--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, April 29th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, a pulse check on the state of the economy, an education case challenging the separation of church and state, and Canada's Liberal Party wins national elections. But first, today marks Donald Trump's 100th day in office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since starting his second term, Trump has fundamentally changed the country and our economic prospects. He launched a global trade war that's led to mass uncertainty about whether the country is headed for a recession.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He and Elon Musk have slashed spending and staffing across numerous government departments. And Trump has clashed with the judiciary, seemingly ignoring court orders in a few instances related to his immigration policy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He has fulfilled other promises, too, like ending DEI initiatives, reversing protections for transgender Americans, deporting and detaining migrants who are here illegally and bringing border crossings to historic lows.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So let's start today by hearing from voters in their own voices. Journalists from outlets like Reuters and CNN have been traveling the country in recent weeks to ask Americans where they stand on the Trump administration.
--:-- Rod O'Rood: I just think we need to let the president do what he's doing. And we need to just see what's going to happen here and give him a little latitude so that, you know, if it doesn't work, then we're going to have to try something different.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some Trump supporters are much more on edge, like Stephen Egan in Florida and Jim Hartman in North Carolina, who spoke with Reuters and CNN.
--:-- Stephen Egan: I did vote for Trump, and now I will deal with the aftermath of the tariffs. I compared 2024 first quarter to 2025 first quarter. I am down 70 percent. I never thought I was going to lose this much money this fast.
--:-- Jim Hartman: Beyond the economy, another big area of concern are the cuts being made by Elon Musk and his team.
--:-- Tamara Varga: I'm worried about Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security. He did say that he wasn't going to cut them, that he was just going to find the waste. And I really hope that he sticks to that because we need to take care of our people with disabilities and our elderly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the nonpartisan congressional budget office, the only way Republicans will be able to turn the blueprint for Trump's spending bill into policy would be by making cuts to Medicaid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On the other end of the spectrum, Fox News recently spoke to a panel of Gen Z voters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's one happy with how Trump has gone after universities.
--:-- Gen Z Voter: This is not an unprecedented attack on higher education. It's simply President Trump saying that we're going to ensure that all students are treated with equality under the law. This is exactly why I campaigned and voted for Donald Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile many Democrats told reporters that they watching what happening with horror.
--:-- Melissa Cordero: He's like crazed right now. I'm constantly going, can he do that? I just feel like nobody cares right now until it affects them. And I don't understand how they don't see that.
--:-- Becky Hofer: They're not dumb. These people aren't dumb. And they're not unkind people and selfish people and thoughtless people, so I don't understand why they're OK with it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While these voices of voters don't alone paint the full picture, what they do reveal is that there is waning enthusiasm among Americans for Trump's time in office so far, even among many Trump backers who say they are willing to wait and see.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And three weekend polls are also fairly bleak for Trump, with his approval rating somewhere between 39 and 45 percent. Those are some of the lowest numbers for any president at the 100-day mark in more than 70 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sticking with Trump's 100 days in office, we're going to spend a few minutes now diving deeper into the state of the economy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we just heard from so many voters, it's the top issue on their minds. But new analysis suggests this has been the worst opening 100 days for the stock market of any president since Richard Nixon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Both the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund are now predicting slower U.S. growth as a result of Trump's tariffs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And several economists have said a recession in 2025 is likely.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: His first 100 days have been shock and awe for businesses and consumers. That's Nick Timmeros, chief economics correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: President Trump keeps things in turmoil and we do not know what he will do next.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: So even businesses that are supportive of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. are worried that they are going to be hurt by this.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: You're seeing it already. Traffic shipping containers to the West Coast ports projected to fall notably in the coming weeks.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: And so there is a lot of disruption that just goes beyond the short term pain that White House officials had been talking about.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has argued the turmoil is a feature of their strategy, not a bug.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: But for businesses, the uncertainty doesn't feel strategic, with many saying it makes it impossible to plan how to hire, how to restructure supply chains and how to price goods and services.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: Timros also reminds us that all of this was pretty avoidable.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: Donald Trump inherited an economy that looked pretty good. the unemployment rate at 4%, inflation coming down after years of being quite high.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: There were some vulnerabilities. The housing market didn't look great. You had some challenges in the economy.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: But overall, Donald Trump inherited what looked like a much better economy than anybody might have anticipated.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: And though Donald Trump said multiple times on the campaign trail that he would enact sweeping tariffs, a lot of consumers say this isn't the outcome they were hoping for.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: Instead, They're yearning for the type of results they saw Trump get in his first term.
