--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, February 4th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, why Trump keeps referencing the original tariff man president. How worried should we be about bird flu? And a critical meeting between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. But first, it's been a dramatic few days at USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After Elon Musk's team entered USAID's headquarters over the weekend and announced his intentions to shut down the agency, staffers were told in a late-night email not to report into work on Monday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Then yesterday, workers showed up to find the lobby entrance was blocked by yellow tape. When some Democrats tried to enter the agency's headquarters, they were initially blocked by federal officers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Congressman Jamie Raskin was one of them. Here's what he told NPR.
--:-- Jamie Raskin: Well, I represent thousands of federal workers, and a lot of them work in foreign aid and at USAID, and I wanted to go and see what's happening.
--:-- Jamie Raskin: They told me they were locked out of their workplace, and sure enough, we got inside, and they said it had been closed, And all of the workers there were told to be teleworking, which is also, I understand, against the law under one of Trump's new executive orders.
--:-- Jamie Raskin: But it's an attempt really to shut down an essential government function.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he's the acting administrator of the agency, even though USAID is an independent body and has been for 60 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he appeared to walk back plans for a full shutdown, saying the agency's functions should be overhauled.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also yesterday, Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii told The Wall Street Journal that he would block all of Trump's State Department nominees, effectively preventing Trump from installing his foreign policy team.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Schatz said he'll delay those nominations from getting through until the administration's attack on foreign aid agencies ends.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So how did USAID, which funds disaster relief, medical services, access to clean water and other programs around the world, become the focus of President Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to slash federal spending?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's what Trump told reporters on the tarmac outside of Air Force One on Sunday.
--:-- Donald Trump: It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics and we're getting them out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: USAID, run by radical lunatics and we're getting them out. and then we'll make a decision.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Foreign aid makes up a very small portion of the federal budget. In the 2023 fiscal year, USAID handled more than $40 billion. That's less than 1% of the federal budget.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Musk has claimed without evidence that USAID is corrupt and wasteful.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The agency does work that many say is essential and that for a long time people of both parties have taken pride in, like treating malnourished children in Sudan, working to eliminate polio in dozens of countries, reducing HIV rates, and providing beds, food, and other critical services to refugees of Russia's war in Ukraine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post calls it the world's largest provider of food assistance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democrats say the attack on USAID is a sign of just how much power Elon Musk is wielding in Washington.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they say Trump doesn't have the authority to shut it down on his own.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democratic Senator Chris Murphy spoke about this on Monday.
--:-- Chris Murphy: This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let's call it what it is. The people get to decide how we defend the United States of America.
--:-- Chris Murphy: The people get to decide how their taxpayer money is spent. Elon Musk does not get to decide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But for people who have long followed Elon Musk, this feels like a familiar pattern.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNBC's Steve Kovac points out we saw Musk take a similar approach with his social media platform.
--:-- Steve Kovac: We're really watching the Twitter playbook play out here.
--:-- Steve Kovac: When Elon Musk took over Twitter two and a half years ago, this fork in the road email, this idea of going into agencies, claiming fraud, even though there wasn't, not paying bills and things like that.
--:-- Steve Kovac: We're seeing this play out now in the federal government from Elon Musk.
--:-- Shamita Basu: More than 10,000 people work for USAID in over 100 countries. And they're just the latest targets in Trump's attack against American foreign aid programs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, he also paused programs that provide heat and electricity for Ukrainian refugees and disease monitoring in Africa.
--:-- Shamita Basu: ProPublica calls what we are seeing, quote, the most consequential and far-reaching shift in U.S. humanitarian policy since the Marshall Plan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And ProPublica recently wrote about the impossible position the freeze on foreign assistance is putting aid workers in on the ground.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Sudan, staffers at U.S.-funded medical facilities had to make the choice last week between caring for severely malnourished children or following orders to immediately stop their work and possibly let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They chose to keep working.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's talk tariffs. President Trump's promised 10% tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect overnight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Beijing responded with a number of retaliatory tariffs and restrictions on American goods and companies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This comes after Trump pulled back on his tariff threats against Canada and Mexico, our two biggest trading partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Those tariffs are on pause for 30 days while mediators negotiate what should happen next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Canada and Mexico have already agreed to some concessions regarding border security.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump's fixation on tariffs as a tool for economic growth and as a way to put pressure on other countries in negotiations has roots in some very interesting history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You'll often hear Trump invoke the name of the 25th president, William McKinley.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has praised McKinley many times, saying the country was prosperous under him because of tariffs he imposed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was the tariff king, and he—I don't think he was as bad as I am.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think I believe in him even more than him, but he believed in him very strongly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was when we were the richest, relatively speaking. We were the richest during that period of time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was tariffs from other countries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post spoke with historians about Trump's reverence for McKinley and his tariffs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they say Trump's retelling of that chapter of history is not a complete picture.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One explained that it's not accurate to say tariffs were the main reason for McKinley's good economic fortune because the U.S. economy was growing pretty steadily before, during, and after McKinley's time in office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One Federal Reserve estimate put growth at around 4% per year for decades before and after McKinley's term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There were other things going on during McKinley's presidency that fanned an already strong economy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Banks started loaning more money. Unrestricted immigration meant that cheap labor was readily available.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And technological advancements like the telephone also played a role.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While McKinley did work to pass a new tariff law raising average taxes on manufactured goods to nearly 50 percent when he served in Congress,
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post reports that the policy was pretty unpopular.
