>> john: welcome to "cbs evening news plus." i'm john dickerson. cooling and warming. inflation. the persistent low-grade economic fever cooled last month but the newest economic challenge, president trump's trade war continued, with canada and european union nations retaliating.

"money watch" correspondent kelly o'grady joins us again to take the temperature in the age of uncertainty. coming home. nasa astronauts on the nine-month layover may be returning to earth. a spacex capsule is headed to the international space station to start their return. mark strassmann reports from the kennedy space center. supply and demand. our in-depth focus tonight. the ceo of saffron road foods tells us how a reduction in immigrants would disrupt america's food supply. those stories and more right after our news headlines. ♪ ♪ protesters rallied outside a federal courthouse in new york city, calling for the release of mahmoud khalil. inside, a judge says for now khalil can remain detained but cannot be deported. a tense hostage situation aboard a train which spanned two days has ended in a remote area of pakistan. dozens of separatist militants and hostages are dead following

the hours-long standoff. officials say more than 300 hostages were rescued. with heavy rain hitting southern california, evacuation orders are in effect in los angeles county, including areas recently burned by wildfires. officials say several inches of rain could trigger dangerous mudslides. ♪ ♪ we begin tonight as we have the last few nights with the economy. fewer stomach drops today, though. a better than expected inflation report may have contributed to a better stock market performance. both the nasdaq and the s&p made gains. still, the trade war is still on. the european union announced retaliatory tariffs and "money watch" correspondent kelly o'grady is here to take stock of the day. let's start with inflation. what do you make -- what did you see inside those numbers? >> it was a pretty good report

overall. we saw a bunch go on the downward side which was good, the biggest drope were airfare prices, down 4% month over month. could be the airlines maybe lowering prices with weakening demand. we also saw gas prices go down as well as some grocery items like dairy and bacon. unfortunately can't have your bacon without your eggs. we saw those increase 10%. couple other notable increases. electricity, utility gas, used cars. overall this is the first report where we saw the headline number go down after four months of increases so it's a good first outing for the administration. doesn't have the tariff impact yet. >> john: i want to ask you about tariffs in a second but back to the point about airline prices. that's the kind of thing the fed looks at, these longer trends. did you see anything in the numbers that had trends that the fed might be paying attention to. >> yes. the trend the fed always looks at is shelter, where are shelter prices going? they increased but not as much

as we had seen. i'm actually going to be at the federal reserve meeting next week and i will ask powell how are you looking at that? the other thing i think they are going to zero in on is core cpi. core is the cpi number when you strip out food and energy. shows you how entrenched it is in the economy. that reached the lowest level since april 2021. i think they're going to look at that and say "oh, well, maybe there is some decent progress." >> john: final question, tariffs. those are going to affect prices. when do we expect that to affect things? >> we are probably going to see that the next few consumer price index reports. tomorrow, john, we have the producer price index and that is a measurement that tracks how the cost for businesses are moving. that's where we can see the early signs of the china tariffs that went into effect in the beginning of february and that could be a warning sign they might pass that onto the consumer. >> john: excellent. everybody, pay attention to the producer price index. kelly o'grady. thanks. see you probably tomorrow.

president trump is starting to enact his pledge to close to the department of education. 1300 employees were laid off this week. combine that with the target recent mass resignations on the agency only has about half the staff it did in january. liam knox is a reporter with "inside higher ed" and he joins us now. liam, thanks for joining us. can you remind us, for people who don't pay as much attention as you do to the department of education, what it does and just as a department. >> thanks for having me, john. the education department historically has a pretty limited purview. its main role is financial. it oversees the distribution of federal grants, financial aid, and funding for k-12 schools. it also investigates civil rights violation, oversees the college accreditation system and conducts research on education policies. what they don't do is decide things like school curriculum or admission policies at colleges. >> john: a big part of these cuts, you mentioned civil rights, the civil rights division is seeing cuts.

