--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita. I've got a quick request for you. If Apple News Today is an essential part of your morning routine, follow the show in Apple Podcasts. And if you have another 30 seconds, leave us a rating and a review too. It helps other people find our show and it helps us know what you like about it. Thanks. Good morning. It's Wednesday, May 28th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, aid distribution in Gaza gets off to a slow, chaotic start. Syrians struggle with reconciliation after Assad's fall. And RFK Jr. says COVID vaccines are no longer recommended for children and pregnant women. But first, President Trump appears to be deepening his financial links to cryptocurrency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, the parent company of Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, announced a series of deals to raise $2.5 billion, which it plans to invest in Bitcoin. What began as a tech company is seemingly moving toward financial services. It comes after the private crypto dinner Trump hosted that we mentioned last week on the show, and which sparked allegations that he was corruptly leveraging his position in power to score personally lucrative deals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People who attended the dinner spent a combined $148 million on Trump's crypto token just for the chance to be there. Crypto is only one piece of the Trump family's sprawling business empire. It touches everything from real estate to digital trading cards to apparel like watches and sneakers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Max Abelson with Bloomberg recently examined its scope. The thing to know about the Trump family's money-making machine is that it is really big. And that from our eyes, from our journalistic position, no modern American president has put their family in a position to make money like this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, the scale of Trump's political comeback, winning the White House after being impeached twice and losing the 2020 election, being criminally indicted four times, and being convicted of felony crimes by a jury of his peers, is perhaps matched only by the moneymaking that's accompanied his return to power.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since the early days of his reelection campaign, he has more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion, according to Bloomberg. What we're seeing now is a new era of moneymaking for the family.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In previous administrations, presidents divested themselves from virtually all of their business interests or put them in a blind trust managed by an independent party, all to avoid conflicts of interest or even the appearance that they were making decisions for personal profit versus the public good.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Trump, in both of his terms, has handed off responsibility of his businesses to his children, and his assets are in a trust that's overseen by his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr. When reached for comment, Trump Jr. told Abelson he doesn't think it would be fair to expect him to change his own personal business practices just because his father is president again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He said, look, it's essentially silly to expect me to change careers just because my dad is in power. You know, I've been a businessman all my life. Then the White House, they said, look, he is the most transparent president ever, and he's sacrificed by stepping away from his empire. And that's the way he sees it. And that's fair. And we let readers know.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump's second term has also broken from some of the guardrails he put in place in his first term. Back then the Trump Organization said it would not make any new foreign deals. But that's no longer the case. Now the organization is only restricting itself from deals with foreign governments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But in a number of instances Abelson found that lines have been blurred. One thing we found is that their new projects include arms of governments. I'm thinking of Qatar. I'm thinking of Oman. You know, it's a little bit less direct. But even in Vietnam, the prime minister, I believe, sat down with one of the Trump organization's financial partners in Vietnam.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It becomes harder and harder to say there is no connection at all. We'll include a link to Abelson's reporting in our show notes, where you can see all of the deals the Trump family has made since he kicked off his 2024 campaign with the estimated sales value and revenue generation for each.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to Gaza, where aid groups have warned that starvation is imminent for over 2 million Palestinians because Israel has overwhelmingly blocked aid since March. Yesterday, an aid effort backed by Israel and the United States got off to a chaotic start, with crowds of desperate people rushing to try to get food from a new distribution site.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Daniel Estrin, reporting from Tel Aviv, explained for NPR how the system works. It involves American contractors. And instead of having food distributed in hundreds of points across Gaza, this group is going to be restricting that to four new zones, with Israeli soldiers guarding the perimeter and private contractors giving out boxes of food to families once a week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel proposed this system of aid distribution, claiming that Hamas was stealing supplies. It was a condition Israel set for lifting its blockade, which forced hundreds of soup kitchens and aid centers across Gaza to close, effectively pushing out all other aid groups except for the organization now running these new sites, which is called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And this plan has faced heavy criticism since it was announced. The executive director of GHF resigned in recent days, saying it would be impossible to deliver aid to Palestinians under this system without compromising basic humanitarian rules such as independence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Humanitarian groups that have been working in Gaza, including the United Nations, have also warned this plan amounts to Israel weaponizing aid. Alex DeWall, the executive director of the World Peace Foundation, told Reuters Israel would use facial recognition technology to target and screen those receiving aid.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's one of the reasons why many Palestinians are avoiding the new aid sites altogether. One Palestinian woman told the BBC, quote, we are being forced to risk our lives just to feed our children.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As desperate crowds rushed to an aid site yesterday, the IDF fired what it says were warning shots nearby, causing a moment of panic. Estrin told NPR this idea of highly targeted aid was devised by Israeli military veterans in the hope of starving Hamas to force them to release the remaining hostages in Gaza.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, Israeli officials have also said publicly that the aim here is to get Palestinians to move south near Egypt as a step toward moving people to other countries. Israel's allies in Europe say that would be forcible mass displacement, and they oppose it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Hamas is warning Palestinians not to take food from this new U.S.