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- [00:05]
Shemitah Basu
Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 21st. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, Trump's busy first day in office, remembering Cecile Richards, a champion of women's healthcare, and Prince Harry goes to court. Let's start in Washington, where President Donald Trump promised in his inaugural speech a packed day of executive actions.
- [00:41]
Donald Trump
With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.
- [00:49]
Shemitah Basu
Trump began signing executive orders within hours of retaking office, choosing to sign a number of them on a stage in front of a crowd of his supporters. And at the Capitol One arena in Washington.
- [01:01]
Paula Reid
The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda and others.
- [01:12]
Shemitah Basu
When he wrapped up there, he headed to the Oval Office to sign more orders, among them pardoning hundreds of people charged with crimes related to the January 6 mob, withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, delaying the ban of TikTok and issuing a series of measures on immigration. Meanwhile, his Republican colleagues in the Senate also went straight to work. They approved Marco Rubio to be our next secretary of state. And a committee advanced Pete Hegsett's nomination for defense secretary for a full vote. There is lots to talk about and lots of questions about whether these orders will stand or be challenged in courts. But for now, just for today, we're let's look at three of Trump's executive orders, what he wants to do, and the immediate reaction we're seeing. Starting with the January 6th pardons. Trump granted broad pardons to more than 1500 people charged with crimes related to January 6th and commuted the sentences of several others. The decision appears to apply to both nonviolent and violent offenders, people like former Proud Boys leader Henry Enrique Tarrio, who prosecutors described as helping plan the insurrection and who was sentenced to 22 years for sedition, the longest sentence handed down in connection with January 6th. Here's CNN's Chief Legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid.
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Nancy Pelosi
Remember, Trump and Vice President Vance had suggested that they were not going to give clemency to people who were violent offenders. But the group that got pardons includes individuals like Julian Cater, who assaulted a US Police officer, Brian Sicknick, and later pled guilty to assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon. Devlin Thompson, who hit a police officer with a metal baton. And Robert Palmer, he's the Florida man who attacked police with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole.
- [03:00]
Shemitah Basu
NBC News captured the reaction of One rioter, Gabriel Augustine Garcia, who was convicted of two felony charges for obstructing an official proceeding and obstructing law enforcement that day. Here he is as he cut off his ankle monitor.
- [03:15]
Gabriel Augustine Garcia
I feel justice was prevailed here. And like I kept saying from the very beginning, it was a two tier justice system under the Biden administration. He pardoned his own son. I just walked in the Capitol to peacefully protest. I'm not charged with violence. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't destroy property.
- [03:30]
Shemitah Basu
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House during the attack, called Trump's order an outrageous insult to our justice system and a betrayal of the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol that day. Onto the second issue, the border. Trump signed a few executive orders to do with the border. Some of them revived policies from his first administration, like forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they wait for a hearing in US Immigration court. Minutes after Trump was sworn in, the app introduced by the Biden administration to assign appointment slots to migrants seeking to enter the US Legally disappeared. And so did people's appointments. The Washington Post spoke with migrants waiting in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and captured the moment that some found out the appointment they had been waiting months for had suddenly been cancele. One person told the Post, if only I had had the appointment for three hours earlier. Trump also rescinded a Biden executive order that created a task force that reunited 800 children with their parents who were separated under the first Trump administration. And Trump rolled back another Biden executive order to rebuild the U.S. refugee program. His team also fired several top immigration officials. And the third issue we'll touch on today is related to immigration. That is Trump's call to end birthright citizenship. This one is perhaps his biggest attempt at reshaping immigration in America by saying children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants should no longer be granted automatic citizenship. This order in particular will likely be challenged in court, as birthright citizenship is protected in the Constitution. While he was signing the order in the Oval Office, Trump said he thinks that won't matter.
- [05:25]
Donald Trump
We're the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, and it's just absolutely ridiculous. But, you know, we'll see. We think we have very good grounds. Certainly people have wanted to do this for decades.
- [05:42]
Shemitah Basu
There are, in fact, dozens of other countries that have some form of birthright citizenship, including Canada and Brazil. Democrats have decried this first wave of actions. But Republicans and Trump supporters hailed Trump's first day in office as a moment that ushered in hope. Here's how Fox host Jesse Waters described Trump's inaugural speech.
- [06:03]
Paula Reid
It was probably the most ambitious speech ever given by a human being. We're gonna plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars. We're gonna make America healthy again. We're gonna seal the border. We're gonna beat inflation. We're going to save our cities. And a lot of people watching felt that it was possible today. A lot of the times you hear politicians run their mouths and you're like, all right, this is just another political speech. This wasn't a political speech. This was a speech made by a hero.
