--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, February 10th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, a key architect of Project 2025 has a big role in Trump's cabinet. Why Super Bowl chicken wings are cheap as egg prices skyrocket. And a night the Chiefs and Drake they never recover from. But first, President Trump on Sunday gave an interview with Fox News' Brett Baier and discussed Elon Musk's efforts to cut back on what they see as government waste.
--:-- President Trump: I told him to do that. Then I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He's going to find the same thing. Then I'm going to go to the military. Let's check the military. We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And the people elected me on that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, Trump and Musk have moved to freeze most foreign aid for 90 days and reduce USAID's workforce of 10,000 plus to around 600 people. On Friday afternoon, a district judge nominated by Trump temporarily halted those plans until a hearing later this week. But that didn't stop the Trump administration from sending crews over to the agency headquarters to remove their name from the building.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we've mentioned on this show before, USAID provides about 40 percent of the world's humanitarian aid. While some conservatives have grown increasingly critical of sending American aid abroad, the Atlantic's Russell Berman told us people on both sides of the aisle have been surprised.
--:-- Russell Berman: The speed with which Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling USAID has been shocking to, pretty much everyone. And there have been attempts over the years to either reduce or to abolish USAID in the past. What Trump is doing is going way beyond even the most conservative or most aggressive proposals that were made for USAID.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Musk, in his role as chair of the Department of Government Efficiency, has referred to USAID as a criminal organization and said that he was, quote, feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Last week, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt listed some examples of expenditures by USAID that she says prove that it's full of waste and corruption.
--:-- Caroline Levitt: These are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on. $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces, $70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I don't know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going towards this crap. The Washington Post and PolitiFact have fact-checked those claims. It is true that USAID provided $1.5 million to a group in Serbia to reduce discrimination against the country's LGBTQ community, but the $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland is false.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That grant came from the State Department, not USAID, and it went toward a music festival, not a musical, to quote, promote the U.S. and Irish shared values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. As for the opera in Colombia, that money also came from the State Department, not USAID.
--:-- Russell Berman: Meanwhile, President Trump claimed USAID gave $8 million to Politico. This is also not true. Staffers at USAID spent $40,000 on Politico subscriptions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In surveys Americans believe the U spends roughly 25 percent of our budget on foreign aid. The truth is foreign aid is less than one percent of our budget. And The Washington Post reports that American farms supply about 41 percent of the food aid that USAID sends around the world each year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Even Trump's own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been outspoken in the past about the need to maintain America's foreign aid and the influence that comes with doing so. Here he is speaking in February of 2013, for example.
--:-- Marco Rubio: We don't have to give foreign aid. We do so because it furthers our national interest. That's why we give foreign aid. Now, obviously, there's a component to foreign aid that's humanitarian in scope, and that's important too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And here's Rubio again in August of 2019.
--:-- Marco Rubio: Anybody who tells you that we can slash foreign aid and that will bring us to balance is lying to you. Foreign aid is less than 1% of our budget.
--:-- Russell Berman: I think the reason why they're going after it is because in the huge federal bureaucracy, it's kind of low-hanging fruit. People in the United States outside of the Washington, D.C. area are not going to be as hurt by cuts to foreign aid, which by definition go abroad.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's unclear if the courts will allow these cuts to go forward. A recent paper published by the Nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says USAID cannot be moved, abolished or consolidated without approval from Congress. But Trump's allies say the Constitution allows Trump to gut this agency and that it's the courts, not the president, who are overstepping by trying to stop him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just this weekend, Vice President J.D. Vance said on social media, judges are not allowed to, quote, control the executive's legitimate power. Here's a name of a recent cabinet appointment that you should know. Russ Vogt, who was confirmed last week as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vogt served in this role for two years during Trump's first term, during which time he froze military aid to Ukraine and delayed funding for Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. And while the budget office isn't as glamorous as some of the other departments we've talked a lot about, it has a tremendous amount of power.
--:-- Russ Vogt: It has the ability to turn on and off any spending within the Office of Management and Budget. It has the ability to turn off the spending that's going on at the agencies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The other reason to know Vogt's name? He was one of the chief architects of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for Trump's second term. He authored Chapter 2 on the executive office of the president, where he really lays out clearly his theory of executive branch power and his vision for sort of testing the limits of that power.
--:-- Megan Messerly: I think this is one of the clearest examples. I mean, we saw Democrats in the run-up to the confirmation vote, you know, just bring up Project 2025 again and again, saying, you know, this is one of Project 2025's authors. We warned you about Project 2025. Now this is coming to fruition with votes confirmations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Though Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 I haven't read it I don't want to read it purposely I'm not going to read it.
