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- [00:05]
Gideon Resnick
Good morning. As Trump continues a campaign to oust Republicans who crossed him, a new poll found some worrying signs for the president's approval rating.
- [00:13]
Amy Walter
It is lower than where Donald Trump was going into 2018. The real question, of course, is will he still be this low months from now?
- [00:22]
Gideon Resnick
What health officials are saying about a developing Ebola outbreak and how Elon Musk lost a court case against his rival at OpenAI. It's Tuesday, May 19th. I'm Gideon Resnick. This is Apple News today. Today, another Republican that President Trump is hoping to defeat faces voters. Thomas Massie has been the representative for Kentucky's 4th congressional district since 2012. He became a Trump antagonist in Trump's first term and further angered the president this term by pushing for the release of government records on Jeffrey Epstein and criticizing the administration's handling of the war in Iran. The president has made clear his desire to oust Massie, helping to recruit his primary opponent, Ed Galrain, a former Navy seal. Trump even went to Massie's district in March and leveled some harsh criticism against him. Massie's a complete and total disaster as a congressman and frankly, as a human being. And just yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth campaigned for Massie's opponent. It was an unusual move, as defense secretaries have traditionally steered clear of political events. The president has lately been very successful in ousting fellow Republicans who have crossed him, showing that he still has strong sway with GOP voters. At the same time, though, Trump's job approval rating with voters overall has declined, according to recent public opinion surveys. A New York Times Siena poll published yesterday, for example, found the president with a record low approval rating for this term so far. Yesterday, I spoke with Amy Walter, the editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, to get a sense of what these numbers mean and how voters might be responding.
- [02:00]
Amy Walter
The president, at 37%, is in territory where he just really hasn't been traditionally. We've thought for a long time that there is a core group of Republican voters or Trump supporting voters may be a better way of saying this, that held him up above 40%. What's happened, and I think Iran is a big reason for this, is that those voters now, maybe they voted for Trump last time, maybe they are not as invested in Donald Trump, but they also give him benefit of the doubt. Those voters seem to be now questioning whether that was a good way of looking at Donald Trump. And to me, the number that I come to that is really the most dramatic is the fact that the president's approval rating among independent voters so Voters who don't identify with either party is only 26%. That is devastating. And at the same time, 82% of Republicans still think he's doing a pretty good job. And that is really the reality of our political moment.
- [03:18]
Gideon Resnick
Yeah. And what does it mean in terms of possible political ramifications for those two numbers to be so.
- [03:27]
Amy Walter
So different?
- [03:28]
Gideon Resnick
So different. Yeah.
- [03:29]
Amy Walter
Yeah. So what this says to me is, if you are up for reelection this year as a Republican in a district where you need to win over independent voters. Right. Or you need to not get crushed with independent voters, this is a devastating number for the president to have only 26% approval among those independent voters. If your district is overwhelmingly Republican, in other words, districts where, say, Donald Trump won by 15 points or more, the fact that he still has an 82% approval rating among Republicans says, well, they haven't abandoned him yet. They still are sticking with him. And as such, I'm sticking with him, too.
- [04:17]
Gideon Resnick
Yeah. And that appears to be driving different political calculations as well. We saw over the weekend incumbent Senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary in Louisiana. There's another primary today where Representative Thomas Massie is facing a similar challenge. So how is all of that playing out across the country in terms of intraparty politics?
- [04:36]
Amy Walter
Right. The one thing we know about politics on the Republican side at this moment is that it is very hard to win a Republican primary without Donald Trump's support, either because he has endorsed against you or when he doesn't endorse at all. Maybe a better way to say this is if you want to win a Republican primary, you either need to get Trump's endorsement or you need to make sure not to get Trump to endorse against you.
- [05:08]
Gideon Resnick
And for this Massie race specifically, what is it about? What are the issues that are animating it so far?
