--:-- Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Thursday, July 11th. I'm Yasmin Khan, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Yasmin Khan: Coming up, world leaders brace for the possibility of Trump's return to power, a scandal involving a famous writer, and new hope for people with lupus. But first, let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: There are some new cracks emerging in Democratic support for President Biden's campaign. Peter Welch of Vermont is now the first Democratic senator to publicly call for Biden to withdraw from the race. Several House Democrats have already done the same. The actor George Clooney, an influential fundraiser, is also now saying Biden should go.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And many in the party took note when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on NBC and talked about timing. It's up to the president to subside if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Biden and his staffers have repeatedly said he's staying in the race, and many Democrats have publicly backed him. But there are worrying new signs for his campaign. The Cook Political Report's widely followed election forecast has shifted its ratings toward Trump for six states.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And Politico reports that Biden aides are calling Democratic delegates to check whether they'll still be loyal to him at the upcoming party convention. While campaigning, Biden continues to govern. One of his administration's latest moves is to ship 500-pound bombs to Israel.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The weapons were on hold for months because of concerns they could cause civilian deaths in Gaza. The U.S. is still holding back on providing the 2,000-pound bombs Israel also wants. Israel recently told residents in Gaza City to evacuate as military operations increase in the area.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Across the U.S., at least 28 people have died from issues related to the heat. The Washington Post tallied up the numbers. The victims are largely in California and Oregon, but include people as far east as Maryland.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: That number is likely to grow as officials find other victims. And there are forecasts for more extreme heat in various places through the weekend. As we've mentioned, many in Texas are facing high temperatures without air conditioning, with power knocked out by Hurricane Beryl.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Turning to sports and the world of soccer. U.S. men's coach Greg Berhalter is out. fired after the team early exit from the Copa America tournament.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In that tournament Colombia advanced to the final with a win over Uruguay They play Argentina Sunday Elsewhere in soccer Spain will play England in the Euros final also this Sunday England advanced yesterday with a dramatic win over the Netherlands, scoring with just moments left on the clock.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: President Biden may be the host of this week's NATO summit in Washington, but former President Donald Trump casts a long shadow over it. And world leaders have been quietly strategizing about the possibility of Trump getting reelected.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Is there a way to, quote unquote, Trump-proof this alliance? Emily Rahula is reporting for The Washington Post from the summit.
--:-- Emily Rahula: On the campaign trail, he's made comments that have really shaken the alliance. He said earlier this year at one event that he would encourage Russia to attack allies if they weren't paying their NATO dues, so to speak, their defense spending requirements.
--:-- Emily Rahula: Some allies worry Trump might try to pull out of the alliance altogether. Congress recently passed legislation, and some Trump-proofing of its own, that requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to withdraw.
--:-- Emily Rahula: That effectively binds the U.S. to NATO. But many members see more transactional threats lurking in Trump's comments. He's just trying to extract more money and get Europeans to pay more, but he won't actually do things.
--:-- Emily Rahula: And members take Trump seriously when he says he'd look at whether they're meeting defense spending commitments before deciding if the U.S. would come to their aid if attacked.
--:-- Emily Rahula: Trump doesn't need to pull out of NATO to undermine it. NATO's based on deterrence. The idea is one ally's attacked, everyone responds.
--:-- Emily Rahula: If someone is saying if someone's attacked, we're not coming to their rescue and adversaries like Russia believe that that is true, the alliance loses some of its power, whether or not the United States is all in or not.
--:-- Emily Rahula: To get ahead of a possible Trump victory in November, NATO policymakers have made a number of moves focused on shoring up support for Ukraine. They've boosted spending and signed decade-long defense pledges with Ukraine.
--:-- Emily Rahula: And they moved control over key aspects of military aid to Ukraine, from U.S. command to NATO more broadly. Members also recently appointed a new NATO Secretary General, who has a reputation for being skilled at working with Trump.
--:-- Emily Rahula: And NATO leaders in Washington yesterday agreed to support Ukraine on an irreversible path to membership.
