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- [00:05]
A
Good morning. The countdown is on. Tomorrow, NASA launches a groundbreaking lunar mission.
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B
It's definitely a huge moment. This is the first time that we are going back to the moon since the Apollo era.
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A
Trump makes new threats to Iran as it refuses to open up oil routes. And her heart will go on. Celine Dion announces a Comeback. It's Tuesday, March 31st. I'm Cecilia Ley and this is Apple News Today. Excessive, unrealistic, and irrational. That was the verdict from Iran yesterday on President Trump's 15 point proposal to bring an end to the war. On the same day, Trump hailed what he called great progress in the negotiations. He also made new threats to target Iran's power plants, oil production facilities and key civilian infrastructure, a move that would mark a dramatic escalation in the conflict, according to some human rights groups. This would be a war crime. NBC's Garrett Hake asked White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt about that yesterday.
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C
The President has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that their best move is to make a deal or else. The United States armed forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination, and the President is not afraid to use them. That's not what I said, Garrett. Of course, this administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law.
- [01:37]
A
Trump has also repeated his threat to attack Harg Island. There's a huge Iranian oil facility there, so any attempt to take it over would be met with fierce resistance. Iran's parliament speaker said as much when he warned that his country would, quote, rain down fire on any invading force. The island is a major source of Iran's oil exports, so seizing it could not only hurt Iran's economy, but also put even more strains on the global oil market. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is also weighing other possible moves, like an operation to extract Iran's uranium. But this kind of escalation would be complex and risky, likely putting US Forces inside Iran for the first time in the war. Speaking to Al Jazeera yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized that diplomacy was still active despite Iran's denials.
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D
There's messages and some direct talks going on between some inside of Iran and the United States, primarily through intermediaries. But there's been some conversation, and I think the president always prefers diplomacy.
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A
But the countries still appear far apart. Rubio outright dismissed Iran's claims to sovereignty of the Strait of Hormuz. He also called the country's new plan to impose tolls on the Strait illegal. Rubio also said Iran would need to stop building missiles capable of attacking Gulf neighbors. And even though Gulf nations are taking Iranian fire for a war they didn't start, there are some indications they don't want it to end right now either. AP reports that nearby countries are privately urging Trump to continue fighting until Iran's regime is weakened further. The BBC's Frank Gardner, a longtime expert on the region, told the network he'd heard something similar from his sources on a recent visit.
- [03:18]
E
Gulf officials said to me, hang on, a month ago we got our product through the Strait of Hormuz and we weren't being shelled and bombed and rocketed and droned from the other side of the Gulf from Iran. And now we are leaving the Gulf in this situation where Iran basically holds all the cards, that's a very bad situation for the Gulf states and they won't be happy. So some of them are pushing for him to finish this, to keep going until eventually the regime collapses. But that might be wishful thinking.
- [03:48]
A
Gulf states continued to absorb drone and missile attacks. Last night, Kuwait reported an attack on one of its oil tankers at a port in Dubai. Meanwhile, Israel said it destroyed more than 100 high rise buildings in Lebanon's capital, Beirut, claiming they were being used by Iran backed Hezbollah. NASA astronauts are getting ready for their first moon mission in over 50 years.
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F
10, 9, 8, 7. Ignition sequence started. All engines are started. We have ignition. 2, 1, 0. We have a lit. Do we have a liftoff? And it's lighting up the area. It's just like daylight here at Kennedy Space Center.
- [04:38]
A
The last time NASA went to the moon was the Apollo 17 mission which landed on its surface back in 1972. But tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, a group of four astronauts will leave on a 10 day lunar flyby mission. They'll go around the moon this time without landing and splash back into the Pacific Ocean. One of the crew members, Reid Wiseman, hyped up a crowd at a press conference last week.
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D
Hey, let's go to the moon. I think the nation and the world has been waiting a long time to do this again. And on behalf of myself, Victor, Christina, Jeremy, we are really pumped to go do this for this entire team.
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A
To get a better sense of the why and why now of the mission, we spoke to Lauren Grusch, a space reporter with Bloomberg.
- [05:24]
B
It's meant to serve as something of an elaborate dress rehearsal for the moon landing which NASA, NASA is targeting in 2028.
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A
She said the four person crew is notable in a few ways.
- [05:36]
B
Victor Glover will be the first black man to travel to deep space into the moon's vicinity. Christina Cook will also be the first woman to do so, and then Jeremy Hansen will be the first Canadian to do the same. So they'll be making a lot of firsts on this mission. Also, the crew will be flying deeper into space than any astronauts have ever gone before, so they'll break that record.
- [06:01]
A
During a part of the mission they're going to swing behind the moon, where they'll briefly lose contact with mission controllers. The closest they'll actually get to the lunar surface is about 4,000 to 6,000 miles.
- [06:11]
B
They've likened it to if you look out the window of the capsule, it'll look like the size of a basketball in your outstretched hand.
- [06:19]
A
The mission is just one part of NASA's ambitious and expensive plan to build out a moon base and launch multiple landing missions each year. Ultimately, NASA hopes it can explore the potential presence of water on the moon, develop technology for more ambitious space travel, and simply develop a greater understanding about the Earth's history. In the past, the US Was in competition with the Soviet Union for space dominance. Now the race seems to be with China, which has its own plans to get its astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade. Trump kicked off the Artemis program in his first term, and later it was endorsed by the Biden administration. Last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman talked about the program's trajectory.
