← The Headlines
The Headlines
Trump’s Retribution Campaign Hits a Major Roadblock, and Health Care Costs Set to Surge
00:10:16
Plus, what a social media break can do for your brain.
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Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
This podcast is supported by USA for unhcr, the UN Refugee agency. Every day, families fleeing war and persecution arrive in overcrowded camps with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Your donation helps them not only survive, but rebuild their lives. $15 provides a kitchen set. $95 delivers warm winter clothes. $149 provides blankets, sleeping mats and insulation. Donate@unrefugees.org Headlines.
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Tracy Mumford
From the new York Times it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, November 25th. Here's what we're covering.
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James Comey
I'm grateful that the court ended the case against me, which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence.
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Tracy Mumford
Yesterday, a federal judge threw out the criminal charges against James Comey, the former director of the FBI, and and Letitia James, the attorney general for New York.
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James Comey
This case mattered to me personally, obviously. But it matters most because a message has to be sent that the president of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.
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Tracy Mumford
The rulings were the most significant setback yet to President Trump's efforts to punish his perceived political enemies. Both Comey and James have clashed with Trump for years. Comey was charged with lying to Congress, and James was charged with bank fraud after Trump called them both guilty as hell. The dismissal of their cases yesterday hinged on the technical details of how they were charged. Trump had his former personal lawyer, Lindsay Halligan, installed as a U.S. attorney to oversee the cases after other prosecutors declined to press charges. But US Attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate. There's an option to put someone in place on an interim basis without confirmation, but you can only do that once, and Halligan was the second interim U.S. attorney in a row in that job. The judge said that because Halligan's appointment was unlawful, the indictments she brought were invalid. On today's episode of the Daily, my colleague Devlin Barrett explains why the judge felt Halligan's appointment posed a threat to the entire criminal justice system.
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Devlin Barrett
What the judge said was this. It would mean the government could send any private citizen off the street into the grand jury room to secure an indictment, so long as the attorney general gives her approval after the fact that that cannot be the law, the judge wrote. And what she means by that is if you were to allow this system to continue to the obvious conclusion, you really wouldn't have any more Senate confirmed U.S. attorneys. It would just be the president picks whoever they want, whenever they want, and they just keep doing that.
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Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Is the president more determined now since the judge's ruling today to go after James Comey and tis James, and if so, why?
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White House Official
I wouldn't say he's going after the them. I think the president is more determined than ever to see accountability in this country. Yes, and to correct the wrongs of the weaponization of our justice system that we saw under the previous administration and Joe Biden.
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Tracy Mumford
Shortly after the rulings, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said that the Justice Department would appeal, potentially putting the cases on track for a hearing at the Supreme Court. At the same time, lawyers for Comey are expected to argue that the charges against him can't ever be refiled since he was indicted just days before the statute of limitations in his case was set to run out. Now two other updates on the Trump administration. In an unusual move, China's leader Xi Jinping called President Trump yesterday and the two talked for about an hour.
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White House Official
The focus was mainly on the trade deal that we are working on with China and those relations and how they are moving in a positive direction, the White House said.
