Brand Logo
Salvador denial, Harvard's stand and stars in space

 
Today's INTERNATIONAL story

El Salvador refuses to return wrongly deported man

What happened
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said yesterday he would not send back Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man unlawfully deported by the Trump administration. President Donald Trump, sitting beside Bukele in the Oval Office, made clear he would not push him to do so, despite a unanimous Supreme Court ordering the Trump administration to "facilitate" Ábrego García's return to the U.S.

Who said what
"Of course I'm not going to do it," Bukele told reporters who asked if he would return the wrongly deported father of three. "The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States." Ábrego García's fate is "not up to us," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in yesterday's Oval Office event. If El Salvador "wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane." The Trump administration is paying Bukele at least $6 million to jail deportees in his notorious gang prison.

Trump's "'nothing I can do here' stance is unusual for a president who prides himself on strong-arming other world leaders to do his bidding," Politico said, but Bukele's refusal to release Ábrego García "gives Trump cover" to dance around the court directives.

The Supreme Court's refusal to spell out the remedy to Ábrego García's erroneous deportation gave Trump a "millimeter-wide opening" and he has "driven a Mack truck through it," Georgetown Law professor Stephen Vladeck told The New York Times. And that leaves us with a "rule-of-law crisis" where "the government can disappear people to a foreign country with no due process and no responsibility for what happens next," and "if the government can do it to Ábrego García, they can do it to anybody."

What next?
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis is holding a hearing today where she will consider a request by Ábrego García's lawyers to "compel the government to explain why it should not be held in contempt," The Associated Press said.

 
 
Today's Higher EDUCATION story

Harvard loses $2.3B after rejecting Trump demands

What happened
Harvard University yesterday rejected the Trump administration's sweeping demands for oversight and internal policy changes, calling the effort an unlawful and unconstitutional overreach. Hours later, the administration said it was immediately freezing $2.3 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard and its affiliated hospitals and research institutions.

Who said what
Harvard was the first of several top universities to defy funding threats from a Trump administration task force of "little-known bureaucrats" ostensibly focused on rooting out "antisemitic harassment" on campus but also "taking on university culture more broadly in ways that echo the MAGA dreams for remaking higher education," The Wall Street Journal said. 

Harvard has undertaken extensive reforms to address antisemitism, but "the university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," Harvard President Alan Garber said in an open letter. "Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over" by a federal government that seeks to dictate what they can teach, "whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue." The federal antisemitism task force said Harvard's defiance "reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset" in universities that "federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."

What next?
It was not "immediately clear" which grants and contracts were frozen, The Boston Globe said, but the task force's listed targets included grants to "fund biomedical research on topics including tuberculosis, traumatic brain injuries and HIV."

 
 
Today's STARS IN SPACE Story

Katy Perry, Gayle King visit space on Bezos rocket

What happened
Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, sent six well-known women into lower orbit yesterday, billing the 11-minute journey as the "first all-woman spaceflight" since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 three-day solo mission in space. The six passengers included pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King and Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, who handpicked the roster.

Who said what
On NBC's "Today With Jenna and Friends," actress Olivia Munn called the fully automated celebrity space tourism flight "gluttonous" and extravagant, especially when a lot of people "can't even afford eggs." Blue Origin "declined to say how much the flight cost or who paid what," The Associated Press said.

"The cynical part of me wants to call it a marketing stunt," Dr. Tanya Harrison of the Outer Space Institute told the BBC. But a high-profile all-women team might "change the demographics a little bit of who might want to do something like this." Taking female celebrities and activists to space "applied a feminist sheen" on the endeavor, Amanda Hess said at The New York Times, but "if the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism's most decadent spoils alongside the world's wealthiest men."

What next?
"In this exciting new era of commercial spaceflight, the dream of becoming an astronaut is no longer limited to a select few," bitcoin investor Chun Wang, who bankrolled an entire SpaceX flight over the north and south poles, said on X last week. Bezos and Sanchez are scheduled to get married in Venice in two months.

 
 

It's not all bad

The company Mobility for Africa connects women in Zimbabwe with electrical tricycles that make running errands and selling their wares much easier. Women can buy or rent the trikes, called Hambas, eliminating the need to get up before dawn and walk miles to work, appointments and stores. In a pilot program, 92% of women said they felt safer getting around on Hambas, and many said they now offer to deliver items for friends or give rides.

 
 
Under the radar

A growing measles outbreak has been keeping American health professionals on alert, but experts say we should also be concerned about another vaccine-preventable disease: pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough. The illness typically presents with a harsh cough and can be especially dangerous for infants. 

Whooping cough cases have "skyrocketed by more than 1,500% nationwide since hitting a recent low in 2021," said ProPublica. There have been "about 6,600 cases already in 2025," said CNN. Idaho, Louisiana, South Dakota and Washington have reported deaths this year. 

These outbreaks tend to be a result of "populations with no immunity or reduced immunity," Lisa Morici, a professor of microbiology and immunology, said to CNN. Pertussis spreads through "coughing and sneezing and sharing close breathing space," pediatrician Alyssa Kuban said to the American Medical Association, noting that the "risk of spread is highest for the first one to two weeks that a person has symptoms."  Without treatment, people can be contagious for several weeks. The highest-risk groups are young children and infants.

Doctors, researchers and public health experts warn that the recent measles outbreak "may just be the beginning," said ProPublica. Epidemics of preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough could "get much worse with falling vaccination rates" and the Trump administration "slashing spending on the country's public health infrastructure." Not only have national vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella fallen, but according to federal data, "so have those for pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B and polio."

 
 
On this day

April 15, 1912

The ocean liner RMS Titanic sank after striking an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. The colossal passenger ship was en route to New York City from Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage when it went down, killing about 1,500 people. The Titanic remains one of the most iconic ships — and its sinking one of the worst disasters — in maritime history.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

"U.S., El Salvador won't budge on mistakenly deported man," The Wall Street Journal says on Tuesday's front page, but "white-collar enforcement recedes under Trump." The president's "tariff reprieve for tech firms may not last," the Los Angeles Times says. "Trump may give auto firms tariff reprieve," says the Detroit Free Press. "Tariffs grow uncertainty for farmers," The Washington Post says. "Economy forecasts gloomy for 2025" and the "pause in tariffs not enough to raise hopes," the Arizona Republic says.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Gotta catch 'em all

Children in Kawara, Japan, are trading Ojisan, collectible cards featuring middle-aged and elderly men who live in their town. Stars include the noodlemaker Mr. Takeshita and Mr. Fujii, a former prison worker turned community volunteer whose card is "so sought after that local kids have even started asking him for autographs," much to his delight, said Tokyo Weekender. The game was created by local officials to "strengthen the connection" between children and the older generation.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images; Erin Clark / The Boston Globe via Getty Images; Blue Origin / Cover Images via Reuters; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images