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- [00:05]
Cecilia Ley
Good morning. Trump hails a breakthrough in negotiations to end the war. But there's not much detail and a lot of questions. Reuters takes us through it.
- [00:14]
Humeira Pamuk
Really, whether or not we're making any progress on the diplomatic side has a lot to do with when the United States wants to stop and how it will be able to do that.
- [00:24]
Cecilia Ley
Voice of America journalists accused the administration of interfering with their coverage and why more Americans are building new lives elsewhere.
- [00:32]
Drew Hinshaw
You can do a lot of jobs from just about anywhere and people are realizing, hey, I can afford a life across the Atlantic that I can't afford
- [00:41]
Cecilia Ley
anymore in the U.S. it's Wednesday, March 25th. I'm Cecilia Ley and this is Apple News.
- [00:47]
Humeira Pamuk
Today,
- [00:52]
Cecilia Ley
Signals from the White House about an end to the war in Iran have decisively shifted in recent days. President Trump has moved from saying this
- [01:00]
Donald Trump
last Friday to I don't want to do a ceasefire. You know, you don't do a ceasefire when you're literally obliterating the other side
- [01:08]
Cecilia Ley
to saying this yesterday.
- [01:10]
Donald Trump
We're in negotiations right now. They're doing it along with Marco. J.D. we have a number of people doing it. And the other side, I can tell you, they'd like to make a deal.
- [01:21]
Cecilia Ley
It's been a whirlwind of claims, counterclaims and apparent diplomatic activity over the past 48 hours. Yesterday, Trump said that talks with Iran are ongoing and that the US And Tehran have, quote, major points of agreement. He told reporters that he received a, quote, very significant prize from Iran, but didn't offer many details except that it was oil and gas related. Multiple outlets also reported that the administration has sent a 15 point plan to Tehran to end the war. The Wall Street Journal says it calls on Iran to dismantle its main nuclear sites, end enrichment of uranium and suspend its ballistic missile work. And of course, Iran. Iran would need to open the Strait of Hormuz. In return, the US Would lift some sanctions and assist a civilian nuclear program. Trump said yesterday that Iran badly wants a deal. But as the Guardian notes, these plans sound very similar to ones rejected a year ago. Adding to the confusion, Iran has denied Trump's claims of diplomatic talks as fake news. As Reuters Humeira Pamuk told us, reporters have been trying to figure out if discussions were even happening and if so, how. One country, seen as a neutral player with strong links to both sides, has emerged as a possible peace broker.
- [02:39]
Humeira Pamuk
Everybody scrambled to find out with who, through whom, who's involved. And that's when Pakistan's name started appearing in the mix. As one of the potential mediators Right.
- [02:50]
Cecilia Ley
Pakistan's prime minister said on X his country stands ready to host face to face talks between the two sides, a post Trump shared on his social media.
- [02:59]
Humeira Pamuk
And we know that President Trump is a leader that operates very much based on his personal relations, and we understand that he's got an affinity for the army chief. There is a chance that some senior U.S. officials may pop up there in the coming days and we might see a round of talks.
- [03:20]
Cecilia Ley
Pamuk told us that a key question for potential talks is how close US And Israeli objectives align. Trump has retreated from his original goal of regime change in Iran, suggesting that remaining Iranian representatives were behaving differently than their predecessors.
- [03:36]
Humeira Pamuk
The United States now is talking about some military objectives. Right. They're saying we've destroyed their navy. We have. Ballistic missile attacks are 90% down. But nobody is anymore talking about regime change here. But we're pretty sure that the Israelis would still want that.
- [03:55]
Cecilia Ley
Pamuk said that ultimately it'll come down to when the US Decides it wants to stop the war. There are conflicting signals on that, too. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon ordered a couple thousand of army paratroopers to the Middle east, and there were more attacks from both sides. Iran said a projectile landed near one of its nuclear power plants and plumes of smoke rose over buildings in Tehran yesterday after Israeli strikes. Meanwhile, Iran fired missiles into Israel. And there were more drone attacks on Gulf neighbors, including Kuwait's airport. The US government founded the Voice of America during World War II with the goal of delivering news to people living under Nazi rule.
- [04:44]
Voice of America Announcer
Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth later.