what does that mean in practice? >> the civil rights division oversees tens of thousands of complaints every year at schools and on campuses of discrimination. and historically their mandate has been to respond to specific complaints and investigate them. even when they were fully staffed, that was a tall order. after losing half of their employees, as they did last night, it's going to be promotion impossible. what's interesting about this is the administration has made it clear that certain ocr responsibilities like cracking down on schools' dei initiatives are investigating campus anti-semitism are a priority for them. the civil rights office will be less of a responsive agency investigating student complaints and more in the business of launching investigations based on national media coverage like the cuts at columbia university, for its student protests, and at the university of maine over their transgender athlete policies. >> john: we've got about 20

seconds left. where else may people start to feel or recognize the disappearance of a department in their local schools? >> well, they are already feeling it to some extent, the immediate impacts of these cuts. the federal -- office of federal student aid lost a few hundred employees last night and many worked on the fafsa, the federal aid form. ensuring that it ran smoothly. families of high school seniors applying for financial aid are experiencing technical errors, complaints of racial discrimination have begun to back up at the ocr which has been gutted. the long-term effects of these cuts are only going to make themselves clear with time. it's that uncertainty that has most people worry. >> john: all right, liam knox, thank you so much for being with us. we learned today that the captain of a cargo ship which struck a tanker chartered by the u.s. military is a russian national, according to the company that owns the cargo ship. monday's collision triggered huge fires aboard the two ships which were still burning days later. the 59-year-old captain was arrested tuesday and remains in

custody on suspicion of gross negligence -- gross negligent manslaughter after the crash left one crew member missing and presumed dead. astronauts suni williams and butch wilmore are very anxious to return to earth. the pair were supposed to spend a week on the space station when they went up last june, but they were left there -- or they stayed there after their experimental capsule malfunctioned. a replacement crew was supposed to arrive tomorrow to relieve them, but now that's may be delayed. mark strassmann is at the kennedy space center with the very latest. >> reporter: finally, the beginning of the end. launching an overdue homecoming for butch wilmore and suni williams. their replacement crew, four fresh astronauts led by commander ann mclain, will soon join them on the international space station. >> people are always ready to get back home. >> reporter: ken bowersox, a former astronaut, now leads

operations for nasa. >> it's always a little bittersweet. you miss your family but you love being on space station. >> how do you think they've handled it, all the attention? >> butch and suni have been great. i can't say enough about them and how proud i am of them. >> reporter: the saga is unlike any in recent memory. back in june, their ride to the iss developed propulsion problems. the original eight-day mission stretched into more than nine months. despite headlines claiming they were stuck in space or abandoned there, wilmore and williams insisted all along they were happy to linger 260 miles above earth. >> we came up prepared to stay long, even though he planned to stay short. >> reporter: but like so much of american life, their mission became political. >> we love you and we're coming up to get you and you shouldn't have been up there so long. >> reporter: elon musk says he offered to bring home the astronauts early, although nasa says it never considered that option. >> i just want to get butch

and suni back, and i'm looking forward to sitting across from them and hearing about their perception of how things went and all about their time on orbit. >> reporter: back live, we have this late-breaking development. just in the last couple minutes nasa has reported a problem and decided to scrub tonight's scheduled launch. the issue is with a hydraulic clamp that is situated near the top of the rocket. it's attached to a piece called the transporter erector which has to tilt back for the rocket to go up. whenever the issue is, it was apparently considered too much of a risk so tonight's scheduled launch is scrubbed and with any luck, they'll try again tomorrow night. >> john: mark strassmann with the latest details, thank you so much, mark. here are three things to know. california's attorney general says officials have made the largest fentanyl bust the state has ever seen. more than 50 pounds of powdered fentanyl, amounting to about 14 million lethal doses with a street value of $55 million.

the haul was seized inside a car and an apartment outside los angeles. three people were arrested. the company that makes roomba, robot vacuums, tells investors it has "substantial doubt about its ability to stay in business." u.s. sales were down by more than 40% of the last quarter of 2024. the roomba, first introduced in 2002, now faces competition from other robot vacuums. a new line of roombas was introduced yesterday. a new study pinpoints a specific age at which our brains show the first signs of cognitive decline. it found that 44 -- oh, no -- is the average age when thinking ability begins to drop. the rate quickens at age 67 and plateaus when we reach 90. researchers at stony brook university in new york looked at brain scans and data from more than 90,000 people. they say this information can help determine when in life we should focus on brain health. and we'll be right back.

