--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, February 13th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, as America battles the flow of fentanyl from across the border, Mexico is fighting the flow of American guns.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: Some maps have officially adopted the name the Gulf of America, and Trump assumes a new title as chair of the Kennedy Center. But first, President Trump's nominee for education secretary might end up leading a department that's on the administration's cutting block.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Linda McMahon's confirmation hearing is today. She'll field questions from senators in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At the same time, Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are working to shrink the Department of Ed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's Trump yesterday answering a reporter who asked, how soon do you want the Department of Education to be closed?
--:-- [Audio clip of Trump]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Oh, I'd like it to be closed immediately. Look, the Department of Education is a big con job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Shutting down the department altogether would require congressional approval. It's an idea that's been floated by Republicans for decades, as long as the Department of Education has existed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many have argued education policy should be handled entirely at the state level. But recent efforts have failed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a vote last year, 60 Republicans joined every single Democrat in voting against abolishing the department.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: I'm an education reporter at NPR.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Janaki Mehta is an education reporter at NPR, and she told us millions of dollars worth of contracts for projects that were already underway have been canceled, including at the Institute of Education Sciences, or IES.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: It's one of the country's biggest funders of education research.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And slashing this research could mean that the public, so parents, educators, students, policymakers, district officials, they don't have access to key data about things like student achievement, enrollment, school safety, teaching strategies that help students, you name it.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: According to Metta's sources who have insight into these canceled contracts, at least one program was already being used in classrooms to help students make up lost ground in math, which schools have struggled to make progress on since the pandemic.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: An employee of IES told Metta they don't understand how Musk can defend the cancellations as being efficient.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: The way one of them put it is that by canceling these contracts, they have, in the words of this employee, have wasted millions of millions of dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: McMahon could face questions about this from senators today, along with questions about her limited background in education.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She is a billionaire best known for leading WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But she served on Connecticut's State Board of Education for about a year before joining the first Trump administration as the head of the Small Business Administration.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: Mehta spoke with some of McMahon's former colleagues from the SBA who praised her work.
--:-- Janaki Mehta: They told me that she was a really sharp leader who had an eye for bringing efficiency to the public sector.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So if she's confirmed, we'll wait and see how those skills might translate to what she's stepping into.
--:-- Shamita Basu: McMahon has recently voiced support for expanding school choice at the K-12 level and providing more transparency in curricula.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In higher education she supports alternatives to college degrees like apprenticeships which has bipartisan support
--:-- Shamita Basu: And according to The Washington Post in her previous role on the Connecticut Board of Education she supported diversity and equity initiatives which marks a significant divergence from the president's education policy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, all of Trump's nominees to cabinet positions have been confirmed by the Senate, including Tulsi Gabbard to lead National Intelligence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was confirmed yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When President Trump pulled back from his threat of 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico, he said Mexico must beef up security along the border to stop the flow of illegal drugs like fentanyl into the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump even suggested the Mexican government is allied with drug cartels, a claim Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum rejected as slander.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She also brought up an issue that often goes overlooked in the battle against drug traffickers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's not what flows from Mexico to the U.S., but the other way around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal reports a quarter million American guns are estimated to be smuggled into Mexico every year.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: I'm a national reporter who covers guns and crime for The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Gun makers sold about 87 million firearms on the U.S. commercial market over the past five years.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: That's a lot of guns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the problem is not all of them stay here.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: Quite a few get smuggled out to other countries where it's hard to buy guns.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: We talked to one former ATF official who described the U.S. as the biggest gun supermarket in the Western Hemisphere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mexican officials say this is a longstanding problem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal reports about 70 percent of guns traced from crime scenes in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 came from the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's led Mexico to take a new approach.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's suing gun manufacturers in America and gun dealers.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: And they allege that these gun dealers and gun manufacturers are turning a blind eye to smugglers because they make so much money off the guns.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: Ellenson says U.S. gunmakers argue they're shielded from responsibility by a 2005 law that says they can't be held liable if their guns are used in a crime.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: And since they manufacture and sell guns legally in the U.S., they're not responsible for how cartels get them or what they do with them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ellenson told us smuggling weapons from the U.S. into Mexico is a very easy, very straightforward crime.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The gun traffickers or cartels, they find someone who can pass a background check in the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That means someone who has no criminal record.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: Sometimes like a single mom who needs some cash, someone with some medical bills who needs some cash, they say, can you go into this gun store and buy me a couple guns and we'll pay you like a thousand bucks.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: And these people are called straw purchasers.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: They at some point give it to the trafficker.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: The trafficker drives it across the border into Mexico.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And you may think that would be a hard thing to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It is not hard to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Journal reports cars headed into Mexico are rarely screened by border officials, partly because of fears that cartels will retaliate against those officials if the flow of weapons stops.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2022, Congress passed a law enhancing penalties for so-called straw purchasers, people who buy guns to be trafficked.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: But Ellenson reports prosecutors are reluctant to go after people in difficult financial situations who don't have criminal records.
