Loading summary
Transcript27 lines
- [00:05]
Sumita Basu
Good morning. It's Monday, November 18th. I'm Sumita Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, how the Department of Education became a political lightning rod. What happened in Florida when they appointed a vaccine skeptic to run public health and the Alaska town that won't see sunrise again for 64 days. But first, President Joe Biden has given Ukraine approval to use U. S Made weapons to strike deep into Russia for the first time. That's according to at least two US Officials who tell Reuters that this is in direct response to North Korean ground troops joining the Russian offensive. And with just two months left in office, it marks a significant policy shift for President Biden who has so far resisted giving Ukraine the green light to use these weapons out of fear that it could escal. Escalate the conflict. In the past, Russia has called this a red line and yesterday senior Russian lawmaker said it could lead to World War 3. The weapons, known as the Army Tactical Missile system can travel about 190 miles and would allow Ukraine to strike Russian ammunition depots, logistical centers, basically anything that would allow them to resupply their front line. Here's how retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Layton described it to CNN.
- [01:29]
Cedric Layton
And it's one of the most lethal weapons that the US has in its arsenal. And if the Ukrainians can use it the same way that the US Would use it in a similar situation, then it could very much change the way in which the war is being fought right now.
- [01:45]
Sumita Basu
Reportedly, Ukraine already used U.S. supplied long range missiles last month. CNN reports the U.S. quietly provided them. But this announcement marks a public change in policy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who's been asking for this since practically the start of the war, addressed the news in a video message.
- [02:07]
Volodymyr Zelensky
Today. There's a lot of talk in the media about us Receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves.
- [02:20]
Sumita Basu
According to cnn, Biden, who has been in South America for the start of the G20 summit, has been talking with world leaders about North Korea's involvement in Ukraine war, including with Chinese leader Xi Jinping asking Beijing to apply pressure on North Korea as its largest trading partner to remove itself from the conflict. Meanwhile, a U.S. official told NPR that the U.S. is specifically allowing Ukraine to use the long range weapons to target the area in and around Kursk. That's where an estimated 100,000 North Korean troops were recently deployed to support Russian forces. Here again is Colonel Layton on cnn.
- [02:57]
Cedric Layton
What the Biden administration is signaling is that that kind of addition to the Russian war machine is unacceptable to us. We don't want foreign troops coming into Russia supporting the Russian war effort. And the North Koreans are the first ones to do this, overtly at least. And the signal to the North Koreans as well as the Chinese is not to support the Russian war effort, at least not that overtly.
- [03:23]
Sumita Basu
Democrats largely celebrated this move, including Congressman Jake Auchincloss, who told MSNBC he's been pushing for it for a long time.
- [03:31]
Jake Auchincloss
NATO can't flinch every time Putin flexes. He's an autocrat. Autocrats respect strength. NATO needs to demonstrate strength. We have to demonstrate in Ukraine, on the front lines of the free world, that the United States and NATO are going to stand with freedom and democracy wherever they're under attack.
- [03:47]
Sumita Basu
Republicans, meanwhile, are likely to be more critical of Biden. Trump has signaled he is less sympathetic to Ukraine's position and that he wants the war to end. Particularly, he wants to stop the flow of US Military aid to Ukraine. This policy shift comes as the G20 summit officially gets underway today in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This year. Top issues include trade, climate change and poverty. But almost certainly the war in Ukraine will eclipse at least part of the summit as the west and the world race for what comes next. Let's turn now to a promise that President Elect Trump made repeatedly during his campaign, shutting down the Department of Education.
- [04:39]
Volodymyr Zelensky
I've said all the time I'm dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education and send education back to Wisconsin and back to the states.
- [04:52]
Sumita Basu
Education has long been the responsibility of state and local governments, which provide 90% of the funding for public schools. They set the rules, the policies, the curriculum. So to understand what exactly the Department of Ed does and what it would mean to get rid of it, we called up Washington Post national education reporter Laura Meckler. She told us the Department of Ed runs what's called the nation's report card, an assessment that helps schools make sure they're staying on track and kids are learning what they should be. It collects statistics on things like crime, staffing and enrollment. It also oversees the $1.6 trillion student loan program. And it does two other pretty major things.
- [05:31]
Laura Meckler
One is it administers a couple very big grant programs, one of which is called Title 1, and it benefits high poverty schools, and the other benefits schools that are serving students with disabilities.
- [05:43]
Sumita Basu
Those programs come with huge budgets, $18.4 billion for the Title 1 program and 15.5 billion for the program for students with disabilities.
- [05:52]
Laura Meckler
And then the other thing that the Education Department does is it enforces civil.
- [05:57]
Sumita Basu
Rights laws, that is Title 9, anything that falls under discrimination based on things like race or sex. And Trump has promised to roll back legal protections for transgender students implemented by the Biden administration.
- [06:10]
Laura Meckler
Conservatives have a problem with that because they don't want, for instance, transgender students to have equal access to bathrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity.
- [06:21]
Sumita Basu
In a survey of over 100,000 voters recently done by the AP, more than half of people and the vast majority of Trump supporters said they believe support for transgender rights has gone too far in America. The AP also reports crisis hotlines have been flooded by calls from trans kids in the days since the election, with kids saying they're terrified for how their lives could change when Trump takes office.
