroshima, drafted to work in war factories cleaning
old guns and military uniforms. On the hot and cloudless
morning of August sixth, Miss Karayake, dressed in a thick
army canvas top hanging down to her knees, was cooling

(39:24):
off under the ease of a building when a searing
brightness exploded over Hiroshima at eight fifteen am. The city
went dark. By the time Miss Karaoke pulled herself out
of the wreckage, every landmark she knew in Hiroshima had disintegrated.
For days, she tended to fellow students seared by the
atomic explosion. One after another another they died. She sifted

(39:46):
through their cremated remains a Japanese ritual. The shards of
one friend's bone shined a soft pink like early cherry blossoms.
Back then, I was ashamed that my life was saved,
Miss Karaoke said, I thought how much easier it would
have been if we died together. On August fifteenth, nineteen
forty five, Emperor Hirohito went on the radio to announce

(40:06):
Japan's exit from the war. The monarch later said he
was not, in fact divine, the kind of deity who
could compel soldiers to die on his behalf. He spoke
on a courtly Japanese so removed from everyday speech that
Miss Karaoke and most civilians could barely understand him, Like
most hibakushka the Atomic War, the Atomic bomb survivors are known.

(40:28):
Miss Karaoke, now ninety five, is fervently pro peace. Some
victims hid their trauma in their kiloids, the painful scar
tissue from burns, for fear that their marriage or job
prospects would be diminished. But Miss Karaaki has spent years
teaching subsequent generations about the consequences of war and nuclear attacks.
Horotima now values peace above all else, and they say

(40:50):
we must abolish nuclear weapons, she said, But eighty years
ago was a military capital. Until the atomic bomb was dropped,
everyone was invaded by militarism. Shed Takashi Hirioka, a former
mayor of Hiroshima, is ninety seven and says he is
angry that Japan has never signed the Global Treaty on
the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. He reserved special ire for

(41:13):
Fumiyo Kishida, the former Prime minister whose family is from Hiroshima.
Mister Kashida supported nuclear disarmament, but in twenty twenty two
he signed off on a plan to dramatically increase defense
spending Japan, mister Hirooka said, is leaning to the right
and becoming militaristic. Mister Tade of the Ultra Nationalistic Blog

(41:34):
thinks that Japan needs to move on from a war
that ended eighty years ago, even as others condemned Japan
for lack of contrition for the atrocities committed by its
imperial armed forces. Like other nationalists, some of whom have
a growing voice in Japan's ruling party, mister Tade dismisses
documented war crimes by Japanese forces from the Nanjing massacre

(41:55):
and the enslavement of women sexually as so called comfort
women to biological war fair experience as concocted by a
Western supported intelligentsia. It's a Japanese guilt theory that Japan
started the war because it was bad and so it
had to suffer damage. He said, there is a sad reality,
a logic used to justify the bombing. In mid June,

(42:17):
mister Tade turned out in Hiroshima to see Emperor Naruhito
of Japan, the pacifist grandson of the monarch in whose
name the imperial Japanese forces invaded and attacked the crowd
of about five thousand people. Among them, an energetic corps
of nationalists held paper lanterns and yelled banzai the cheers.
Still tainted by Japan's military past, they looked up at

(42:40):
the building where Naruhito and Empress Masako were staying. Suddenly,
two blowing orbs appeared by the window lanterns held by
the Emperor and Empress to acknowledge their devotees below. To
eradicate a Japanese imperialism. The Americans oversaw the drafting of
a constitution in which Japan forever renounces war. The United

(43:02):
States promised to defend Japan if it came under attack.
More than fifty thousand American soldiers are still stationed in
the country. The Security Treaty, which put Japan under the
American nuclear umbrella, is a bedrock of the post war
Pacific order and has allowed Japan to promote peace, but
the terms of the alliance for being a question both
by Japanese and American politicians. Japan's military is called the

(43:26):
Self Defense Forces. Its formation in nineteen fifty four hastened
by an American wish for Japan to serve as a
bulwark against communism prompted by the Korean War. Last year,
the Japanese parliament approved a nine point seven percent increase
in the defense budget for twenty twenty five, bringing Japan's
annual military outlays to about fifty seven billion dollars, put

