--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Thursday, December 5th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, explaining the political turmoil in South Korea, one country's sweeping plan to stop kids from using social media, and the final House race of the 2024 election has been called. But first, Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday amid a storm of controversy.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A number of damaging stories have emerged since he was selected for the role, leading to concerns from some Republican senators and questions about his future. Trump's team has publicly defended him, and Hegseth said that Trump told him that he had his support.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Let's recap how we got to this moment. The first allegation came from a woman who said Hegseth sexually assaulted her in a hotel in Monterey, California, seven years ago.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: She said she doesn't remember much, but remembers saying no, and alleges that Hegseth prevented her from leaving his hotel room. That's all according to a police report that was filed at the time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hegseth was never charged, but he did pay the woman a settlement and maintains it was consensual. Yesterday, he was asked about the incident on The Megyn Kelly Show.
--:-- Pete Hegseth: Did you rape a woman in a hotel in Monterey? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I've been honest about that encounter, starting with law enforcement, from the beginning.
--:-- Pete Hegseth: I may have been drinking, but I was cognizant enough to remember every single detail. And I'm not here to say that my conduct was good. Being in a hotel room with someone that's not the person you're with is not okay. I own up to that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Another allegation of bad behavior came from his mother. Last Friday, the New York Times reported that Hegseth's mother had sent her son an email in 2018 accusing him of mistreating women.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: At the time, Hegseth was going through a divorce. His mom's email reads, quote, I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, and sleeps around.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yesterday, she appeared on Fox News to clear up those comments.
--:-- Hegseth's Mother: I want people to look at Pete and judge people or understand him for who he is today. Pete is a new person he's redeemed, forgiven, changed. I think we all are after seven years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Then this week, Jane Mayer, chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, reported that Hegseth was forced out of previous leadership positions for, quote, financial mismanagement, sexist behavior and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The allegations are based on a whistleblower report and other internal emails. Here's Mayer on CNN.
--:-- Jane Mayer: I mean, the behavior described by the people that he worked with really was the kind of behavior that would get anybody fired in almost any office in America. Near constant allegations of drunkenness, him being blackout drunk, having to be carried to his hotel room.
--:-- Jane Mayer: Mayer also described one incident that took a dark turn. People that he worked with who sent it to the management saying he was really horrified by what he described as the quote despicable behavior which was Pete Hegseth closing down a bar at 2.30 in the morning in Ohio, chanting, kill all Muslims, kill all Muslims, which again, of course, is concerning for someone who might run the Pentagon.
--:-- Jane Mayer: Mayer's reporting also found that Hegseth had run up massive debt while he was the head of the organization Veterans for Freedom, to the point where it was unable to pay its bills.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A lawyer for Hegseth called the allegations outlandish and attributed them to, quote, a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Hegseth's.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Since all of this, Hegseth has been meeting with senators to try to shore up support. He's told at least one that he wouldn't drink if he were confirmed for the role.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But there are mounting concerns. Here's Senator Lindsey Graham on CBS News earlier this week.
--:-- Senator Lindsey Graham: Some of these articles are very disturbing. He obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is going to be difficult.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But other Republicans are standing firmly behind Hegseth, like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.
--:-- Senator Tommy Tuberville: We need a drill sergeant in the military. We need somebody to straighten the military out, to get the woke, the DEI affiliation out and go from there.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And you don't have any concerns about the allegations against him in the New Yorker article, sir?
--:-- Senator Tommy Tuberville: No, I've looked at all the personal stuff. And again, I've known him for a long time. And I would, there's not going to be anything to this at the end of the day.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the Senate next year, which means Hegseth can afford to lose no more than three Republican senators to be confirmed.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is already considering backup options, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Let's turn now to the political turmoil that's erupted this week in South Korea. It started when President Yoon Suk-yul declared martial law after accusing the opposition party of engaging in anti-state activities.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That decision was met with swift backlash, leading Yoon to lift the martial law declaration just six hours later. Now he faces the threat of impeachment.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The quickly moving events are being described as the biggest political crisis that South Korea has faced in decades. It's caused a lot of confusion in South Korea, where no one can understand what seemed to be a sort of doomed effort from the start was undertaken.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's Karen DeYoung, a senior national security correspondent at The Washington Post. She says the events also took the U.S. by surprise.
--:-- Karen DeYoung: And it's also caused a lot of consternation in the United States, which considers South Korea a sort of model democracy in East Asia and has a number of agreements on the security front with South Korea.
--:-- Karen DeYoung: South Korea is one of America's closest allies. In fact, one of President Biden's signature foreign policy achievements is engaging the United States in a security pact with South Korea and Japan in the face of mounting threats from Russia, China, and North Korea.
