--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 29th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, inside the data deal between the IRS and ICE, allegations of a car company's dark history in the Amazon and the priest who brought it to light, and the first state to introduce health warnings for social media. But first, it's a critical week for the U.S. economy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A flood of economic data is coming. New consumer confidence and spending figures, major reports on GDP, inflation data, corporate earnings, and a new jobs report will offer a glimpse into the state of the labor market.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bloomberg's Sean Donnan told us these will provide a clearer picture of the impact of President Trump's sweeping tariffs, which he started to ramp up in earnest back in April.
--:-- Sean Donnan: One of the things we're looking for there is, are we seeing companies continue to hire, particularly in the private sector? Or as a lot of economists have warned, are they just going to be kind of sitting on hiring decisions because of all the uncertainty that's created in the economy by these tariffs?
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it'll be a big week for policy decisions. The Federal Reserve will announce its next interest rate decision tomorrow.
--:-- Sean Donnan: Trump will be closely watching. He's expressed frustration that Fed Chair Jerome Powell hasn't lowered rates and has repeatedly threatened to fire Powell, even though he doesn't have the legal authority to do so.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Fed has been reluctant to lower rates over concerns about how Trump's tariffs could drive up inflation.
--:-- Sean Donnan: Then on Thursday this week, a federal appeals court will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump's tariffs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's claimed that there's an emergency in the U.S. trade deficit and that that gives him the authority to impose these tariffs.
--:-- Sean Donnan: Now, that's been challenged by a group of small businesses, including a wine importer and a toy company. And they actually won their challenge at what's known as the Court of International Trade.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that's now been appealed. Donnan says the case could very likely go all the way to the Supreme Court.
--:-- Sean Donnan: But even as that's happening, the president has threatened new tariffs on a number of trading partners if they don't agree to deals, with a deadline of this Friday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there's some big ones that are still out there that are meaningful in terms of the volume of trade and their importance to American consumers because of the goods that come from there.
--:-- Sean Donnan: Like India, Brazil, Australia and Bangladesh, which has a big textile industry that exports to the U.S. Also, South Korea. South Korea is home to Samsung smartphones, a lot of consumer technology products. It also has a big chips industry. It also has a big auto industry that exports to the United States.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These countries could still reach agreements with the U.S. before Trump's deadline, as we just saw the European Union do over the weekend.
--:-- Sean Donnan: But Donnan says it's all but certain Trump raises tariffs on their imports to some degree.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For example, he originally threatened the EU with a 30 percent tariff and the recent framework deal settled on a 15 percent tariff for most products.
--:-- Sean Donnan: And I think this is something we need to remind ourselves of over and over again. We have seen this year the biggest increase in U tariffs since the 1930s
--:-- Shamita Basu: And those are going to have a meaningful effect on both the price of goods here in the United States but also economic relationships all over the world and for years to come.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, the economy has appeared pretty resilient to these major changes. But plenty of economists remain concerned about the risk of inflation or a weakened job market.
--:-- Shamita Basu: By the end of this week, we should have a much clearer picture what kind of economic direction we're heading in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to how the Trump administration is upending privacy norms to change how government agencies operate to carry out its immigration agenda.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've previously highlighted reporting from NPR about an effort from Doge and the Department of Homeland Security to build out a national citizenship database.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the Associated Press previously reported that the administration was giving ICE access to data of millions enrolled in Medicaid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, ProPublica reports that the IRS is working on a program that would provide an unprecedented level of confidential information to deportation officers.
--:-- William Turton: It's important to understand that taxpayer data is among the most confidential data held by the U.S. government.
--:-- William Turton: There's extremely strict privacy laws that protect it from disclosure even to law enforcement agencies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, it is so closely guarded that the IRS resisted previous efforts from Doge to get access to taxpayer data.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The agency's chief counsel was removed from his role earlier this year and replaced by Andrew DeMello, who was seen by Trump administration officials as being more willing to enact elements of the president's agenda.
--:-- William Turton: Yet ProPublica reports that last month, DeMello refused to turn over the addresses of more than 7 million taxpayers sought by ICE, saying the request did not meet specific legal guardrails that safeguard private taxpayer information.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Two days later, he was removed from his job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We don't know for sure exactly why DeMello was removed, but it is fascinating because DeMello was installed into the chief counsel job, And many people at IRS thought he was unqualified for the job and thought that he would be friendly to the Trump administration priorities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He wasn't the only one to leave. Melanie Krause, the IRS's acting commissioner, reportedly resigned over the data sharing deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is an established process for law enforcement to seek IRS data to support active criminal investigations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Former IRS officials told ProPublica that in the past, law enforcement officials would present full explanations for why the information was necessary, and those requests typically involved fewer than a dozen people at a time, not millions, as was requested recently.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One former IRS official who'd been advising the agency on this issue told ProPublica, there's no way ICE has 7 million real criminal investigations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to ProPublica, the system that the IRS is now building would give ICE automatic access to home addresses, bypassing traditional protocols and opening the door to serious errors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Essentially DHS would send the IRS a spreadsheet of people it targeting for deportation including their previous addresses
--:-- Shamita Basu: The IRS system would then try to match that information with a specific taxpayer record
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if there a match it pulls that person most recent address
--:-- Shamita Basu: We showed the technical blueprints to people familiar with IRS data, familiar with IRS systems, who said that this system is almost guaranteed to make mistakes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because of the way that I submits data and it gets searched through IRS systems, it's extremely likely that the IRS, if using the system could return the wrong address to ICE, leading to an ICE raid on the wrong address.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Turton reports that engineers are still working on the system, but they hope to roll it out soon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A spokesperson for the White House told ProPublica that the planned use of IRS data is legal and part of fulfilling a campaign promise on immigration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, data privacy advocates took the government to court, and a federal judge refused to block the IRS from sharing the data, but in its ruling, it did make clear that ICE could only request the information in specific targeted circumstances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Advocates are now appealing that judgment, and 90 Democratic lawmakers have joined with a similar request to the court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to a Washington Post investigation about one man's efforts to hold a major carmaker accountable for allegedly abusing workers in Brazil for years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The story is really a confluence of power, greed, and religion.