-backed group. Critics of this plan have also pointed out these GHF aid sites are exclusively in South Gaza which raises questions about how vulnerable groups like the elderly, orphaned children, and people who have been injured will be able to travel to distribution sites.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, the State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce defended the system, which she says has delivered close to half a million meals so far. Was this going to be like going to the mall or through a drive-thru? No, it wasn't, because the issue here is getting aid to Gazans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And then suddenly it moves into complaints about style or the nature of who's doing it or elements of administration. And being opposed to getting food and aid, as we've demonstrated here, is happening and will continue to happen because someone might feel left out, is, I think, the height of hypocrisy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: GHF says it plans to increase the flow of aid daily, but it still represents a fraction of what Gaza's population needs to survive. Let's turn now to Syria, where people are adjusting to life under the new president, Ahmad al-Shara.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a major policy shift, Trump acknowledged and celebrated the new leader and removed sanctions against the country without preconditions. Al-Shirah is a former militant commander, and the world is watching to see how he answers fundamental questions about his country's future, its system of government, economic priorities, and how it manages relations with its neighbors, most notably Israel.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But for a new leader replacing a brutal regime, confronting the past can be just as important. The Washington Post's photojournalist Salwan Georges told us about how Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship cast a long shadow that people are struggling to emerge from.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Under the Assad rule, Syria became a civilian state where neighbors, colleagues, and even family members were pressured or rewarded sometimes to inform on each other. And that has really left a huge distress between people, has left deep scars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Assad ruled Syria for nearly 25 years, and his father controlled the nation before him. This past December, when the Assad regime was toppled by rebel forces, jails were emptied of political prisoners. And journalists gained access to files that had been hoarded by the government surveillance apparatus.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They learned who had informed on who and what details had been shared. Sometimes the barbers were informants. Sometimes doctors were informants. Everybody was an informant at some point in some neighborhoods. So the documents are very important, and Syrian new government has a huge task ahead to kind of go through them and bring justice to these people who still don't know who disappeared their family members.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Georges told us about a man named Abu Ayman, a baker whose neighbors say was an informant for the Assad regime during Syria's civil war. Abu Ayman has since left Syria for neighboring Lebanon, but his family who still lives there is dealing with the aftermath of the accusations, which Abu Ayman has denied.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of Abu Ayman's sons told The Post he was shot at by neighbors who believe his father was responsible for the detention and torture of their family members. His son now faces community backlash, illustrating how the consequences of betrayal extend beyond individual but to entire family.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some cases, people who had been loyal to the regime tried to negotiate with their neighbors. One individual gave his apartment to rebel fighters. One family that a man blamed for his imprisonment showed up at his door to offer an expensive car.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So in Syria, like betrayal wasn't a crime. It was a currency. You know the informant system didn't just break trust. It broke families, neighborhoods, even childhoods. And no one knew who was watching them. I mean, sometimes it's even your family member. That's how far it extended.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of George's sources told him aligning with the previous regime wasn't presented as a choice, but as necessary for survival. Under the new president, the Syrian government has set up so-called reconciliation centers, places where former soldiers and intelligence agents can hand over their weapons in exchange for civilian ID cards.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But George has told us it will take much more for true reconciliation to happen. Without justice, there's of course no peace. But without reconciliation, there's no future. So Syria, I feel like it's not only about building its cities, it needs to rebuild its soul.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the U.S. will no longer recommend the COVID vaccine for pregnant women and children.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It comes a week after his department announced tighter regulations that will effectively limit new vaccines to the elderly and those at most risk of serious disease. The recommendation puts the U.S. in line with some other similar countries, though the WHO continues to recommend getting vaccinated against COVID during pregnancy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The format and timing of the announcement was unusual. Normally, the CDC would meet and vote, and the Health and Human Services Secretary would act on that recommendation. But Reuters reports the CDC's advisory committee has not voted on these changes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In higher ed news, the Trump administration has ordered a halt to all new scheduling appointments for student visas, while the State Department reviews its online vetting policies of potential students, according to diplomatic cables seen by Politico.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The State Department refused to confirm the story, but said the U.S. will use every tool it could to vet people coming to the United States. Right now, it's unclear what posts or statements would make an individual ineligible for a student visa, though Politico says the cable alludes to keeping out terrorists and battling anti-Semitism.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, President Trump has announced he will pardon the reality TV couple Todd and Julie Chrisley, convicted for tax evasion and conspiring to swindle community banks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their show, Chrisley Knows Best, followed the family's lavish lifestyles in Atlanta as real estate moguls. But they were found to have defrauded banks out of more than $30 million and were sentenced to a combined 19 years in prison.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prosecutors said the two submitted false bank statements to obtain millions in personal loans before they became stars and spent the money on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel.
--:-- 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, we've got a narrated article coming up next from The Atlantic. A carpenter from Los Angeles shares the story of how he was shipwrecked and lost at sea for 13 days on a raft after his fishing boat sank and the captain died.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
