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Good morning. It's Wednesday, September 3rd. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, Brazil's coup trial comes to a head. Trump's plan to fine immigrants under deportation orders and a beloved fall classic that could soon be more expensive. But first, Congress returned from recess yesterday with a pileup of priorities to tackle. Today we're looking at three of the biggest issues coming down the tracks. The possibility of a government shutdown at the end of the month, a bipartisan push to release more Department of Justice files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and a possible change to the Senate confirmation process. First, lawmakers have until the end of the month to agree on a bill to fund the government through the end of the year or risk a shutdown. That is not an atypical place for Congress to find itself. But Sahil Kapoor, a senior national politics reporter for NBC News, told us that things are not starting off on the right foot.
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There is no framework, no agreement on the way forward here. The two parties are far apart, and they're moving even further apart. The first thing that generally happens in this situation is that they agree on the overall amount that the government's going to spend in the upcoming fiscal year, and then they agree on how to allocate it. They are nowhere close to an agreement on that.
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In addition to that, late last week, the White House told Congress that it wants to cut $4.9 billion in foreign aid funding through a process called pocket rescissions. Basically, it is a seldom used move where the president tries to cancel funding so late in the fiscal year that Congress doesn't have time to weigh in. NBC News notes that lawyers for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office have previously called these moves illegal. Democrats and some Republicans have also spoken out about it. A funding bill will require 60 votes in the Senate, so it would need some Democratic support. Kapoor said that the Trump moves to claw back funding are complicating. Democrats desire to work with Republicans because.
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Their view is why would they agree? Or how can they agree to a government funding deal if the White House is simply going to refuse to spend money on on the parts of the deal that they don't like? So that is a pretty intractable problem at this moment.
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As that deadline approaches, the pressures over Epstein have not disappeared during the recess, Republican Congressman Tom Massie from Kentucky and Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, have rolled out a resolution attempting to force the DOJ to release more Epstein files.
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These two are unified on requiring the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and they've teamed up on a bipartisan bill that would force the White House to do that not at their discretion. It lays out very specific specifically all categories of documents and communications that the Justice Department has to release, anything involving Epstein, his death, the various prosecutions, charging decisions, and so forth.
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Alleged Epstein victims are planning to attend a rally in Washington today as well. The House Oversight Committee is also investigating, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that effort will suffice. The committee released a first trove of files that they had obtained from subpoenas yesterday, though most of them so far appear to have been previously publicly available. And finally, one other thing worth watching is whether Senate Republicans change the rules on how nominees get confirmed, invoking the so called nuclear option to cut down on debate time and rush the nominees through faster. Democrats have said that they want more time for nominee consideration, particularly after the recent firings of Senate approved rolls like the CDC director and the IRS commissioner.
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This has been a real clash between the Republican leadership and Democrats who are not allowing speedy votes on Trump nominees. That would be a significant change to Senate rules that would apply permanently for the foreseeable future if Republicans do this.
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On the CDC firing. Specifically, senators will have an opportunity to ask Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Questions when he appears for previously planned testimony later this week. Now to Brazil, where the Supreme Court is preparing to deliver a verdict in the historic criminal trial of far right former President Jair Bolsonaro. He's been accused of plotting a military coup to overthrow Brazil's democratic government after losing the presidential election in 2022 to the progressive candidate and former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Prosecutors say Bolsonaro urged his supporters to riot at the Capitol, coordinated with multiple government officials to remain in power, and allegedly planned to assassinate his rivals, including da Silva and one of the Supreme Court justices now overseeing his case. Manuela Andreoni, the chief correspondent for Reuters in Brazil, has been following Bolsonaro's trial.
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He has admitted to considering options to overturn results, which he denounced at a time as fraudulent without offering any evidence. But he has always denied trying to throw a couple.
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And Bolsonaro has denied all five charges against him, calling the proceedings politically motivated. Also on trial are seven of his closest allies, including his former running mate in the 2022 election and several high ranking military officials.
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This trial is the first time that military officers may be held accountable for trying to overthrow democracy because in all the dictatorships that Brazil had and the coup attempts that Brazil had, no one has ever been pun. And a lot of people say it's why it keeps happening.
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Brazil has experienced 14 coup attempts in its history, seven of which were successful.
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The last one was a coup in 1964 that the United States supported as part of its Cold War strategy. That regime took power after this coup and ruled a dictatorship for 20 years that killed and tortured thousands of Brazilians. Bolsonaro and his allies are big admirers of this regime. He famously said that the dictatorship should have killed a lot more people.
