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Good morning. It's Friday, December 19th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, European leaders agree to fund Ukraine in its war against Russia. The dizzying pace of Trump's executive actions and a look at some of your favorite movies, music and shows of the year. But first, to the conclusion of a dramatic days long search for the person who officials say shot and killed two students at Brown University and injured nine others. Authorities in Providence, Rhode island announced last night that the man they believe carried out that shooting was found dead. Here's Providence Mayor Brett Smiley speaking at a press conference announcing the discovery. I know this has been hard on all of us. Over the past five days. Minutes have felt like hours. But the people of Providence have done what we're best at. We've leaned on one another, come together and supported one another and showed the nation what a tight knit community looks like. The suspect was Claudio neves Valente, a 48 year old Portuguese national and a former student at Brown. Valente's body was discovered in a storage unit in New Hampshire. The Providence police chief, Colonel Oscar Perez, said that Valente had taken his own life. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Narona said that Valente only became a focus in their investigation late Wednesday when they learned his identity. He added that in many cases a name is all you need. As soon as you have a name, I believe you can find anybody in this country and the fact that this team was able to do it in around 24 hours I think is a tribute to them. Narona was defending the earlier apprehension of another person of interest in the case who was eventually released. He and authorities detailed how Valente tried to evade capture by changing license plates and using credit cards not in his name. Providence residents in subsequent days of the shooting expressed frustration and anxiety over the pace of the investigation and the lack of a new suspect. Eventually, through a combination of a witness account, video evidence and finding a rental car that he had used, authorities were able to link Valente not only to the Brown shooting, but to another crime that happened earlier this week. MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro, also from Portugal, was killed in his home on Monday night. Yesterday, authorities said that Valente is believed to have committed both of the shootings. Here's leah Foley, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts.
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On December 13, Nieves Valente entered an auditorium on Brown University's campus during a study session and began shooting at students, killing Ella Cook and Mohammed Aziz Umer zokov and injuring nine others. Between December 13 and December 14, Nies Valente returned to Massachusetts. On December 15, he murdered MIT professor Nuno Luriero at Luriero's home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
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Foley at one point said she believed the gunman knew Larero, and the FBI says they believe the two may have attended the same university in Lisbon. There were not indications that Valente knew the students at Brown. More questions will likely emerge in the coming days, including more scrutiny over the length of the search and a motive for the killings, which police have yet to determine. You can find additional new details in the Apple News app. Now to the war in Ukraine. A Kremlin envoy is set to meet with American negotiators representing President Trump in Miami tomorrow. And as Trump expressed optimism about a potential end to the war, many leaders in Europe are worried about further Russian action, like Poland's Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who said this at an EU summit as leaders there debated the use of frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.
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Now we have a simple choice, either.
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Money today or blood tomorrow. And I am not talking about Ukraine only, I'm talking about Europe. Ultimately, they agreed early today to help fund Ukraine with a 90 billion euro loan coming from the EU budget. And this comes as European countries have taken on the bulk of the financial burden in supporting Ukraine after the US Pulled back its support. And as you heard there, many leaders now believe that Russia is a threat to the whole continent. Max Colchester is a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.
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Well, what's really shifted is since the Russian reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022, we've seen a hardening of the language used by European security and military officials. Before, it was very much that one should be aware that Russia posed a risk. Now it's slowly evolving towards, well, we as a European people need to be ready to potentially fight Russia.
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On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took aim at European leaders in an annual meeting with top military officials. He referred to these leaders as pigs and pledged to achieve his goals by diplomacy or force. Colchester told us that Russia has increasingly sought to intimidate and destabilize its neighbors, blurring where the lines of conflict were being drawn.
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So we're in this period of where we're between war and peace, we're seeing a huge number of attacks, sabotages on infrastructure across Europe, especially in Eastern Europe. We're seeing cyber attacks on water infrastructure. We've seen packages blowing up in DHL warehouses in Britain and elsewhere. So we're really in this era where Russia seems to be trying to sow confusion and cause panic and cause economic damage in Europe without actually engaging in a full blown war.
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Because of this, and following pressure by the Trump administration, European countries have boosted their defense spending, while some have started new military recruitment efforts. And the language has grown more combative. France's top general caused a stir when he said the country needed to prepare to lose some of its children in deterring Russia. And last weekend, Germany's chancellor compared Putin's actions to those of Hitler in 1938.
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I think it's just worth stating how much of a psychological shift this is for Europe. I mean, if we step back, the idea that we'd be having this conversation 10 years ago would have been mad. And I think it really demonstrates how the world is shifting beneath our very feet.
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But Colchester notes that European citizens might need more convincing. Not everyone is as concerned about Russia, and many see the country as a distant, abstract threat far from their borders. Right now, the continent faces major financial challenges with low growth and an aging population, so focusing more on defense could mean trade offs elsewhere.
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After the Cold War ended, it meant that Europe didn't need as big a military presence as it had previously. And so what we saw was defense spending was ramped down and spending on pensions and healthcare ramped up in its place. So life got a lot better as a result for many people. And having to now reverse those gains potentially is going to be a very difficult political sell and it's going to be a very difficult social reality for a lot of people who have benefited enormously from this so called peace dividend.
