--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita here. Just want to let you know, after today's show, our team is taking a good long end of the year break. We are human, we need to recharge, and we'll be back for the first full week in January. Okay, let's do the news. Good morning. It's Friday, December 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, how some women in Afghanistan are risking their lives to protest Taliban rule. Why releasing a holiday blockbuster is still tricky business. And the summer camp where wannabe Santas go to train. But first, it's been a roller coaster couple of days for lawmakers trying to avert a government shutdown before the holidays.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After a bill negotiated by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was effectively killed by President-elect Donald Trump before it even came to the floor on Wednesday, the GOP, with no apparent backup plan, scrambled yesterday to pass an extension of current funding.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The new Trump-approved bill cut out a good chunk of provisions that were included in the previous version, but kept money for farmers, about $10 billion, and $100 billion in disaster aid. The bill made it to the floor, but not any farther.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On this vote, the yeas are 174, the nays are 235, one voting present, two-thirds not being in the affirmative. The rules are not suspended, and the bill is not passed. So lawmakers went home with no deal last night.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump was demanding spending be tied to a two-year debt limit suspension. Dozens of Republicans voted against the bill, balking at that idea without spending cuts.
--:-- Texas Representative Chip Roy: To take this bill yesterday and congratulate yourself because it's shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine. And that's precisely what Republicans are doing.
--:-- Texas Representative Chip Roy: I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say, you think this is fiscally responsible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As he's promised to do with Republicans who go against him, Trump threatened Roy with a primary challenge in online posts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was the first major test of how Congress is preparing to act under a second Trump presidency, and it revealed a willingness from some Republicans to defy the president-elect.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It also casts a harsh spotlight on Speaker Johnson, who will need to figure out how he wants to balance Trump's demands with congressional realities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A slim Republican majority in the House means Johnson will likely need the support of Democrats to pass any bill, something Dems are not keen to do now after their initial contributions to the bill were axed.
--:-- Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries: We negotiated in a bipartisan, bicameral way, real progress for working-class Americans, for middle-class Americans, for everyday Americans who aspire to be part of the middle class.
--:-- Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries: That has been cut out of this legislation. Why would you do that?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jeffries expressed his frustration by calling the new plan the Musk proposal, referring of course to Elon Musk who led an intense pressure campaign on social media against the initial bill in recent days.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He called the bill outrageous and encouraged his followers over 200 million people to call their representatives and urge them to vote against it.
--:-- Melanie Zanona: You could see Musk shifting the tides on Capitol Hill in real time. When he was tweeting that today, members were taking notice.
--:-- Melanie Zanona: That tweet was flying around. I saw people on their phones on their way to votes looking at that tweet. One of them pulled it out and showed me. And that mattered.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They view him really as the most powerful proxy. They think he speaks for Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Musk's relationship with the president-elect has received a lot of attention ever since he endorsed Trump over the summer, especially once Trump gave Musk a title and a mission to lead a new Department of Government efficiency, basically tasking him with suggesting big cuts to federal spending.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Musk's potential conflicts of interest, as well as his effect on entire government agencies, have been the subject of scrutiny and speculation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He is, after all, the world's richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and he's CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media site X.
--:-- Shamita Basu: All the while, though, it's been hard to pinpoint Musk's exact influence in Trump era politics. But not this time, where Musk left a clear trail of his charge to derail this government spending bill.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Congress is on a tight deadline to pass a funding bill by midnight tonight to keep the government running.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban almost immediately regained control of the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the years since, the Taliban has stripped the rights of women and girls, banning them from school, from going out without a chaperone, banning their voices from being heard in public.
--:-- Malala Yousafzai: They have systematically erased women from public life, which Afghan women activists and human rights experts call a gender apartheid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist who famously recovered from her own attack by the Taliban in her home of Pakistan back in 2012.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I recently got a chance to talk with her about a new documentary she executive produced called Bread and Roses, released by Apple TV+.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The film was made largely from footage that three women activists in Afghanistan took themselves at great personal risk as the Taliban cracked down on their protests.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the film, you see the women out on the streets chanting their motto, work, bread, freedom. You see them being threatened by talibs with guns, sprayed with tear gas, and in some cases being arrested and detained.
--:-- Sahra Mani: Director Sahra Mani says that the three main women in her film have since escaped the country, but not all women are so lucky.
--:-- Sahra Mani: I know there are so many women arrested that they never come back home. They got killed by Taliban. And still so many women they kidnapped and we don't know where they are.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of them, their dead body find it around the city and some of them is still missing.
--:-- Malala Yousafzai: Malala told me that it's important for them to continue to raise their voices despite the risks.
--:-- Malala Yousafzai: It really important for us to make a clear stance against the Taliban that what you are doing does not represent us. It does not represent our culture. It does not represent our faith. And it does not represent our country.
