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- [00:05]
Shemitah Basu
Good morning. It's Thursday, May 22nd. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, the COVID vaccine will soon be available to fewer people. What Biden's closest aides knew about his declining mental acuity in office. And Trump derails his meeting with South Africa's president with false claims and a surprise screening. Foreign but first, two staff members of the Israeli embassy were shot and killed outside an event at the Capitol Jewish museum in Washington D.C. last night. The man and woman, a young couple, had been attending a reception for young diplomats. In a statement to the press after the incident, D.C. police Chief Pamela Smith said a suspect is now in custody and identified him as 30 year old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago.
- [01:00]
Pamela Smith
Prior to the shooting, the suspect was observed pacing back and forth outside of the museum. He approached a group of four people, produced a handgun and opened fire, striking both of our decedents. After the shooting, the suspect then entered the museum and was detained by event security. The suspect chanted Free Free Palestine while in custody.
- [01:25]
Shemitah Basu
Former Israeli Ambassador to the U. S Michael Herzog told the Israeli army radio that the woman killed was an and the man was Israeli. The current Israeli Ambassador to the U. S Yechiel Leiter told journalists the couple was about to be engaged.
- [01:41]
Michael Herzog
The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. I will say this, we are a resilient people. Together we won't be afraid. Together we'll stand and we're going to overcome moral depravity of people who think that they're going to achieve political gains through murder.
- [02:06]
Shemitah Basu
On social media, Trump called for an end to antisemitism, writing that, quote, hatred and radicalism have no place in the usa. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released a statement saying he is outraged by the killings. D.C. embassies in particular have been a focal point for demonstrations against the war in Gaza where over 53,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last 19 months. Israel is in the midst of its latest offensive and Netanyahu said this week that his goal is to take full control of Gaza and force Palestinians out. Also this week, after widespread international condemnation, Netanyahu allowed a minimal amount of aid into Gaza after an 11 week blockade. Around 100 trucks carrying flour, baby food and nutritional supplements entered the enclave late Wednesday. But U.N. officials say as of this morning because of distribution issues, none of that aid has so far reached Palestinians in need. We learned this week that the group of people eligible to get A Covid shot is set to be restricted. After the Food and Drug Administration issued new guidance, the FDA said it would no longer approve new vaccines for healthy people under 65 years old unless pharmacy companies run additional trials to test their safety and benefits. Right now, anyone can get a booster. Under the new restrictions, boosters would be available to those who have a medical condition that elevates the risk of severe disease, such as obesity, pregnancy or a history of smoking. The head of the FDA's vaccine program, Dr. Vinayak Prasad, stressed that higher risk people would see no changes to accessing Covid shots at risk.
- [03:59]
Pamela Smith
Americans can be reassured that they will be covered by such approvals. At the same time, we want more evidence at the US Food and Drug Administration. We want to know more about what these products are doing, especially as we enter the seventh, eighth and ninth dose. We have launched down this multi year campaign of booster after booster after booster and we do not have gold standard science to support this for average risk, low risk Americans.
- [04:23]
Shemitah Basu
Last year, just 23% of adults had a booster shot, with many of those in the over 65s bracket, which the FDA says will remain eligible. This is a major shift in policy, but it's hard to know if it'll make a dramatic effect to infection rates overall. It's also not entirely unusual by global standards. Some countries in Europe restrict free boosters or at least limit their official recommendations to those vulnerable to severe illness. But even there, it's usually possible for healthy younger people to choose to get a shot and pay out of pocket if they want to. Usha Lee McFarling, a national reporter with STAT, told us that's been the gist of the criticism of this move.
- [05:06]
Usha Lee McFarling
A lot of people really just want choice. They say, well, don't take away my choice to have the vaccine. Maybe I live with my grandmother who has cancer and I want to get it to protect her.
- [05:15]
Shemitah Basu
She notes that the announcement has left some physicians confused as to who might be eligible this fall and what it means for people hoping to continue getting boosters and wondering when clinical trials will make that approval possible.
- [05:28]
Usha Lee McFarling
The problem is that these trials take a long time, months, and can be quite expensive. Vaccines are not very profitable, certainly not compared to drugs like Ozempic, for example. So one concern is that vaccine manufacturers just may say, well, it's just not worth it.
