Biden exits with low public approval. Where did he go wrong?

Summary

Apple News Today: Episode Summary – "Biden Exits with Low Public Approval. Where Did He Go Wrong?"

Release Date: January 16, 2025
Host: Shemitha Basu

In this compelling episode of Apple News Today, host Shemitha Basu delves deep into the multifaceted challenges facing President Joe Biden as he prepares to leave office amidst declining public approval. The episode navigates through Biden's final address, the precarious Gaza ceasefire, trends in gun violence, and the FDA's recent action on red food dye, providing listeners with an insightful analysis of current events shaping the national discourse.

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1. Biden’s Farewell and Plummeting Approval Ratings

As President Biden delivers his final address from the Oval Office, Basu examines the factors contributing to his dwindling public support. In his poignant farewell, Biden reflects on his five-decade career in public service, stating, “This will be my final address to you from the American people, from the Oval Office, from this desk as president. And I've been thinking a lot about who we are and maybe more importantly, who we should be.”

Despite signing significant legislation early in his presidency, Biden faces criticism as the tangible benefits of these policies remain out of immediate reach for many Americans. A recent CNN survey highlighted that only 36% of Americans approve of Biden's job performance, with particular discontent in areas such as immigration and the economy.

Andrea Shellal, White House correspondent for Reuters, attributes Biden's struggles to delayed policy impacts and external factors like rising prices. Biden acknowledges this challenge: “For most Americans, the bridges, the roads, the factory down the road, those things matter, but they matter in a very diffuse and not tangible way. And what they felt was the price of eggs, the price of gasoline, the.”

The administration's handling of immigration, particularly the surge in illegal crossings and the subsequent executive actions to restrict asylum requests, has also been a point of contention. Additionally, Biden's efforts on police reform have been perceived as insufficient, taking two years to address misconduct following George Floyd's murder in 2020.

Economic concerns have been paramount, with high costs of childcare and housing lingering post-pandemic. Despite promises to bolster the care economy, initiatives like the child tax credit extension and universal pre-K investments stalled, leading to continued financial strain for many Americans. Biden's age and perceived mental fitness further eroded voter confidence, especially after a less-than-stellar debate performance.

Reflecting on his tenure, Biden remarked, “The Democrats lost this election and I think it's just a heavy time for him to be leaving office and to know that much of what he worked for and his administration worked for may be unwound and undone.”

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2. Gaza Ceasefire Deal on Shaky Ground

The episode shifts focus to the fragile Gaza ceasefire deal, initially brokered with enthusiasm but now teetering on the brink of collapse. Yesterday, Hamas confirmed reaching an agreement with Israel, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog publicly endorsing the accord. However, tension mounts as The Wall Street Journal reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's accusations against Hamas for allegedly breaching parts of the agreement.

The Israeli Cabinet has delayed the approval meeting of the ceasefire, which was set to commence a six-week pause in hostilities on Sunday. Concurrently, Israel intensified airstrikes in Gaza, resulting in 81 fatalities within the last 24 hours. Despite these developments, Hamas maintains its commitment to the agreement, as per a draft reviewed by the Journal.

Key components of the ceasefire include:

• Israeli Withdrawal: Israeli forces pledge to vacate populated areas.
• Hostage Release: 33 hostages, including vulnerable groups and two Americans, are slated for release.
• Reciprocal Measures: Hamas agrees to return deceased hostages' bodies, while Israel plans to release hundreds of Palestinians from prisons.
• Future Negotiations: Both parties intend to revisit talks after a few weeks to explore a permanent ceasefire.

However, the terms appear unchanged from previous offers made when the conflict's intensity was still escalating. With over 46,000 Palestinians dead, roughly 1 in every 50 Gaza residents, the humanitarian toll remains devastating.

President Biden, in his final Oval Office speech before the deal's potential unraveling, emphasized the collaborative effort: “[...my team had worked hard to secure a deal and that they'd involved Trump's team to make sure all would go smoothly with Trump taking office next week.](00:00- something similar)

As the situation evolves, Basu underscores that the U.S. transition of power remains a secondary concern compared to the immediate crisis unfolding between Israel and Hamas.