(43:47):
it on course to rank among the world's top spenders.
The build up has come to Kure, the port city
neighboring Hirishima. This year, it was named the command center
for a maritime transport network serving Japan and southern islands,
including the approach to Taiwan and the South China Sea,
two potential flash points with China. The three hundred and

(44:08):
twenty acre steel factory conversion is slated to include an
ammunition depot. Kire is now a pilgrimage site for military buffs.
The museum honoring the Yamato, the World War II battleship,
is undergoing a thirty three million dollar renovation. Naval spotters
can view modern day attack submarines a stealth frigate that
was commissioned in May in Japan's largest warship, the Kaga.

(44:32):
There is a vast Pacific Ocean surrounding Japan, said Captain
Chushaka Takuchi, the commanding officer of the Kaga, adding that
Japan has to defend the sea area around Japan. Lieutenant
Yusakimakami serves on the Kaga, a helicopter carrier. He did
not grow up playing soldier. His great grandfather died at Iwajima,

(44:52):
one of the most punishing battles in the Pacific, and
he is from Hiroshima. But Lieutenant Marikami loves plains and
helicopters mis machines that soar like cranes and doves birds
of peace. Japan is a peaceful country. He said. War
was a long time of go. The military expansion in
Cure has angered some residents, who note that the city
was bombed fourteen times by the Americans during World War II.

(45:16):
Revitalizing the military industry would be strangling ourselves, said Takashi Karatsune,
a member of the citizens group. Little Boy destroyed nearly
seventy percent of the buildings in Hiroshima. The Hypno center
that the hypocenter, the point below the mid air detonation,
is now a small parking lot for a medical clinic.
Few tourists come to see the unassuming sign marking the

(45:39):
spot around the corner. One building miraculously survive, the Hiroshima
Prefectual Industrial Promotional Hall, its dome stripped to its steel skeleton,
but its foundation largely unscathed. A museum nearby tells of
Hoiroshima suffering tourists emerged, hushed, parents gripping their children's hands.

(46:00):
Across the city there are signs of a peace industrial complex,
drawings of doves and no nukes, bumper stickers, and garlands
of original cranes of origami cranes. The legacy of the
bombing infuses the city's art scene. Sinngiokata hardcore punk rocker
headbangs to lyrics that push denuclearization and condemned violence. In

(46:22):
Ukraine and Gaza. Punk rock has always been political in
the West, he said, being from Hiroshima, I felt like
I should do my part. But there is a lesion
in Hiroshima Io a passive voice used in the official
explanation of what transformed the city the bomb was dropped.
People often describe the nuclear attack as if it was

(46:43):
a natural disaster, devoid of human intervention. Only at the
end of one exhibits it may clear how the United
States pursued atomic weapons and how the race against the
Soviet Union may have hastened President Harry S. Truman's decision
to order the second bombing. In twenty sixteen, President Barack
Obama came to Hiroshima. He was the first US sitting
president to visit, but he did not apologize for the attacks.

(47:07):
On a bright, cloudless morning, mister Obama said, death fell
from the sky. Mister Harioka, the former mayor of Hiroshima
and his campaigned for decades for due nuclearization. He wants
no more war. Unlike some other Japanese politicians, he recognizes
Japan's responsibility for its brutal wartime record, but he also
says there is another nation that needs to face its history.