--:-- Terry McCoy: Back in the 1960s, Brazil's military dictatorship wanted to expand development in the Amazon rainforest, and it wanted global corporations to help bankroll those plans.
--:-- Terry McCoy: Sensing an opportunity, Volkswagen Brazil, which at the time was the largest carmaker in Latin America, decided they could be giants in both cattle and cars.
--:-- Terry McCoy: They got into this sort of seemingly quixotic plan, which was to deforest the Amazon and then raise cattle where the forest had been.
--:-- Terry McCoy: The Volkswagen farm brought in masses of workers and laborers from all over the country to work in this place.
--:-- Terry McCoy: And now Brazilian prosecutors are saying many of these workers, hundreds, were enslaved.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this has really only come to light as a result of a priest who has maintained these records for decades.
--:-- Terry McCoy: Volkswagen promised these workers good pay and the opportunity for a better life.
--:-- Terry McCoy: But many say they were forced to work and brutally beaten by the contractors who ran the farm.
--:-- Terry McCoy: One man said he spent seven years there and was never allowed to leave.
--:-- Terry McCoy: And there was allegedly a cave on the property where people were killed and the bodies were dumped.
--:-- Terry McCoy: Some people were successfully escaped, other people apparently did not.
--:-- Terry McCoy: And so it's a shadow that haunts these workers to this day.
--:-- Terry McCoy: And old men during these interviews were weeping, crying about what they had gone through 40 years ago on this property.
--:-- Shamita Basu: State authorities found evidence of forced labor on the farm four separate times, but the Post couldn't find any records of charges filed against the operators of the farm.
--:-- Terry McCoy: As its reputation grew, a local priest became increasingly concerned.
--:-- Terry McCoy: He tried to raise the alarm to authorities at the time, but got nowhere, so he started collecting evidence.
--:-- Terry McCoy: He started building this massive dossier of all the people he was interviewing of all the newspaper clippings the reports that are coming out about this place and it grew and it grew and it grew and to the point where now it exceeds 1,000 pages.
--:-- Terry McCoy: He identified at least 69 potential victims, and in 2019, he contacted a prosecutor who works on slave labor cases for Brazil's labor ministry.
--:-- Terry McCoy: He shared his dossier, and last year, prosecutors filed a lawsuit accusing Volkswagen of exploiting slave labor and human trafficking on a systemic scale.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is the first time that Brazil is moving to account for what had occurred, which were, at that era, extraordinary, horrendous human rights abuses that are virtually unknown to the outside world and are virtually unknown to Brazilians themselves.
--:-- Terry McCoy: Volkswagen has denied the allegations.
--:-- Terry McCoy: And in court, they've argued they were just a shareholder in the farm, that a separate company owned it and was responsible for hiring the contractors who ran it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: McCoy says evidence presented to the ministry disproves that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A decision is expected from a federal labor court any day now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In New York, at least four people, including a police officer, were reportedly killed in a shooting in midtown Manhattan yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The alleged gunman, initially identified as a 27-year-old from Las Vegas, also died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He reportedly walked into a Park Avenue building with a long rifle and opened fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Authorities say he acted alone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The skyscraper is the headquarters of several major corporations, including Blackstone and the NFL.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump has acknowledged there is real starvation taking place in Gaza, contradicting the denials from Israel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And for the first time, two Israeli human rights groups say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The World Food Program says hundreds of thousands are living in, quote, famine-like conditions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the World Health Organization has described a marked spike in malnutrition-related deaths.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump said Israel bears a lot of responsibility for the food scarcity and pledged to work with European allies to set up food centers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And NPR reports that starting next year, any Minnesotan using a social media app will get a digital warning label telling them about the potential dangers to their mental health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a first-in-the-nation move, users in the state will have to click through an acknowledgement before their daily scroll.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Platforms will also have to provide resources like hotlines to support people struggling with mental health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Governor Tim Walz signed the law to start this time next year, but companies say they will be pushing to have it rolled back.
--:-- 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: The San Francisco Chronicle looks at how the Bay Area is graying.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's the third oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., and it's growing older faster than any of them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The paper examines what that'll mean for housing, health care, education and social services in years to come.
--:-- 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.
