--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, August 4th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, where have Ukraine's missing children gone and can the country ever get them back? One month after the Texas floods, officials are still piecing together what should have gone differently. And in Russia, first an earthquake, then a volcanic eruption. But first, to another unprecedented firing from the White House.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On Friday, President Trump received some weaker-than-expected jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economy added about 73,000 jobs in July, which was lower than expected. But the more surprising figures were from May and June, where hiring numbers were downgraded by a quarter million jobs fewer than had previously been reported.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rather than accept the findings, Trump fired the Labor Bureau Commissioner Erica McIntyre for delivering the bad news. He justified his decision by claiming without any evidence that she had somehow rigged the numbers and was politically motivated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election. And there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her. And you know what? I did the right thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic advisor, said over the weekend that the large revisions were proof that the data was unreliable. But revisions from the bureau are not uncommon as it responds to new data and survey information.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Courtney Brown, senior economics reporter at Axios, told us how people in Washington were reacting to Trump's decision.
--:-- Courtney Brown: This shocked everyone. This shocked all my sources. We all know that this is a nonpartisan agency. There's no fiddling with the numbers, as President Trump claimed, without evidence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So we are going to have to reckon with this idea that when the administration doesn't like the numbers that it gets on the economy, it blames the person in charge of the agency. And the commissioner who was fired came with a solid reputation. She was a Biden appointee confirmed by the Senate with strong bipartisan support, an 86 to 8 vote, with then Senators J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio both supporting her.
--:-- Courtney Brown: Brown told us that by firing her now, it raises questions about the work of her eventual successor. Whenever President Trump announces his nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are going to be huge questions about this person, whether they are going to politicize the agency, whether they are going to fudge with the numbers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, even if this person is perfectly up to snuff and respects the agency and plans to keep it politically independent, we have this perception that maybe they won't.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Bureau for Labor Statistics doesn't have the most exciting title in the world, but Brown explained why trust in their research matters a lot.
--:-- Courtney Brown: I know it's nerdy. I know the everyday person does not wake up at 8.30 a.m. the first Friday of every month like I do, so excited to see the jobs report. But a lot of decisions rest on this data.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We have a big debate right now happening within the walls of the Federal Reserve in this country, trying to figure out what's going on with the economy. Will it be appropriate to cut interest rates? Should they keep interest rates on hold? And they're looking at this data to make this decision. They are data dependent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democratic lawmakers have criticized the decision to fire McIntarfer and even some Republicans have expressed concern GOP Senator Cynthia Lummis from Kentucky said that it would be quote impetuous for the president to dismiss her without knowing if the numbers were inaccurate
--:-- Shamita Basu: The data was part of a big week of economic news reports, which gave us a better indication for how the U.S. economy is doing in the face of Trump's tariff announcements.
--:-- Courtney Brown: Our understanding of the health of the economy has completely shifted. When you look under the hood, there is some indication of pretty soft domestic demand, not recessionary by any means, but slower growth than the headline would imply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We also learned that inflation was a little bit stickier in the second quarter. And then we get the jobs report on Friday that shows not just soft jobs growth in July, but basically hiring has stalled out over the last three months.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And these are new questions we have to grapple with. Trump's new global tariffs, meanwhile, are set to take effect on Thursday. It marks a new economic reality for the U.S. and the world, with tariffs now among the highest they've been for a century.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn to Russia's war in Ukraine. President Trump has threatened further sanctions on Russia if a negotiated peace settlement isn't reached by Friday. But so far, there are few signs of any kind of breakthrough.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the sticking points in the talks has centered on the fate of the thousands of missing Ukrainian children that are now thought to be in Russia.
--:-- Simon Schuster: So in total, there are about 1.6 million children who are living now in parts of Ukraine that are under Russian occupation. The Ukrainian authorities say that about 20,000 children have been abducted and forcibly transferred to Russia or areas under Russian control.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over these allegations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has brought up the children in his conversations with Trump. And a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a resolution earlier this year calling for the return of all the children prior to a peace deal with Russia.
--:-- Simon Schuster: But Schuster told us that Putin's refusal to engage on this issue has successfully forced it to the sidelines as U.S. negotiators look to show evidence of progress.
--:-- Shamita Basu: American diplomats have said, look, we need to move fast. President Trump wants to move fast toward a peace deal. And if we want to move fast, we can't be setting conditions on the peace process.
--:-- Simon Schuster: But that is an unacceptable state of affairs for the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians want to make sure that any peace deal ensures the return of these children as a top priority.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Russian media portrays the abductions as an act of charity, claiming these are children who were saved by soldiers. And Zelensky told Schuster about his fears that these young Ukrainians will be indoctrinated to believe their country no longer exists, that their home is gone, and that the war Russia is waging there is a righteous one.
