--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, November 4th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, why all eyes are on a ballot initiative in California this election day. How more people are avoiding jail after killing someone. And Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history, has died.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, at midnight tonight, this shutdown will become the longest in history. Up to this point, most people outside the federal workforce have been pretty well insulated from its worst effects, allowing both parties to stand their ground. But the pain for lower income Americans is now coming into full view.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Food stamp benefits through SNAP expired last weekend. And yesterday, the Trump administration confirmed it would provide only half the normal food stamp benefits to recipients in November. And for many, those payments will be delayed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It comes after a court order last week that compelled the government to find the money to keep the program going during the shutdown. The average monthly payment is around $330. And the program helps nearly 42 million low-income and disabled Americans buy food.
--:-- [Audio clip of Michelle Lockhart from Tennessee speaking to CBS]
--:-- Michelle Lockhart: This is a dire need for us, and they need to see it that way. It's not that we want it, it's that we need it to survive. Myself, I was diagnosed stage 4 cancer in 2022, and I've been unable to work since 2023, a SNAP benefit recipient for about a year now.
--:-- Michelle Lockhart: And it's not just myself, it's others in the community, others like me, people that are no longer able to work. And without the SNAP benefits, we're unable to put food on the table as normal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The administration is using half the contingency funds available to keep the program going and say depleting that source of money would leave nothing for potential disaster relief.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An official told the court that some people might not see their November entitlements for weeks or even months owing to dated decades-old processing systems. And it's unclear how long this can go on for.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Senate Majority Leader John Thune described the future of the program as, quote, uncertain.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Food banks, meanwhile, have been left to pick up the slack. Here's Elizabeth Kiever with Harvester's Food Bank in Kansas City, Missouri, speaking to NPR.
--:-- Elizabeth Kiever: We're in uncharted territory. We have always been the supplement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. And when you think about the county I was in alone, I was in Jackson County. There are 92,000 folks in that county who are on SNAP benefits.
--:-- Elizabeth Kiever: And the monthly distribution that is anticipated for that county alone is $19 million. So it's nearly impossible to make up the gap that SNAP is leaving us.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Houston, Texas, a food bank super site popped up at the NRG Stadium over the weekend. NBC reported long lines of vehicles turned out to collect groceries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reporter Ryan Chandler described it as a scene from the COVID era and spoke to people about to lose their benefits.
--:-- Ryan Chandler: I've been in here since 5 o'clock this morning, working hard and trying to feed our children at home and being responsible.
--:-- Ryan Chandler: You know, whatever is going on right now with the shutdown with the government, you know, it's hurting a lot of people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Speaking to Fox on Sunday Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the government had been duct taping support programs for a month and blamed Democrats for not voting to reopen the government.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We are working and looking at all angles right now. The president has been very clear. He wants us to do everything we can to make sure that we can keep these benefits going.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So that what we're doing right now and over the weekend, especially for our most vulnerable populations, as the Democrats keep shutting things down.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's just crazy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democrats want Republicans to agree to extend health care subsidies for the more than 20 million Americans with coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It appears lawmakers are no closer to cutting a deal to end the shutdown. But Senator Thune said Monday he was optimistic an agreement could be reached this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's Election Day. Yesterday, we talked about critical races in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, today let's talk about what voters in California are being asked to weigh in on, a ballot measure that could help determine who controls Congress next year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Proposition 50 would suspend California's current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent commission, and clear the way for new lines to be drawn that favor additional Democratic seats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Melanie Mason, a senior politics reporter with Politico California, spoke to us about why Democrats in the state are making this extraordinary push.
--:-- Melanie Mason: They did this in response to the redistricting efforts in Texas and other Republican-led states. So they're sort of positioning this ad as a check on President Trump, check on the Republicans who are doing these mid-decade redistricting efforts all across the country.
