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--:-- Shamitha Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, May 18th. I'm Shamitha Basu.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And I'm Duarte Giraldino.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Supreme Court is taking up a case that could challenge Roe v. Wade. The court will hear arguments later this year in a lawsuit that could change access to abortion in America for generations.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Lawyer and legal journalist Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog explains what's at stake.
--:-- Amy Howe: At the heart of this case is a Mississippi state law that sought to make most abortions illegal after the 15th week of pregnancy. That law was challenged by the state's sole licensed abortion provider. A federal district court sided with the clinic. It reasoned previous Supreme Court rulings didn't allow states to ban abortions before a fetus is viable. That's around 24 weeks of pregnancy. An appeals court upheld that decision.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: There are two landmark cases that could be upended here, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the 1990s.
--:-- Amy Howe: Recently, the Supreme Court struck down a state abortion law in Louisiana. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority in ruling the law made it too hard to obtain an abortion. But today's court looks very different after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was a staunch defender of abortion rights. She was, of course, replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose personal anti-abortion views were a point of contention during her confirmation hearings.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Skoda Splach says the court's next term could have significant impact on multiple hot-button issues. In addition to this abortion case, the court will hear arguments in a gun rights case, and the justices are also likely to make a decision on whether to involve themselves in lawsuits around Harvard's race-conscious admissions policy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Your family could be one of the millions getting government money starting this summer. As part of the new child benefit payment, the Biden administration will begin sending money directly to millions of American families on July 15th.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: The White House is estimating nearly 90% of children in the U.S. will benefit from these direct payments. This program is part of the pandemic relief bill that was passed earlier this year, and it may outlast the pandemic.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Washington Post breaks down how the coronavirus relief legislation made some key changes to the existing child tax credit system. For one, families with children will be given more money than in years past, up to $3,600 per child in total per year. Lastly, the legislation now expands the benefit to tens of millions of low-income families.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Now, to get the full benefit, you can't earn more than $75,000 a year as an individual or $150,000 as a couple. Taxpayers should get the money automatically. But policy experts have warned that it's going to be harder to get money to some of the poorest families who did not file taxes. So the administration is also starting an effort to make it easier for people to sign up.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The United States has one of the highest child poverty levels of any wealthy nation. Biden told Congress this credit could cut child poverty in the U.S. in half, though some analysts say that may be an overstatement.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Biden has proposed extending the enhanced benefits through 2025. And he also said he would like to make the benefit permanent. But it's not clear how this would actually become a reality. Many Republicans have pushed back against this measure. They're critical that payments are going to households where no one is working.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is a nonpartisan think tank, estimates the expanded credit will cost roughly $150 billion per year.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Let's talk about UFOs. The stuff of science fiction, right? Not anymore. In recent years, lawmakers and the military have been asking a lot of questions about phenomena out there that defy logical explanation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Over the weekend, Senator Marco Rubio was on CBS's 60 Minutes.
--:-- Marco Rubio: There's a stigma on Capitol Hill. I mean, some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic, and some kind of giggle when you bring it up. But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question. What do you want us to do about this? I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: By even acknowledging UFOs, the government has come a long way. Next month, the Pentagon is expected to release a report that contains a lot of data from various agencies, and this data concerns the government's knowledge about UFOs.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The New Yorker tells the story of journalist Leslie Kane and explains how her reporting has played a key role in Washington taking the topic of UFOs more seriously. She's been reporting on this for a couple of decades, and she's been on something of a quest to prove government interest in UFOs is real.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Her reporting revealed the U.S. government has been taking UFOs much more seriously than it publicly let on. This reporter points to many incidents of UFO sightings that the government did investigate, like a glowing diamond outside of Tehran. And she ended up getting a key piece of evidence from a former Pentagon intelligence officer. He showed her records that proved a government program tracking military encounters with UFOs actually existed.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That's what led to Cain and reporters at The New York Times writing an article in 2017 that brought this program to the public's attention. And Kane says she started to notice a change, a move toward acceptance of UFOs as a legitimate topic of discussion. Since then, high-level officials and pilots have been publicly talking about UFOs without being embarrassed. The Navy even revised guidelines to encourage pilots to report UFO sightings without fear of being criticized. And last year, the Pentagon announced the existence of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. Now the public is waiting its report next month.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: We know it's a problem when health researchers don't include a diverse slate of people in their studies. For example, if clinical trials focus heavily on men, half the population may not benefit from that science.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But a CNN story reports on a sexism problem in an area you may not have thought much about, lab rats. Before things can be studied in humans, animal experiments often pave the way.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: One study found male animals were used six times more often than females, and when the default lab rat is male, important gender differences are left out. That bias in the design of these experiments can taint the research on humans that comes later.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Right. Like researchers have found women are more likely to be misdiagnosed and often experience more intense drug side effects than men. That's the kind of stuff that gets missed if women aren't built into studies. But now scientists are looking into whether sexism in the animal studies that come first may be part of the problem.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: A psychology researcher tells CNN female lab animals were once thought to be too hormonal for scientific research. She explains this is based on myths about reproductive hormones making data more variable. But myths can cause trouble if they're not dealt with.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As a National Institutes of Health researcher put it to CNN, studies that don't consider sex as a variable don't actually have all the data.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Thanks for listening to Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: And thanks to our guests for joining us.
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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Apple News Today is a daily podcast from Apple News, available every weekday morning.
--:-- Shamitha Basu: If you want to hear more stories like these, download the Apple News app and follow us.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And if you have any feedback or suggestions, email us at [email address].
--:-- Shamitha Basu: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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