Good morning, this is Hanna Lee.

Today, we'll be looking at how the Trump administration has impacted perceptions of the U.S. dollar's stability, the federal election and the Safe Third Country Agreement. In just a few months, the U.S. president's chaotic second term has drastically upended many aspects of society once taken for granted.

A 'madman' penalty: Are Trump's actions eroding U.S. economic power?

People walk past an American flag display in New York City's Times Square on April 11. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Stocks are down, the U.S. dollar is down and so is demand for U.S. bonds. These three things aren't supposed to happen all at once. And there's a common theme: a collapse in faith in the United States.

What's happening: Washington is trying to repair after a month of chaos, in which U.S. President Donald Trump introduced the highest tariffs in more than a century, then rescinded some of them, threatened to fire the head of the Federal Reserve, then ruled that out. This type of turmoil is not meant to take place in the United States, which holds the world's most important currency that supports the world's safest investment — U.S. debt bonds. But investors may now be losing faith in those, too. 

The status of the U.S. dollar: The greenback has until now enjoyed widespread use in international transactions and foreign central bank holdings, creating an inexhaustible appetite for it. That's allowed the U.S. to spend more money than it has and run up significant debt, as well as to keep issuing bonds with the confidence that there will always be buyers. It's not that the American dollar is losing this status presently — it still represents 57 per cent of currencies held by foreign central banks, with no evident replacement — but the Trump administration's unforced errors in policy-making do little to assure investors of its stability.

ELECTION UPDATE

With days left in the campaign, Trump returns to the fold

U.S. President Donald Trump, seen here during an event to sign executive orders on Wednesday. The president made more comments on Canada afterward. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

The big story: Trump resumed making his favourite threat against Canada yesterday afternoon. "I have to be honest, as a state it works great," he said. "As a nation — consider the fact that what they do as a nation, 95 per cent of what they do is they buy from us and they sell to us." It came after a period of relative quiet from the U.S. president on the matter. And with the election campaign down to its last stretch, the leaders spent the day reiterating their key pledges.

Other updates: The Conservatives republished the English version of their platform to include cracking down on "woke ideology." That wasn't in the previous edition due to a publishing oversight, the party said; it was always in the French copy. Meanwhile, voters' priorities are changing, data from Vote Compass suggests. The economy and finances are once again the top issue, shifting from concerns about the U.S. trade war. (Though I'd presume this will again adjust.)

Answering questions: Here's a file from my colleague Mouhamad Rachini responding to your queries about mail-in ballots, having two addresses and protest voting. And reporter Kevin Maimann looked at how Elections Canada counts ballots and keeps votes secure.

Is the U.S. still a safe third country?

Aracely, sits with her daughters, aged four and 14. They were held in a holding cell for two weeks at the U.S. port of entry in Niagara Falls, N.Y. CBC News is not showing the family's faces or revealing their full names for safety reasons. (Ousama Farag/CBC News)

Canada and the U.S. have a bilateral agreement under which they consider each other safe for refugees. In most cases, that means migrants seeking refugee status in either country must apply for it in the first one they enter. But the treatment of a family turned down by Canadian border authorities is raising renewed questions around whether this agreement is still valid.

What's happening: Aracely, her common-law husband and their two young daughters entered Canada through the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. Originally from El Salvador and living undocumented in the U.S., the family hoped to resettle in Canada through her brother, who is a citizen. But their parents' names on the siblings' birth certificates didn't quite match each other, and the family was sent back across the border and jailed in holding cells at the U.S. port of entry, without a breath of outside air for nearly two weeks. Now, her husband is in a detention centre in Batavia, N.Y., awaiting a deportation hearing, while she and their daughters are living in a shelter in Buffalo.

A worrying trend: Experts fear this is part of a growing trend under the Trump administration. Jennifer Connor of Justice for Migrant Families says she's learned of children and families held for days or even weeks at ports of entry along the northern border, something that's been previously relatively unheard of. Young children are being locked up, she said, and it's difficult to locate people who have been detained. In the case of Aracely and her family, their lawyer, Ottawa-based Heather Neufeld, has filed for a judicial review of the CBSA rejection with the Federal Court. But with Aracely's husband facing potential deportation, they're up against a ticking clock.

In case you missed it

• Starting Friday, Hudson's Bay will begin selling off all merchandise at the six stores that were previously spared from liquidation, it said in a new court filing.
   
• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pulled out from planned talks to end Russia's war in Ukraine, after Trump was again angered by comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this time around his position on Crimea.

• Air Canada has been ordered to pay passengers $10 million in damages after a class-action lawsuit over ticket prices.
   
• Many people with autism and their advocates say U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s recent comments on autism are dangerous. Here's why. 

And, to close off...

Step inside Alberta's largest bat cave! 

Cadomin Cave, among the biggest in the Canadian Rockies, is home to the largest bat hibernaculum in Alberta. Each winter, researchers and cavers slip inside to count the bats, one by one. (Wallis Snowdon/CBC)

Cadomin Cave is Alberta's largest bat hibernaculum. It's a critical hibernation site for hundreds of bats, and human visitors are mostly forbidden in order to protect the colonies against a deadly fungus. Only researchers are allowed to enter, and once a year, they complete a census of the colonies. 

Here are a few photos from this year's expedition.

A bat squeaks as its wings are swabbed for samples. This bat will be the only one handled by researchers during the annual count. (Wallis Snowdon/CBC)

Dave Hobson counts a cluster of bats on the cave wall. Hobson, a wildlife biologist, has been involved with the bat count since the 1980s when Cadomin was still busy with human visitors. (Wallis Snowdon/CBC)

Once the bat count begins, it takes several hours to navigate the rabbit warren of tunnels and passageways of Cadomin Cave. (Wallis Snowdon/CBC)