--:-- Nick Timmeros: When I talked to voters, that's what they reflected on. They wanted to go back to that economy that we saw in Donald Trump's first term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The White House has defended its economic policies, saying any pain being from tariffs will only be short-lived and will lead to longer-term gains.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They've also promised trade deals, peace deals, and tax cuts in the next 100 days, with White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt saying, quote, more American greatness is on the way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to the Supreme Court, which will hear a case tomorrow that could have huge implications for not just education, but for the separation of church and state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're going to be deciding whether Oklahoma can create the nation's first religious charter school.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: We already have some form of public support for religious schools in the form of school vouchers. a number of years ago, the Supreme Court allowed vouchers to be used for religious schools.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: But this is much broader than that because vouchers just cover a portion of tuition and charter schools are pretty much all of the funding comes from public sources.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: And that would be a major change in how we think about the separation of church and state.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: The school in question is based in Oklahoma. It teaches all of its classes online and has a mission to, quote, fully embrace the Catholic Church's teachings and fully incorporate them into every aspect of the school, from everything from reading class to math.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: A few years ago, it was recognized by Oklahoma's state charter school board, meaning taxpayers pay for the school to operate and students attend for free.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: But Oklahoma's attorney general, who is a Republican, filed a lawsuit arguing that allowing the school to operate as a charter school and receive public funds would violate state and federal law.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: The state Supreme Court sided with the attorney general.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: Other conservatives in the state urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, including the governor and the superintendent who supports teaching the Bible in public schools.
--:-- Maureen Grappi: They cite recent Supreme Court cases that have expanded religious institutions' access to public money.
--:-- Kate Anderson: The Supreme Court has every single time said that these monies can go to religious entities when they're taking part in a program that should be open to them, but for them being religious.
--:-- Kate Anderson: So they need to be treated fairly, the same as any other organization, and they cannot be excluded simply because of their religious character, which is exactly what happened here.
--:-- Rachel Laser: I'll quote Thomas Jefferson, that it's sinful and tyrannical to require a man to fund a religion that's not his own.
--:-- Rachel Laser: So that is fundamentally why it would violate America DNA to fund this type of education directly and fully with tax dollars
--:-- Shamita Basu: One potential twist in tomorrow oral arguments only eight justices will weigh in Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, reportedly because she has close ties to someone connected to the school.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Barrett's recusal means that the 6-3 conservative majority on the court will now be a 5-3 majority.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If the court were to allow the school to move forward, it could make charter schools the next frontier in the debate over religion and public education.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The CBC reports Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's liberals will win Canada's federal elections.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Carney will now keep the job of prime minister, which he assumed just last month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Previous polls showed conservative leader Pierre Polyev would easily cruise into power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But after former prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned and Trump's tariffs, the political winds shifted dramatically.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Carney campaigned on the message that Trump is trying to break Canada so America can own it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His message to voters on the campaign trail was that will never happen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post reports that about half of the nearly 400 lawyers in the DOJ's civil rights division either have left or are leaving.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their departures come as the new head of the office has redirected staff to focus on things such as anti-Christian bias, anti-Semitism and combating DEI initiatives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A big departure from their mission under previous administrations, which focused much more heavily on racial discrimination.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In addition to changing their mission, the Washington Post reports more than a dozen career staffers were reassigned, some to areas outside of their legal expertise.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While many are used to the goalposts shifting when administrations change, some attorneys said this time around the new directives have been more extreme than anticipated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Spain and Portugal suffered a massive power outage Monday that caused chaos across the Iberian Peninsula.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trains stopped working, ATMs and traffic lights went dark, hospitals, airports and other emergency services operated on backup electrical systems.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Both countries declared states of emergency as authorities worked to restore power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One interesting detail, CNN notes that Portugal imports its electricity from Spain.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So if Spain's power goes down, so does Portugal's.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Portuguese officials ruled out a cyber attack, and an EU commission executive called it one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's the Apple News Plus Story of the Month for April.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New York Magazine investigated a podcast called The Telepathy Tapes, which has been climbing up the charts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It focuses on non-speaking people with autism who seem to have telepathic abilities, which has launched a nationwide debate about what's really happening.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Thank you.
