--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, May 11th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the political impact of the indictment of George Santos, the revelation that has historians reconsidering what Martin Luther King Jr. really thought about Malcolm X, and how sushi came to America. But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories in the news.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today marks the end of the U.S. declaration of COVID as a public health emergency. It's been in place for more than three years. Over that time, more than 1.1 million people died in America. The disease is still with us, but this means some policies will change. The federal government will stop buying up tests and vaccines to give away for free. People will now get those through the normal health care and insurance system. Some infection tracking programs will be scaled back, although the CDC will still track hospitalizations and deaths and do genetic testing to watch for dangerous new variants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Staying with health news, an FDA panel is unanimously recommending that a birth control pill called Opil can be sold over the counter. This would be a first. As we talked about on the show the other day, the U.S. is unlike many countries in that birth control pills can't be accessed without a prescription.
--:-- Dr. Kristen Brandy: We have to give people all the tools that they can to protect themselves, protect their health. And this is one great option that I hope will be able to be pushed forward.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The panel's endorsement is not the final word. That's expected to come from the FDA this summer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At the Capitol, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is back at work. She cast her first vote in months yesterday after taking an extended health leave with shingles. The 89-year-old has faced calls from some Democrats to step down. Because of the slim majority the party has in the Senate, her votes are critical for advancing President Biden judicial nominees and passing legislation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's move now from the U.S. Senate to the House. Republican Congressman George Santos pleaded not guilty to 13 federal charges yesterday, including wire fraud and money laundering. He's currently out on a half-million-dollar bond.
--:-- Mark Molinaro: George Santos should have resigned in December. He should have resigned in January. He should have resigned yesterday. And maybe he'll resign today. But sooner or later, honesty and justice will be delivered to him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vox looks at how the indictment could play out. There's nothing in the Constitution barring a person from holding congressional office while they're under criminal indictment or after a conviction. Traditionally, members of Congress give up their committee assignments after being criminally charged. Santos already did that back in January after other controversies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Members are expected to resign if they're convicted. Sometimes they don't. Most recently, Democrat James Traficant wouldn't step down after being convicted of taking bribes and racketeering. He was expelled by Congress in 2002. Santos looks to be safe from expulsion for now. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said Santos has a right to stay in Congress while a case is ongoing. But if Santos is found guilty, McCarthy says he'll call on him to resign.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The prospect of losing a GOP member comes at a tricky time for the party, which has only thin control of the House and a tough fight with the president over spending. The recent debt limit proposal passed by a single vote Santos voted in favor at the last minute.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If Santos is out somehow, a special election would replace him. And the seat could go to a Democrat. Biden won his district by 10 points in 2020. Santos is due back in court late next month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New revelations about Martin Luther King Jr. are raising big questions for the history books on the issue of how he really felt about Malcolm X. For decades, academics and the public believed that King was harshly critical of him. And a lot of that rests on a quote from King in a 1960s Playboy interview.
--:-- Jonathan Eig: Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence as he has done can reap nothing but grief.
--:-- Shamita Basu: King biographer Jonathan Eig read the quote for us. Eig is the author of the new book, King, A Life. He found a transcript of that interview with King during his research, and he says it shows the key parts of what Haley claimed King said were fabricated or taken out of context.
--:-- Jonathan Eig: When he was asked about Malcolm, he was actually much more open-minded. He said they had met only once and briefly and that they certainly had their areas of disagreement, but he thought that they had many areas of common interest as well.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Haley died decades ago and has a mixed legacy. His books had major impact in bringing the Black American story to a broad audience, but he also settled a plagiarism case and faced accusations of historical inaccuracies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As far as MLK and Malcolm X, Eig says this news transforms the historical understanding of these two civil rights leaders. We've been taught that King and Malcolm were foes for the most part during their lifetime, and that King was very critical of Malcolm X. And it appears now that that may have been an attempt by the media to divide and attempt to conquer the black civil rights movement, the black fight for equality.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we see this time and time again where the media is being used to manipulate and damage disrupt the civil rights movement. So this appears to be another example.
--:-- Shamita Basu: History has treated these men as rivals when in fact they may have been more aligned than we really believed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're going to close with a story you've probably never heard about sushi. These days, you can get it delivered through an app or grab a salmon roll in a grocery store. So it's easy to forget how, for a long time in America, the idea of eating raw fish was pretty icky.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There was a period when many Japanese restaurants in America didn't even serve sushi. They didn't think it would fly. So we enjoyed reading an origin story from the Los Angeles Times about a dinner in the 1960s that paved the way for sushi in the U.S., forever changing the way America eats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The meal was in Tokyo. And at the table were Noritoshi Kanai and Harry Wolfe. They were entrepreneurs in town on a mission to find a new food product to import to America. And they made a pretty odd pairing. One was a Japanese Army veteran and the other a former bouncer from Chicago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The trip wasn't going so well until Kanai suggested they grab a bite to eat at a family-run sushi spot. Now, Wolfe had never had sushi before, but he was hooked. He went back to the restaurant multiple times. The pair came up with a plan to bring sushi to America. The story of how they convinced Los Angeles and the rest of the country to eat sushi is a bumpy one with lots of stops and starts. But of course, you know how it ends.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sushi is now available across the country, from takeout joints to Michelin star restaurants, thanks in part to this unusual duo. 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, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next from The Atlantic about a small-town mechanic who built a billion-dollar green energy Ponzi scheme that drew in Warren Buffett and the U.S. Treasury.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow. For more information, visit www.fema.org.