--:-- Melanie Mason: And California as a blue state is the one sort of bulwark for Democrats to try and pick up a few seats on their side of the ledger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The campaign recruited former President Barack Obama for their ads and has elicited so many financial contributions that California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, asked people to literally stop donating, sending the message that his political operation is feeling confident about their campaigning efforts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The No on Prop 50 campaign, meanwhile, has been funded in part by Charles Munger Jr., son of the late billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett and the man who helped then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger create the independent commission in the first place more than a decade ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Schwarzenegger himself has avoided becoming the face of opposition, but he did criticize Newsom's moves as a race to the bottom on CNN.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is spreading like wildfire all over the country, and it saddens me to see they be going in the opposite direction rather than having an independent commission draw the district lines.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This effort to change how redistricting works in California is just the latest move where Newsom is showcasing a more antagonistic style toward President Trump than many of his peers in the Democratic Party.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For months now, Newsom has been posting on social media in a similar style to Trump, in all caps, name-calling political adversaries, kind of trolling the president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a recent rally in the state where former Vice President Kamala Harris also made an appearance, Newsom made a few digs at Trump, and in a way at his own party, for its general unwillingness to put up a fight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He didn't expect any of this to happen. He thought maybe we'd have a candlelight vigil. Maybe we would hold hands. Maybe we could all come together and, like, you know, do an op-ed in the L.A. Times and, you know, just say what it could have should have done something.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They never expected this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Most political observers expect for Prop 50 to pass, in part because of Newsom's messaging on it. And in some ways it is surprising because Californians like voters I think across the country they don't love the idea of politicians drawing their own district maps.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in other ways I don't think it's all that surprising that it's doing very well because what Governor Gavin Newsom and Democrats have done pretty savvily is they turned this into a broader referendum on President Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mason told us the campaign has brought in an unprecedented $114 million in just 10 weeks, outspending the no campaign by more than two to one.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think what's really interesting is that they have raised nearly $40 million in small grassroots digital fundraising, which just doesn't really happen when it comes to ballot measures.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ballot measures are usually like big corporate interests battling each other. So the idea that you have somebody going online and giving $5 or $20 or $100, it's so much more akin to what we see in presidential races, for example.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And particularly for Gavin Newsom, who there's a lot of speculation, maybe he's going to run for president in 2028. And if he decides to run, Politico writes that he would have a significant national list of donor names and contacts from this redistricting push.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Americans have long been free to use deadly force to defend themselves within their own homes. But over the last 20 years, many states have expanded those legal protections, and more and more people are claiming a very particular kind of defense to avoid jail.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Murder or self-defense? A jury will decide that for Fort Payne man on trial this week for capital murder. His defense, Alabama's stand your ground law.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A dispute over a parking space led to an argument, a fatal shooting, and now a lot more talk about stand your ground laws.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also a developing story, a stand your ground hearing happening right now over a golf course attack. This fairway fight happened at Harbor Hills.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Stand your ground laws began with Florida back in 2005. The basic idea is that if you kill someone and claim self-defense, the presumption is you acted reasonably and it's on the prosecutor to prove otherwise.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Florida's law has become a model for 30 other states since then.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mark Maramont, a senior editor with The Wall Street Journal, has been looking into how these laws have affected homicide data.
--:-- Mark Maramont: We analyzed FBI data over a recent six years and found a significant increase in self-defense killings that were ruled to be justifiable in the 30 states with stand your ground laws.
--:-- Mark Maramont: In other words, nobody was being punished for these killings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Maramont found that so-called justifiable homicides carried out by civilians jumped 59 percent in a large sample of cities and counties in those states.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he said that those numbers could be attributed to a number of overlapping factors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are a number of these states that actually added the ability for people to carry guns virtually anywhere they wanted to without restrictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in addition to which, there's been a huge increase in the whole country in gun ownership.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So what you end up with is more people carrying guns with them in more places.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they end up with some kind of situations and disputes, sometimes trivial disputes, that might once have resulted in fisticuffs or an argument and now end up with somebody dead.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Supporters of Stand Your Ground say the law can deter violent behavior and that it allows people to feel confident they can protect themselves against strangers without fear of punishment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But FBI data shows that many of these cases are not random acts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, around 60 percent of reported self-defense killings involved people who knew one another.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The exception to that are road rage incidents, which experts told Maramont are quite common.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In one case he highlighted in 2023 two retirees got into an argument in a Las Vegas parking lot One man who was a retired CIA contractor contractor with a CIA clearance had a gun and was known to have a temper.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he was shouting at the other man, and the other man stopped his car, backed up, and both of them got out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the police said that the retired CIA contractor pulled his gun first and pointed it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it turned out that the man he was pointing the gun at was himself a retired police officer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he pulled out his .45 and shot several times and killed the other man in the parking lot.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nearly two years after the shooting, Las Vegas detectives determined that the case was a justifiable homicide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the county district attorney said that it wouldn't charge the former police officer because Nevada law would make it difficult to disprove his self-defense claim in court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dick Cheney, one of the most influential vice presidents in U.S. history, has died at 84.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a statement, his family said it was due to complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The conservative titan served under three GOP presidents, first as White House chief of staff for Gerald Ford, then as defense chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush, and as vice president under George W. Bush.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was a vocal advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the use of heightened surveillance and detention after the 9-11 attacks, even when the links he claimed existed between the 2001 attacks and pre-war Iraq were proven wrong.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In recent years, he had become a strong critic of President Trump and surprised many in the party last year when he announced he planned to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the New York City mayor's race, President Trump made an 11th hour endorsement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He posted on Truth Social on Monday that he is backing independent candidate Andrew Cuomo over Democratic Socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump wrote that he would rather see a Democrat who has a record of success win the race rather than Mamdani.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although Cuomo has closed the gap in recent weeks, polls have consistently shown Mamdani with a double-digit lead over both of his opponents.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, to Cairo and the unveiling of what's being called the world's largest archaeological museum.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Officially opening to the public today, Egypt celebrated with an opening ceremony so grand it looked more like the start of the Olympics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Heads of state and royal dignitaries gathered as the country's president celebrated what he hopes will become the tourism centerpiece of the capital.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The museum is decades in the making and sits near the Giza pyramids, one of the seven wonders of the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's packed with over 100,000 artifacts covering seven millennia and for the first time will present in one place the entire contents of the intact tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New York Magazine has the story of a couple who hired what seemed like the perfect caretaker for their baby but after things turned sour an intense battle ensued over the nanny's refusal to move out of the family's home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