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Tracy Mumford
They talked trade. The months of tit for tat tariffs and restrictions between the two has pushed American farmers into crisis mode since China stopped buying soybeans. Previously, for example, it had bought as much as 70% of North Dakota's whole crop. The Trump administration said last month that China had agreed to start buying soybeans again and order 12 million metric tons before the end of the year, but so far they've bought less than 2 million. Notably, the Chinese summary of the call had a detail the White House didn't mention. It said that President Xi brought up the subject of Taiwan. China claims ownership of the self governing island. In recent weeks, however, Japan has said that it would respond with military force if China tried to seize it when President Biden was in office. He also vowed that the US Military would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. Trump, however, has not said what he would do, and Xi's call was an apparent effort to move him closer to Beijing's perspective. Also, the Times has learned that President Trump is considering pushing for an extension of Obamacare subsidies, the same thing the Democrats were insisting on in the standoff that shut down the government. The subsidies are going to expire at the end of this year, at which point a lot of Americans could see their health insurance premiums double or more. Many Republicans, including the president, are feeling the pressure. As one Republican strategist told the Times, they're in charge and so if those bills skyrocket, that's who voters are going to look to to fix it. According to a senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The president has not made a final decision. A new study out yesterday found something that a lot of people have suspected, wondered about or tried for themselves. Dialing back Social media use can lead to mental health benefits. The research followed about 300 young people aged 18 to 24 who volunteered to detox from the apps for a week. They didn't go cold turkey. They were told to stay off social media as much as possible, and in practice, that looked like spending just half an hour a day on it. Overall, they reported positive changes. Symptoms of anxiety and insomnia both dropped by about 15%, and symptoms of depression dropped almost 25%. One interesting thing less screen time likely wasn't the factor driving that. On average, the participants actually spent more time on their phones during the detox week. But the benefit may have come from avoiding behaviors like comparing yourself to what other people post. With the study, which was published in the journal Jama Network Open, there's a lot of caveats. Again, it was only a week long, there's no control group to compare it to, and the researchers emphasized that a social media detox shouldn't be anyone's first or only form of mental health care. But one of the study's authors told the Times that for people who feel they're struggling, quote, it's likely worth experimenting to see whether reducing social media helps you feel better. On Broadway this fall, the buzz was building over an elaborate new musical, the Queen of Versailles, which tells the true story of a Florida couple who tried to build a modern day palace. Kristen Chenoway reunites with the composer of Wicked, Stephen Schwartz, in a lavish new musical. The show had marquee names, the kind of people with Tony Awards lined up on their mantles and over $20 million in investment. But yesterday, only about two weeks after it opened, the producers announced that the show will be shutting down early, long before that money is recouped. It's just the latest example of how musical theater on Broadway is in dire straits. Hearts grow hard. High profile revivals like Cabaret with Billy Porter have fizzled out. Where is Betty? Betty ain't here. We gotta find her. She loses. And new shows like Boop, a song and dance take on Betty Boop, have also gone in the red before closing their curtains. The bleak overall picture as of earlier this fall, none of the 18 commercial musicals that had opened last season had made a profit. Producers point to a number of factors they say are driving the musical meltdown. There are skyrocketing costs for labor and set construction and the fact that a lot of people really just want to see a handful of old favorites that have been running for years, like Wicked, Hamilton and the Lion King. That has left Broadway executives worried about the prospects for new shows, which they say are crucial to keeping musical theater alive. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the legendary composer behind Phantom of the Opera and Cats, told the Times, I am very worried. I look at the economics of this and I just don't see how it can sustain. Notably, even though musicals are struggling, plays which are far cheaper to develop and put on, have become a bright spot, especially with celebrity casting. Last season, both Good Night and Good Luck, starring George Clooney, and Othello, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, broke Broadway box office records. And finally, you know those cozy holiday traditions. Hot cocoa, snowflake decorations and curling up to let AI write your wish list. We are there, people this holiday season, artificial intelligence is increasingly part of the shopping experience. According to a recent survey, 42% of shoppers are using AI tools. Some are using it to come up with gift ideas for themselves or the people on their lists. Other shoppers are using chatbots that a lot of retailers like Target and Walmart have rolled out to help them make their decisions. The tools can help sort through all the matching pajama options or summarize the reviews for an air fryer. Recently, ChatGPT rolled out a buy button so users can purchase some of the products that it recommends without ever leaving the chat. OpenAI takes a cut of each sale, but declined to say how much. One shopper, who told the Times he's planning to use AI to tackle his holiday lists, said it comes with a built in bonus if his family doesn't like their gifts. Quote I'll blame it on ChatGPT. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
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Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
This podcast is supported by USA for unhcr, the UN refugee agency. Every day, families fleeing war and persecution arrive in overcrowded camps with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Your donation helps them not only survive, but rebuild their lives. $15 provides a kitchen set. $95 delivers warm winter clothes. $149 provides blankets, sleeping mats and insulation. Donate@unrefugees.org headlines.