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President Trump has repeatedly supported Bolsonaro throughout these legal proceedings, calling the case a witch hunt. He and Bolsonaro had a warm relationship during Trump's first term, and Trump has said that he relates to the, quote, political persecution that he believes Bolsonaro is facing. Trump has also applied political and economic pressure to try to influence the outcome of the trial. Sanctioning the Supreme Court. Justice Bolsonaro is accused of conspiring to assassinate, and his administration imposed a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods. That's one of the highest rates in the world. The Brazilian Supreme Court's final session is scheduled for September 12th. If convicted, Bolsonaro and his allies face decades in prison. Let's turn now to a tactic the Department of Homeland Security is using to try to force the hand of certain immigrants to leave the U.S. in order to increase deportations, ICE has issued fines.
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To 21,500 immigrants it says have ignored deportation orders. And collectively, that's worth $6.1 billion in fines.
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And in recent weeks, Wall Street Journal reporter Jack Morfett told us the agency has been making moves to bring in that money.
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They have threatened to garnish tax refunds, launch civil litigation, engage private collection agencies, alert credit rating bureaus, and curb any federal or state payments owed to the fine recipient. But interestingly, in a novel move, they've also said that they may report the unpaid fine as potential income to the irs.
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Many immigrants targeted here are low wage workers who can't afford to pay these fines.
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Most often, the fines are worth $1.82 million because it can fine migrants nine for every day that they have failed to leave the country after receiving an order of removal.
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If an immigrant under deportation order elects to self deport, however, Homeland Security has said the fines will be waived and that person will receive $1,000, which the administration is calling an exit bonus. The goal basically is to use financial penalties as a stick and this bonus as a carrot to get people to leave the country on their own.
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It's a lot easier and cheaper if the migrants Self deport rather than if ICE enforcement has to round up immigrants off the street and send them back to the country where they came from.
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A senior official at DHS called it an easy choice. But immigration lawyers Morfett spoke to say the tactic is mostly creating fear. One compared it to psychological warfare, saying, quote, it's driving immigrants to the point where they feel like they will lose everything if they remain in the United States. Morfitt told us about a mother of four from Mexico living in the Bronx who's worried about this. She came to the US in 2000. Her husband's employer sponsored their residency soon after, a judge ordered her removal in 2013 after she missed a mandatory immigration court hearing. Her attorney told Morfitt that this woman's former lawyer failed to tell her about the hearing and she recently received notice from the government that she owes over $1.8 million in fines.
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She's been in the country for decades and has been paying tax the entire time. She's essentially living out the American dream by working hard and saving and putting that money towards her family. And now she's faced with the prospect of her entire net worth being wiped out by this fine. She does have assets and she does own a home and she doesn't want to risk the government seizing that home. So she is considering self deportation, leaving her husband and leaving her children so the government doesn't come after her assets.
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She's now trying to vacate her removal order to obtain a green card. And Morfett points out in his reporting this is why many immigrants with removal orders choose to stay in the country. Not to evade orders, but because they hope their circumstances could change and allow them to qualify for legal status. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. The world's leading professional organization of genocide scholars says that Israel's war on Gaza meets the legal conditions for genocide outlined by the United Nations. The UN defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Since the October 7th massacre, which the group also described as an international crime, the Gaza Health Ministry reports that more than 63,000 Palestinians have been killed and at least 83% were civilians, according to Israel's own military intelligence. And the International association of Genocide Scholars concluded that Israel has engaged in systematic and deliberate attacks on hospitals, among other civilian infrastructure. Israel's Foreign Ministry described the statement as an embarrassment to the legal profession and the country is fighting similar allegations of genocide in the International Court of Justice. Now to California, where a federal judge ruled yesterday that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth broke the law when they deployed roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests earlier this summer. U.S. district Judge Charles Breyer said they violated the Posse Comitatus act. That's a 19th century law that generally prohibits the use of troops for domestic law enforcement. His order will block the administration from using the US military in California starting September 12th for actions like arrests, searches and seizures, crowd control and more. But the order does not require the government to withdraw the 300 National Guard troops who remain in LA so long as their use complies with the Posse Comitatus Act. And Breyer said the ruling does not apply to National Guard troops in other states. The Department of Justice has indicated that it will appeal the decision. And finally, to How White House policies could impact the flavor of Fall now that it's September, pumpkin spice season is in full force, though its most dedicated fans might argue that any season can be pumpkin spice season. And this year, fans of the cozy spice blend will have to weigh just how much they're willing to spend for it. That's because as of last week, the Trump administration put a 50% tariff on India, a major exporter of core components of pumpkin spice like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. The Atlantic writes that you won't notice major price changes immediately, but spice companies told them they'll likely have no choice but to raise prices soon. So you may want to stock up now, though you could skip one of the items the Atlantic lists pumpkin spice bacon. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening to the News app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next from New Scientist. As the human lifespan gets longer, researchers who study aging say there's a metric we should be paying more attention our health spans, which measures the quality of the years in our lives. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Narrated to find that story. And we'll be back with the news tomorrow.