--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, May 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the upcoming GOP bill may have hurt the U.S. credit rating. Another airport near miss makes America's air traffic issues unignorable. And a second high-profile exit at CBS News made tensions with Trump. But first, yesterday, the Supreme Court gave the administration permission to terminate the temporary protected status former President Biden had granted to about 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This had given them legal rights to work and live in the U.S. as their home country was deemed unsafe or impossible to return to. The Trump administration is planning to end similar rights for 500,000 Haitians later this year. Although border crossings are down substantially, President Trump is working to fulfill his promise of deporting millions of people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the Brookings Institute, the best available data indicates that daily deportations are below Biden-era levels, in part because of the lull in border activity, but conflicting data from government agencies makes it difficult to know the true number.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One way the administration is trying to boost its numbers is by detaining people at routine and mandatory immigration check-ins. The Guardian analyzed immigration arrests made during Trump's first month in office and found roughly 1,400 happened during ICE check-ins or right after.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's around 8% of the total arrests made during that time. Some of the people detained have no criminal records. Like Josue and Jose Lopez Diaz, brothers from El Salvador who are 19 and 20 years old.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They came to the U.S. almost 10 years ago with their mom, who was fleeing poverty and gang violence. They were detained at the border. Their asylum request was denied. But the family was released into the U.S. while their appeal process continued.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the brothers were pursuing green cards under special immigrant juvenile status for those under 21 years old who've been abused or neglected by a parent, in this case, their father.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In March of this year, Josue and Jose went with their mom to a routine check-in with immigration officials in Manhattan, and they were both detained.
--:-- Mark Cisano: They were very quickly brought to a detention center in Buffalo, and they stayed there a couple of weeks. Eventually, they're flown down to Louisiana in this crazy trip that was many, many hours long.
--:-- Mark Cisano: They're shackled the entire way so intensely that they both had what they called phantom pains afterwards, even after the shackles were taken off.
--:-- Mark Cisano: They get to Louisiana, they spend some time there and are told that they're going to be deported at the end of the week. They get removed to El Salvador. And that's where they are now.
--:-- Mark Cisano: Josue missed his high school graduation. He told me that an immigration official told him to not worry about that stuff anymore because, quote, you're not from here anymore.
--:-- Mark Cisano: But their mother told me the United States is all they know. El Salvador is so foreign to them at this point that she doesn't know who they will live with.
--:-- Mark Cisano: And she can leave the U.S. to go be with them because she can leave her youngest son a U.S. citizen who's eight years old behind. He has a neurological disorder that requires constant care.
--:-- Mark Cisano: These brothers are so American to the point that they were being used to translate for other immigrants while in detention by ICE.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So I think that's worth keeping in mind when we think about who is being detained by the Trump immigration system.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn to Congress as House Republicans race to pass a major tax and spending package before Memorial Day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In doing so, they're preparing to face a basic math problem. The scale and scope of their proposal could increase the deficit by several trillion dollars, just at a time when borrowing costs appear to be climbing and concern over mounting debt rises.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On Friday, Moody's Credit Agency, which monitors a country's capacity to pay back its debts, downgraded the U.S.'s rating from the highest AAA.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It blamed, quote, successive administrations and Congress for failing to agree on a sustainable path forward. But it also sounded the alarm over this bill.
--:-- Richard Rubin: Part of that report clearly said, look, we're concerned that the proposals that are coming out of this Congress and administration does not make significant, meaningful changes.
--:-- Richard Rubin: The concern is that the more the U.S. government is borrowing, it'll be harder to have investment capital for new factories, new homes, new whatever.
--:-- Richard Rubin: And it can drive up interest rates. And those interest rates obviously go into what you're paying on credit cards and mortgages and those kinds of things.
--:-- Richard Rubin: Changing the U.S. credit rating is unlikely to seriously damage the economy. Only 11 countries now hold the top rating.
--:-- Richard Rubin: But it's an important signifier, and as I note, incurring more national debt may lead to more expensive borrowing over time, and it may eventually give future politicians some unpalatable choices.
--:-- Richard Rubin: One notable fact from Moody's report, interest payments in the U.S. are set to consume 30 percent of the federal government's revenue by 2035, compared with 9 percent in 2021.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, Republicans are moving forward with this bill. They advanced it out of a key House committee over the weekend, securing the votes of several who had blocked the measure just days before, and they hope to put the bill up for a vote by Thursday.
--:-- Richard Rubin: Rubin says Republicans believe that core elements of this legislation, like expanding and extending tax cuts, will help spur economic growth and offset what's added to the deficit.
--:-- Richard Rubin: And they would also argue that other parts of the Trump agenda, the deregulation, oil and gas production, are also going to generate growth.
--:-- Richard Rubin: And they're saying, basically, if you take all of that growth, the growth caused by this bill and the growth that will happen outside this bill, that it will increase the economy so much, then throw off enough revenue and basically cover the cost.
