Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, April 10th. Here's what we're covering.

In the breakroom of a courthouse in Massachusetts, workers put up a sign decorated with balloons saying, "We'll miss you." It was part of a goodbye party for an immigration judge. Then another judge was out and another. These are the judges who decide if someone gets asylum or gets deported. Soon, the courthouse was having so many goodbye parties, they just left the decorations up. It was all part of a massive wave of firings carried out by the Trump administration. Now, a new investigation from the Times shows just how the administration has gone after judges in its larger effort to reshape the immigration system.

Investigator: You know, these judges wear robes, but they are not part of the judicial branch. They are not independent. They work for the attorney general and they can be fired and so the Trump administration has used that lever of pressure.

Tracy Mumford: My colleague Nick Nehamas is part of the team who worked on the investigation. He says immigration courts have long had a reputation for being dysfunctional with a huge backlog of cases. That's something critics and supporters of immigration agree on. But he says the way Trump is approaching it has alarmed many judges who work in the system. They described being systematically pressured to deport more people and threatened with disciplinary action if they didn't.

Nick Nehamas: They also sent out memos to judges. One of the most prominent basically said, "Hey, it's come to our attention that some of you are quote exhibiting bias in favor of aliens and against the government." And the message was, you know, we're not telling you how to rule, but we think you're biased in favor of immigrants. And so judges took a pretty clear message from that, that they were supposed to rule more in favor of the government.

Tracy Mumford: Every president tries to bring the immigration courts in line with their own policies. But no president has moved as quickly or as comprehensively as Trump to fire so many judges to change so many policies and to really fundamentally transform how the courts work. The consequences have been fast and dramatic. We've seen the asylum rate drop to a record low. We've seen the number of deportation orders soar to a record high. We've seen more people locked up in detention centers and even more people deciding to give up their cases and accept being removed from the country rather than keep fighting from behind bars.

In response to questions, the Justice Department did not explain how it chose which judges to fire. And a White House spokeswoman said, quote, "The American people elected President Trump based on his promise to enforce federal immigration law."

Tracy Mumford: Now, on the war with Iran, a few things to know as we head into the weekend. Tomorrow in Pakistan, a delegation from the US is set to meet with Iranian officials to try and hammer out a longer-term peace agreement. The current ceasefire only runs for two weeks. The US is sending Vice President JD Vance along with Trump's special envoy Steven Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Veteran diplomats have raised concerns that Trump has sidelined skilled experts who normally would have helped with these kinds of talks. And he's putting diplomacy in the hands of a friend and family member instead whose backgrounds are in real estate. Also,

Interviewer: Very few ships have yet passed through. Who is the Strait of Hormuz open to if you say it is now open to everyone? Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister: Anybody who communicates with the Iranian authority has got permission from this. Tracy Mumford: In an interview with ITV News, Iran's deputy foreign minister insisted the Strait of Hormuz is open, though traffic is still just a trickle. Normally, 130 or so ships would pass a day. Yesterday, just a handful got through, according to global shipping data.

And last update on the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, even as those attacks put a huge strain on the shaky ceasefire with Iran. The US and Israel have said Lebanon is not included in the temporary truce. While Iran and the leaders of several NATO countries insist it must be. Yesterday in Beirut, search and rescue teams were still combing through the wreckage of flattened apartment buildings where people are still missing. According to Lebanese officials, the death toll from the Israeli attacks there this week has crossed 300.

Melania Trump: At the White House yesterday. Good afternoon. The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. Tracy Mumford: First Lady Melania Trump summoned reporters so that she could give a surprise statement about Jeffrey Epstein. In a short six-minute speech, she said she wanted to clear quote "my good name." Melania Trump: I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. Tracy Mumford: Melania specifically shot down rumors that she'd met her husband through the convicted sex offender. And she said she had no relationship to Epstein and no knowledge of his crimes. In files released by the Justice Department, though there is email correspondence between someone named Melania and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's co-conspirator. Maxwell called the woman "sweet pea" and the woman signed her note "love." It's not clear why Melania chose to speak out about Epstein. Now, at the end of her remarks, she shifted the focus to his victims and called on Congress to hold a public hearing where she said the women could share their stories. Melania Trump: Then, and only then, we will have the truth. Thank you.

