--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, Duarte Giraldino, speaks]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Friday, September 24th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti says he's done. He's resigning over what he calls the Biden administration's inhumane, counterproductive policy. The U.S. is currently deporting thousands of Haitian refugees from the U.S.-Mexico border.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We talked about this story a lot lately, as criticism of the Biden administration gets louder. This is a good moment to take a broader look at Biden's border policy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was horrified by images of agents on horseback chasing migrants. The Border Patrol has now suspended the use of horse patrols. That's one shift. But Psaki is still defending the administration's policy and warning potential migrants to stay away.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're implementing our border restrictions, including Title 42, including making clear that people who are coming through irregular migration, that this is not the time to come and they will be placed in removal proceedings.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: HuffPost adds some higher level context here. President Biden promised to break from Trump immigration policies, but State Department numbers show the U.S. is on track to admit fewer refugees than Trump did.
--:-- Shamita Basu: America is on track to admit just around 8,000 refugees this fiscal year. That would be a record low. And that number is tens of thousands below the cap on refugees. The U.S. once led the world in allowing in refugees. The numbers fell during the Trump years. And so far under Biden, they're even lower.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There's a heavy focus this week on climate change. World leaders are gathered at the United Nations and New York, and the White House wants to make big legislative changes around energy and the environment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But among progressive and moderate Democrats in Congress, there are some big differences. And because of that intraparty tension, we might not see any major new laws at all.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Both have kind of hinted that they would be OK with not passing something over passing what the other side wants. That's Robinson Meyer, who covers the environment for the Atlantic.
--:-- Robinson Meyer: And he explains when it comes to the Democratic Party's moderate wing, any climate policy has to go through Senator Joe Manchin. Senator Manchin has received more donations from the fossil fuel industries, from coal, from natural gas, from oil in the current election cycle than any other senator.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: What we gather from his rhetoric is that he doesn't think the country should decarbonize as quickly and the country should walk away from fossil fuels as quickly as some of the climate scientists and energy experts say that we need to if we want to avoid the worst of climate change.
--:-- Robinson Meyer: Meyer says even though the rest of the party would like a more aggressive climate approach, they know nothing's going to pass without Manchin's blessing. The way Meyer puts it, some Democrats think it's better to have no change rather than compromise with a senator who's friendly with big energy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One example that Meyer gives, Democrats tried to get a big climate bill through during President Obama's first term. And at one point, it looked like it might pass the finish line, but ultimately it fell apart.
--:-- Robinson Meyer: They erred in thinking that you could just pass climate policy through elite consensus, that you could basically just convince a bunch of very powerful people that we should do something about climate change and then you could get a bill through Congress. That is not how change in the United States works. That's not how you get new bills in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's stay with climate and focus on the debate over potential solutions. One of the big ideas out there aims to do a whole lot. Conserve the environment, expand green energy, all while creating tens of thousands of jobs for young people.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is President Biden's vision for a civilian climate corps. The money to start this kind of program is tied up in the larger congressional budget debate. The funding may not come through, but if it does, the Washington Post explores what the corps might look like.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It would put people to work doing things like retrofitting old infrastructure, restoring wetlands, and installing solar panels. This program is inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps. During the Great Depression, it employed millions of young men. They built roads, cut trails, and generally worked on improving infrastructure.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The mission today is different. For one, a modern-day climate core would be a lot smaller. And the hope is a lot more inclusive in who it hires. During the Depression, white men got almost all the jobs. Some lawmakers want to use this opportunity to create jobs in communities that are struggling, and ones that are underrepresented in the field of climate conservation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Pandemic lockdowns were tough for us, but birds, they loved it. As people were traveling less and staying indoors, research shows birds' activity changed a lot. They started moving into big cities, hanging out around roads and airports.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Scientists say this is all part of the anthropos. That the term for the dramatic slowing of human activity because of COVID. Researchers talked to National Geographic about how this moment became an unprecedented opportunity to see what animals do when people get out of the way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Using data from a birdwatching app, they looked at the behavior of dozens of species, and what they discovered was a mass shift right after COVID hit. As lockdowns kept traffic low and planes on the ground, birds flew into areas that they would normally avoid.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Ruby-throated hummingbirds were three times more likely to be spotted near airports than before the pandemic. And some birds of prey, they traveled hundreds of miles to nest in new places.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This study shows just how much humans can displace wildlife. These scientists say it's clear that traffic reduction and bird conservation go hand in hand. But is attracting more birds to cities really a good thing? They're dangerous for birds in cities. Hungry cats, windows to crash into.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Maybe, these researchers say, as people get back into their regular groove, it'll drive birds back out of urban areas, which might be the best thing for them long term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And this week on In Conversation, we talk to the reporters behind the Wall Street Journal's investigative series called the Facebook files.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They told me about the internal documents they got their hands on that show the social network knew Instagram could be harmful to teen mental health. It reveals this gulf at times between how the company is talking about itself internally and how it understands its own problems and how it talks about them publicly. And that's common at companies, but the gulf here is just massive.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy that weekend listen. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
