--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, July 14th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, questions about FEMA's response time in Texas, why a high-profile murder case from the 2000s is back in the news, and Yannick Sinner and Iga Swiantek win their first Wimbledon titles.
--:-- [Discussion begins]
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, it's been a year since the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. It happened on July 13, 2024, at a campaign rally for the then-candidate in Butler, Pennsylvania. At 6:11 p.m., while Trump addressed the crowd, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired out at least eight rounds, killing one person and injuring others.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you want to really see something that's said, take a look at what happened. Speaking on his daughter-in-law Laura Trump's show on Fox Saturday, President Trump recalled his memories of the day. Well, it was unforgettable. I didn't know exactly what was going on. I got whacked. There's no question about that. And fortunately, I got down quickly. People were screaming, and I got down quickly, fortunately, because I think they shot eight bullets, and one got me.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also praised the Secret Service sniper who killed Crooks from a distance almost immediately after he had opened fire. The shooting shaped the rest of the campaign. Trump's bloodied face and single fist up in the air remains one of its most defining images and continues to be a rallying cry for his base. But it's also come to represent a day of failure for the Secret Service.
--:-- Carol Lennig: The Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released an updated report on Sunday describing it as a preventable tragedy and one that revealed a disturbing pattern of communication failure and negligence. The Secret Service failed miserably in a way that was visceral to the country and a shock to the system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On that day, they were treating Donald Trump, a former president, as sort of an also-ran candidate for a campaign event that they were just ticking off their list. And what each of these reports consistently finds is that the service failed to communicate on that day properly with all of the local police that were around the site, some of whom were noticing that Thomas Crooks, a strange man, was clambering onto a roof and had a gun.
--:-- Carol Lennig: Beyond communications, I told you that the second failing was in securing the building Crooks used to take aim. A man got onto a roof that is a billboard for potentially killing Donald Trump. It's a screaming site that says, I'm 150 yards from the stage, and this is a place someone could kill the candidate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Senate's latest report was also critical of what it describes as limited accountability within the Secret Service. The director at the time, Kimberly Cheadle, resigned in the days after the incident. But CNN reports that only six people were ultimately suspended, information the service handed over only under the threat of subpoena.
--:-- Carol Lennig: In his Saturday interview, President Trump told Fox News he was satisfied with the report conclusions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for Crooks, investigators have spent months attempting to work out a motive. He was shot dead at the scene and left no note or manifesto. In her reporting, Lenig reveals that just days before the Butler rally, the FBI had warned the Secret Service of a plot backed by Iran to kill Trump. Following the shooting, the FBI underwent months of painstaking work and hundreds of interviews, but in the end, Crooks was eventually determined to be acting alone, not with the Iranians.
--:-- Carol Lennig: He was seemingly another socially isolated young man whose internet history suggested serious mental health problems. The assassination attempt, Lennox says, continues to be a symbolic day for Trump's supporters, and one that Trump himself has described as a turning point for him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So many people in the MAGA movement believe that he was saved by divine intervention, and that he is a unique and special candidate here to save America. And that is their strong belief.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to the aftermath of the floods in Texas and new reporting about the federal government's response. A number of officials within FEMA, which is run by the Department of Homeland Security, told CNN that bureaucratic obstacles delayed the ability for the agency to respond immediately.
--:-- Kristi Noem: I was there that very morning, that afternoon when the flooding was happening, and was with those emergency responders right away, with the governor, with Nim Kidd, who's running the state's response. And every one of them will tell you that they got everything that they needed when they asked for it immediately.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But CNN reports that FEMA had deployed only 86 of its own people by Monday. That number increased to 311 by Tuesday. One state-level official told CNN that interactions with FEMA have been the same as usual for disasters like this.
--:-- Kristi Noem: I'm not certain it's accurate, and I'm not sure where it came from. And the individuals who are giving you information out of FEMA, I'd love to have them put their names behind it, because the anonymous attacks to politicize this situation is completely wrong.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The focus on FEMA resourcing comes as there are major questions surrounding its future. In the past, both Trump and Noem have expressed a desire to abolish the agency entirely, moving the burden of relief onto states. Noem and administration officials have since shifted that position and spoken more about reforming FEMA and empowering states to lead their response more.