--:-- Malala Yousafzai: We have not elected you. You are not our representatives. And what you are doing is against our will. It's against our rights and dignity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Malala and Sahra also told me about the need for the international community to take notice of what's happening to women and girls in Afghanistan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: and they hope the film underscores the urgency to act.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm sure Taliban have plans for the future, but the world doesn't have any plan for the Taliban.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To hear the rest of my interview with Malala Yousafzai and Sahra Mani, listen to this week's episode of Apple News In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the News app, we'll queue it up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Christmas is just a few days away, and for a lot of families, it's a cherished tradition to take a good old trip to the movies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The 2024 holiday lineup includes some family-friendly films like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa the Lion King. Those are both out today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there's one coming up on Christmas Day that is definitely not suitable for kids, the gothic horror film Nosferatu.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's been a pretty rough few years for Hollywood at large. Between pandemic closures and labor strikes by writers and actors last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But it scored a big win over the Thanksgiving holiday. Three, actually. Wicked, Moana 2, and Gladiator 2.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was led by Moana, which grossed $221 million in five days in its opening, which is a Thanksgiving record.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Little sis! Little sis! Little sis! Little sis! You were gone forever. It was three days, but I missed you.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: Ryan Fonder covers the business of entertainment for the LA Times. All told, all the movies grossed $420 million at the box office in that five-day stretch.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: And that was also a Thanksgiving record. So it was a massive weekend, dominated completely by those top three films.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: But the problem is that the overall box office environment is not as strong as it was even pre-pandemic.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: Fonder says theaters were already on a slow decline before the pandemic for a few reasons.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: Ticket prices are up. Consumer habits have changed, with streaming getting more popular.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: A lot of people just wait for a movie to show up there so they can watch from their couch.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's part of why actors and writers went on strike last year, for better streaming residuals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But to be clear, the theater still has diehard fans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I don't just mean fans of the movie Die Hard, another great Christmas movie, by the way.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: If you tell those fans to show up in costume, to show up in groups, they'll really get into it.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: They will go out for an event type of picture. The kind of movie like Wicked where it's like, OK, we're going out, we're going to dinner, we're going to get dressed up, that kind of thing.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: Like that is what's really driving the business.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: And less so just kind of that old school walk up like, oh, what's going on at the movie theaters today?
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you haven't noticed, so many of the movies I've mentioned already are sequels or franchises.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: Fonder says that's because studios know it works.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: He pointed out every year the top 10 movies are dominated by sequels, remakes, and franchise extensions.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: As far back as 2011 the New York Times noted sequels and franchises were starting to take over.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: But as moviegoers Fonder says we lose a little something with that model.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: I think you just get a less interesting mix of movies when every studio is trying to do basically the same thing and trying to do something that they've all done before.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The phrase that I constantly hear from executives that makes me laugh a little bit is that they want something familiar with a twist.
--:-- Ryan Fonder: It's just a little different. But even as execs want to keep going back to the same old well, it's not clear if there will be anything there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so the studios have really dug in on this IP renaissance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the problem is that they've started to run out of things to adapt.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And you can't just regurgitate and regurgitate forever and ever.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some significant movement this week in the case of Luigi Mangione, the man charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
--:-- Shamita Basu: First, Mangione waived his right to an extradition hearing and was transported to New York City yesterday afternoon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Federal prosecutors also unveiled new charges against him, including stalking, murder through the use of a firearm, and an additional gun charge.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's according to NBC News.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Earlier this week, Mangione was also charged with murder as an act of terrorism and 11 other charges.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Amazon workers went on strike in New York City, Atlanta, and California yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Teamsters union says it represents nearly 10,000 Amazon workers and wants Amazon to recognize the union and negotiate a contract with them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Amazon claims workers don't want a union and says the strike won't affect holiday deliveries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We have seen how Amazon deals with unions in the past.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2022, an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize and was certified by the NLRB, but so far Amazon has refused to bargain with them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, as you make those last-minute trips to the mall or big box stores and you see Santa Claus there taking photos with families.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is a chance the person in the suit went to Santa camp.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CT Insider reports over the summer about 90 soon-to-be Santas gathered in the woods of New Hampshire to learn the basics like how to dress, how to create a backstory, and maybe most importantly, how to talk to children and adults with empathy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The camp is just like any other summer camp, with cabins, paddling the lake, and sitting around the campfire bonding.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We welcome you to Santa Camp. We're mighty glad you're here. We'll send the air reverberating with a mighty cheer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The president of the New England Santa Society says most people don't know what goes on behind the scenes of being Mr. Claus, and learning that is what the camp is all about.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're listening in the News app right now, stick around for my full conversation with Malali Yousafzai and Sahra Mani.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That episode of Apple News in Conversation is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Like I said, this team is taking a good break to end the year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So enjoy your holidays. Happy New Year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we'll be back with the news on Monday, January 6th.