- [04:54]
Cecilia Ley
During the Cold War, it was seen as a way to advance American values as a soft power tool. But Trump has long accused the broadcasting Service, which reached more than 360 million people globally a week, of doing the opposite. He said it spread anti American news propaganda. In his second term, he appointed former TV anchor Carrie Lake to a senior advisor role without any Senate confirmation. Then she immediately began major cutbacks. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflick told us about it.
- [05:26]
David Folkenflik
You've seen Carrie Lake kind of go between trying to eviscerate it and just take it out completely, which she has tried to do unsuccessfully, but really did pare it back from about 49 language services to about six.
- [05:38]
Cecilia Ley
Last year, Lake fired VOA's contractors and put more than 1,000 people on paid administrative leave. But now her effort has been undone. Recently, a federal judge ruled that Lake had been illegally running the agency responsible
- [05:51]
David Folkenflik
for voa, federal Judge Royce Lamberth said last week. This is unlawful. This is illegal. You can't exercise the powers of a presidential appointee without having been appointed to it or without having been eligible to be named to hold that job in title, even on an acting basis.
- [06:10]
Cecilia Ley
And there's another case to come. A suit filed by VOA staffers on Monday claims that Lake did the very thing Trump criticized VOA for spreading biased news.
- [06:20]
David Folkenflik
There is a fresh lawsuit that is accusing her of essentially putting on pro Trump propaganda as opposed to news reports. The idea that there's effectively news releases being put on their news websites instead of reported pieces that incorporate different points of view, debate, dissent, critique, whatever, none of that is happening, they are saying.
- [06:40]
Cecilia Ley
The suit also alleges that VOA reporters were censored from reporting support for the son of the late shah during Iranian anti government protests in January and last month, VOA staffers told NPR that the outlet's Persian broadcasts parroted the Trump administration's language about the war. The VOA has faced criticism during past administrations as well, and some question its very existence, saying the government shouldn't be in the business of funding news media. But until recently, federally funded international media had broad bipartisan support. Back in the 1950s, it was a young Ronald Reagan who joined a campaign urging the public to spend its, quote, truth dollars to support VOA's sister network, Radio Free Europe.
- [07:26]
Mike Abramowicz
This station daily pierces the Iron Curtain with the truth, answering the lies of the Kremlin and bringing a message of hope to millions trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
- [07:36]
Cecilia Ley
But times have changed. The Republicans under Trump have become much more outwardly critical about the value of this kind of soft power and generally of established media. Speaking to PBS last year, the VOA's director, Mike Abramowicz, defended his reporter's journalism and said VOA was still needed.
- [07:54]
Mike Abramowicz
Today, the Cold War doesn't exist anymore, but what is happening around the world is that there is a huge really battle over information. The world is awash in propaganda and lies that directly undermine accurate views about America. EOA in particular has been an incredible asset for fighting back by providing objective news and information.
- [08:15]
Cecilia Ley
But Folkenflake told us that doesn't really fit with the foreign policy strategy of the current administration.
- [08:22]
David Folkenflik
Voice of America represents soft power. It's you spend some money, you earn goodwill, and you reflect American values of pluralistic democracy abroad. And you've seen whether it's through State Department being slashed, whether it's through other kinds of things that have built up sort of an aura of goodwill around American democratic values. The President seems intent on exercising hard power on the idea of threats, on the idea of takeovers, on the idea of bombing Iran. Whether or not you agree with those individual policies, I think you can see there's a consistency to what he's done in that regard.
- [08:50]
Cecilia Ley
Following the federal judge's ruling on Lake from earlier this month, dozens of VOA journalists are scheduled to return to work in the coming days. The Trump administration indicated it would appeal and cited the cutbacks were a part of its effort to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. The 250 year history of the United States has been shaped in large part by immigration. People crossing oceans and borders to make new lives here. Then last year, something different started happening.
- [09:28]
Drew Hinshaw
It was really the first year since 1935 when more people moved out than moved in.
- [09:34]
Cecilia Ley
Drew Hinshaw is a senior reporter with the Wall Street Journal. He and his colleagues pulled together immigration statistics from dozens of countries and analyzed this remarkable trend. It wasn't the easiest task. For years, the US hasn't comprehensively tallied who leaves the country. The record numbers of departures can be partly attributed to Trump's immigration policy.
- [09:56]
Drew Hinshaw
A big part of that was deportation. 600,000 people deported. Another 2 million foreign residents of the US decided to leave.