--:-- Deanne Criswell: When we look at a state like Texas, the most capable state probably in the country, that also needed to ask for assistance first through state-to-state mutual aid and then FEMA, if they need that kind of assistance, what is that going to say for every other state or small jurisdiction out there when they have a big event and they don't have the federal government that they're used to depending on?
--:-- Shamita Basu: We can't ask states to replicate everything that the federal government can provide.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to new developments in a crime that gripped the nation back in the early 2000s, the disappearance and murder of Lacey Peterson, a California woman who was eight months pregnant at the time. Her husband, Scott, was convicted in 2004, and he's been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
--:-- Harriet Ryan: This tiny organization started looking at the evidence, and eventually they just became convinced that he was in fact innocent. And they're not like revisiting what he raised at trial or things that have come up in intervening years. They're looking at things that they can turn up now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But before we get into the new evidence they say they've discovered, let's first quickly go through some of the evidence that led to Peterson's conviction. Lacey's body and the body of her unborn baby washed up separately on the shores of the San Francisco Bay, just a few miles away from where Peterson went fishing on Christmas Eve of 2002, the day Lacey disappeared.
--:-- Harriet Ryan: The LA Innocence Project analyzed handwritten notes from the Peterson's home, which documented pricing for boat anchors, and they concluded Lacey probably wrote those notes, and Peterson probably did not.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the LA Innocence Project says there's another piece of evidence that suggests Peterson is innocent. The age of the baby that died in her womb. At the trial, there was testimony that the baby had died in her womb on the last day that she was seen before she went missing. But the Innocence Project got a new expert, a Harvard medical doctor, a specialist in fetal size to look at the evidence. And he came back and said, actually, the baby lived at least five days and maybe as long as 13 days after Lacey Peterson went missing.
--:-- Harriet Ryan: And in that period, the Innocence Project says there's no way that Scott Peterson could have killed her because he was under police surveillance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The L.A. Innocence Project has faced some backlash for taking on Peterson's case because he doesn't fit the mold of a typical client. Most of the time in Innocence Project cases, they have a public defender. They didn't have a big-time defense like Peterson did, and they didn't have any of his notoriety and resources in terms of a family to help pay for his defense at the time of trial.
--:-- Harriet Ryan: The attorney that represents the LA Innocence Project declined to be interviewed for Ryan's story, but the group's board chair told the Times he believes Peterson's case deserved their attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The district attorney's office, meanwhile, says the original evidence against Peterson was overwhelming. Ryan says Peterson and the Innocence Project will take their case to court this summer and ask for an evidentiary hearing. The process could take years.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. We're still learning new details about the June Air India flight that crashed and killed all but one of 242 people on board and 19 people on the ground. India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau says that both engines on the plane stopped receiving fuel shortly after takeoff, causing the plane to lose thrust and ultimately crash.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- Shamita Basu: And at Wimbledon, Yannick Sinner defeated Carlos Alcaraz to claim his first Wimbledon title, and giving Alcaraz the first taste of final defeat after five Grand Slam wins. It was a rematch between the top two players in the world after an epic French Open final that Alcaraz won.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sinner is the first Italian player to win a Wimbledon title. And besides overcoming Alcaraz to do it, he also had to deal with a champagne cork landing on the court mid-match. He was asked about it in an on-court interview. How was it having to avoid a champagne cork that came onto the court? Have you ever had to do that before?
--:-- Yannick Sinner: No, only here in Wimbledon, but that's exactly why we love playing here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the women's final on Saturday, Iga Swiantic easily defeated Amanda Anasimova 6-love-6-love, a double bagel, to claim her first Wimbledon title and sixth overall Grand Slam.
--:-- 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. The Los Angeles Times takes a deep investigative look into how L.A. became the city with the highest homeless population of any place in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 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.
