--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, August 6th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shumita Basu: On today's show, how a booming industry is quietly driving up your electric bills. Journalists unveil a massive police misconduct database. And can Adam Driver's booming voice keep cattle safe from predators? But first, to the Trump administration's moves against some of America's most elite colleges and universities.
--:-- Liam Knox: The White House has cut and frozen billions of dollars of federal funding to push higher education institutions closer in line with its cultural worldview. And the pressure seems to be working. It's been kind of remarkable just how well that playbook has worked so far.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That's Bloomberg education reporter Liam Knox. In recent weeks, three universities, Columbia, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania, struck deals with the administration to release frozen funds.
--:-- Liam Knox: Taken together, Columbia and Brown agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the federal government, or in Brown's case, to local workforce development programs. The government will now reportedly have access to standardized test scores and the GPAs of every student that applies to Columbia and Brown, plus information about their race.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Officials at Penn, meanwhile, publicly agreed to ban transgender women from women's sports to align with the administration's position.
--:-- Claire Shipman: In its deal, Colombia did not admit to any wrongdoing, and its acting president, Claire Shipman, told CNN they walked away preserving what felt most important to them, their academic independence.
--:-- Claire Shipman: I actually think the narrative that paints this as a kind of binary situation, courage versus capitulation, is just wrong. It's too simplistic. This was a really, really complex problem. And I will argue over and over again that choosing to listen, choosing to try to solve the problem with everything that we had at stake is not capitulation. It was extraordinarily difficult.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Many schools that have been targeted by the White House are struggling without federal funds. Some have taken on debt, laid off staff, and cut spending.
--:-- Liam Knox: And Knox says that financial pressure has forced them to the table.
--:-- Liam Knox: I think the fact that universities are willing to take that gamble, despite the fact that there's certainly no assurance that there's not going to be more federal funding freezes down the line, more grant cuts down the line, shows just how much universities are dependent on this kind of federal funding.
--:-- Shumita Basu: As some schools have cut deals, there's been a cascading effect with more institutions showing a willingness to enter talks.
--:-- Liam Knox: Bloomberg reports that Cornell and Northwestern are close to agreements with the White House, though both schools declined to comment on settlement talks.
--:-- Shumita Basu: At Northwestern, the administration froze $790 million back in April. University officials say these past few months have been some of their most difficult to navigate, and they announced the elimination of over 400 positions last week.
--:-- Liam Knox: Even if these schools do come to some kind of agreement with the Trump administration, university leaders worry how much more will be asked of them in the future.
--:-- Liam Knox: That those dollars are not going to come without strings attached and without potentially ideological strings attached is a very, very new thing. And there might be a little bit of reticence to rely as heavily as they have been in the past on these kinds of federal grants
--:-- Shumita Basu: One exception to this trend at least so far is Harvard, the administration's biggest target.
--:-- Liam Knox: The funding cuts will cost the school $1 billion a year, according to Harvard estimates. The administration has demanded Harvard spend $500 million to restore funding.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The New York Times reported that the school is considering a settlement. But the school's president reportedly told faculty in recent days that they plan to keep fighting in court.
--:-- Liam Knox: And as the wealthiest school in the country, it's better positioned than others to hold its ground.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Extreme heat has defined the summer of 2025. And for millions of Americans, extreme electricity bills have come along with it.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: According to the Department of Energy, the average American is paying about 6.5 percent more for power this year compared to last year.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The eastern half of the country is seeing especially high costs, particularly people in Maine who are paying 36 percent more for power on average.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: But as Washington Post reporter Peter Whoriskey explained, temperatures are not the only thing making power expensive. The AI boom is playing a big role.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: Their demand for electricity is driving up the price. And as a result, everybody, not just the data centers, are paying more for electricity.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Many parts of the country are seeing more data centers that power AI pop up, which is taxing the capacity of the grid and raising prices.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: But there are 13 states feeling the impact the most, in large part because of how they buy their power every year.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: From New Jersey to Ohio, all the way down to Virginia, they share an electricity market. So if they need extra capacity during the summer, when electricity demand is high, they basically go to an auction and they bid for it.
--:-- Shumita Basu: These auctions happen annually and act as a bellwether for electricity prices nationwide over the coming year.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: What happened last year is that the auction went kind of crazy. And as a result, all of those utilities are paying much, much more for capacity for their customers.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And they've been passing that along to the customers this summer.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: In Trenton, New Jersey, bills rose by about $26. In Philadelphia, bills climbed by about $17 on average. Columbus, Ohio saw $27 hikes.
--:-- Shumita Basu: $20 a month might not sound like that much to some people, but it's certainly a lot to people who are watching every penny.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: Their bills could get even bigger next year. At this year's auction, prices climbed again by about 22 percent.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And the way electricity bills are calculated, the whole country could be affected as a result, not just these select states.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: People that I spoke to said they don't think it's fair that big tech companies are building and profiting from these data centers while everyday people have to pay higher bills.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: Most people are kind of aghast that they may not use any AI or they might not be online very much, but they're paying the price in terms of higher electricity bills because of these companies that are making billions of dollars.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Still, some states are eager to build more data centers. Several have offered tax breaks to companies and other incentives.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: And one company has begun taking steps to lower their strain on the grid.
--:-- Peter Whoriskey: Yesterday, Google signed a first-of-its-kind deal with Michigan and Tennessee to scale back data center usage during periods of high electricity demand.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Let's turn to California, where decades of police misconduct data was made accessible to the public for the first time.
--:-- Suki Lewis: Here in California, we had some of the most secretive laws in the country. Access to those kinds of records was just completely cut off.