>> john: today the environmental protection agency administrator, lee zeldin, cut dozens of environmental regulations, including decades-old rules on greenhouses

gases and clean water. the agency also shuttered its environmental justice offices which worked to protect disadvantaged communities from the severe impacts of pollution. for tonight's interview, we're joined by matthew tejada who worked at the epa for multiple administrations and led the epa's environmental justice efforts. thanks so much for being with us. the administer said today that these are the most -- this is the most consequential day of deregulation in american history. how do you read the impact of today's decisions? >> i would agree with him. i think it is the most consequential day in deregulation because they are taking us back to the 1960s from before the times we had regulations that actually cleaned up our water, protect people from across our country from cancer-causing agents in our air, actually cleaning up legacy contamination sites that people have been living on top of for generations. they are taking us back to that time when we didn't have regulations. it is not about making government more efficient or more effective. it's certainly not about making

americans healthier. it is about allowing polluting industries in this country to have their cake and both eat it too by having absolutely unfettered ability to pour their pollution into our communities, and that's every community in the united states, not just black, brown communities but white communities, suburban communities. this is going to affect everybody in the united states. >> john: one of the announcements said the agency is "reconsidering the 2009 engagement finding." help us understand what that means. >> that was the endangerment finding, the finding that basically unlocked the authorities of the environmental protection agency in our federal government to start combating climate change. we have seen repeatedly how our climate is changing on a regular basis and having devastating consequences not just in our country but across the world. how it is causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every single year. they are taking us back to not even square one. to the one decision that allowed us to start to make the slightest progress, that was

then supercharged during the last administration through the inflation reduction act and other regulatory progress that we made recently. it is taking us back in time just like all these other decisions are taking us way back to an era when we were suffering from pollution in every part of this country. >> john: and let me ask you now, finally, matthew, about the environmental justice offices. remind us -- define environmental justice for us and what you think will now happen as a result of these policies. >> environmental justice has worked for decades to make sure that every part of our country, especially those parts of our country that have not had the power to keep pollution out of their community and to bring in the positives of a clean environment, of green space, of natural resources. those are black and brown communities. those are indigenous communities. those are low-income white communities, those communities that have not had the power to be protected from environmental pollution. the environmental justice

program at epa worked every single day to make sure those communities felt heard by the government and to bring their voices back into government to make it respond and serve those people too. they are gutting that program today as we speak. >> john: matthew tejada, thank you so much for being with us. straight ahead on the "cbs evening news plus," from wall street to the food aisle, how one immigrant entrepreneur built a brand by celebrating his culture.

next level dog people give their dogs next level protection with nexgard plus. one and done monthly parasite protection against fleas, ticks, heartworm disease, roundworms and hookworms use with caution in dogs with a history of seizures or neurologic disorders. get next level protection with nexgard plus >> john: we continue our look at the role immigrants play in the nation's food supply. we found essential workers on the farm, driving the trucks, stocking grocery shelves, and even bringing new foods to market. cbs's nikki battiste reports on an immigrant story inspired by the american dream.