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3. Unveiling Surprising Trends in Gun Violence

Gun violence continues to be a pressing issue in America, with Shemitha Basu presenting a revealing analysis from The Trace. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of lives have been lost to shootings, but the data challenges common perceptions about where this violence is most prevalent.

Samantha Storey, Managing Editor at The Trace, shares, “We noticed that 13 out of 20 of the cities were located in the South.” Contrary to popular belief, half of the top 20 cities and towns with the highest shooting rates are small communities with populations under 1 million, such as Selma, Alabama, and Clarksdale, Mississippi, rather than large metropolitan areas like Chicago or Philadelphia.

Moreover, The Trace's analysis reveals a 10% nationwide decline in shooting deaths by the end of October 2023, particularly in large Democratic-run cities with significant non-white populations, including San Francisco and Baltimore. This contradicts political narratives that predominantly allege rampant gun violence in major cities.

An alarming pattern uncovered is the proximity of shootings to schools: 188,000 shootings over the past decade occurred within 500 yards of a school. In 2023 alone, approximately 6 million children attended schools with at least one nearby shooting incident. Storey comments, “So kids say in Philadelphia have to walk past crime tape in the morning on their way to and from school.” highlighting the pervasive impact on young lives.

Additionally, incidents of road rage-related shootings have surged by over 400% in recent decades, resulting in more than 3,000 casualties. The analysis also critiques state laws permitting open carry of firearms without permits or training, finding no deterrent effect on shootings. In fact, 16 out of 20 states that enacted such laws experienced an uptick in shooting deaths.

This data-driven examination by The Trace underscores the complexity of gun violence in America, dispelling myths and prompting a reevaluation of policy approaches.

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4. FDA's Bold Move to Ban Red Food Dye

In another significant development, the FDA has announced a ban on Red Dye 3, a food coloring linked to cancer in animal studies. The Los Angeles Times reports that while Red Dye 3 was previously prohibited in cosmetics and drugs applied to the skin since 1990, its use as a food additive continued due to the absence of the specific biological process causing cancer in rats from transferring to humans.

However, the FDA is now enforcing the Delaney Clause, which prohibits any color additive proven to cause cancer in animals or humans. Companies have been granted a two-year window to reformulate products free of Red Dye 3. Consumers are advised to check ingredient labels, as not all red products contain Red Dye 3—Swedish Fish and candy corn are notable exceptions.

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5. Additional News Highlights

• Trump’s Cabinet Confirmation: POLITICO reports on the ongoing confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominee, Pam Bondi, to lead the Department of Justice. Despite Democratic reservations about her loyalty to Trump and her involvement in overturning the 2020 election results, Bondi appears poised for a smooth confirmation as Senate Democrats hesitate to expend political capital on opposing her.

• Starbucks’ Bathroom Policy Change: In a controversial policy shift, Starbucks now requires payment for bathroom use and lingering within their stores. This move aims to deter non-paying patrons, particularly targeting the unhoused population seeking shelter. Previously, Starbucks locations allowed free public access to restrooms, positioning their stores as a third place beyond work and home.

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Conclusion

This episode of Apple News Today offers a thorough exploration of President Biden's final days in office amid declining approval, the unstable Gaza ceasefire, evolving patterns in gun violence, and significant regulatory actions by the FDA. By interweaving expert insights and authoritative data, Shemitha Basu provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of these critical issues shaping the nation's landscape.

For the latest updates and comprehensive analysis, tune into Apple News Tomorrow for continued coverage of these evolving stories.

Transcript

[Shemitha Basu]