- [06:45]
Laura Meckler
The reason why it's been somewhat of a lightning rod is because so many of our nation's debates and controversies about we value and what our culture is going to speak to go through schools. And so the Education Department ends up.
- [06:59]
Sumita Basu
Being something of a symbol of that, meckler says. Republicans have argued for years that the department is unnecessary and ineffective, and the bottom line here is eliminating it is a real long shot. Trump would need the support of Congress, and it doesn't look like he'd have enough in the Senate. Maybe a better way to think about what Trump is proposing here is is he suggesting eliminating a federal agency and farming out its functions to other departments, or is he suggesting getting rid of it altogether? The fact is, Trump hasn't gone into much detail, though he has suggested he wants to cut education spending in half. Meanwhile, Project 2025 lays out a plan to assign the DOE's functions to other departments. Another department that is in for big changes under Trump is hhs, the Department of Health and Human Services. Last week we talked about RFK Jr's record as a longtime vaccine skeptic now that he's been tapped by Trump to lead the department. Well, NPR recently looked at Florida to get a sense of what it could mean to have a vaccine skeptic running health policy. Florida's surgeon general is a man named Joseph latapo. Like RFK Jr. He has a long history of being critical of vaccines, and that position came under more scrutiny earlier this year when there was a measles outbreak in the state. The CDC recommends in the event of a measles outbreak, parents keep unvaccinated children at home. But here's how Latipo handled the situation as described by University of Florida pediatrics professor Jeffrey Goldhagen to npr.
- [08:41]
Volodymyr Zelensky
He sent a letter to parents basically saying, if you want to keep your kids home, you can keep your kids home. If you want to send them to school, you can send them to school. It violated every, every premise of how measles should be addressed.
- [08:56]
Sumita Basu
During the pandemic in 2022, Latapo advised parents against giving their kids the COVID vaccine, a move that the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics called irresponsible. And NPR reports last year he received a letter from the CDC and the FDA warning him against spreading misinformation about vaccines. Lisa Gwynn, a pediatrician in Miami Dade county, told NPR when she's treating patients, she now has to spend a lot more time trying to counter misinformation.
- [09:27]
Jake Auchincloss
It's probably 50% of our job now in pediatrics is explaining to parents the importance of vaccinating their children.
- [09:35]
Sumita Basu
Vaccination rates were already dropping in Florida before Latapo was appointed to his role, but under his leadership, they dropped even further. Today, the routine childhood vaccination rate for kindergartners in the state is at the lowest it's been in over a decade, and we're seeing similar trends on the national level. Gwynne told NPR she's worried we'll see that accelerate with a vaccine skeptic like RFK Jr. In charge of national health policy.
- [10:01]
Jake Auchincloss
I'm very concerned, as are all pediatricians across the nation. One of our primary roles as pediatricians is keeping children safe, and the most effective way to keep children safe from preventable, communicable diseases is vaccines.
- [10:18]
Sumita Basu
Recently, RFK Jr. Has said he will work to make sure parents have the science and information they need to make an informed decision about vaccines for their kids. Many Republican senators have already come out to say they'll support Kennedy's nomination, but should he not get confirmed, NPR says Florida Surgeon General Joseph Latapo is another name that's been floated before. We let you go. A few other stories being featured in the Apple News app. On his way to the G20 summit, where climate change will be a top focus, President Biden became the first sitting US President to visit the Amazon.
- [11:02]
Volodymyr Zelensky
Folks, we don't have to choose between the environment and the economy. We can do both. We've proven it.
- [11:11]
Sumita Basu
Back home, he met with local leaders and indigenous groups working to preserve the rainforest. He also announced an additional US commitment of $50 million to save the Amazon from deforestation, a goal current Brazilian President Lula da Silva has vowed to accomplish by 2030. In U.S. election news, there is a recount underway in Pennsylvania in the race between Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Dave McCormick, his Republican challenger, who currently leads by about 20,000 votes. And there's something of an open revolt taking place against a court order. A few weeks before the election, a judge ruled that mail in ballots that are missing the date on the outer envelope or have the wrong date cannot be counted. But Fox News reports that local officials in at least four counties are counting them, saying that the ruling makes no sense. The chairman of the Bucks County Election Commission, who is a Democrat, told the New York Times that it's already known when the ballots were printed, making the outer envelope date a meaningless requirement. And he said he he's prepared to be sued. Meanwhile, in Iowa, Ann Selzer, the revered political pollster who released a surprise poll before the election suggesting Kamala Harris had a three point edge in that state, announced over the weekend that she is ending her polling operation. In a column for the Des Moines Register, she said she made the decision a year ago that this election would be her last and suggested the recent election results were humbling for her as a data scientist who believed the data was pointing in the other direction. And finally today, when the sun sets in the northernmost town in the United States, residents won't see the sun rise for another 64 days. This is what life is like for the folks in Utqiavik, formerly Barrow, Alaska, where for two months of every year the sun stays below the horizon, a period of time known as Polar Night. It begins with today's sunset at 1:27pm local time. When the sun finally rises again on January 22nd of 2025, it'll peak out for a brief 48min before setting again. The days will grow longer after that. 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. David Brooks argues in the Atlantic that the meritocracy that exists in our country, sorting the educated from the uneducated and holding ivy leagues as the gold standard, is not working and that we need something new. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News plus Narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.