(47:29):
We must hold America responsible, he said. In other words,
the first step in eliminating nuclear weapons is making them
acknowledge that America's strategy of dropping bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was wrong. Usamu Nakokura, now one hundred, began his
Imperial Naval training at fourteen and became a draftsman at Kire,
rendering tiny submersibles used at Pearl Harbor. We were taught

(47:53):
that the Americans were red demons, he said. After the war,
mister Nakokura worked with American researchers for twenty years documenting
the uptick in diseases associated with radiation, such as leukemia
and breast and lung cancers. While the initial blast of
radiation dissipated quickly, victims of the blast suffered from illnesses
that sometimes showed up decades later. Once a designer of

(48:16):
war machines, he now frets about the durability of Japan's passivism.
There hasn't been a very thorough discussion with people who
bravely raise their hands for peace diplomacy, he said. Peace
is not just the absence of war. The peace celebrated
in Hiroshima suffers from other emissions. The Japanese Empire annexed
the Korean Peninsula in nineteen ten, dispossessing many landless Koreans

(48:41):
labored in Japan, including about eighty five thousand in Hiroshima,
who dug air raid shelters or collected wood for charcoal.
Up to thirty thousand Koreans died from the atomic bombing
on August sixth. The pain of moving and working here
and then the atomic bomb that was a double hardship,
said Kwan june O, whose father survived the detonation but
died of lung cancer at forty seven. Mister kwad said

(49:03):
that Japan's government for years did not provide official support
to document the Korean dead, nor, he said, have their wards.
The award ees of the Noble Peace Prize acknowledged the
full extent of Korean suffering. Submerging memories was what many
Japanese family. Japanese families did for decades. Toshinori Tetsutani never
met his brother Shinichi, who died at age three from

(49:26):
the blast, nor his two sisters, who were also killed
After Shinichi died, his parents couldn't bear to give his
body for mass Bieru. They secretly interred him in their
garden along with the neighborhood girl. Next to the children,
they nestled a tricycle, Shinichi's prize toy. Forty years later,
the parents, with their sons born after the war, dug
into the ground. They found tiny skeletons holding hands, just

(49:49):
as they had been placed. The tricycle was unearthed and
donated to the Hiroshima Peace Museum. From Shinchi's skull covered
in a helmet, the roots of a fig and a
pomegranate tree grew. The boys born after the war had
eaten fruit from those trees. Yoshika Konishi, mister Tetsusani's daughter,
now tells the tale of Shinichi to children like her own.

(50:10):
Some schools in Hiroshima have stopped commemorating the anniversary of
the bomby fewer survivors are alive to share their memories.
It feels a little strange to saying this in Hiroshima,
but I worry that we might forget, she said. Miss Karyak,
the ninety five year old survivor of the bombing remembers
how no one expected anything to grow again in Hiroshima's

(50:31):
scortch soil, But the next spring, seedlings pushed through the earth.
Pink oleander flowers bloomed. Years later, Miss Kiryaki planted in
her garden a cutting from an oleander tree growing near
the point of the bomb's greatest impact. It blossoms every year.
I was happy that the plants grew, she said, of
the sight of green and a charred city eighty years ago,
I thought, this will be fine, and I will be

(50:53):
able to live. The next article from the front page
of today's edition is entitled Hiroshima and the And we
refuse to imagine. Eighty years after the city's destruction, we
seem to be blundering into a new age of nuclear perils.
It is time for culture to rediscover the courage to
be afraid. By Jason Farrago, Hiroshima, Japan. For a few

(51:15):
years now, I've been turning over in my head one
brief scene in a beautiful movie. It comes two hours
in to drive my car. Ryusakahelmaguchi's Oscar winning twenty twenty
one masterpiece of bereavement and artistic inspiration. When a troop
of actors step steps outside the theater to rehearse in
the fresh air. It is autumn leaves crunched beneath the
feet of two actresses as they play one of the

(51:37):
tenderest scenes of Uncle Vanya. They've been struggling up to
now as they recited Chekhov's lines about sorrow and stagnation,
lives not lived, dreams squelched in the dreams maintained. But
here in the park something clicks. We must live, the
show must go on. It's never made explicit why this
outdoor rehearsal unlocks the core of Tchehov. How this park

(51:57):
for these actors opens a whole universe of grief and
endurance for a Japanese audience. At least, there was no need.
The park is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, designed in
nineteen fifty four by the great modernist architect Kenzo Tongae.
On August sixth, nineteen forty five, eighty years ago this week,
a new kind of bomb detonated, almost slightly silently, some

