--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, February 11th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, what happens when ICE shows up at church? A pretty compelling argument to quit the penny. And the DOJ moves to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. But first, President Trump is aggressively going after media companies in lawsuits and winning.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In December, Disney, which owns ABC News, settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over a false claim made on the air. It agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump's future presidential foundation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In late January, Meta settled a suit with Trump for $22 million and another $3 million in legal fees over suspending Trump's account after the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now President Trump is suing the owner of CBS News, Paramount Global, and he recently doubled down, literally, doubling the damage claim from $10 billion to $20 billion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CBS is the avatar for Trump's multi-front assault on the media and the news media in particular.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR's media correspondent David Fulkenflik told us what's happening at CBS is the latest chapter in Trump's attempt to use the power of the presidency to strong-arm the media.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: In this particular suit, Trump claims that CBS's 60 Minutes aired a deceptively edited interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to boost her election chances.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: One example Trump's suit gives is a clip of Harris's answer to a question about Israel used on CBS's Face the Nation, which was different from the answer shown in a lengthier broadcast of the same interview on 60 Minutes.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: Trump's legal team argued that CBS had engaged in, quote, unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive and substantial news distortion.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: What CBS said was this is part and parcel of what journalistic choices involve all the time, what journalists like you are confronted with in compressing a longer interview to meet the time imperatives of the programming.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: In December, CBS asked the judge to dismiss the case or move it to New York, where CBS is based and where the show in question was edited.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: The case was filed in a Texas court that's been friendly to conservative interests.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: Folkenflik told us legal scholars and media experts say Trump's argument here is weak. This is frivolous.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: And I've got to tell you, every legal expert I've spoken to on this say that this is essentially an abuse of the courts.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: There's no legal grounds that they can point to in precedent that would support this as voter interference.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: And in fact, of course, Trump won. Trump won in Texas. Trump won in the country.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: It doesn't feel as though somehow this interview harmed him.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: CBS says during the campaign, the network also invited Trump to sit down with 60 Minutes, but after agreeing to an interview, he backed out.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: Further complicating matters, the outcome of this lawsuit will inherently be political.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: There is a pending sale of CBS News' parent company, Paramount Global, to Skydance Media.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: The Paramount-Skydance merger requires the approval of Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: The L Times says parties involved in the merger want to have the billion deal wrapped by spring.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: It's been reported by the LA Times that the chairwoman of Paramount has instructed her team to settle the Trump suit.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: But that arrangement doesn't sit well with journalists at CBS who are calling for Paramount to defend their editorial freedom.
--:-- David Fulkenflik: This really is a moment where journalists are watching their corporate owners bend to power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I've talked to former and current executives at CBS and their rivals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I've spoken with legal scholars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I've spoken with corporate attorneys and I've spoken with journalists.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What is happening now almost uniformly in their views is that Trump is exerting pressure to intimidate the press from doing things that he will take issue with.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's also doing it to show that he can do it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They believe he wants to make sure they don't act as a check on his power and that they are aware that he's going to make it hard for them to do so or raise the pain threshold to them for doing so.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Vanity Fair reports that there are multiple other lawsuits against journalists or journalistic organizations pending.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has sued longtime reporter Bob Woodward and his publisher for Woodward's book about Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He has sued the Pulitzer Prize board for recognizing a story about Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he's going after the Des Moines Register and its former pollster, J. Ann Selzer, for publishing a poll ahead of the election suggesting Harris had an edge in Iowa.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, there are no indications those parties plan to settle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On a recent Sunday in January, Kania Kalindris was at church with her husband and their three children when her husband got a phone call.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He didn't answer it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Soon after, his ICE-appointed ankle monitor went off.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That worried him because he always charges it, so he stepped outside to figure out what was going on and to not disrupt the service.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Little did he know, immigration agents were there waiting to arrest him and bring him to a detention center to await deportation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kania told WSB-TV in Atlanta that her husband had never been in trouble with the law.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that he was given the ankle monitor when he and the family sought asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border two years ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After leaving their home country of Honduras, where she says they were threatened by gangs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She also said he was the only one in the family with a work permit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she worries that she and her children will be threatened with deportation now too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: WSBTV reached out to ICE to confirm why he had an ankle monitor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But ICE said they couldn't provide a specific reason.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And they issue monitors on a case-by-case basis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This case and the threat of others like it has houses of worship worried.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For centuries, churches, temples and mosques have functioned as sanctuaries, giving safe harbor to people who were enslaved, people during the Vietnam War who resisted the draft, and in modern times, people facing deportation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in one of his first actions as president, Trump revoked a ban on immigration arrests in sensitive places, including schools, hospitals and churches.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the president has suggested without evidence that churches are harboring dangerous criminals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: What churches say is they have never sheltered criminals from deportation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Andrea Castillo, a federal immigration reporter for the LA Times, who's been speaking with faith leaders in California.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: The folks that they have invited into sanctuary have been people who had no criminal history who had longstanding roots in the United States and who they felt deserved protection from deportation.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: Here's how one religious leader put it to her.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: He said we have an executive order from God not from politicians.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: And he went on to say that it would be a betrayal of what they consider the greatest commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: In the wake of Trump's order, places of worship have been preparing for the possibility of arrests by ICE agents by educating their congregants about their rights.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: In some cases, faith leaders have accompanied migrants for check-ins with immigration officers.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: And many, Castillo says, are prepared to do more to protect their community.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: What many religious leaders told me was that they suspect they might see a return to the sort of Underground Railroad type of tactic where they are bringing people in to live in churches or church-affiliated buildings and not saying anything about it so that those folks can avoid arrest by immigration agents.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: A number of places of worship have sued the Department of Homeland Security over Trump's order, calling ICE arrests at places of worship a violation of religious liberty.