- [06:29]
Shemitah Basu
This is just the first wave of actions the president says he plans to take. We'll be covering the reaction to these policies and what they'll mean for all of us in the days and weeks to come. Now to the legacy of Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood and a longtime activist for reproductive rights who died yesterday at the age of 67 fighting an aggressive form of brain cancer. Here's how Sarah McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR, described her reputation.
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Sarah McCammon
The people close to her that I've spoken to have just talked about the way that she was unflappable. I think someone used the word indefatigable, the way that she represented for many people in her movement. Someone who never stopped fighting and someone who persisted, even amidst challenges, even amidst these very significant setbacks.
- [07:29]
Shemitah Basu
Richards led Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of reproductive health care in the United States, from 2006 to 2018, spanning three presidential administrations, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump. During that time, she grew Planned Parenthood's base of supporters and volunteers from 2.5 million people to 11 million, according to the New York Times. It was also a time when Republicans aggressively went after abortion funding and access. Though Richards was able to fend off many such attempts in Republican controlled state legislatures, she ultimately was not able to overcome the political headwinds. During her tenure, Trump changed a federal program that assists in family planning, which cut off federal funding to hundreds of clinics. Texas led the charge to defund Planned Parenthood, forcing hundreds of clinics in the state to close. And the conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
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Sarah McCammon
Ultimately, that's something that people like Cecile Richard and the abortion rights movement were not able to prevent. Despite, you know, many years of efforts to expand access to abortion.
- [08:36]
Shemitah Basu
Richard's advocacy work continued after she left Planned Parenthood. After the fall of Roe, she launched an online chatbot to provide confidential information on how people could access abortion care. And recently she helped launch a website devoted to sharing stories of people who sought abortions under new restrictions. At the Democratic national convention in 2024, she spoke about how her work had taken on new meaning as her own family grew.
- [09:02]
Cecile Richards
Last year I became a grandmother, and during my daughter's pregnancy, nothing mattered more to me than her health. One day our children and grandchildren may ask us, when it was all on the line, what did you do? And the only acceptable answer is everything we could.
- [09:35]
Shemitah Basu
And that mentality of do everything you can is one that Richards had championed for a long time, she told Rachel Maddow in 2018 why it was a cornerstone of her philosophy.
- [09:46]
Cecile Richards
You can make change, you can make people's lives different, and you can also find a lot of joy and meet amazing people along the way. And look, if you're fighting for things that are hard, you're going to lose more than you're going to win. But when you do win, you've got to claim that VICT and learn from it.
- [10:09]
Shemitah Basu
Now to a few other stories we're following today. President Trump's newly launched crypto coin skyrocketed in the days leading up to yesterday's inauguration. The meme coin, simply called Trump with a dollar sign in front of it, launched last Friday. It soared to a market cap of $10 billion by the time Trump was being sworn in. Reuters reports that 80% of the currency is owned by Trump's company or a close affiliate, meaning Trump linked businesses could have gained $8 billion worth of crypto over the weekend. Some ethics experts and industry insiders are saying the coin and other tokens created by Trump's family raise a significant conflict of interest concerns. Trump has said he wants to reduce regulations for the industry and promote even greater adoption of digital assets. In other Trump news, the Wall Street Journal has a story on how several Trump campaign promises might cause serious slowdowns for major disaster recovery efforts across the country. North Carolina and Florida are still reeling from huge hurricanes. Los Angeles is still battling wildfires. All these places will need to rebuild on a massive scale. The Journal points out how Trump's pledge to impose tariffs on certain imported goods and to deport undocumented workers could impact construction and rebuild in these hard hit areas. Builders rely on imported steel and lumber, much of which comes from trading partners Trump has threatened with tariffs, and undocumented workers make up about 13% of the construction workforce in the US and lastly to the UK where opening arguments begin in Prince Harry's case against Rupert Murdoch. The prince is suing Murdoch's British news division, News uk, alleging the company's journalists and private investigators illegally obtained personal information about him. For years, Harry has blamed the tabloids for the strife between him and the rest of the royal family and for creating emotional distress for his wife, Meghan Markle. According to the BBC, News UK has paid around $1.5 billion in settlements to people who have sued over the use of their private information, like voicemail messages, health and financial records and other sensitive materials. Of the 40 original complaints against News UK, Prince Harry is one of only two who have not settled. The prince is expected to appear in court in the coming weeks. 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 Bloomberg Businessweek. It explores how a deal between Walmart and a company that makes smart displays for refrigerators went sour. The idea was to use the doors in the refrigerated and frozen food aisles to advertise to shoppers, but it ended in a $200 million lawsuit. 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.