--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, September 9th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, how the Trump administration is targeting D.C.'s homeless encampments, rural hospitals are teaming up to survive, and the Murdoch family succession drama reaches a conclusion. But first, to Chicago, where the Department of Homeland Security announced the start of escalated immigration enforcement efforts, but provided little detail on what that will involve or how long the operation will last.
--:-- Tricia McLaughlin: In a statement released on Monday, DHS says federal agents plan to target people they believe do not have legal status and, quote, surge ICE resources in the city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News on Sunday that the administration believes sanctuary policies in blue cities like Chicago threaten public safety. They become safe harbors for these incredibly vicious gangs. So that's why we're flooding the zone, whether it be Los Angeles, whether it be New York, Chicago. We have to make sure Americans are safe, especially when their own leaders won't insure it for them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to FBI data, violent crime has been dropping in Chicago. Last year, it dropped 11 percent compared to 2023, and the violent crime rate was roughly half of what it was in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, FBI data shows that 22 other major U.S. cities have higher homicide rates than Chicago, the majority of which are in red states.
--:-- Brandon Johnson: Chicago's Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, says city officials received no notice from DHS about the operation ahead of Monday's announcement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the weekend, he signed an order directing city law enforcement and officials to not cooperate with federal agents. This comes as the administration already launched an immigration crackdown in Massachusetts, specifically calling out the mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu's, sanctuary city policies.
--:-- Jess Bravin: The Supreme Court delivered a victory to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles. In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the conservative members of the court voted to end restrictions on immigration stops in the city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jess Braven, who covers the court for The Wall Street Journal, told us their ruling is not final. These are emergency orders that essentially suspend lower court decisions while the litigation proceeds. But they are an indication of where the court is now on how these issues would likely come out.
--:-- Jess Braven: A lower court judge in L.A. had previously ruled that federal immigration agents could not detain or stop people based on how they look, where they work, or what language they speak. Agents had been targeting bus stops and businesses like Home Depot. The plaintiffs argued that profiling people to make arrests violated the Fourth Amendment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Supreme Court's decision now gives federal agents broad authority to stop someone for questioning if they suspect that person might be in the country illegally. As the LA Times puts it, agents can stop and detain people based on little more than their working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
--:-- Jess Braven: And Braven says this ruling follows a pattern. We've seen the Supreme Court continue to be extremely deferential to President Trump assertions of executive power. Since taking office in January, the president has filed 23 emergency appeals asking the Supreme Court to block lower court orders and 17 of those requests have been approved.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the emergency appeal process, the public gets very little insight into how the justices reach those decisions because there are no oral arguments and no requirements for the majority to issue a signed opinion explaining their reasoning. However, in this case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh did offer some insight into his rationale, writing in a concurring opinion that he thinks apparent ethnicity alone should not create reasonable suspicion for federal agents to detain people, but that it could be a, quote, relevant factor in ICE raids in Southern California.
--:-- Sonia Sotomayor: Then we also got the other side, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the senior member of the court in the dissent, saying that having a country where you can be picked up because you look Latino or you speak Spanish is the wrong way to go. And we're blessing racial profiling.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because the conservative majority did not explain its decision, the New York Times notes that it's hard to say definitively whether the court's ruling will extend to other cities nationwide, but that it certainly emboldens the administration to continue expanding its efforts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to Washington, where President Trump's emergency order to take over the city's police force expires tomorrow. And according to The Washington Post, leaders in Congress are not planning to vote to extend the order, which was predicated on Trump's inaccurate claims that D.C. crime and violence is out of control.
--:-- Caroline Levitt: The White House says federal and local police have cleared 50 encampments as of late August.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The administration initially promised to provide support to people they had displaced. Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt a few weeks ago.
--:-- Caroline Levitt: Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services. And if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Washington Post reporter Marissa Lang told us the administration has not delivered on those promises.
--:-- Marissa Lang: The Trump-led troops have mostly been just kind of evicting people from where they've been living. We haven't seen a big shift toward finding people's services or housing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to a census conducted by the city last week, at least 764 people are living on the streets full time. And thousands more don't have permanent housing.
--:-- Marissa Lang: Unhoused people and advocates told CNN only local government officials have stepped up to help. But Lang says local resources have been insufficient for a long time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And for many homeless people in the city, the recent White House-directed actions just feel like a continuation of what the city's mayor, Muriel Bowser, was already doing, removing homeless people from sight now with federal backing.
--:-- Marissa Lang: There just are not enough resources in D.C. to help all of these people. There's not enough vouchers to get folks into permanent housing. There's not enough bed space in the shelters that already exist. And there aren't enough shelters that cater to people's very specific needs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That the case for Joyce Bochum a D native and former custodian who worked in federal government buildings. Until a recent sweep she had been living on the streets along with her son who Lang says has a lot of medical needs.
