--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, September 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, investigating how the U.S. military downplayed possible war crimes, surprising news in the fight against drug overdoses, and Shohei Ohtani makes baseball history. But first, polls open today in Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota, the first three states to kick off early in-person voting in the 2024 election.
--:-- Emily Schultheis: In South Dakota, along with picking a president, voters also have the chance to weigh in on a ballot measure that will legalize recreational marijuana. It's one of the many ballot measures that voters will be seeing this fall.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Politico recently took stock and found over 150 across 41 states. We've talked a lot about the ones that cover abortion rights, so today we're zooming in on some of the other issues on the ballot this fall.
--:-- Emily Schultheis: Some involve who can vote and how, like in several states where voters will see ballot measures about ranked choice voting. What ranked choice voting does is allow people to list their candidates or to rank them in order of their preference.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so ultimately, if you get to the election, the votes are tabulated and no candidate gets a majority of votes, then the lowest ranked candidates will drop off and the people who supported them as number one would then factor in who their number two candidate was, number three candidate, and so on.
--:-- Emily Schultheis: Conservative critics say this process lacks transparency. Advocates argue it reduces the likelihood of politically extreme candidates winning office. You are choosing from a wider range of candidates and it encourages them to move toward the center rather than move toward the edges of the ideological spectrum.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Measures to implement ranked choice voting will be on the ballot in D.C., Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. In Alaska and Missouri, voters will consider the opposite, ending or banning ranked choice voting.
--:-- Emily Schultheis: In eight states led by Republicans, lawmakers put constitutional amendments on the ballot this year to ban non-citizens from voting in federal elections. That's already illegal under federal law, though there are some cities that allow non-citizens to vote in certain local elections.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Republicans are focusing on questions of voter fraud, of election integrity, these sorts of things. And despite the fact that there is not evidence that this is happening in any sort of demonstrable way...
--:-- Emily Schultheis: All of these ballot measures have the potential to reshape state policy on critical issues. And I point out in my reporting, they're also worth watching because we've seen over the last decade how ballot measures can spark national movements, like the expansion of health care coverage and the legalization of marijuana.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find Politico's full overview of big issues on ballots across the country on the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When a member of the U.S. military is accused of a war crime, the case is dealt with in-house. It's investigated, charged, and tried within the military justice system, largely out of public view.
--:-- Madeline Barron: Recent reporting from the New Yorker podcast In the Dark reveals that this system can and very often does lead to serious misconduct going unpunished.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've given the U.S. military justice system tremendous power to prosecute its own service members for alleged war crimes. But we do not have the picture of what that system actually looks like, who's involved in those decisions, and what are the outcomes.
--:-- Madeline Barron: That's me, Madeline Barron. I'm the lead reporter and host of In the Dark. My team has been looking into one particular instance of an alleged war crime by U.S. Marines during the Iraq War in 2005. It's known as the Haditha Massacre.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Marines shot and killed 24 Iraqi men, women, and children. At the time, some Marines claimed they were fighting insurgents, but all of the victims were civilians, including children as young as three years old.
--:-- Madeline Barron: The killings got a lot of media attention at the time. Four Marines were charged with murder, but years passed and only one went to trial. It ended in a plea deal to a really minor charge, negligent dereliction of duty, which is like his own lawyer described it to me as like akin to a parking ticket.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He didn't have any prison sentence at all. And then he left the military after that.
--:-- Madeline Barron: I wanted to understand how the outcome of the Haditha case fit into the way the military justice system handles potential war crimes more broadly. So over the course of four years, my team sued the military multiple times to finally get tens of thousands of records.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That allowed them to put together the largest known collection of possible war crimes investigated by the U.S. military. And they found what happened in the Haditha case was the norm, not the exception.
--:-- Madeline Barron: What we found was that, you know, the majority of the time, these cases are either being dismissed or they're being given, you know, very low level sentences. I mean there are some exceptions but for the most part that's what happening.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because the military justice system is shrouded in so much secrecy, Barron says shortcomings are hard to identify and even harder to fix.
--:-- Madeline Barron: You know, so you can possibly hold the military justice system accountable whatever that might mean if you literally are prevented from knowing what the military justice system is doing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So if a democracy relies on people having access to information, this is a great example of where that information, at least prior to our reporting, was sorely lacking.
--:-- Madeline Barron: You can hear more from me about this massive investigation in this week's episode of Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, that episode will be queued up to play for you after today's show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to exclusive reporting from NPR on a trend that's giving new hope in the fight against drug overdose deaths in the U.S. Recent data shows an unprecedented drop in deaths, about 10 percent.
--:-- Keith Humphreys: Experts aren't entirely sure why, but they are happy, as I am, as Keith Humphreys, a top addiction policy expert at Stanford, told NPR. This is going to be the best year we've had since all of this started.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In 2019, overdose deaths really skyrocketed. Today, roughly 100,000 Americans die every year from drugs. And this data is getting a lot of attention because it's the first time in decades we've seen the numbers drop.
--:-- Nabarun Desgupta: I was going through state by state. Almost all the graphs all kind of pointed downwards.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR also spoke to people living with addiction, like Kevin Donaldson in Burlington, Vermont. He uses drugs, including fentanyl. And he says more people are carrying naloxone, a life-saving medication that can reverse most opioid overdoses.
--:-- Kevin Donaldson: And he is seeing things change. For a while there, we're hearing about it every other day. But when was the last overdose we heard about? A couple weeks ago, maybe? That's pretty far and few between.
--:-- Shamita Basu: States in the eastern U.S., like Vermont, appear to be seeing the biggest improvements. But some hard-hit states out west, like Washington, are as well.
--:-- Nabarun Desgupta: And Descupta told NPR we could be on track to have 20,000 fewer people dying from drug overdoses every year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now experts are working to better understand what's causing this dramatic drop and how to save more lives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app. Israel launched airstrikes on targets in southern Lebanon saying it hit multiple Hezbollah rocket launchers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These were some of the most intense attacks on Lebanon since the war in Gaza began elsewhere in the region. Hezbollah has promised to retaliate for the deadly explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies this week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The blasts are widely blamed on Israel, though it hasn't claimed responsibility.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Kentucky, a sheriff now faces a first-degree murder charge. State police say he shot and killed a judge in his chambers after the two men had an argument.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The sheriff turned himself in after the shooting. Investigators released little detail about what happened right before the gunfire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They said the motive was under investigation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Moving to Washington, where a bipartisan group in Congress is proposing a constitutional amendment to deal with a possible scenario they believe is worth considering, a mass shooting that kills so many lawmakers that it shifts the balance of power in the House.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post explains that the amendment would allow murdered elected officials to be replaced quickly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a grim hypothetical, and like any attempt to amend the Constitution, it's a long shot. But supporters of the amendment say it's needed, given the level of political violence in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, a major new entry in baseball's record books. Last night, the L.A. Dodgers' Shohei Otani hit his 50th homer this season.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sends one in the air, the other way, back it goes, gone! One-of-a-kind player, one-of-a-kind season, Shohei Otani starts the 50-50 club!
--:-- Shamita Basu: The 50-50 club is another way of saying Otani is the first player in MLB history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ever since he came from Japan in 2018 to play Major League Baseball, Otani has smashed records and dominated the sport.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a post-game interview through an interpreter, Otani said he's feeling happy, relieved, and very respectful to his peers.
--:-- 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, as we mentioned, the episode of In Conversation about the shadowy military justice system with In the Dark's Madeline Barron is coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
