--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 17th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, humanitarian conditions in Gaza more than 100 days into the war. How a small fish could upend the power of federal agencies. And why tennis balls are serving up controversy among pro players.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: First, to the Middle East, where the United States struck Houthi targets in Yemen again. The U.S. has been targeting the Iran-backed rebel group for attacking commercial ships, and the Biden administration is reportedly planning to put the Houthis back on its list of designated terrorist groups.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Also, Iran has launched attacks inside Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria, all while Israel wages war on Hamas in Gaza. The new wave of violence has analysts worried about the Gaza conflict spreading into a broader regional war.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Meanwhile, Qatar says it and France have struck a deal between Israel and Hamas that would allow more medicine and humanitarian aid to be delivered to the people of Gaza in exchange for medication being given to the hostages held by Hamas.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This deal comes as the UN has called on Israel to allow in more aid. They say more than a quarter of Gaza's population is starving. That's over half a million people. About half of Gaza's population is children.
--:-- Marwan Al Ghul: Conditions were already miserable before the war. And they've gotten much worse. Not enough water, not enough food, no place to sleep. It's very difficult to describe.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Dr. Paul Spiegel worked in Cairo with a U.N. agency to support the public health response in Gaza.
--:-- Dr. Paul Spiegel: Survival needs are barely being met. It's completely insufficient. And therefore, the ability in the humanitarian space to respond is not possible.
--:-- Dr. Paul Spiegel: The health care services, the hospitals and many health centers are being actively attacked and bombed. And therefore, the amount of care that is available is reducing on a continuous basis.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: With no immediate end in sight to the war families in Gaza are caught in the middle trying to feed their children when food is scarce and help is falling short.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now let's take a quick look at some other stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Brutally cold weather is sweeping across America. There are more than a dozen deaths blamed on the Arctic blast. Many are in Oregon where power outages are making it hard to deal with freezing temperatures.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Portland's Fox station talked to a resident about trees knocked over in the storm.
--:-- Resident: We had three oaks come down in the backyard, big ones that did damage to the roof. We had two fir trees come down in the front yards that took down power lines and everything.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Across the country, there are school closures and travel disruptions, with thousands of flights canceled or delayed. Nashville got more snow in a day than it typically gets in a year. And in Texas, the power grid operators asked people to conserve electricity to avoid outages.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It looks as though things are holding up. Grid failures in a Texas winter storm in 2021 killed hundreds of people.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In legal news, the man who shot and killed five people at an LGBTQ plus nightclub in Colorado last year is agreeing to plead guilty to federal hate crime and gun charges.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The federal government will not seek the death penalty in the Club Q shooting. Court filings say the plea agreement will result in multiple sentences totaling 190 years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And the Supreme Court is not going to hear a case involving students and bathroom access. Last year, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a transgender middle school student who wanted to use the restroom matching his gender identity.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: With the high court declining to step in, that ruling will stand.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Staying with the Supreme Court, today it's hearing arguments in a pair of cases that are technically about rules around commercial fishing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But the impact could go far beyond questions about catching herring. The court could deliver a ruling that blows away decades of precedent and weakens the ability of federal agencies to regulate the environment, financial markets, workplaces, healthcare, and more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These cases were brought by fishing companies, and they're backed by conservative legal groups. They believe a government mandate requiring them to pay people to monitor their boats is unreasonable.
--:-- Anne Maramo: These arguments are really about the fate of a landmark case that involved Chevron. And that case set up a framework that judges have used now since 1984 to evaluate regulations that federal agencies have put into effect and whether the agencies made a reasonable interpretation of statutes set by Congress.
--:-- Anne Maramo: And that may sound like a boring academic exercise, but it's really important. The case was enormously influential. It created what judges and lawyers now call Chevron deference.
--:-- Anne Maramo: In short, it requires courts to defer to federal agencies when it comes to turning laws passed by Congress into actual regulations. If Congress was not explicit about something, courts have to trust how agencies interpret it as long as they're reasonable.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Critics of Chevron deference say that it has given federal agencies too much power in recent decades and resulted in too much red tape.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And those critics think they have a shot at big changes with this conservative Supreme Court.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Chevron is being heard by a court that has really been remade with the addition of three justices nominated by former President Trump, whose administration put a premium on recruiting judges who were skeptical of federal power and what they refer to as the administrative state.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They think that unaccountable bureaucrats should not have this much power and that it should really be up to judges to use their independent judgment when looking at these, what they consider burdensome regulations.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If the fishing companies win here, Chevron deference could fall or be scaled back.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And these aren't the only cases this term that will test the power of the federal government. There's one challenging the in-house administrative judges at the Securities and Exchange Commission that looks to limit fraud in the financial markets.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And there's another case challenging the funding for the CFPB, that's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So this one being heard today about Chevron deference is just one of a series going after really the power of the administrative state.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Supreme Court's upcoming cases on abortion and Trump's election eligibility may be getting more attention. But these other cases, starting with today's arguments, could fundamentally change how much power the federal government has when it comes to regulating the important issues of our time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Australian Open, the tennis world's first major of the year, is underway. And right now the sport has some controversy involving the highlighter yellow-greenish balls, with some players saying they're causing injuries.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So they say the balls are inconsistent across tournaments. Sometimes they're heavier or fluffier. And some balls, they say they have to hit a lot harder.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: One top player said playing with some of these balls are like hitting a grapefruit, forcing players into 30-shot rallies because they can't hit winning shots.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Different tennis ball brands are used at different tournaments, and players say the lack of consistency is actually dangerous.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Novak Djokovic spoke about this in November during the Davis Cup.
--:-- Novak Djokovic: There's been a lot of discussions on the effect of the different balls basically every week on the joints and the wrists and the shoulders and the elbows.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He and other top players say professional tennis should standardize ball designs so that all manufacturers can stick to common specifications and players will know what to expect at different tournaments.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In response, the governing bodies for men's and women's professional tennis are now conducting a strategic review of tennis balls.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They say they'll aim for more consistency without disrupting the money-making sponsorship deals with the companies that make the balls in question.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: For now, at least one player says he's actually planning his tournament schedule for the year based on the kind of balls being used.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening to the News app right now, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next from The Atlantic that aims to answer a question that American parents, prospective parents, and observers around the world can't seem to figure out.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Why is it so difficult to raise a child in the U.S., the world's richest country?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Congress may have a bipartisan deal that would expand the child tax credit for families, but the U.S. still provides far less support for families than other wealthy countries do.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Atlantic argues having a family in America really shouldn't be so hard.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