--:-- Megan Messerly: Messerly says we already seeing so much of it unfolding. We've seen this massive effort already to reshape the federal government. It really runs the gamut here, even just within social issues, school choice, banning transgender troops from serving in the military, ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of the other goals laid out in Project 2025, disbanding the commerce and education departments, undoing climate protections, and redefining marriage and family according to the Bible. During the 2024 presidential campaign, these ideas polled extremely unpopular with voters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, every Democrat in the Senate voted against Vogt's nomination. All 53 Republicans voted to confirm, with Politico reporting that Republicans in both chambers are feeling enthusiastic about Vogt and his ability to enact Trump's agenda.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The day after he was confirmed by the Senate, the Trump administration tapped Vogt to be acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and his first email to the staff instructed them to stop work immediately. He has since said the bureau will be closed for at least a week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The CFPB is a watchdog agency intended to look out for American consumers and shield them from misleading or fraudulent practices by banks, credit cards, or loan agencies. Just a few weeks ago, before Trump took office, the CFPB sued Capital One, alleging the bank cheated customers out of $2 billion by underpaying the interest on savings accounts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Capital One says it disagrees with the claims. It's estimated that 1.47 billion chicken wings were consumed over Super Bowl weekend, according to the National Chicken Council, which led NPR to ask the very good question, with bird flu going around. How come we're seeing such high prices on eggs, but not the same kind of scarcity with chicken wings?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Well, as it turns out, It's because chickens raised for meat live on different farms than the chickens raised for laying eggs. And even though the chickens that become our wings aren't immune from bird flu, they haven't been hit as hard by the current outbreak.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The farmers who raise eggs, on the other hand, are scrambling. Here's one farmer who has a flock of 14 million egg-laying hens across three states speaking to NPR.
--:-- Egg Farmer: Egg farmers are in the fight of their lives to keep this disease at bay, to keep our hens safe, and to keep eggs coming. We know it's frustrating for consumers who want to go and buy eggs at the prices they've been used to.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That farmer told NPR that it can take six months to a year to recover after a flock of hens is wiped out from bird flu. So far, there are no signs of bird flu easing up. In fact, it seems to be spreading.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, we learned that a new strain of bird flu has infected dairy cows in Nevada. And this weekend, bird flu was detected in poultry markets in New York City. Here's Elizabeth Walters, Deputy Commissioner for the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, addressing the outbreak.
--:-- Elizabeth Walters: These markets are very closely linked by source box, distributors. So we think it's really important to get in there, have a period of the markets being down so we can stamp out this disease.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bird flu is also responsible for the death of three ducks at the Queen's Zoo and as many as 12 birds at the Bronx Zoo. There's no evidence yet that there's a widespread risk to humans, but Scientific American's chief opinion editor says she's concerned about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention being muzzled.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Trump administration has ordered the agency not to release any communications that aren't first approved by Trump's team. Several studies about bird flu have been published, including one about the number of veterinarians who contracted the virus.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're watching. On his way to the Super Bowl, President Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States starting today, and that we should expect to see more action on tariffs later this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump said the tariffs apply to all countries, including Canada and Mexico, our largest trading partners. So far, Trump imposed a 10% tariff on all products coming from China. He also threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico before backing down and putting that decision on pause.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At the Super Bowl, meanwhile, the Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chiefs in a lopsided victory, defeating the two-time defending champs 40-22. The Chiefs fell behind early and were never able to recover.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It means they failed to accomplish the rare and coveted three-peat. Apple Sports editor Shakra Siman was at the game. The Eagles side, they just did everything right. They were better on offense. They were better on defense. They got lucky at the right times.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jalen Hurts played the game he needed to. And any time we were waiting for that little bit of Mahomes and Chiefs magic, that little sprinkling of dust where they turn nothing into something and win another Super Bowl, it just never happened.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts led the Eagles' charge with two passing touchdowns touchdowns and a rushing touchdown, he took home Super Bowl MVP honors. The last time the Eagles won the Super Bowl was in 2018. At the time, Donald Trump was president, and the team decided not to attend a ceremony at the White House.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last night's other big winner, halftime performer Kendrick Lamar. Lamar didn't just become the first solo rap artist in history to headline the Super Bowl. He brought his world-renowned Drake diss track, Not Like Us, to one of the world's biggest stages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's after it already won five Grammys last Sunday, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year. There were big questions about whether he and the NFL would avoid the song altogether. Drake is suing Lamar's record label for allowing Lamar to call him a pedophile on the track, an accusation which Drake denies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But to fans' delight, Lamar performed it, leaving out that key word. And when he got to the song's most famous line, the entire stadium sang along. Lamar's dancers wore the colors of the American flag, and he recruited some heavyweights in what felt like a nod to Compton, a takedown of Drake, and a scathing review of race relations in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: DJ and record producer Mustard and SZA performed. Samuel L. Jackson played the part of Uncle Sam. Serena Williams made a surprise appearance dancing on stage. She and Drake are rumored to have once dated, the implication being that she is now on Team Lamar, too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The 13-minute show ended with the words, Game Over, lit up. A message clearly to Drake, but it also worked in the context of the actual game, when the Chiefs were already down 24-0 by the half.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. New York Magazine has a story about yonder pouches, security devices referred to as phone prisons, meant to keep students from using their phones while at school.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Turns out, though, students have already figured out how to get around them. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow. Thank you.