--:-- Zusha Ellenson: But Ellenson also says a lot can be done to prevent trafficking on both sides of the border
--:-- Shamita Basu: People who study this issue they say that more needs to be done to pay attention to gun dealers along the border to make sure they keeping a good eye out for people who might be buying guns for traffickers
--:-- Shamita Basu: These folks who study the issue also say it would be good for Mexico to strengthen its criminal justice system so that they could really assist in investigations into gun trafficking.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We spoke to former federal agents who said it's quite difficult to pursue investigations down in Mexico because of the corruption in the ranks of police there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When President Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico, which has been called that for more than 400 years, to the Gulf of America, it raised a bunch of questions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Like, is he allowed to unilaterally decide something like that?
--:-- Shamita Basu: And do other governments have to follow Trump's lead?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they're used on official U.S. maps.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But he can't force other governments to adopt those changes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's really no official agreed-upon system used to name boundaries and geographical features on our planet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, there's a long history of government disputes over how bodies of water in particular are named.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR cites a few famous examples.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's the Sea South of China, which is known to much of the world as the South China Sea.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Vietnam, it's the Eastern Sea.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Philippines has designated parts of it as the West Philippine Sea.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another example is the water that separates the Arabian Peninsula from Iran, which much of the world calls the Persian Gulf, while Arab nations in the region call it the Arabian Gulf.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But back to the Gulf in question.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum rejected the name change and encouraged other countries to join her.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She said it's not up to one country to decide what to call an international body of water.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she jokingly shot back at the president that she might start calling North America Mexican America, as she stood before a map from the early 1600s that shows North America was once labeled that way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some Mexican citizens expressed similar takes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reuters spoke to one man on the coast shortly after Trump made his announcement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Honestly, it's wrong because the Gulf of Mexico will always be the Gulf of Mexico.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's the way it is, and it doesn't need to change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The AP also went to the Gulf to speak to some locals on the U.S. side.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One man said his family had a long history of being out on boats in the area, and he welcomes the change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I've been spending every 4th of July just about of my whole life on the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be great to spend 4th of July on the Gulf of America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sounds like fun.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Wired has been reporting on how digital maps are handling Trump's order.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On Google Maps, users in the United States now see this body of water labeled as the Gulf of America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Google users in Mexico see the Gulf of Mexico, and users outside of those countries see both names listed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Apple Maps renamed it to Gulf of America for all U.S. users, but MapQuest and a number of map services run by other countries have not made the change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Media companies are in a similar gray area, and the Trump administration has already taken action against those unwilling to comply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The president barred reporters with the Associated Press from the Oval Office this week after the organization decided to officially continue using the Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging Trump preferred name Gulf of America
--:-- Shamita Basu: The AP called it a plain violation of their First Amendment rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories out of Washington that we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A federal judge lifted the pause on President Trump's deferred resignation program for federal employees, and the Trump administration quickly closed the offer to any more workers who might have been considering it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The program had been halted since last Thursday after unions representing government employees sued, saying Trump didn't have the authority to offer such buyouts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, the judge decided the unions lacked the legal standing to bring the suit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the White House, at the time when the program was frozen last week, 65,000 workers had accepted the deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other D.C. news, a top Democrat in the Senate says Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to lead the FBI, may have perjured himself during his confirmation hearing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He says he's received credible evidence that Patel has been personally directing a purge of employees at the bureau before being confirmed by the Senate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In his hearing, when New Jersey Senator Cory Booker brought up the topic, here's how it went.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm not aware of that, Senator.
--:-- Shamita Basu: there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNBC notes lying to Congress under oath or not is a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison, but charges are rarely filed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In response to Durbin's accusation, a Patel spokesperson dismissed it as, quote, secondhand gossip.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Durbin has asked the DOJ to investigate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Senate votes today on whether to move Patel's nomination forward.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, the board of the Kennedy Center installed President Trump as its new chairman, carrying out a plan that Trump announced last week to take over the historic arts institution.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The board also fired President Deborah Rutter and appointed Richard Grinnell, former acting director of national intelligence, as its interim president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump had a contentious relationship with the Kennedy Center, bucking the tradition of attending the institution's honors ceremony during his first term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump said he was remaking the center because, quote, we didn't like what they were showing and said it's, quote, not going to be woke.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNN reports Trump replaced all board members appointed by Democratic presidents with his own appointees.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The move also prompted musician Ben Folds to step away as an artistic advisor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Television producer Shonda Rhimes and opera singer Renee Fleming also resigned their positions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Kennedy Center is funded by a mix of government dollars, ticket sales and private donations.
--:-- 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: More and more people are expected to travel further into space in the coming years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New Yorker asks, is deep space something the human body can handle?
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thank you.