--:-- Shumita Basu: KQED's criminal justice reporter Suki Lewis told us that made tracking patterns in policing across the state next to impossible.
--:-- Suki Lewis: And people impacted by police violence had very little recourse to get answers.
--:-- Suki Lewis: They would go to their local agency and say, what happened? How was my loved one shot? Who were the officers involved? Was anybody disciplined? Were there any policies broken?
--:-- Shumita Basu: And the general answer was always, that's confidential.
--:-- Suki Lewis: But when California lawmakers adopted laws in 2018 to improve transparency around police records, a team of investigative journalists, data scientists, lawyers, and civil liberties advocates got to work.
--:-- Suki Lewis: They spent seven years building a public database, which went live this week, that tracks police use of force and misconduct across hundreds of California law enforcement agencies.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It was the first project of its kind nationwide, and they discovered around 12,000 cases of force and misconduct dating back to the 1960s.
--:-- Suki Lewis: Lewis says with this database, journalists and academics are now finally positioned to start piecing together patterns, like officers being accused of sexual offenses while on duty.
--:-- Suki Lewis: Often when the women would go to complain that something had happened, they were not believed.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Now, this is not an uncommon story, but I think especially in a law enforcement context and internal affairs context in which they are people responsible not just for investigating themselves, but also investigating sex crimes, to be in this position of not believing women was very, very troubling.
--:-- Suki Lewis: And a lot of serious incidents did not result in criminal charges for the officers, even if they did result in discipline.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It's also providing a window into how police use force in prisons.
--:-- Suki Lewis: Lewis told us about one prison that had avoided investigation despite evidence of abuse.
--:-- Suki Lewis: And there was a pattern there of officers who would take people who are incarcerated into places that were outside of the view of the cameras that were in the prison.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And then they would say, oh, they were resisting. They were doing this. They were doing that. We had to use force to bring them back under control.
--:-- Suki Lewis: And they would end up with incredibly severe injuries, broken backs, broken legs, broken ribs, concussions, and one man actually died as a result.
--:-- Shumita Basu: She says the creators of this project hope it will be a valuable tool for victims and their families.
--:-- Suki Lewis: One man, Cephas Johnson, whose nephew was Oscar Grant, who was shot in the back by police in 2009, said getting those answers, you know, getting to see these records for families is the beginning of the healing process, the beginning of trying to get answers.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And she says they hope police chiefs will find the information useful, too, as they make hiring decisions.
--:-- Suki Lewis: There are many police officers who don't want bad apples working alongside them.
--:-- Shumita Basu: This project is a work in progress. The creators plan to keep requesting and adding new records before they're lost forever.
--:-- Suki Lewis: The California Reporting Project, this project, were the only people requesting these records. And because of destruction laws, they able to be destroyed after five years in a lot of cases.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Starting to build this database and keeping it going, I think can begin to provide this really rich text that available for people just who are curious about what is happening locally.
--:-- Suki Lewis: If you want to check out the California database for yourself, we'll include a link in our show notes page.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Rwanda has reached a deal with the U.S. to be paid to accept up to 250 deported migrants.
--:-- Suki Lewis: A Rwandan government spokesperson said this is in line with Rwanda's values to help displaced people and that individuals will be given workforce training, health care, and accommodations to jumpstart their lives in a new country.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Back in June, the Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their country of origin without first giving them a chance to show they could be harmed.
--:-- Suki Lewis: But the legality of the removals is being contested in a federal lawsuit in Boston, a case that could potentially make its way back to the high court.
--:-- Shumita Basu: This is not the first time Rwanda has opened its doors in this way.
--:-- Suki Lewis: It reached a similar deal with the U.K. in 2022, but it was scrapped after a U.K. court ruled that the government could not guarantee that asylum seekers would be safe in a country long accused of serious human rights abuses.
--:-- Shumita Basu: We now know why the Titan submersible imploded while on an expedition to see the Titanic shipwreck killing all five on board back in 2023.
--:-- Suki Lewis: A damning report from the U.S. Coast Guard concluded that the sub had a catalog of technical failures and had suffered damage from earlier dives that had not been properly fixed.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It also concluded Ocean Gate Chief Executive Stockton Rush showed, quote, negligence that contributed to the deaths and that the company, quote, leveraged intimidation tactics to evade regulatory scrutiny.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And finally, a surprising story about managing wildlife.
--:-- Suki Lewis: The Wall Street Journal reports that staffers at the Department of Agriculture have been experimenting with blasting different sounds to protect livestock herds from packs of gray wolves.
--:-- Suki Lewis: The sounds play from drones that zero in on wolves when they're on the hunt.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Some of the sound cues that have successfully scared off the wolves include ACDC's famous rock anthem, Thunderstruck, and a recording of the fight scene between Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in the movie Marriage Story.
--:-- Suki Lewis: You're being so much like your father. Do not compare me to my father. I didn't compare you to him. I said you were acting like him. You're exactly like your mother. Everything you're complaining about her, you're doing. You're suffocating Henry.
--:-- Shumita Basu: A USDA district supervisor in Oregon, whose real name is Paul Wolfe, by the way, said that he needs wolves to know that, hey, humans are bad.
--:-- Suki Lewis: And what better way to send that message than hearing that scene play out?
--:-- Shumita Basu: One ranch owner told the Journal that he was grateful for the drone support, but he figured that eventually the wolves will get used to it and carry on doing what wolves do.
--:-- Shumita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Popular Mechanics looks at the pretty wild, but hopefully good, plan NASA has come up with to defend the Earth in the unlikely event of a massive asteroid approaching.
--:-- Shumita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shumita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
