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--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, August 5th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shumita Basu: On today's show, ICE agents turn to smashing through car windows to make arrests. The tiny nation that makes your jeans declares a state of disaster over U.S. tariffs. And a pickpocket ring led by some very clever monkeys. But first, to a major political showdown playing out in Texas that could shape the midterms and even the way future elections are fought.
--:-- Gene Wu: We really didn't have a choice. We tried to negotiate Republicans. We tried to talk to them. We tried to tell them that the public is very angry at what they're doing, and they simply wouldn't listen. This was the only way we could protect our constituents and protect the state.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Gene Wu, the chair of the Texas State House Democratic Caucus, explained why on CNN. Wu and his colleagues are already facing $500 daily fines for leaving the state. Now, Governor Abbott has taken the extraordinary step of ordering civil arrest warrants for the absent Democrats and has claimed he has the legal authority to strip them of their seats.
--:-- Greg Abbott: Gerrymandering can be done or drawing lines can be done on the basis of political makeup, as in Republican versus Democrat. And there's nothing illegal about that.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Thanks to a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, federal courts do not have the authority to determine if a partisan gerrymander goes too far, meaning Texas can do just that so long as they secure the votes.
--:-- Kathy Hochul: I have newsflash for Republicans in Texas. This is no longer the Wild West. We're not going to tolerate our democracy being stolen in a modern-day stagecoach heist by a bunch of law-breaking cowboys.
--:-- Shumita Basu: New York Governor Kathy Hochul, along with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and others, have vowed to explore redrawing their own maps in retaliation.
--:-- David Daly: This is a national problem. It can't be fixed piecemeal state by state. And when the courts pulled themselves out of this, it really took away the last possibility of a neutral arbiter coming in and trying to enforce a standard.
--:-- Shumita Basu: David Daly from the nonpartisan group FairVote, which campaigns for voter reform, said the Supreme Court had made it very difficult to stop gerrymandering from escalating.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: This next story is about encounters with ICE officials. Please be warned, there is some distressing audio of arrests.
--:-- McKenzie Funk: That's the sound of ICE agents smashing in the car window of a father in Oregon who was driving his toddler to preschool when ICE detained him since Trump took office in January.
--:-- Shumita Basu: ProPublica has documented close to 50 instances of breaking vehicle windows during arrests though the government doesn't release data on this so the exact number is hard to pin down.
--:-- McKenzie Funk: It just wasn't common practice because it was seen as so aggressive. It was a transgression of a line that we didn't all collectively know wasn't there.
--:-- Shumita Basu: But seeing these videos, you see that something has changed. That's reporter McKenzie Funk.
--:-- Alexandra Wexler: The problem is that a lot of the damage has already been done. The threat of these 50 percent tariffs has dried up orders. Thousands of people have been laid off, and that's had a really dire effect on them and the economy as a whole.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Alexandra Wexler is an Africa corporate reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Lesotho's textile industry heavily relies on exports to the U.S., which for 25 years have been duty-free through the African Growth and Opportunity Act enacted by Congress.
--:-- Alexandra Wexler: The garment industry accounts for nearly 90 percent of industrial jobs in Lesotho, and the U.S. accounts for almost 20 percent of all its overseas sales, including to clothing brands like Reebok and Levi's and big retailers like Walmart.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Lesotho was sending a lot of stuff to the U.S. and not getting a lot of U.S. goods in, and that trade imbalance ended up, sort of as the trade minister told me, punishing them in an unexpected way.
--:-- Alexandra Wexler: By imposing these tariffs, Wexler reports that Trump appears to be sidestepping the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The law expires this year, and experts don't expect the Republican-controlled Congress to renew it.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And finally, to a criminal enterprise wreaking havoc in Bali, snatching phones and other belongings in exchange for rewards. This network of criminals are, in fact, monkeys, long-tailed macaques to be precise.
--:-- Shumita 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.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Breakfast might have the reputation for being the most important meal of the day, but The New Yorker makes the case for why lunch deserves more respect than it gets. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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