(52:19):
nineteen hundred feet overhead. The scene from Drive My Car
came back to me when I stood in a pouring
rain on the spot where it was filmed. Anyone standing
there in nineteen forty five was killed immediately. Then came
the fires and the fallout. It started raining in the
first days of August sixth as well, viscous black drops,
heavy switch soot and debris. The survivors drank it desperately

(52:40):
in the ruins of Hiroshima. The rain drops were radioactive.
A scientific event, wrote the painter Wassili Kandinsky in nineteen thirteen,
removed one of the most important obstacles from my path.
This was the further division of the atom. The collapse
of the atom was equated in my soul with the
collapse of the whole world. At the start of the

(53:00):
last century, after Ernest Rutherford, Pierre and Mary Caree and
Albert Einstein began to unravel the mysteries of nuclear physics,
a periodic table of artists, authors and philosophers grew fixated
on this new sciences cultural repercussions. Suddenly, the permiance of matter,
the permiance of history, perhaps appeared like an industrial relic.

(53:21):
Objects that seemed stable actually vibrated with energy. Nuclear physics
was confirming a suspicion one of the core of modern
art and literature that the things we see are less
solid than they look. Everything became uncertain, precarious, and insubstantial.
Kandinsky had said, I had come to Horoshia but to
try to see and to feel. Where that argument led

(53:44):
The Peace Memorial Museum, crowded but quiet, showed that side
of atomic power. Kandinsky could not have envisioned metal fused
with debris and on godly heat. Sin's student uniforms singed
in children's dresses. There was a six panel folding screen
donated just recently by Hiroshima family, whose gold expanses are
stretched by black rain. The most terrifying abstract painting I

(54:07):
have ever seen modern art's atomic optimism vanished outside a
bank building in this city, about eight hundred and fifty
feet from the hypocentre, its steps darkened by the permanent
shadow of someone who died there instantly in heat that
reached seven thousand degrees fahrenheit or more. When the Painrivis
Kleins saw those steps in a documentary, he was moved

(54:29):
to create one of its ghostly impressions of bodies in
his signature Blue and a panorama called Hiroshima circ In
nineteen sixty one. The bodies of his models have receded
from bright blue to ashy white. Flesh became negative space.
Everything physical and material could disappear from one day to another,
said Kleine, to be replaced by nothing but the ultimate abstraction. Imaginable,

(54:52):
the ultimate abstraction. It is closer than you think. In
the decades after August sixth, nineteen forty five, and the
second bomb dropped three days later in Nagasaki, the domains
of painting, cinema, and literature committed to envisioning the doomsday
scenarios of mutually assured destruction on the beach following the
last survivors of a Third World War waiting for the

(55:15):
reiation to reach Australia turned melodrama into a radiactive genre.
Doctor Strangelove, literalizing the paranoia and psychosis of a nuclear confrontation,
confirmed our daily survival as nothing but a black comedy.
George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Kim Stanley Robinson imagined life,
or what was left of it after atomic armageddon. They

(55:36):
were nuclear cassandras. They found our institutions, our leaders as
unstable as plutonium. Now, eighty years after Hiroshima, we have
blundered into a new age of nuclear perils. In twenty
twenty two, after Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joseph ar Biden
Junior said that the planet faced the greatest risk of
nuclear confrontation since the Cuban missile crisis. Earlier this year. Present,

(56:00):
Nut Trump's Director of National Intelligence Toulsie Gabbard warned that
we stand closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than
ever before, drawing a rebuke from the President. The US
and Israel bombarded Iran's nuclear development sites in June. North
Korea continues to modernize its nuclear capable forces, while China
is expanding its own arsenal to swiftly, so swiftly that

(56:21):
students of deterrence must now account for three, not two,
nuclear powers. The last arms control treaty between the US
and Russia is set to expire in just six months.
The very principle of arms control may die with it.
This concludes the reading of The New York Times for today.
Your reader for today has been Chris Greco. If you've

(56:43):
any questions, comments, or suggestions concerning this program, please feel
free to call us at eight five nine four two
two six three nine zero. Thank you for listening. And
now please stay tuned for continued programming on Radio I