- [05:17]
Amy Walter
I think the issue that's animating it at its core is the fact that Thomas Massie is a sort of lone wolf in many ways, that he is willing to go against leadership and the president voting on and agitating on issues that upset both the Republican leadership and the president. Obviously, the Epstein files being at the center of that frustration, but fundamentally, I think it is about President Trump wanting to make clear to his members of his party that it does not do them any good to try to stand alone or to stand away from him. In a district like this one, which is heavily, heavily Republican, the political cost in terms of the vulnerability of this district in the fall is not a factor. Same with Louisiana. Louisiana is an overwhelmingly Republican state. The winner of that runoff election will end up almost certainly winning in November. What it does, though, is it makes it very clear to voters that the party is the party of Donald Trump.
- [06:34]
Gideon Resnick
Polls close at 6pm local time in Kentucky today. You can find more coverage of this primary and others in the Apple News Appreciate the Democratic Republic of Congo will open three Ebola treatment centers as the World Health Organization responds to an outbreak of the rare disease that so far has killed over 100 people. On Monday, an American physician was among the newly confirmed cases in the drc. To prevent cases from coming into the United States, the Trump administration imposed an entry ban on foreign travelers who have been to the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in the last 21 days. The travel order was issued by the CDC and doesn't apply to American citizens, green card holders or American service members. It will stay in effect for 30 days. Ebola's incubation period can last up to 21 days.
- [07:29]
Helen Branswell
The way it transmits from person to person is largely through contact with bodily fluids from an infected person.
- [07:37]
Gideon Resnick
Helen Branswell is an infectious diseases correspondent for stat.
- [07:40]
Helen Branswell
This particular outbreak, the virus that's behind it, is called Bundabugio. It causes people to become really severely ill over time. They hemorrhage internally. They can bleed visibly as well.
- [07:57]
Gideon Resnick
Ebola is deadly in about 50% of cases on average. This particular strain of Ebola virus has a lower fatality rate than other strains, which has made it historically less of a concern. But controlling the outbreak remains an issue as there is no approved vaccine for this strain. The World Health Organization declared the current outbreak a public health emergency over the weekend. The first known case dates back to at least April 24, indicating that the outbreak has been developing for some time before it was formally identified. While the DRC is familiar with dealing with Ebola, the location of this outbreak poses a threat to neighboring countries.
- [08:34]
Helen Branswell
It's the part of DRC that borders Uganda, also borders South Sudan, and it's not that far from Rwanda as well. And the population in this part of DRC is very mobile. There's lots of cross border transit and as a consequence there can be cross border spread of the virus. That's already happened in this outbreak.
- [08:58]
Gideon Resnick
Branswell told us that while the latest outbreak is the fourth largest on record, it's nowhere near the 2014-2016 outbreak that included more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths. The CDC and State Department did not respond to STAT's requests for comment, but SAT did find that the US government has been talking to healthcare facilities that can quarantine Americans who do have high risk Ebola exposures. But one of those facilities is one we highlighted on the show recently in Nebraska, currently housing patients exposed to a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship.
- [09:30]
Helen Branswell
There are multiple facilities across the country that have capacity to handle a few people under these circumstances, but the number of spaces are limited and that is going to possibly have an impact on what the plan will be for these Americans in drc.
- [09:49]
Gideon Resnick
Earlier this year, the Trump administration withdrew from the World Health organization, and the U.S. agency for International Development has played a major role in containing Ebola outbreaks in the past. A State Department spokesperson told NBC News that cuts to USAID would not impact the US Response to this outbreak. A jury on Monday rejected Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, notching a win for his rival Sam Altman and bringing a tense chapter that involved several high profile leaders in the tech world to a close. For now, at least, deliberations took around two hours. Musk sued Altman and the company co founder Greg Brockman in 2024. That came years after Musk had left the board of OpenAI, citing concerns about a pivot to a for profit model.
- [10:43]
Elizabeth Lopato
According to Musk, he said that basically that he felt that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and effectively OpenAI, the for profit, had stolen a charity.
- [10:56]
Gideon Resnick
Elizabeth Lopato is a reporter with the Verge and covered the trial.
- [11:00]
Elizabeth Lopato
So in the end, the specific thing that he was arguing was that there was a breach of charitable trust, which meant that he had created a trust by making a donation with certain specific strings attached to it and that money had been used for something other than its purpose.