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Today, Putin will hold his year end press conference, an event you can expect every European leader to be watching closely. Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to expedite the reclassification of marijuana. The move is intended to increase research on the medical use of the drug. It was just the latest example of Trump increasingly using executive orders during his second term in office. According to a Washington Post analysis, the president has already signed more executive orders this year than he did in his entire first term.
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When President Donald Trump ran for office for the first time, he was very critical of then President Obama for using executive orders. On Monday, he signed his 221st executive order of his second term, which really shows how much he's evolved and changed in the last decade.
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That's the Washington Post's Emily Davies, who has been looking into where the administration has focused its orders. For decades, American presidents have used executive orders to enact their agendas, but Trump has increased the trend. Compared to his most recent predecessors, the orders have the force of law if they adhere to presidential powers that have been laid out in the Constitution or delegated by Congress. So while this has allowed Trump to circumvent Congress, many of the orders have faced judicial scrutiny. The Post estimates that a third have been challenged in court.
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And yet Trump continues signing executive orders. His staff continue to draft executive orders. It is seen as a successful tool that his administration is using. Despite the legal pushback, Trump has relied.
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On executive orders for a wide range of policies, from sweeping tariffs and seeking payback against his political enemies to challenging immigration laws and regulations on water pressure and showerheads. Trump has also signed orders that seek to ban transgender athletes from girls and women's sports, to remove regulatory barriers on AI and to make changes to the foster care system. They have been issued with such speed that one former Trump administration official told Davies that it actually becomes difficult to follow through on the orders.
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It's very hard for the Trump administration to implement each one of them with great care, especially given the slew of court challenges and all the attention that those cases now take.
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Sometimes, though, the orders can be a form of communication in and of themselves. Davey spoke to former Trump officials who said that executive orders were often more of a communication strategy than substantive, governing.
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More weeks than not. As a White House reporter, we're preparing for a potential executive order signing, and oftentimes those events open up to the press. So on a Wednesday, on a Monday, a group of reporters walk into the Oval Office, and Trump has set the stage based on whatever it is he's signing.
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How about gathering around me and we'll hold this up. Congratulations. That's an amazing job. Come on around, come on around. Let's take a good picture.
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He is a producer in many ways, and he really produces those events for the reporters and therefore for the world. And so these executive order ceremonies have turned into a real platform for him. First to get across whatever he is trying to do via the eo, and then it opens up for press questions. And, you know, it can become like the center of the day or the week.
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Even as Trump continues with this strategy, he is still some way behind FDR's record of around 300 executive orders a year. And finally, a few other stories we're following. The White House says the Kennedy center in Washington, D.C. will be renamed for President Trump. The Kennedy Center Board, which Trump chairs, voted unanimously to change the institution's name to Trump Kennedy Center. Trump earlier this year replaced the Kennedy Center's board with loyalists that he handpicked. Now, whether or not the name can actually change is a little bit up in the air, a Georgetown legal expert told ABC News. The center's name is enshrined in the law, so Trump may be able to rename parts of the building, but maybe not the entire facility. Despite the unanimous vote announcement, Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, who sits on the board, said that she was muted during the call when the vote took place. She and other lawmakers believe the move is illegal. Trump himself said that he was honored and surprised, but ABC notes that he's referenced it as the Trump Kennedy center several times before. The Trump administration says it is clamping down further on medical providers that offer transgender care for minors. If approved, the proposals would strip hospitals of funding for providing such care. The Department of Health and Human Services will also prohibit hospitals from administering puberty blockers, hormone therapy and the rare instances of surgery to minors if those institutions want to participate in Medicare and Medicaid. A pediatrician in St. Louis called the policies anti science during a press conference with the Human Rights Campaign. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the US Medicare and Medicaid administrator, said, quote, we're not going to let taxpayer money go to hurt these children. The new rules would also ban the use of the federally funded Children's Health insurance program, or CHIP, from being used for transgender care for people under 19. The proposed changes will now go through a public comment period before being fully adopted. And finally, we're approaching the end of the year and so we wanted to hear from you what some of your favorite movies, music and TV shows were from the past year. We asked our listeners to send us voice memos with their recommendations and you sent us a lot of great submissions. My name is Evan Curtis Mategian. I live in Chicago, Illinois. Top Music of the Year Album of the Year I would definitely say Lady Gaga's Mayhem. My name's Jennifer and I'm calling from East Bell, California.
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I was obsessed with Severance this year.
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My name is Thomas Billington. I'm from Durham, North Carolina, and I think the best movie of 2025 has to be Sinners. I do, too. That movie absolutely rocks. You're going to hear more listener recommendations on this week's episode of Apple News. In Conversation. Shamita also asked the culture critic Sam Sanders, the host of the Sam Sanders show for Casey Trw and Anne Helen Peterson, creator of the podcast and newsletter Culture Study, to talk about their standout releases of the year, whether or not they actually agree that was the number one song in the country for weeks. Yeah, this song is bad. It's bad if you're already listening to the News app right now. We've got that episode queued up to play for you next. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News in conversation to find it. Enjoy the weekend and I'll be back with the news on Monday. Sam.