Tracy Mumford: Across the country, America's furniture stores are struggling. Anyone who wants to go wander through and test out a couch or peruse end tables may have noticed the going out of business signs and the everything must go sales. Over the last few years, a number of retailers have gone bankrupt and closed, like Con's 550 stores around the US, or American Freight, which was based in Ohio, closing its 300 plus stores. The industry has basically been ravaged by high mortgage rates and home prices that have frozen the housing market. That's left fewer people looking to furnish new places or dropping thousands of dollars on a dining set or a sectional. More recently, President Trump's tariffs have added pressure to the already strained market with 25% levies on imported furniture and cabinets and more increases set for next year. The chief executive of RH, the upscale furniture retailer formerly known as Restoration Hardware, told investors on a conference call this month that the furniture industry had never seen fallout like this before. and quote, "There's going to be a lot of competition that's not going to make it through these times."

Tracy Mumford: And finally, a study from researchers at Harvard Medical School has found that on days with big album releases, think Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny, traffic fatalities go up. They looked at crash data from 2017 to 2022, the last year that had full stats when they started their analysis, and they overlaid that crash data with the release dates of the 10 most streamed albums in that period. Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Harry Styles, etc. They found that traffic fatalities increased nearly 15% on the days when the albums dropped. To try to ensure it wasn't an anomaly or related to something else. They did things like compare crash data on each release date to randomly selected dates or the same date, different year. They also ruled out seasonal or holiday travel as a contributing factor. One of the researchers said he would bet the danger on release days is because of the physical task of listening to a new album, unlocking the phone, opening an app, scrolling through a track list, tapping a specific song. Those are all things that could distract a driver. There has been previous research into things like this, whether certain days can correlate to more danger on the road. Past studies, for example, have shown that traffic deaths have been higher than usual on tax day, which is next week, possibly because of stress and distractions.

Tracy Mumford: First up, there exists a person who has eluded the CIA, the NSA, and the best private investigator. For years, there's been an enormous mystery swirling about the true identity of the creator of one of the most influential inventions of the 21st century. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym. This week, the Times published a new investigation with evidence suggesting that the figure who went by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto is a 55-year-old British man named Adam Back. Your question, what is the invention? The answer, Bitcoin. Yeah. Despite the fact that it's become a trillion dollar plus industry, the inventor of it has never claimed credit, which has led to all the speculation. If Back is in fact Satoshi, which he denies, he could quietly be one of the richest people on Earth, potentially holding a stash of Bitcoin worth nearly $80 billion.

In second question, recently footage hit the press of a classic parenting moment. A dad teaching his daughter to drive, except the vehicle in question was a tank. And she's driving it while her adoring father, a world leader, looks on. The video is widely being interpreted as a sign that the girl, who's believed to be about 13, is being groomed to eventually take over from her father and lead the country. What country is it? The answer, North Korea. The tank video is one of several recent public appearances that the girl Kim Ju has made with her father, Kim Jong-un, like standing with him at a missile test launch or even firing a sniper rifle.

And last question. As of this morning, early Friday, NASA's Artemis 2 mission is in the home stretch with the astronauts said to splash down in the Pacific. To mark their journey, we're going to ask you about some of our other favorite big space sagas, fictional ones. See if you can name these three space movies. We'll play some short clips. First up, total classic. You got this. "Open the pod bay doors, Hal." Next one. "PREPARE SHIP FOR LIGHT SPEED. NO, NO, NO. LIGHT SPEED IS TOO SLOW. YES, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GO RIGHT TO ludicrous speed." And one more. "You're going out there to destroy them. Right. Not to study, not to bring back, but to wipe them out." That was in order, Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001 A Space Odyssey, the Mel Brooks space spoof, Spaceballs, and the absolutely scarring Aliens.