Hey there, it's Shemitha. I've got a quick request for you. If Apple News Today is an essential part of your morning routine, follow the show in Apple Podcasts. And if you have another 30 seconds, leave us a rating and a review, too. It helps other people find our show and it helps us know what you like about it. Thanks. Good morning. It's Thursday, January 16th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, Biden gives his final address from the Oval Office. What a decade of data reveals about the gun violence epidemic in America and what to know about the FDA's new ban on red food dye. But first to the Gaza ceasefire deal and news this morning that it might be under threat. Yesterday, Hamas leadership confirmed it had reached a deal with Israel, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the agreement and urged the Israeli government to accept it. But the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accusing Hamas of reneging on parts of the agreement. The Israeli Cabinet has postponed their meeting to approve the deal, which was supposed to take effect on Sunday, initiating a six week pause in fighting. Israel launched more airstrikes in the Gaza Strip overnight, where health authorities have reported at least 81 fatalities in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Hamas leadership said early today that it's still committed to the agreement, according to a draft of that agreement reviewed by the Journal. During the first phase of the ceasefire, Israeli forces said they would withdraw from populated areas and 33 hostages were set to be released from Gaza. That included women, children, people with severe injuries, people over the age of 50, and two American hostages. Hamas had also agreed to return the bodies of hostages who died, and Israeli negotiators had agreed to release hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli prisons, and they were going to return to negotiations after a couple of weeks to discuss the possibility of a permanent ceasefire. The Journal reports that the terms of this ceasefire agreement weren't substantially different from the offers put forward months ago, when more hostages were still alive and before thousands of Palestinians lost their lives. More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed, roughly one out of every 50 residents of Gaza. Last night, before news that the deal might be jeopardized, President Biden spoke from the Oval Office, saying his team had worked hard to secure a deal and that they'd involved Trump's team to make sure all would go smoothly with Trump taking office next week. But now, as this dispute between Israel and Hamas plays out, the US Transition of power is far from the top concern. This is A fast changing story this morning. You can follow along. For the latest in the Apple News.

[Joe Biden]

App.

[Shemitha Basu]

Let'S turn to what else President Biden said in that speech last night, a farewell address in which he said goodbye to the country and to his five decade career in public office.

[Joe Biden]

This will be my final address to you from the American people, from the Oval Office, from this desk as president. And I've been thinking a lot about who we are and maybe more importantly, who we should be.

[Shemitha Basu]

Polls show Biden is leaving at a low point when it comes to public support. A majority of people are dissatisfied with his performance. A new CNN survey found just 36% of Americans approve of the job Biden did as president. And Biden's approval numbers are especially poor on immigration and the economy. So what went wrong for Biden on domestic issues? He did sign some major pieces of legislation, especially early in his presidency. But many of the benefits of those bills will take a long time for Americans to feel in their daily lives, something Biden himself acknowledged in a recent interview with USA today. Andrea Shellal, White House correspondent for Reuters, spoke with us about that.

[Joe Biden]

For most Americans, the bridges, the roads, the factory down the road, those things matter, but they matter in a very diffuse and not tangible way. And what they felt was the price of eggs, the price of gasoline, the.

[Shemitha Basu]

Price of housing on the border. Meanwhile, the increase in illegal crossings overwhelmed many states and cities. The Biden administration and Congress haggled over how to respond, only for Trump to kill a deal Biden reached with Senate Republicans. Biden responded by taking executive actions to restrict asylum request, a move Republicans said he should have done all along, Shelal told us Biden also is seen to have fallen short on police reform. Biden came into office shortly after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. It took two years before he signed an executive order aimed at preventing police misconduct. And then, of course, probably the most consequential bucket of issues to voters, the economy. Biden and his administration started out by talking about bolstering the care economy.

[Joe Biden]

They talked about the importance of ensuring that people can afford childcare and housing. And coming out of COVID we saw that so many caregivers in the economy either don't get paid at all or get paid very little. And many, many working Americans are struggling to have the resources. Their incomes don't cover the cost, really high cost of childcare, high cost of housing. And so there were promises made to try to address.

[Shemitha Basu]

But as Shealal told us, efforts to extend the child tax credit during the pandemic or invest in universal pre k ultimately didn't come to fruition. Prices remained stubbornly high after the pandemic, and in the absence of additional federal assistance, it was much harder for Americans to cope. And all of that translated onto the campaign trail once public concerns about Biden's age and ability to serve came to the foreground, fueled by his disastrous performance in the first debate with his age and mental fitness became an overwhelming concern for voters and was added to the list of reasons many wanted a change.

[Joe Biden]

The Democrats lost this election and I think it's just a heavy time for him to be leaving office and to know that much of what he worked for and his administration worked for may be unwound and undone.