--:-- Emily Rahula: Several foreign policy experts point out NATO made it through four years of a Trump presidency before and many NATO countries are now led by people who share some of his political views and could potentially work well with him.
--:-- Emily Rahula: But with no certainty about whether Trump will win and what he might do about NATO if he does, world leaders are hedging their bets, and they're buckling up for a challenging shift in American leadership.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: A warning that this next story involves child sexual abuse. Recently, the daughter of the late Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Monroe revealed a horrifying family secret.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In an essay for the Toronto Star, Andrea Robin Skinner details how she was abused for years by her stepfather, starting in the 1970s when she was nine years old. As an adult, Skinner told her mother about the abuse.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And she says Monroe was complicit in hiding it for years, and her mother chose to stay married to her daughter's abuser.
--:-- Constance Grady: That's Constance Grady, a senior culture correspondent at Vox. She really consistently chooses her husband over her daughter and seems to have a really difficult time or perhaps be unwilling to grasp that her daughter was hurt really, really badly by her husband.
--:-- Constance Grady: She just chooses her husband over her daughter again and again and again. Skinner is Monroe's youngest daughter. As a child, she told trusted adults in her life about the sexual assault and asked for help.
--:-- Constance Grady: But for a long time, she had to face the threat alone, and the abuse became this big unspoken secret. Skinner eventually went to the police with evidence she collected.
--:-- Constance Grady: In 2005, her stepfather pleaded guilty to an indecent assault charge. She got some justice there, but writes that she felt it was important for the public to finally know about her mother's role in the abuse as well.
--:-- Constance Grady: She says in her essay, I never wanted to see another interview, biography, or event that didn't wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me and with the fact that my mother confronted with the truth of what had happened chose to stay with and protect my abuser.
--:-- Constance Grady: She's very clear that she thinks her mother is a great writer and she probably deserved her Nobel Prize and she doesn't want to destroy her legacy, but she does want for this story to be a part of Alice Munro's legacy.
--:-- Constance Grady: Grady says it's impossible to read Munro's work the same way with the knowledge of what happened to her daughter. A lot of what Alice Munro writes about is about women and girls and their inner lives.
--:-- Constance Grady: And she writes about the ways in which social structures and sort of attractive but also brutal men will push against these girls and silence them or potentially one way of thinking about it would be to deform them in a way.
--:-- Constance Grady: Their inner lives become crushed and unable to flourish because of these men and the patriarchal system in which they live. Skinner and her siblings came forward as a group to share Skinner's story, and they say they hope it can prevent other families from repeating the mistakes that happened in theirs.
--:-- Constance Grady: They want to make people think about the ways in which families can become complicit in abuse by refusing to acknowledge it. That it's more than just the abuser who is really causing harm.
--:-- Constance Grady: We can cause harm by refusing to acknowledge the abuse and refusing to fix it. They have said that they want us to try to do away with the mask of secrecy that can so often cover over these horrible issues of sexual abuse within families.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Finally, an important discovery sheds new light on a disease that affects as many as 1.5 million Americans, lupus. Researchers believe they've finally found an answer to the longstanding question about what the root cause of the disease is, and the insights could pave the way for new treatment.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The new findings point to abnormalities in people's immune systems. It's complicated, of course, but in short, it's in the blood.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Samples showed people with lupus had an imbalance of cells, too many that cause damage, and not enough that make repairs. The vast majority of people with lupus are women.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Symptoms include extreme fatigue, joint pain, and skin rashes. It can be deadly in rare cases. Treatment has long been difficult.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Many patients get their immune systems suppressed overall, which doesn't always work. The study found that treating people with a particular drug seems to prevent that imbalance of cells.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Further research building on these findings could help a lot of people who've been suffering for a long time. You can read about the new lupus research and much more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next from New York Magazine.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: It goes inside the story of a Wall Street con man who scammed his former classmates from Harvard Business School. If you're listening in the podcast's app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