--:-- Andrea Castillo: And one pastor told Castillo that he would physically get between his congregants and ICE agents if it came to that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Aside from making a wish, playing a game of heads or tails, maybe stabilizing a wobbly table, what are pennies really good for these days?
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a world where a lot of us don't use cash and definitely don't like to carry around change, does making single cents make any sense?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Especially when the cost of producing those small coins is more than double their worth.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's the argument from President Trump, who is calling to get rid of the penny.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he is far from the first.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2013, then-President Obama expressed an openness to dumping the penny.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the things that you see chronically in government is it's very hard to get rid of things that don't work so that we can then invest in the things that do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the penny ends up being, I think, a good metaphor for some of the larger problems that we've got.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To all the penny haters, the math speaks for itself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It costs 3.69 cents to make a penny.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2024, the Mint issued over 3 billion pennies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That means that we lost more than $85 million, making what many people think of as useless coins.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it's not like we've never banished a coin before.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Back in 1857, Congress put a stop to the minting of half-cent coins.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But America has long been resistant to the idea of saying goodbye to the penny.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 1989, Congress considered a bill to eliminate pennies in cash transactions and round to the nearest nickel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It didn't pass.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Congressman Jim Colby, a Republican from Arizona, made this his mission.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He tried and tried to kill the penny, but he said that a couple of things stood in his way, like special interest groups that support zinc mining, which, by the way, pennies are mostly made of zinc, not copper.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also, the fact that the Speaker of the House at the time was from Illinois, the home state of the president whose face is on the penny.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here is Colby on NPR in 2020.
--:-- Jim Colby: Illinois is the land of Lincoln.
--:-- Jim Colby: So Illinois was not too anxious about getting rid of the penny.
--:-- Jim Colby: So our bill never got much of a hearing at all.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since then, the main opposition has come from the advocacy group Americans for Common Sense, their pun not mine, which argues that the government wouldn't save money if the penny were eliminated and that the U Mint would have to make more nickels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Which is likely true.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If Congress does decide to get on board with Trump's suggestion and eliminate the penny, we'll almost certainly need to produce more nickels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we lose far more money making nickels than we do making pennies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nickels last year cost 13.8 cents each to make.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A federal judge on Monday found the Trump administration hasn't followed his order to unfreeze federal spending and directed the White House to release billions of dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Trump administration quickly appealed the ruling.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is the first time a judge is saying the White House is disobeying a court order.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The ruling comes after several top Trump administration officials have openly questioned the judiciary's authority to check the president's power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Judges have also blocked, at least temporarily, Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship, Elon Musk's access to Treasury Department records, and a mass resignation plan for federal workers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In what is being called the most serious threat to date of the Gaza ceasefire deal, Hamas said Monday it would delay the next scheduled release of hostages set for Saturday, accusing Israel of violating the terms of the agreement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A Hamas spokesperson said Israel was preventing some displaced Palestinians from returning to northern Gaza and have been targeting them with gunfire and shelling.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hamas also says Israeli forces aren't allowing relief supplies to enter as agreed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump weighed in and issued an ultimatum to Hamas on Monday after signing unrelated executive orders in the Oval Office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm speaking for myself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel can override it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But from myself, Saturday at 12 o'clock and if they're not here, all hell is going to break out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel's defense minister called the move by Hamas a violation of the deal and ordered the military to be prepared for any situation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, the Department of Justice on Monday ordered prosecutors in Manhattan to drop federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, saying the case was impeding Adams' ability to cooperate with Trump's immigration crackdown.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Adams, in recent months, has appeared to be cozying up to Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He visited him at Mar-a-Lago and attended the inauguration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also said he wouldn't publicly criticize him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Adams was charged last year with soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and accepting $100,000 in bribes in the form of luxury travel and hotel stays from wealthy Turkish officials for nearly a decade in exchange for favors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Adams has maintained that he's innocent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The charges will have to be reviewed when a new Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in New York is confirmed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The charges would be dropped without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled at a later date.
--:-- 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: Blood is one of the most valuable substances in the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And as the New Yorker explains, scientists are getting closer to figuring out how to artificially replicate it.
--:-- 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.