[Shemitha Basu]

Every year, tens of thousands of people lose their lives to gun violence in America. That's according to the trace, which analyzed 10 years of shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive. And in that analysis, reporters uncovered some surprising trends they say challenge what people think about gun violence in the US first, where gun violence occurs. According to the Trace's analysis, of the 20 cities and towns with the highest rates of shootings, half of them were not large cities. They were in communities of less than 1 million people.

[Samantha Storey]

We noticed that 13 out of 20 of the cities were located in the South.

[Shemitha Basu]

That's Samantha Storey, managing editor at the trace.

[Samantha Storey]

Places like Selma, Alabama, Clarksdale, Mississippi, places you wouldn't expect to have a higher shooting rate per capita than say Chicago or Philadelphia, which are more typically known for having high rates of shootings.

[Shemitha Basu]

Even though the numbers tell a different story, that hasn't stopped politicians from pushing the narrative that large Democratic run cities are overrun with gun violence. According to the trace's analysis, many of those cities are actually getting safer. Shooting deaths were down more than 10% through the end of October 2023 nationwide. And that drop was most pronounced in large Democratic run cities with substantial non white populations like San Francisco and Baltimore.

[Samantha Storey]

A lot of politicians will tend to sort of tell the story of there being terrible crime in all of these like inner cities. It's something that Trump definitely talked a lot about on the campaign trail, and that's just not always the truth of the matter.

[Shemitha Basu]

The TRACE analysis found another trend, an alarming frequency of shootings near schools. 188,000 shootings over the last decade occurred within 500 yards of a school. That's to say not school shootings, but shootings within a few blocks of a school. In 2023 alone, the Trace notes that 6 million kids attended a school that had at least one shooting nearby.

[Samantha Storey]

So kids say in Philadelphia have to walk past crime tape in the morning on their way to and from school. And that to me was really eye opening because so much of what we hear about in the media about school shootings are school shootings that take place actually in the schools, on the school grounds.

[Shemitha Basu]

The trace also noted that road rage gun incidents over the decades surged more than 400%. And overall, angry drivers shot more than 3,000 people. And while many states passed laws allowing people to carry firearms in public without a permit or training, which gun rights supporters said would deter shootings, those laws did not have that effect. Sixteen of the 20 states that passed these types of laws actually saw more shooting deaths. We'll include a link to their full analysis on our Show Notes page. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following today. As confirmation hearings for Trump's Cabinet continue, POLITICO took a closer look at Trump's pick to lead the Department of Justice. Pam Bondi, whose hearing continues today. She appears to be on track for a smooth confirmation despite concerns from Democrats about her history as a Trump loyalist. As the former attorney general of Florida, she represented Trump in his first impeachment trial. She also supported his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. But in her confirmation hearings, Politico reports Senate Democrats don't seem to feel that sinking her nomination is worth the political capital. They alone don't have the votes to do it for one. And for some of them, Bondi is more palatable than Trump's original choice, Matt Gaetz, onto an announcement from Starbucks. The coffee chain says if you want to use their bathrooms and hang around in their stores, you gotta pay up. It's a reversal of a policy at most Starbucks locations that their bathrooms were free to the public. CNN describes it as a move to deter people from using Starbucks as a sort of third place, aside from work and home, a hangout spot where you didn't necessarily need to spend money to be there. It's also particularly aimed at unhoused people looking for a safe place to shelter. And lastly, on to reporting from the Los Angeles times on the FDA's decision to ban Red Dye 3 and what took so long. Red Dye 3 has been shown to cause cancer in rats and for humans. Officials banned it in cosmetics and drugs applied to the Skin in 1990. The Times reports the biological process that causes cancer in rats does not occur in humans, which is why it was allowed to be used as a food coloring. But the FDA says they're now going by a more strict law called the Delaney Clause, which states that no color additive can be deemed safe if they're shown to cause cancer in animals or humans. Companies have two years to reformulate their recipes and eliminate the dye. By the way, just because something is red doesn't mean it necessarily has Red 3 Swedish fish, for example, not Red 3. Candy corn, surprisingly, contains Red 3 dye. If you're not sure, it's best to check the ingredients. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next from the Atlantic. As Americans spend more time alone, it's changing our politics, our personalities, and our relationships. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Narrative to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.