← The Headlines
The Headlines
U.N. Inquiry Says Israel Is Committing Genocide, and Trump Threatens Crackdown on Liberal Groups
00:10:32
Plus, a “sci-fi” discovery about ants.
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- [00:00]
American Petroleum Institute Representative
This podcast is supported by the American Petroleum Institute. Energy demand is rising and the infrastructure we build today will power generations to come. We can deliver affordable, reliable and innovative energy solutions for all Americans, but we need to overhaul our broken permitting process to make that happen. It's time to modernize and build, because when America builds, America wins. Read API's plan to secure America's future at permittingreformnow.org.
- [00:33]
Tracie Mumford
From the new York Times, it's the Headlines. I'm Tracie Mumford. Today's Tuesday, September 16th. Here's what we're covering. A United nations commission investigating the war in Gaza said this morning it's found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. The panel's most sweeping findings yet about Israel's conduct. In earlier reports, it found Israel had committed crimes against humanity but stopped short of a genocide declaration. Now the panel's leader says, quote, the responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign, adding that the leaders had, quote, the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza. A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced the report as fake news. Israel has previously accused the UN of being biased against it. Since the Hamas led attack on October 7, 2023 that triggered the war, Israel has come under intense international condemnation over the toll its operations have had on civilians. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, entire cities have been reduced to ruins, and starvation is widespread. For months, Israel prevented food and other badly needed humanitarian supplies from crossing the border into Gaza. While the UN Commission that issued the report has no enforcement power, the leader of the panel that conducted the investigation said its findings would carry weight with the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The announcement came at the same time as Israel has launched its ground offensive in Gaza City. It kicked off the operation overnight with an intense bombing campaign aiming to take control of the city even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are still there. We are all terrified, a former school teacher sheltering in an apartment in western Gaza City told the Times. Death would be more merciful than what we're living through in Washington, D.C. yesterday.
- [02:46]
JD Vance
Welcome back. This is the Vice President of these United States, JD Vance, your host for today's Charlie Kirk Show.
- [02:53]
Tracie Mumford
The vice president guest hosted Charlie Kirk's podcast and used the platform to announce a sweeping crackdown by the Trump administration on liberal groups.
- [03:03]
JD Vance
We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin's bullet. We're going to talk about.
- [03:17]
Tracie Mumford
While investigators are still working to definitively determine a motive in last week's killing of Kirk, Vance claimed, without evidence that the gunman was part of a left wing network that funds and incites violence against conservatives. And he invited other administration officials onto the show, including Stephen Miller, the president's top policy advisor, to outline the government's next steps.
- [03:39]
Stephen Miller
With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen. And, and we will do it in Charlie's name.
- [03:54]
Tracie Mumford
Senior administration officials tell the Times that details of the crackdown are still being worked out. But one said that they would be trying to draw links from liberal groups to people who attacked Tesla dealerships to protest Elon Musk, to people who assaulted immigration agents.
- [04:09]
JD Vance
You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, oh, Stephen Miller and J.D. vance, they're going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, we're going to go after the. The NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.
- [04:24]
Tracie Mumford
While there has been a wave of violence across the political spectrum in the US in recent years, the administration appears to be focusing only on threats to their own party, looking past incidents like the killing this summer of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota. Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress have warned that the White House could use Kirk's killing as a pretense to crush political dissent. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on social media, quote, pay attention, something dark might be coming. Now three more updates on the Trump administration. A federal appeals court has ruled that Lisa Cook can remain on the board of the Federal Reserve despite President Trump's ongoing effort to force her out. The administration has accused Cook of mortgage fraud, saying that's grounds to fire her, though she has not been charged with a crime. The Times recently reviewed one of Cook's loan records, which suggests she did not try to deceive lenders, as Trump has repeatedly claimed. The president's been trying to staff the Fed with his own picks as he pressures the traditionally independent institution to carry out his economic agenda. For now, Cook will stay as the Fed kicks off a crucial two day meeting today, where they're expected to make a decision on interest rates. Also, President Trump announced the US Military has carried out a second deadly strike on a boat from Venezuela, claiming it was transporting drugs. He said three People were killed. Legal experts say this kind of strike is illegal, and the administration has not provided any detailed rationale for why it would be lawful and not murder or a war crime. In the past month or so, the administration has been building up a major military presence in the Caribbean, saying the US Is targeting drug cartels.
- [06:25]
Adam Schiff
I don't want to see us get into some war with Venezuela because the president is just blowing ships willy nilly out of the water.
- [06:32]
Tracie Mumford
But Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Adam Schiff, have criticized the strikes, emphasizing that the Constitution requires the president to get congressional approval for this kind of military action.
- [06:44]
Adam Schiff
These lawless killings are just putting us at risk because it means other countries now may decide to blow an American ship out of the water and claim that it was engaged in drug trafficking. You can imagine what our response to that. And I'm signing a presidential memorandum to establish the Memphis SAFE Task Force. And it's very important because of the crime that's going on, not only in Memphis, in many cities, and we're going to take care of all of them.
- [07:12]
Tracie Mumford
Yesterday, the president signed off on a plan to send National Guard troops and federal agents to Memphis, his latest show of force in a blue city. Memphis's Democratic mayor said he did not ask for the help. Crime rates there have dropped this year, though they remain high compared to other parts of the country. This summer, Trump ran into legal pushback when he sent the National Guard into Los Angeles against the wishes of the mayor and California's governor. But in this case, Trump said Tennessee's Republican governor requested the support. On farms across The Midwest, the U.S. s trade war with China is beginning to take a toll. Soybeans that would normally be harvested and exported to Asia are now set to pile up in large steel bins. China used to buy more than half the soybeans grown in the US Every year, but it stopped in retaliation for President Trump's steep tariffs on Chinese goods. The Times visited farms in North Dakota, including one about two hours outside Fargo, where China was their biggest customer. Now, for the first time in the more than 75 years that the farm has been operating, China's buying nothing. The farm's expected to lose $400,000. In August, Trump called publicly for China to step up its soybean purchases, which raised some farmers hopes that a deal was close. Close? Top officials from the two countries met this week for negotiations, but nothing on this was announced and harvest season is just weeks away. One farmer told the Times the standoff is particularly upsetting because the U. S. Spent decades building up China as a key customer for soybeans. He said, quote, are we going to lose a generation of farmers because of the trade war? I think that's what we're fast approaching. And finally, researchers have announced a new discovery about ants that's pretty mind blowing. So just hang in there for a second while I explain the science. In a paper published this month in the journal Nature, scientists explained how they noticed something odd in the colonies of Mediterranean harvester ants. The colonies had a bunch of hybrid ants around doing all the work and heavy lifting. Those hybrids were a mix of their species and another one. Fair enough. It's not unusual for queen ants to mate with another species. But the thing is, there should not have been any of that other species around to mate with. The closest ones are hundreds of miles away. So how were the queens finding them? What the researchers discovered floored them. The queens were giving birth to the other ants, laying two different species of eggs. Basically, it's like a human giving birth to a chimpanzee. But as one of the researchers explained, it's actually even weirder than that. It's like humans having chimps and then mating with those chimps to make hybrid offspring who do all the housework. This kind of phenomenon, xenoparity, or foreign birth, has not been seen before in any creature. One biologist who worked on the project called it, quote, sci fi material. Those are the headlines today on the Daily Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill on how some ChatGPT users have gotten caught in dangerous delusional spirals. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.