>> reporter: saffron road foods makes sauces, snacks, and frozen entrees sold at grocery stores from walmart to whole foods. adnan durani is saffron road's ceo. he started the company in 2010. what inspired saffron road specifically? >> i thought wouldn't it be neat if we created a food brand that took really the different cultures and ethnicities and diversity of that silk road and brought it into really the mainstream in america. >> reporter: durani legally immigrated from pakistan with his diplomat parents when he was a child. after years working on wall street, he became more interested in social entrepreneurship and switched to the food industry. how much of your own journey as an immigrant played into how you are here today? >> we wouldn't be here today at saffron road if it wasn't for my immigrant journey. a lot of the employees here are from different immigrant communities and they bring that authenticity and that diversity of culture and that really celebration of the different

types of cuisines they've experienced in their family home and their family meals to come in and help devise those meals. >> reporter: one of those immigrants is director of commercialization for saffron road, lulu gardiner. gardiner immigrated to the u.s. from china, receiving her master's degree in food science from cornell university in 2014. she was hired on an h-1b visa and has worked for saffron road for ten years. she's now a u.s. citizen. >> it's a little bit hard for food science background graduate background to find a job in the united states and for me i was very lucky to find a company that was willing to take on, even though they don't understand what is the e-verification, h1b at the time, such a small team and they're willing to give me a shot. >> reporter: when people say immigrants are taking jobs from americans, what's your response? >> i don't see how that's factually true at all. it just doesn't make any sense. i think if you look through history even and what's happened

in this country, there's been studies going back over 100 years how immigration has consistently fueled the industry. >> reporter: if the number of immigrants goes down, how does that impact the price of your product? >> it impacts it dramatically. you're going to see trucking go up, and a result it will result in a lot more inflation of simple stable products like milk and eggs and bread and so on. >> reporter: nikki battiste, cbs news. port washington, new york. >> john: this story is part of a new "cbs reports" documentary the goes inside the milk supply chain from farm to table. "the price of milk" is streaming this saturday, march 15, on "cbs news" 24/7. ahead in my reporter's notebook, how a fireside chat set a new standard for presidential leadership.

♪ ♪ >> john: i want to talk for a few minutes about explanation. this story begins with the president moving fast and trying one thing after another. bold, persistent experimentation, he called it. his plans were so big, he was accused of being a dictator. this might sound familiar in our current moment but what happened next is where things diverge. >> i want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the united states about banking. >> john: the president was franklin roosevelt, and that was the opening line of his first fireside chat, which aired on this day in 1933, to an audience of approximately 60 million.

the chat was an explanation. >> i want to tell you what has been done in the last few days and why it was done and what the next steps are going to be. >> john: it was not a list of claims or boasts that demanded the public take sweeping changes in their lives merely on faith. >> i know that when you understand what we in washington have been about, i shall continue to have your cooperation as fully as i have had your sympathy and your help during the past week. >> john: the speech was based on the idea that a president had an obligation to explain himself. he owed it to the people in whose name he was acting. but roosevelt also believed that understanding was itself a benefit in an economy where confidence was so important. >> there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people themselves.

>> john: roosevelt understood that explanation treats people as partners, not subjects. he believed that if people were treated with respect, they would be more likely to support what his administration was doing or give it grace if success wasn't always immediate. it's the difference between telling people "we're all in it together" and inspiring them so much that they go grab a shovel themselves. and that's tonight's "cbs evening news plus." thanks for joining us. i'm john dickerson. good night. son. >right now on cbs news bay area. while the storm arriving in the bay area is causing huge headaches, this group of kite surfers is taking full advantage. >they'll be out there all day because they love it so much. >we're tracking damaging winds and potential thunderstorms during the evening commute. plus tesla

trouble. >i actually just had a friend up in idaho. a rock was thrown at his window with his three year old kid in the back. >the bay area owners, who say they feel under siege. and we'll introduce you to an east bay woman making sure her neighbors have a roof over their head. >how >>her work is keeping thousands of people off the streets. >i believe every single person deserves love and dignity and a home. >and we'll meet the bay area residents taking part in a unique barista training program. >so i want to get a job. i want to be employed. >the beloved bay area sirup company, giving them the skills for a better life. >okay. >>well, it is a first alert weather day as the first in a series of storms hits the bay area, and we're already seeing some big problems. good evening, i'm ryan yamamoto. that includes this