- [11:16]
Gideon Resnick
The jury that heard the case in Oakland said that Musk brought the lawsuit after the statute of limitations had expired, but that means that the case didn't directly settle Musk's claims. In a social media post yesterday, he referenced that, saying that the decision was made based on a quote calendar technicality. One of his attorneys said that he would appeal. Musk had sought to collect more than $100 billion in damages, which he said he wanted to go to OpenAI's nonprofit foundation. And he also sought the removal of Altman and Brockman from their leadership positions. Lopato told us the origins of the dispute go back to when OpenAI realized they needed more money to achieve the type of growth the company was after.
- [11:56]
Elizabeth Lopato
And so they begin discussing with Musk the possibility of creating a for profit company. And also to be clear, there are emails from before this where Musk is suggesting that he should have made it a for profit company from the beginning.
- [12:11]
Gideon Resnick
Emails and texts revealed from as far back as 2017 showed Musk knew about and was even supportive of a for profit conversion. The for profit arm of OpenAI is still governed by the nonprofit entity known as the OpenAI Foundation. Lopato says Altman, for his part, despite winning the case, did not come out unscathed.
- [12:31]
Elizabeth Lopato
This trial sort of really over and over again emphasized that a lot of people don't trust Sam Altman. And there were several people under oath who said that they felt lied to by Sam Altman. And this has been sort of a recurring narrative around Altman for quite some time that he's not totally honest, he's a little bit shady, he's kind of a snake. Having that reinforced as OpenAI is considering an IPO because there have been rumors that they may go public as soon as this year, that's not great for the company.
- [13:01]
Gideon Resnick
How much the case will actually affect OpenAI is still an open question. But Lopato told us winning the trial may not have been the point at all for Musk, who himself will take his own AI company, Xai, public very soon.
- [13:14]
Elizabeth Lopato
OpenAI is one of the companies that really is solidified as being on the cutting edge of AI, rightly or wrongly, is really embedded in people's conception of what AI is and like what the future is going to look like. And all of those things in a way that XAI is so undercutting Altman, undercutting OpenAI, kneecapping a rival, and like potentially releasing a bunch of really embarrassing dirty laundry, I think were the actual
- [13:42]
Amy Walter
goals of this trial.
- [13:51]
Gideon Resnick
And finally, here are a few other stories we're following. Local and federal officials are investigating a shooting that took place at San Diego's largest mosque. Here is San Diego Police Chief Scott Wall at a press conference Monday afternoon. So we have our two suspects that are deceased. We have three victims at the Islamic Center. All three are adults, for a total of five people that are deceased because of the Islamic center location. We are considering this a hate crime until it's not. Wall also said that students who attend school at the center as well were safe. One of the victims was a security guard who authorities say played a vital role in preventing more deaths. Police said the two suspects were found dead in a car nearby. The center's director said that people from all walks of life come there to pray, celebrate and to learn. The Trump administration announced the creation of a fund to compensate allies who believe they were mistreated by the Biden administration's DOJ. The $1.7 billion fund is part of a settlement that resolves the president's lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. It would allow for people who think they were the subject of political prosecution to apply for financial payouts. In a move that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called a, quote, lawful process for victims, Democrats and government watchdogs have called the arrangement corrupt and unconstitutional. Blanche may very well face more questions about it during testimony on the Hill today about the DoJ's budget and what happens to the jets of an airline that no longer exists. The Wall Street Journal has the unusual story of the repo men sent out to retrieve dozens of bright yellow planes that were once owned by the now defunct Spirit Airlines. One of the men tasked with this job said that his company was contacted even as some of the final Spirit flights were still in the air. That's because aircraft leasing firms that loaned Spirit the jets were getting antsy as the company's finances were teetering. Pilots formed a WhatsApp group, then fanned out across the country to pick up a number of these jets. The Journal says that each repossession can take hours, and the whole process involves regulators, airport officials and lawyers. Many of the jets are now parked in the Arizona desert, a climate that keeps the planes from rusting while the owners decide what to do with them. It's not a job that the repo company relishes, and it's one that the owner acknowledged is bizarre as they fly around in these jets in jeans and T shirts. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening to the News app right now, we have a narrated article coming up. Next time reports on former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who died of lung cancer in 2024 despite not being a smoker, and why her family is still trying to find answers years later. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News plus narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.