--:-- Shamita Basu: American businesses reaped huge profits, but consumers were upset about rising prices.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Newspaper articles from the time blamed the tariffs for the cost of clothing and other items.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's one of the reasons historians say Republicans lost midterm elections later the same year and the following presidential race.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One big difference between McKinley and Trump, according to a historian and McKinley expert speaking to the Post,
--:-- Shamita Basu: is that Trump appears to be using tariffs as a stick to make demands or threats against other countries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: McKinley used them more as a carrot to incentivize other countries to mutually reduce tariffs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was a big part of McKinley's reciprocity approach to trade policy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In McKinley's second term, he gave a speech about the need for reciprocal trade agreements,
--:-- Shamita Basu: saying the United States can't, quote, forever sell everything and buy little or nothing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also said the period of exclusiveness is past.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But as the Post points out, we'll never know how his plans to rein in tariffs might have panned out,
--:-- Shamita Basu: because the day after he gave his speech, he was shot by an assassin.
--:-- Shamita Basu: McKinley died eight days later.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have you noticed the price of eggs is up again? That is, if you can find them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: My grocery store was out of stock a few days ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're seeing this because of bird flu.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the past several weeks, across all 50 states, more than 13 million birds have been affected by it, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And for a poultry rancher, even one case of bird flu can have devastating consequences.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's Jess Craig, a fellow at Vox and former infectious disease epidemiologist.
--:-- Jess Craig: When bird flu is detected on a farm, they can be massive operations that produce millions of eggs per week.
--:-- Jess Craig: They have to be shut down, cleaned, decontaminated.
--:-- Jess Craig: And to contain the spread of bird flu, any birds that have been exposed must be euthanized,
--:-- Jess Craig: which has been necessary for tens of millions of birds in recent years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it's really just that we're seeing a surge of cases, and that is resulting in a shortage,
--:-- Shamita Basu: and then we see that in the price tag of eggs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to Vox, a carton of eggs has nearly doubled in price,
--:-- Shamita Basu: from on average about $2.50 a year ago to more than $4 now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the bird flu scare is going beyond poultry farms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's now infected cows, which is rare, and even people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are dozens of current cases in the United States where a human caught bird flu from interacting with an animal, according to the CDC.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And last month, a person in Louisiana with underlying health conditions died of bird flu after being exposed to chickens and birds,
--:-- Shamita Basu: the first human death attributed to bird flu in the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So how worried should you be about bird flu?
--:-- Shamita Basu: For the most part, the risk of bird flu to most people is very low.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Craig told us there are some basic things we can all do to be vigilant and protect ourselves.
--:-- Jess Craig: We do know things like pasteurizing milk and cooking your eggs and meat does kill bird flu.
--:-- Jess Craig: The highest risk is not from consuming these products.
--:-- Jess Craig: It's more coming into contact with an infected bird.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the good news is most of us do these things anyway.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 99% of the country's milk supply comes from farms that pasteurize milk, for example.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Craig says the USDA does a pretty good job keeping tabs on poultry farms and taking quick action when there's a sign of possible bird flu
--:-- Jess Craig: But the agency is up against some major challenges.
--:-- Jess Craig: Craig reports that a lot of farmers are skeptical of bird flu.
--:-- Jess Craig: They think it's a hoax.
--:-- Jess Craig: Some don't trust the government, so they might not report cases if they occur.
--:-- Jess Craig: And other farmers, she says, won't allow veterinarians on site to check for disease.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, Craig told us she doesn't think that people should panic about this.
--:-- Jess Craig: Though there are a few things that she'll be watching closely to see if the risk level changes.
--:-- Jess Craig: If any of the agencies announced that human transmission has become possible,
--:-- Jess Craig: or if we start seeing infections in swine, that probably would be major turning points in this outbreak.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But I think for now, take your standard precautions when eating or consuming meat and other animal products, and you should be okay.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Trump,
--:-- Shamita Basu: becoming the first foreign leader to do so since Trump returned to office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR reports that there's a lot at stake in this meeting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Most immediately, how to proceed on the second part of the ceasefire deal to end Israel's war with Hamas and release all remaining hostages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another topic that the Trump White House wants to broach is Israel opening diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A big obstacle to all of this are Netanyahu's allies in government at home in Israel,
--:-- Shamita Basu: who want to see the war against Hamas continue and are threatening to bring down his government if he doesn't go on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Spain, a trial is underway for Luis Rubiales, the former head of Spanish soccer,
--:-- Shamita Basu: who forcibly kissed a female player after the team won the 2023 Women's World Cup.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jenny Hermoso, the player in question, said in court on Monday that the kiss, quote, stained one of the happiest days of my life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prosecutors are seeking a one-year prison sentence for sexual assault.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're also pushing for an additional year and a half on coercion charges.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're claiming Rubiales and three former colleagues tried to pressure Hermoso into saying the kiss was consensual.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rubiales denies the allegations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hermoso, who has faced death threats since speaking out,
--:-- Shamita Basu: has since left Spain to play in Mexico.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, we are days away from the Super Bowl when the Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if the Chiefs bring it home, this would be their third championship win in a row, commonly known as three-peat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But if they want to use that specific term, they might have to pay big bucks to an NBA legend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Former player, coach, and now minority owner of the Miami Heat, Pat Riley,
--:-- Shamita Basu: owns the trademark of the term three-peat and several variations of it,
--:-- Shamita Basu: meaning if anyone wants to make hats, shirts, or other memorabilia, they'll have to pay up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: USA Today reports in the 90s, when the Chicago Bulls pulled off two separate three-peats,
--:-- Shamita Basu: Riley profited pretty handily off of both occasions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 1998 alone, he received nearly $600,000 in royalty fees.
--:-- 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,
--:-- Shamita Basu: we've got a narrated article coming up next ahead of the Oscars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vogue profiled best actor nominee Adrian Brody,
--:-- Shamita Basu: and he told the magazine none of his previous roles pushed him to the extremes as much as working on The Brutalist did.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app,
--:-- Shamita Basu: follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll be back with the news tomorrow. Thank you.
