Loading summary
Transcript27 lines
- [00:05]
Shemitah Basu
Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 22nd. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, Harvard takes the Trump administration to federal court. Some members of the National Guard who went to LA amid protests wonder why they're still there. And according to new research, the chance of having a baby girl or baby boy is not actually 50. 50. But first, as we continue to evaluate how America has changed over the first six months of President Trump's second term, we wanted to return to a question that dominated the 2024 presidential campaign under a Trump presidency. How much could Project 2025 shape US policy? As you most likely know by now, Project 2025 is a conservative agenda from the Heritage foundation, written as a kind of aspirational guide for a pro Republican administration. It features many far right proposals. And as it was scrutinized last year, it became extremely unpopular with voters. So much so that Trump spent a lot of time trying to create distance from it on the campaign trail.
- [01:16]
Donald Trump
Many of the points are fine. Many of the points are absolutely ridiculous. I have nothing to do with the document. I've never seen the document.
- [01:25]
Shemitah Basu
But when he took office, Trump quickly put principal architects of Project 2025 in powerful positions, like John Ratcliffe, the of the CIA, Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, and Russell Vogt, the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
- [01:41]
David Graham
He's a major figure who has been so instrumental to getting so many of these things done and who had made up a plan for how to get a lot of the things he wanted done.
- [01:48]
Shemitah Basu
That's David Graham, a staff writer at the Atlantic who has been tracking what he calls the Project 2025 presidency. He says he read all 922 pages of it, and he wrote a book about how it's already shaping U.S. policy.
- [02:02]
Michael Moore
And.
- [02:02]
Shemitah Basu
And he told us these appointments played a key role in moving the agenda from conservative wish list to reality.
- [02:09]
David Graham
One of the maxims of Project 2025 is that personnel is policy. And I think the same is true for Trump. The fact that he has appointed all of these people to these jobs and then followed the suggestions they made so closely is the demonstration that he knows exactly what's going on there and that he is using it as a blueprint for himself.
- [02:26]
Shemitah Basu
We asked Graham to try to quantify just how much the policies Trump has implemented align with the plans proposed by Project 20.
- [02:35]
David Graham
I think I'd be in the 66 to 75% range. There's a few conflicts and things they haven't gotten done, but they've been so successful in the kind of power grab within the executive branch that lays the groundwork for so much of what they want to do. And I think they have made a surprising amount of progress in getting towards their goals.
- [02:54]
Shemitah Basu
Some of those goals move the conservative movement further to the right on LGBTQ rights and abortion, rid the government of so called disloyal civil servants and launch a mass deportation operation, among many other things. Graham says much of the progress made so far can be credited to Elon Musk and his brief tenure working for the White House.
- [03:15]
David Graham
There were things that they had laid out a sort of slow plan to achieve, and he just kind of drove a bulldozer through it and made it happen very quickly. And we've also seen the Supreme Court giving sanction to a lot of those things. That's helped them to move very quickly.
- [03:28]
Shemitah Basu
So what might happen over the next six months? Graham told us what kinds of policies he's watching for.
- [03:35]
David Graham
For example, encouraging larger families, changing daycare regulations. It could also mean things like working to ban abortion or to make it more difficult. That's something that's really important to the authors of Project 2025 and something that we haven't seen a lot of from the Trump administration yet. But the goal of Project 2025 is really to transform what the shape of society is. And so a lot of these changes we're talking about feel very ab. But if they're successful, their goal is to have an impact that will last for a very long time and will be really direct.
- [04:14]
Shemitah Basu
Now to the legal fight between the Trump administration and Harvard. At a hearing in federal court yesterday, Harvard asked a judge to restore billions of dollars in canceled federal funds. The ultimate decision here could impact dozens of universities nationwide. But before we get into what happened in court, a quick reminder of how this all started. Months ago, the White House ordered Harvard to change its governance, hiring, admissions and more to address alleged anti Semitism on campus. Harvard did not comply, so the administration froze more than $2 billion in federal research grants. It also launched a number of investigations, threatened to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status, and attempted to block international students from enrolling. In court yesterday, a lawyer representing the school said that the administration's decision to cut funding amounted to retaliation. He argued it violates Harvard's First Amendment rights and threatens researchers ability to carry out vital work in medicine, science and technology. A lawyer for the Trump administration said their actions were legal because of an executive order that empowered agencies to combat antisemitism with basically any tool at their Disposal. Harvard has previously acknowledged that it has a problem with antisemitism following campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza last year. President Alan Garber spoke about this with NBC back in April, not long after the administration initially froze federal funding.
- [05:41]
Alan Garber
We take it very seriously, and we're trying to address it. There is no doubt about the severity of that problem. We don't really see the relationship to research funding at Harvard and other universities. They are two different issues.
- [05:58]
Shemitah Basu
Yesterday in court, the judge in this case, Allison Burroughs, seemed sympathetic to that argument, and she pressed the lawyer for the Trump administration to explain the relationship between their allegations of antisemitism and their decision to make such sweeping cuts to research, saying there's, quote, no documentation, there's no procedure. Harvard's lawyer pointed out the only documentation the administration has used to defend its allegations came from a report conducted by Harvard about anti Semitism on campus and anti Israeli, anti Muslim and anti Palestinian bias. And he said the report did not prove anti Semitism is an issue that impacts all corners of the school, let alone every single research lab impacted by cuts. Legal analysts following this case have said that the cuts ultimately appear to be an effort by the federal government to exert more control over higher education institutions. Here's CNN's Michael Moore.