--:-- Karen DeYoung: It provides for joint exercises, intelligence sharing, high-level consultations, and basically security cooperation. And it part of turning toward China as what the Pentagon calls the pacing threat of American security.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On Tuesday, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Kirk Campbell, told reporters that the U.S. was watching the unfolding events with, quote, grave concern.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now South Korean lawmakers say they'll hold a vote to impeach President Yoon on Saturday. At the same time, American leadership is on the cusp of changing as well.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If there were a government that is not quite as friendly to the United States as the UN government is now, I think that would be a challenge for the incoming president.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: President-elect Trump has congratulated himself on his relationship with North Korea during his first term and has indicated he would try to follow up on that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So I think it basically would just be another challenge on a long list of challenges that will be greeting him on his first day of office.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are growing efforts across the world to limit how much time young people spend on their phones. Recently, Australia approved a new law that would ban kids from accessing social media platforms until they're 16 years old.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's expected to go into effect in a year. And there are not a lot of details about how the ban would be enforced. But social media companies could face fines of up to $32 million if they don't comply.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Meanwhile, in Spain, lawmakers there are considering a recommendation that smartphones carry warning labels.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And here in the United States, our Surgeon General has recommended something similar for social media platforms.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: At the same time, lots of states and locales are starting to take matters into their own hands. Multiple school districts, including in Los Angeles, are banning phone use at school.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And next year, children in Florida who are under 14 will not be permitted to have social media accounts.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I mean, we've seen a number of things over the last year that have been, in my opinion, heading in the right direction, and some things that don't seem very well conceived.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association, who spoke to us a few months back for an episode of Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: I think shutting off social media to everyone and anyone below a certain age doesn't make a lot of sense and it doesn't fit the science.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: That's because he says kids' brains develop at such different rates. It's also concerning that if you shut everything off till 16, come on, we are all adolescents.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: You know exactly what that's going to do. It's going to make every 13-year-old think it's the coolest thing to find a way on there. And it conveys the idea that once you hit 16, it's perfectly safe and fine, which it's not.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: So that's a wrong way. In his professional opinion, the right way to approach the issue is to treat social media like any other potentially dangerous behavior and to teach kids how to use it the right way.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: Let's build digital media literacy into every school. Even better, let's build it into the social media programs themselves.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: And the last thing I'll say is that the Netherlands, the UK, France, they're all starting to take phones out of the classroom.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: And that well in psychological science as well. There's no such thing as multitasking. There only task shifting. And kids are not as good at task shifting as adults are.
--:-- Mitch Prinstein: So to expect a kid to learn organic chemistry well period but certainly while they scrolling through their social media at the same time, there's just no argument that I'm aware of to suggest that that's a good idea.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: NPR recently spoke to a bunch of teachers about this issue. One in Arizona who taught high school biology said that he recently quit after 11 years, saying that phone use in the class was taking a toll on him.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And one English teacher in Minnesota said that after she banned phones in her classroom, students were participating and socializing way more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app. We're starting to learn more details about the death of Brian Thompson, an executive with UnitedHealthcare who was shot and killed Wednesday morning as he was heading to the company's annual investor conference in Midtown Manhattan.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A gunman fired multiple rounds before fleeing into Central Park. Here's the NYPD commissioner, Jessica Tisch.
--:-- Jessica Tisch: Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target. I want to be clear. At this time, every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre-planned, targeted attack.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Police officers don't have a motive for the shooting yet, and they've yet to find the suspect.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In political news, the final House race in the 2024 election has been called. Democrats flipped California's 13th district, with Adam Gray eking out the slimmest of victories, beating his Republican opponent by just 187 votes.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, with all of the races called, we finally know the balance of power in next year's House of Representatives. Republicans will hold 220 seats and Democrats will hold 215.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that majority will get even narrower for at least parts of January, as Trump has picked several Republican House members to fill cabinet positions.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, tis the season of holiday music you can't get out of your head. Tunes often referred to as earworms.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: According to one study, 90% of people say they experience the earworm phenomenon once a week. If this is you, NPR reports on a new tool created to help you get rid of those pesky repeating tunes.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's called the Ear Worm Eraser, a 40-second audio track designed specifically to help you forget a song by switching beats, musical styles, and tempo every few seconds.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Here's a bit of what it sounds like.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A lot of people on YouTube have said the song does in fact do the trick while others say not so much.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So the next time that you're at the grocery store and you get all I want for Christmas is you by Mariah Carey stuck in your head, you can go ahead and try it out yourself.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: 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 have Shamita's interview about limiting social media use queued up to play next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrative to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