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D
This revised step by step approach to learn to build muscle memory to bring down risk and gain confidence is exactly how NASA achieved the near impossible in the 1960s. But this time the goal is not flags and footprints. This time the goal is to stay.
- [07:15]
A
The moon base will cost an estimated $20 billion over the next seven years, and the Artemis program overall has already cost nearly $100 billion. Gresh said that there are still some questions about why Congress is willing to spend $20 billion and implement mo moon landers that are built by the private companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.
- [07:36]
B
There's a lot of concerns about what the state of the hardware that needs to be developed when it comes to the landers, right? So SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing their lunar landers and they are very complex and they have a lot to do before they're actually ready. And Isaacman has also said that whoever is ready first will be the ones to fly first. So he's kind of started a bit of a space race between the two companies. Were already rivals to begin with.
- [08:06]
A
Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch tomorrow at 6:24pm Eastern Time. There's a little known immigration court that's become increasingly important under the Trump administration. And as NPR has been reporting, it could be quietly reshaping policy in some dramatic ways. Under the U.S. constitution, noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, are guaranteed due process rights. That means the government is expected to take steps to ensure fairness in deportation proceedings, including providing a right to a hearing.
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G
When an immigrant is going through immigration court, that is their chance, typically, to argue why they should get to stay in the United States while there's an Immigration and Customs attorney arguing why they should be removed.
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A
Ximena Bustillo covers immigration policy for npr. After the hearing process concludes, a judge makes their ruling which immigrants could appeal. After that, the case would go to an obscure administrative court.
- [09:14]
G
The Board of Immigration Appeals is this tiny corner of the Justice Department. So immigration courts generally are not like other courts that you might think of. They are housed all within the Justice Department, which means that they're under the executive branch of government. They are not independent judiciary.
- [09:34]
A
Because of that, the Trump administration has been able to reshape the Board of Immigration Appeals, and it's helping them execute its mass deportation campaign and set immigration policy across the country. For one thing, the size of the board has shrunk from 28 judges to 15. Most of them were selected by Trump.
- [09:53]
G
There is one Obama appointee and there's one Bush appointee. The rest were either appointed during Trump one or the second Trump administration.
- [10:03]
A
This board also makes decisions which set precedents for how immigration law gets interpreted. Bustillo told us that it's in these decisions where she saw the impact of how the administration has changed the board's makeup. In 2025, it put out a significantly higher number of these decisions than in years past, and a vast majority of them sided with the DHS.
- [10:24]
G
Last year, there were 70 precedent decisions, and of those 70, 97%. So all but essentially about two sided with DHS. And in one of the two cases where the board did not side with DHS, it was because DHS didn't even show up to the initial hearing.
- [10:45]
A
Some examples of the rulings include making it harder for immigration courts to release individuals on bond instead of detaining them, and making it easier to deport immigrants to countries that they're not from. Recently, the Trump administration has also tried to dramatically streamline this appeal process in order to deport more immigrants, but a federal judge temporarily put a halt to that. Changing the Board of Immigration Appeals is just one of the ways the administration is reshaping the Executive Branch's immigration court system. According to NPR, at least 100 judges were fired in the last year and others have resigned or retired. The overall loss in judges has led to a big backlog in cases, and with the appeals board reduced in size, it could make it harder to catch issues in legal proceedings.
- [11:31]
G
Speaking with people who have sat on the board, who have litigated in front of the board and are familiar with the inner workings of the board, say that the reason this appeals process exists is simply because even the best immigration judges can make a mistake. And this is mistakes on all sides, mistakes that could grant permissions to stay in the country or could deny permissions to stay in the country. And so it is only fair in due process that both sides get the chance to challenge that and to appeal that.
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A
In response, a DOJ spokesperson told NPR that the current appeals board decisions, quote, reflect straightforward interpretations of clear statutory language. And here's a few other stories we're following. The attack on a Michigan synagogue earlier this month was an act of terror inspired by the Iran backed group Hezbollah. According to the FBI, on March 12, a man who was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon rammed a truck full of explosives into Temple Israel just outside of Detroit. No one was killed in the attack, but the man behind the wheel later took his own life during an exchange of fire with synagogue security. CBS News reports that members of the man's family were killed on March 5 when Israel attacked Hezbollah outposts in Lebanon, which his brothers were reportedly a part of. Air Canada's CEO will retire later this year after being criticized for failing to speak French. In a condolence video, Michael Rousseau was responding to the March 22 fatal collision at LaGuardia Airport in New York that killed two pilots. But he had to apologize for being unable to express himself adequately in French, an official language in Canada. The country's prime minister, Mark Carney, said Rousseau had a responsibility to express himself in both languages.
- [13:30]
D
I'm very disappointed, as others are, rightly so, in this unilingual message of the CEO of Air Canada. It doesn't matter the circumstances, but particularly in these circumstances, lack of judgment and lack of compassion.
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A
And finally, there were some hints when mysterious banners appeared across Paris bearing song titles like the Power of Love and My Heart Will Go on well, yesterday the reason was confirmed. Celine Dion is returning to the stage three years after being diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder known as stiff person syndrome. She will perform 10 concerts in Paris during September and October. The city marked the occasion by lighting up the Eiffel Tower with the sign Paris I'm ready. Dion has strong ties to the French capital and performed the song Ime a la Mort at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics. 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. Popular Mechanics reports on a legendary stash of gold that was lost during the civil War in Pennsylvania and whether the FBI secretly dug it all up. 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.