- [06:55]
Michael Moore
You know, really what the administration is saying is if you don't teach and do things the way we want you to do it, this particular administration, not the Constitution, but my administration, then I'm going to cut your funding out. And that's so antithetical to what an academic institution is. And I think their position is stronger that being the college. And also, you know, there have been a lot of other universities that have signed on and joined into the lawsuit supporting that. So we're not talking about Harvard standing alone.
- [07:21]
Shemitah Basu
And what happens in this case has huge implications for higher education nationwide. So far this year, the administration has canceled millions of dollars in federal funding for dozens of institutions. As Jodi Farish, a lawyer who specializes in higher education, put it to npr, there is nothing different about Harvard University than there is about some Midwestern, smaller private college. The same things would apply. Harvard is asking for a summary judgment in the hopes of getting a faster ruling, meaning this case would not go to trial. But legal experts interviewed by NPR say they don't expect a full resolution anytime soon, since both sides are prepared to appeal. It's been more than a month since President Trump deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to respond to protests that broke out against federal immigration raids taking place across the city. Los Angeles Times reporter Jenny Jarvi spoke to some of the soldiers who were still in town, and they told her they're pretty bored.
- [08:30]
Jenny Jarvi
One Marine told us there's not much to do. There were troops huddling in pairs and small groups, and they were just either standing silently with their rifles pointed at the ground and just looking up and down largely empty sidewalks, or they were chatting and joking over energy drinks and.
- [08:47]
Shemitah Basu
Beyond simply not having much to do. Some say morale is low. A few soldiers spoke to the New York Times about how they're questioning the mission. There have been legal disputes over Guard members being assigned to back up federal immigration agents. One soldier pointed out how the National Guard had just earned all this goodwill from the city of LA when they helped respond to the wildfires in January. That soldier told the Times they gave Disneyland tickets to the people who worked in the wildfires. Nobody's handing out Disneyland tickets now. Jarvi, with the LA Times, told us that some soldiers called into a GI rights hotline to raise concerns about being involved in immigration enforcement efforts.
- [09:27]
Jenny Jarvi
People were calling in saying they were shot, that deployment orders were for 60 days, and others were more concerned about the mission rather than the length of time. They didn't want to play a role in deporting people, either because they themselves had immigrants in their family family or they just, you know, considered immigrants even without papers as part of the community.
- [09:46]
Shemitah Basu
Data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that close to 3,000 people were arrested in the LA area in the month of June. The majority had never been charged with a crime. Last week, the Defense department sent home 2,000 National Guard troops, and yesterday Pentagon officials said the 700 Marines stationed there will begin withdrawal. But around 2,000 California National Guard soldiers remain. California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA's Mayor Karen Bass have said that the continued presence of the Guard is absurd.
- [10:18]
Jenny Jarvi
Newsom has said that, you know, they're here for no reason, they're in Los Angeles for no reason, and he has urged Trump to end this theater. Karen Bass has said that they're in LA guarding federal buildings that don't need to be guarded.
- [10:33]
Shemitah Basu
Newsom condemned Trump for pulling California National Guard soldiers away from prepping for wildfire season, noting that the Wildfire unit is operating with 40% of regular staffing due to the deployment. The White house eventually approved 150 guard members to be released to work on wildfire suppression efforts. Jarvi spoke to Jennifer Kavanaugh with Defense Priorities, a military research group, who said the reason California National Guard troops are still deployed is likely to send a message.
- [11:04]
Jenny Jarvi
She said that she thinks the reason they're still deployed suggests this is really about setting precedent of having military forces involved in immigration enforcement and deployed in US Cities.
- [11:21]
Shemitah Basu
Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison was sentenced to 33 months in prison yesterday for violating Breonna Taylor's civil rights during a botched 2020 where Taylor was shot and killed. The death of the 26 year old woman sparked widespread protest as part of the Black Lives Matter movement that year. This sentencing comes after the Justice Department said last week that the case should not have been prosecuted and unusually suggested that Hankison serve a one day jail sentence. Hankison blindly fired 10 shots into Taylor's apartment where he and six other Louisville police officers showed up to serve a no knock drug warrant and he was found guilty of using excessive force last November. While he didn't shoot Taylor, he's the only officer who was at the scene to be charged for a crime connected to her death. The officers who shot the bullets killing Taylor were not charged because they were allegedly returning fire from her then boyfriend, who had previously said he believed an intruder was breaking into the apartment. Let's turn now to news from your latest grocery bill. Beef has never been more expensive. While egg prices are returning to normal after an avian flu outbreak drove them up earlier this year, experts say beef likely won't stabilize that quickly. The supply chain is suffering widespread. Droughts are driving up the cost of feed, shrinking herd sizes. The country's total number of farms and ranches is falling, too. And beef imported from places like Australia and Brazil isn't enough to offset the country's increasing demand. New federal data says the average pound of ground beef costs $6.12 in June, up 12 nearly a year ago. And finally, a recent study found that the odds of giving birth to a baby girl or boy is not quite 5050 as it may seem. Researchers say it's more like flipping a coin unique to a particular family, weighted to individual factors like maternal age, genes and the sex of older siblings. For example, one of the study's authors told the Washington Post that a family with multiple girls who might be hoping for a boy are more likely than not to have another. It's just one study, but the researcher said it provides a window into how different families are working with different odds. 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. New York Magazine examines our relationship with our neighbor to the north, Canada, and how this administration's tariff policies and talks of annexation have united Canadian Canadians in anger at us. 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.