- [05:44]
Shemitah Basu
ABC News reports that it's traditionally the CDC that sets these kinds of recommendations, while the FDA determines which vaccines to approve, making this a departure from precedent. It's another indication of the ways our public health apparatus is changing under the current administration. Meanwhile, NPR reports that many of the ways the CDC previously distributed health and outbreak alerts like newsletters, have gone silent. The agency's main social media channels are now run by the Department of Health and Human Services. Cases of measles, salmonella, listeria and hepatitis A and C have continued to rise. All this comes as the World Health Organization celebrated a new pandemic treaty, the first global agreement for how to respond to future pandemics. It included a series of measures aimed at improving collaboration, preparedness and research. The US did not participate, as President Trump has begun the process of withdrawing from the WHO. And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has urged nations to reject, as he put it, the moribund who. The US Was once the who's biggest donor, a title that China now holds. President Biden's health is back in focus this week after we learned just a few days ago that he's been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. But even before this news, his health, specifically his cognitive health, was a topic of debate and speculation. A turning point in this conversation came nearly a year ago when he and now President Trump met for their first and only debate of the 2024 campaign. Many Americans tuning in were shocked by what they saw.
- [07:40]
Michael Herzog
Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the, with the COVID excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare.
- [08:00]
Shemitah Basu
At that point, the questions about Biden's ability to serve another term were impossible to ignore. But new reporting from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios's Alex Thompson reveals that people in Biden's inner circle knew about his cognitive decline for years and that they actively concealed it from others in the administration, from elected officials and from the American people. Here's Thompson.
- [08:25]
Jake Tapper
We had Cabinet secretaries, multiple Cabinet secretaries tell us that, you know, if there was a crisis at 2am they would have been worried. They did not have confidence that he would have been a reliable commander in chief. With the middle of the night crisis.
- [08:43]
Shemitah Basu
Thompson and Tapper lay out their reporting in a new book called Original President Biden's Decline, Its Cover up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. They're my guests this week on Apple News in conversation. And just to say, we spoke a few days before Biden's cancer diagnosis was announced. So you won't hear us discuss that in this interview. They told me Biden and his closest confidants didn't seem to be concerned by his disastrous debate performance or the fallout. In fact, they kept him largely isolated from outside opinions about the state of his campaign. Here's Tapper.
- [09:19]
Jake Tapper
The outside pollsters, Murphy, Guerin and Pollock never talked to Biden. They were never allowed to speak with him. And, you know, they'd been having concerns about his age and the impact of his age on his candidacy for months, but they never got to talk to him. And finally, Chuck Schumer is able to confront Joe Biden and say, I've talked to your pollsters. Have you? They think you only have a 5% chance of winning. He's the only one that we can find that actually said to Biden, if I were you, I would drop out. He's the only one we can find saying that.
- [09:53]
Shemitah Basu
Eight days after that conversation, Biden announced he would step down. In response to the reporting in this book and elsewhere about his health, the former president has said that claims about his cognitive health declining during his presidency are wrong and that there is nothing to sustain them. To hear the rest of my conversation with Tapper and Thompson, stick around after today's show. That episode will play for you next. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. The House has voted to approve legislation to fund President Trump's tax and immigration agenda, sending the bill to the Senate. The bill would extend trillions of dollars in tax cuts from Trump's first term, along with hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending, while slashing spending on social safety net programs by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The final vote came in the early hours of this morning, wrapping up a marathon 24 plus hour session. The bill is expected to undergo major revisions in the Senate. Meanwhile, yesterday in the Oval Office, President Trump hosted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. But their meeting descended into serious diplomatic discomfort as Trump raised false claims of a white genocide taking place in South Africa. As Ramaphosa suggested that Trump listened to the voices of his country, Trump ordered the lights dimmed and played a video mashup that included grave crossings along a road which Trump claimed were farmers graves. A fact check from multiple news outlets points out that the mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence against farmers, not actual graves. And when they kill the white farmer.
- [11:44]
Jake Tapper
Nothing happens to them?
- [11:45]
Shemitah Basu
No, there is quite nothing happens to them. There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity are not only white people. Majority of them are black people. Police statistics in the country show that white South Africans are not killed at a higher rate than other South Africans. Trump's false claims largely focused on land seizures. The South African government has passed a law that allows the government to take land without compensation, which is aimed at addressing historical inequalities for land ownership that resulted from apartheid. Before the meeting concluded, Ramaphosa alluded to the controversial Qatari jet I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you. I wish you did.
- [12:32]
Michael Herzog
I take it.
- [12:33]
Shemitah Basu
I would take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane I would take. Speaking of that jet, the Defense Department has officially accepted a luxury Boeing jet from Qatar to temporarily serve as Air Force One for President Trump. It's believed to be one of the biggest foreign gifts ever given to the US Government, and it's raised bipartisan security and ethical concerns. A Pentagon spokesman said that the administration was abiding by federal rules and regulations and that they would ensure proper security measures were taken. The emoluments clause of the Constitution forbids the president from receiving gifts from foreign kings and states without the consent of Congress. Some ethics experts have said that Congress needs to more strictly enforce this clause to prevent things like this from happening. You can find all those stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. The rest of my conversation with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about former President Biden's mental acuity is coming up next. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can find that episode by searching for Apple News in Conversation, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.