--:-- Marissa Lang: They live near a church that supports unhoused people by offering them showers, meals, bathrooms, and access to caseworkers. She is someone who has sort of fallen through the cracks of the shelter system because shelters in the district are sex segregated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Joyce would have to leave her son, which she's not willing to do because she wants to help take care of him, it was pretty clear to her and to us that she didn't really have anywhere else to go.
--:-- Marissa Lang: Lang says most people who've been pushed out of encampments, including Bochum and her son, have been forced to move to hotels, emergency rooms, another street, another park, or in some cases to nearby Virginia, where they hope federal agents won't notice them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As people are forced to move, belongings like personal documents and phones can get lost. And for those seeking help in housing, an eviction can make it harder for the nonprofits trying to help them.
--:-- Marissa Lang: I've been covering homelessness in D.C. for more than five years. And if we see a person who is evicted from a particular encampment who's maybe already connected to services and they move, there's a really good chance that their caseworker will lose track of them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The policy director for one local provider of homeless services told CNN their group has lost contact with at least 25 people over the last month. And they're worried many of them won't be able to receive critical help.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to health care, where it's become increasingly hard for providers to treat patients in rural parts of the United States over the last 15 years. 153 rural hospitals have closed or stopped providing inpatient services in that time, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina.
--:-- Arielle Zients: So some hospitals are banding together to keep their doors open. They're able to combine their patient numbers, their bargaining power and their resources to try to improve care while saving money.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Arielle Zients covers rural health care for KFF Health News. And told us about these collaborations, formerly known as clinically integrated networks.
--:-- Arielle Zients: These networks aren't new, but they're becoming increasingly popular in rural areas. By pooling resources, hospitals can negotiate better deals on mundane things, like laundry services, and offer specialized care they might not be able to afford on their own.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's say one individual hospital may not have enough patients who need to see a specialist, like a pediatric endocrinologist, for example. If there was a doctor who cared for those patients at the hospital, they would have too much free time. It wouldn't be worth their time or the hospital's paying for them. So instead, they float between multiple of these hospitals. So they are seeing patients every day.
--:-- Arielle Zients: The same concept applies to equipment. These small rural hospitals may not be able to afford MRI units on their own because they can be very expensive. And it also may not be justified. Maybe there's only one or two patients who need it a week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: By teaming up, one group of hospitals across North Dakota called the Rough Rider Network was able to get a mobile MRI that can move from location to location in a semi-truck.
--:-- Arielle Zients: Zions told us how it helped the community of Bowman. It saves patients from having to do a five round trip. That is huge. I mean that basically means taking a whole day off of work. If you don't have a car, it means having to borrow a car. It might mean having to arrange and pay for child care. So that is very helpful for the patients.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Although clinically integrated networks have been around for a long time, Zients told us there's been surprisingly little academic research into whether they truly deliver on what the participating hospitals want to save money and improve patient outcomes.
--:-- Arielle Zients: But anecdotally, the group say they're seeing positive results. One network in western Colorado told her their insurance costs have gone down, along with the frequency of patients requiring inpatient and emergency care.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. A birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein featuring what appears to be President Trump's signature was turned over to Congress by the deceased financier's legal team on Monday.
--:-- Caroline Levitt: The letter contains typewritten text surrounded by the outline of a naked woman.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump had previously denied the letter existed and sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation over its reporting on it.
--:-- Caroline Levitt: In a social media post, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Trump did not draw and did not sign the letter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another Trump spokesperson suggested that the lawsuit will move ahead. The journal has maintained their reporting is accurate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other Wall Street Journal-related news, the succession-style drama over who will run the paper's parent company is over.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a deal struck between Rupert Murdoch and his children, eldest son Lachlan will gain control of his father's assets in the company as part of a new family trust.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Journal reports Lachlan will have total voting control over assets that contain significant stakes in News Corp and Fox Corporation, the parent companies of the Journal and Fox News.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The original trust split those assets equally among the four Murdoch children. Murdoch was denied by a probate commissioner earlier this year when he attempted to amend the original trust and hand control to Lachlan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, with Lachlan in charge, he's expected to continue in his father's footsteps and maintain the conservative leanings of the company.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, in Iceland, it's that time of year again to throw a bird off of a cliff. Puffins, to be precise. And you don't have to worry, it's for the good of the bird's survival.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Every year, a town in Iceland that's in the middle of one of the biggest puffin colonies in the world helps wayward pufflings find their way to sea.
--:-- Shamita Basu: National Geographic reports every summer, for as long as anyone can remember, families, including kids, scour the ground for lost birds. Then they take them home, and in the morning, they toss them off a cliff.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The puffins can easily get lost because of nighttime light pollution from human activity, so they need a hand to find the ocean.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The community that does this is in the Westman Islands, where puffins outnumber them 1.6 million birds to 4,300 humans.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Men's health examines some of the buzziest trends in the Maha movement, from ditching seed oils to embracing beef tallow and how they're reshaping the U.S. economy.
--:-- 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.