--:-- Simon Schuster: Schuster told us about the case of Margarita Prokopenko, who was just a baby when the invasion began. She was living in an orphanage in the city of Kherson. And when Russian troops moved into that city and occupied it in the spring of 2022, soon after that she was taken out of that orphanage along with dozens of other children and transferred to Russia and parts of Ukraine that are under Russian control
--:-- Shamita Basu: She ended up in the custody of a Russian lawmaker. It was fascinating and quite alarming to think about the kind of environment that this little girl is going to be growing up in an environment where the head of the household, this Russian lawmaker, openly, publicly calls for the destruction of Ukraine and its full annexation and conquest by Russia.
--:-- Simon Schuster: Zelensky told Schuster that the only way to bring the children back would be through international pressure and peace deal negotiations. But over the weekend, Putin gave no sense that he was budging from his position.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He praised his troops' advance on the front line and suggested that people had developed inflated expectations over the chances of peace.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today marks one month since severe rain and flash floods overwhelmed Texas Hill Country and killed at least 135 people. But many questions about that day and its aftermath remain.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In recent days, lawmakers have been holding public hearings where they have scrutinized the disaster response teams, particularly in Care County, which was hit hardest.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They also heard from survivors, many of whom were angry that the county wasn't better prepared. Here's Auburn Gallagher, a longtime resident of Sandy Creek, holding back tears as she spoke to the committee chair.
--:-- Auburn Gallagher: Nobody came. No resources. Nobody came. No fire, no EMS, no. Nobody came. No sheriff. Nobody came for us. Nobody.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The top two emergency management officials from Care County surprised many in their testimony when they revealed they were sleeping during the early hours of July 4th as floodwaters began to rise.
--:-- Emily Foxhall: One was this recognition that there is no mechanism for the state to call and make sure that local officials are awake and alert and responding to these disasters. And the second, she said, was that there's no standard for being a local emergency management coordinator in Texas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The state really appears to have failed to address making sure, like a police officer has to take a certain test or a firefighter has to take a certain test. In this case, there's not one certain qualification that the emergency management coordinators have to have.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Evacuations are handled by local officials, but they often have fewer resources compared to the state level. The National Weather Service had issued a flood watch warning for Care County on July 3rd, and stronger flood warnings went out at about 1 a.m. on July 4th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Sheriff's Dispatch Center had just two people working when calls for help began to roll in. One of the lawmakers said something along the lines of, we have people who have titles, but when the time came for them to act, they didn't do so in a timely way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some family members of victims also gave powerful testimony. Alicia Jeffrey Baker spoke about her 11-year-old daughter, Emmy, who died alongside her grandparents.
--:-- Alicia Jeffrey Baker: My daughter was not identified until Thursday the 10th. And the only thing that identified her at all was her charm bracelet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When we know better, we do better. And so we need to do better for the people in this community for the people that are suffering
--:-- Emily Foxhall: Foxhole told us that after listening to all these accounts local lawmakers seemed all too aware of that as important as it was to understand what went wrong they also need a plan to prevent disaster with the next big flood
--:-- Shamita Basu: There was one legislator who said the monster will be back. And that really struck me because we know disasters will repeat in this state. We have seen them in the past and we know they will come in the future.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so I think the question is, how can legislators look at this big picture, you know, how warning systems more broadly could be improved and how local emergency responders could be better supported?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Hamas released a disturbing video of 24-year-old Israeli hostage Evyatar David over the weekend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: David, who appears pale and gaunt, is seen digging his own grave in an underground tunnel. It's one of multiple videos that have been released by the militant group in the last few days, coinciding with the breakdown of last week's temporary ceasefire talks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Tel Aviv on Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters participated in a rally to call for the release of the hostages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israeli officials say they believe there are around 20 living male hostages and 30 dead bodies in Hamas' captivity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, pressure on Israel to end the war has grown in recent weeks as images of desperate and frail Palestinians starving to death circulate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post's analysis of local health ministry figures suggests 60,000 Palestinians have now been killed since the outbreak of the war, and more than 18,000 of them are children.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A number of Democratic state lawmakers in Texas fled the state yesterday to temporarily block Republicans from passing new congressional maps.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The redistricting plan, which Republicans are pushing at Trump's urging, would benefit Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: By leaving the state, Democrats are making sure the state legislature doesn't have the minimum number of lawmakers needed to hold votes today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the Texas House rules, lawmakers who flee the state can be fined $500 a day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if Democrats successfully run down the clock on this voting window, the Texas governor could, in theory, continue calling subsequent sessions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, first came a Russian earthquake, now a volcano. After lying dormant for centuries, the Khrushchev volcano in Russia's Far East spewed out ash as high as four miles into the sky.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The last recorded eruption was 475 years ago, in the year 1550.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The director for the Nature Reserve there said it was an exciting and fascinating event.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One researcher told NPR, while the recent magnitude 8.8 earthquake alone probably couldn't have triggered the eruption, if the volcano was already close to erupting on its own, the quake's seismic waves might have given it the shake it needed.
--:-- 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. Reporting from New York Magazine looks at how more kids are developing ARFID, a disorder that's caused by a fear of food.
--:-- 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.