--:-- Richard Rubin: Economists largely agree that the legislation could boost economic growth, but many say not anywhere close to the level Republicans are projecting.
--:-- Richard Rubin: One expert at the Libertarian Cato Institute told me Republicans like to use this argument of economic growth as a, quote, magic wand to wave away problems in legislation.
--:-- Richard Rubin: But while there are some self-styled deficit hawks in the congressional ranks, I say they will struggle to balance economic realities with political ones.
--:-- Richard Rubin: The way they're thinking about it is the extension of the tax cuts won't get felt much at all because it's just keeping the status quo.
--:-- Richard Rubin: These things are scheduled to expire where people are very much used to them. So Republicans clearly are concerned about deficits but they also view an expiration of the tax cuts as scheduled at the end of this year as completely untenable.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today President Trump is expected to meet with House Republicans as they try to pull their votes together as soon as they can.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to travel, where a string of high-profile aviation disasters have left people wondering just how safe our air traffic control system really is.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just yesterday, we learned about another close call. Earlier this month, a passenger jet at LaGuardia Airport in New York was forced to abort takeoff to avoid a potential collision as another United Airlines plane was on the runway at the same time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Air traffic controllers realized just in time and frantically pulled their go-ahead to take off. 4736, stop. Sorry about that. I thought United had cleared well before that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just stay there for a moment and I got to get the other United out of the way. We'll get you off the runway.
--:-- Zach Wichter: The safety incidents that we've seen are absolutely anomalies. Flying commercially in the U.S. is still the safest way to travel.
--:-- Zach Wichter: Experts in aviation safety often like to say that aviation safety operates on the so-called Swiss cheese model, where like there's no such thing as a 100% safe system, especially when it comes to something as complex as air travel, where there are tens of thousands of flights a day in the U.S.
--:-- Zach Wichter: The idea is to try to keep the gaps in the safety system apart from each other and that these incidents only really happen when they align.
--:-- Zach Wichter: Right now, there are some bigger holes in that system because of how the FAA is funded.
--:-- Zach Wichter: None of what I'm about to say means that air traffic control is unsafe. But the way that the Federal Aviation Administration does its funding is kind of piecemeal.
--:-- Zach Wichter: It gets funded by Congress essentially every five years. And because of that structure, it's been really hard for Congress and the agency to fund tech upgrades.
--:-- Zach Wichter: And it's also been really hard to fund the hiring and training of new air traffic controllers.
--:-- Zach Wichter: And this is something that experts who are familiar with aviation have sort of been warning about for years, if not decades.
--:-- Zach Wichter: In a recent New York Times analysis of air traffic control facilities nationwide, reporters learned that 99 percent of facilities are operating below the recommended staffing levels set by the FAA and the union representing air traffic controllers.
--:-- Zach Wichter: And the administration has said that the U.S. air traffic control system is so outdated that it still relies on technology like floppy disks to function.
--:-- Zach Wichter: Certain replacement parts can only be found on eBay.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaking at a press conference earlier this month shortly after the Newark incidents.
--:-- Sean Duffy: We use radar from the 1970s. Some of them are from the 80s, but most of them are from the 70s.
--:-- Sean Duffy: So this technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Duffy recently announced that his department plans to build a brand new, multi-billion dollar air traffic control system within three years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It would involve new hardware and software paid for by Congress. The exact price tag is unknown.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Duffy has suggested he wants lawmakers to tell him what they would be able to fund.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far, the House Transportation Committee has approved $12.5 billion, but Duffy says he'll need more.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump claims ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine are to start immediately after he had a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a separate call with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But his post on social media made no mention of the unconditional ceasefire demanded by some European leaders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Nor did it reference the talks in Istanbul last week, which seemingly went nowhere.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump instead touted the potential trade wins for Putin in the event of peace.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Putin, meanwhile, stressed again the need to address, as he put it, the root causes of the war in any deal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In media news, the head of CBS News has become the second high-profile person to step down as the network confronts a lawsuit from the Trump administration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CBS's corporate parent, Paramount Global, is currently involved in settlement negotiations with lawyers for Trump over the editing of an October interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now former CBS CEO Wendy McMahon's resignation made clear that she was not happy with the way those talks were going, declaring that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The veteran executive producer of 60 Minutes, Bill Owens, resigned in April, saying Paramount Global was infringing on his journalistic independence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It makes it a federal crime to post real and fake sexually explicit imagery online of people without their consent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it requires social media companies to remove images and videos, including deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence, within 48 hours after a victim's request.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The bill had bipartisan support as well as public backing from the First Lady, Melania Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The 19th has some advice on how you can request the takedown of explicit images created or shared without permission, including some resources on how to fight online abuse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find those links and all the stories we talked about today 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 from Wired.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This month, Airbnb will launch the first phase of a $200 million reinvention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This version of the company won't just be about booking a vacation, according to Airbnb's CEO.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It'll be a hub to solicit almost any kind of service, including a super concierge with AI that knows you well enough to plan your trips for you.
--:-- 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.