- [10:05]
Cecilia Ley
A White House spokesperson told the Journal the US Economy was outpacing other developed nations and that while deportations are increasing, the country was also attracting high net worth foreigners. Beneath the surface, though, there's a more interesting and longer term trend happening here that predates the start of Trump's second term in office. Remote work, mounting living costs, and the notion that a more accessible life awaits elsewhere. Americans have left for places like Bali, Colombia, Thailand and Mexico, but they've been particularly drawn to Europe.
- [10:39]
Drew Hinshaw
We heard the same things over and over again. People realized that they could just live much nicer on an American salary. Overseas, they could afford housing and health care and education that increasingly felt out of reach in the US they left because they liked walkable cities and cobblestone old capitals.
- [10:56]
Cecilia Ley
In Europe, some of the numbers are striking. In the past 10 years, the number of Americans in Spain and the Netherlands has more than doubled. And in Portugal, the total number of Americans living there since the pandemic has gone up by 500%.
- [11:11]
Drew Hinshaw
Last year, more Americans moved to Germany than Germans moved to America for the first time in years. The same was true in Ireland. In Norway, there are now more Americans living in Norway than Norwegians living in America. That's a really symbolic milestone these moves
- [11:28]
Cecilia Ley
don't appear short lived. The Journal reports that the number of requests to renounce citizenship in order to get a foreign passport or to avoid taxation abroad has jumped, and applications for British and Irish citizenship have been increasing too, over the last few years. These moves have not always been welcomed. Countries like Spain have pushed back on so called digital nomads, and outside of Europe there have been some protests against gentrification caused by American salaries, the Journal says. For the US the trend has presented a bit of an existential question. Are these moves a credit to the US economy in the sense that salaries afford a nice life overseas, or is this indicative of some deeper loss of faith in life here?
- [12:13]
Drew Hinshaw
This is, after all, a country of immigration that has historically brought in more people than it sends out year after year after year for centuries. And yet here in our 250th year, we are seeing something that's really not like the US and the reasons for that are complicated. They're not simple to reduce to a handy kind of political point. But it's definitely unusual. And it's changing cities and countries that are on the receiving end of this really interesting wave of American immigrants.
- [12:42]
Cecilia Ley
During the 2008 financial crisis, Gallup asked Americans if they wanted to leave the US and 1 in 10 said yes. Last year that number was 1 in. And finally, a few other stories we're following. In a landmark ruling yesterday, a New Mexico court has ordered Meta to pay out nearly $375 million for misleading users over the safety of its platforms for children. It marks as one of the company's first major defeats in court for child safety issues. The state's attorney general accused the company of having lax safety protocols on its platforms which allowed sexual predators to minors, and the jury agreed. During the seven week trial, jurors had access to internal documents and one former engineer testified to various experiments he ran on Meta's Instagram that showed underage users were served sexualized content. Meta said it would appeal the ruling and that they worked hard to keep people safe on their platforms. Yesterday, Minnesota sued the Trump administration to gain access to investigation materials on the two fatal ICE shootings that took place earlier this year allege the administration's top law enforcement agencies have been stonewalling them and withholding evidence over the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Preddy. The state is also seeking information from a third case involving a non fatal shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant named Julio Sosa Salis, who was shot in the leg by a federal officer, and Mar? A Lago is turning blue Last night, Democrat Emily Gregory won a special state House election in a Palm beach district which includes Trump's Florida. It was Gregory's first time running for office against Republican John Maples, a former council member who first received Trump's complete and total endorsement in January. Trump voted via mail in ballot, a method he has often criticized.
- [14:47]
David Folkenflik
Mar?
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Cecilia Ley
A Lago will now be represented by a trio of Democrats across the Florida state House, Senate and House of Representatives. Gregory told CNN she avoided making Trump a central focus of her campaign, but was there to serve everyone, including her highest profile constituen.
- [15:04]
Emily Gregory
I would be happy to have a conversation and you know all 180,000 residents of District 87 are my priority if I'm so lucky to serve. So I will put them all with equal weight.
- [15:17]
Cecilia Ley
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. Wired has a story of two brothers whose crypto company bought 500 residential buildings in Detroit. They promised investors a high rate of return. Then the homes started to fall apart. 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.