--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 22nd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Harvard takes the Trump administration to federal court. Some members of the National Guard who went to L.A. amid protests wonder why they're still there. And according to new research, the chance of having a baby girl or baby boy is not actually 50-50. But first, as we continue to evaluate how America has changed over the first six months of President Trump's second term, we wanted to return to a question that dominated the 2024 presidential campaign. Under a Trump presidency, how much could Project 2025 shape U.S. policy?
--:-- [Discussion begins]
--:-- David Graham: As you most likely know by now, Project 2025 is a conservative agenda from the Heritage Foundation, written as a kind of aspirational guide for a prospective Republican administration. It features many far-right proposals. And as it was scrutinized last year, it became extremely unpopular with voters. So much so that Trump spent a lot of time trying to create distance from it on the campaign trail.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many of the points are fine. Many of the points are absolutely ridiculous. I have nothing to do with the document. I've never seen the document. But when he took office, Trump quickly put principal architects of Project 2025 in powerful positions like John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, and Russell Vogt, the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- David Graham: He's a major figure who has been so instrumental to getting so many of these things done and who had made up a plan for how to get a lot of the things he wanted done. That's me, David Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has been tracking what he calls the Project 2025 presidency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he says he read all 922 pages of it, and he wrote a book about how it's already shaping U.S. policy. And he told us these appointments played a key role in moving the agenda from conservative wishlist to reality.
--:-- David Graham: One of the maxims of Project 2025 is that personnel is policy, and I think the same is true for Trump. The fact that he has appointed all of these people to these jobs and then followed the suggestions they made so closely is the demonstration that he knows exactly what's going on there and that he is using it as a blueprint for himself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We asked Graham to try to quantify just how much the policies Trump has implemented align with the plans proposed by Project 2025.
--:-- David Graham: I think I'd be in the 66 to 75 percent range. There's a few conflicts and things they haven't gotten done, but they've been so successful in the kind of power grab within the executive branch that lays the groundwork for so much of what they want to do.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think they have made a surprising amount of progress in getting towards their goals. Some of those goals move the conservative movement further to the right on LGBTQ plus rights and abortion, rid the government of so-called disloyal civil servants, and launch a mass deportation operation, among many other things.
--:-- David Graham: Graham says much of the progress made so far can be credited to Elon Musk and his brief tenure working for the White House. There were things that they had laid out, a sort of slow plan to achieve, and he just kind of drove a bulldozer through it and made it happen very quickly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we've also seen the Supreme Court giving sanction to a lot of those things. That's helped them to move very quickly. So what might happen over the next six months Graham told us what kinds of policies he watching for For example encouraging larger families changing daycare regulations It could also mean things like working to ban abortion or to make it more difficult.
--:-- David Graham: That's something that's really important to the authors of Project 2025 and something that we haven't seen a lot of from the Trump administration yet. But the goal of Project 2025 is really to transform what the shape of society is. And so a lot of these changes we're talking about feel very abstract still.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to the legal fight between the Trump administration and Harvard. At a hearing in federal court yesterday, Harvard asked a judge to restore billions of dollars in canceled federal funds.
--:-- Michael Moore: You know, really what the administration is saying is if you don't teach and do things the way we want you to do it, this particular administration, not the Constitution but my administration then I going to cut your funding out And that so antithetical to what an academic institution is and I think their position is stronger that being the college
--:-- Shamita Basu: And also you know there have been a lot of other universities that have signed on and joined into the lawsuit supporting that. So we're not talking about Harvard standing alone. And what happens in this case has huge implications for higher education nationwide.
--:-- Jodi Farish: There is nothing different about Harvard University than there is about some Midwestern, smaller private college. The same things would apply.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Harvard is asking for a summary judgment in the hopes of getting a faster ruling, meaning this case would not go to trial. But legal experts interviewed by NPR say they don't expect a full resolution anytime soon since both sides are prepared to appeal.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: It's been more than a month since President Trump deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to respond to protests that broke out against federal immigration raids taking place across the city.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Los Angeles Times reporter Jenny Jarvie spoke to some of the soldiers who are still in town, and they told her they're pretty bored.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: One Marine told us there's not much to do. There were troops huddling in pairs and small groups, and they were just either standing silently with their rifles pointed at the ground and just looking up and down largely empty sidewalks, or they were chatting and joking over energy drinks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And beyond simply not having much to do, some say morale is low. A few soldiers spoke to the New York Times about how they're questioning the mission.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: There have been legal disputes over Guard members being assigned to back up federal immigration agents. One soldier pointed out how the National Guard had just earned all this goodwill from the city of L.A. when they helped respond to the wildfires in January.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That soldier told the Times they gave Disneyland tickets to the people who worked in the wildfires. Nobody's handing out Disneyland tickets now.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: Jarvie with the LA Times told us that some soldiers called into a GI rights hotline to raise concerns about being involved in immigration enforcement efforts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People were calling in saying they were shot that deployment orders were for 60 days and others were more concerned about the mission rather than the length of time. They didn't want to play a role in deporting people, either because they themselves had immigrants in their family or they just, you know, considered immigrants even without papers as part of the community.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: Data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that close to 3,000 people were arrested in the L.A. area in the month of June. The majority had never been charged with a crime.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last week, the Defense Department sent home 2,000 National Guard troops. And yesterday, Pentagon officials said the 700 Marines stationed there will begin withdrawal.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: But around 2,000 California National Guard soldiers remain. California Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A.'s mayor Karen Bass have said that the continued presence of the Guard is absurd.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Newsom has said that, you know, they're here for no reason. They're in Los Angeles for no reason. And he has urged Trump to end this theater.
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: Karen Bass has said that they're in L.A. guarding federal buildings that don't need to be guarded.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Newsom condemned Trump for pulling California National Guard soldiers away from prepping for wildfire season noting that the wildfire unit is operating with 40 percent of regular staffing due to the deployment
--:-- Jenny Jarvie: The White House eventually approved 150 Guard members to be released to work on wildfire suppression efforts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jennifer Kavanaugh with Defense Priorities, a military research group, who said the reason California National Guard troops are still deployed is likely to send a message.
--:-- Jennifer Kavanaugh: She said that she He thinks the reason they're still deployed suggests this is really about setting precedent of having military forces involved in immigration enforcement and deployed in U.S. cities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison was sentenced to 33 months in prison yesterday for violating Breonna Taylor's civil rights during a botched 2020 raid where Taylor was shot and killed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The death of the 26-year-old woman sparked widespread protest as part of the Black Lives Matter movement that year. This sentencing comes after the Justice Department said last week that the case should not have been prosecuted and unusually suggested that Hankison serve a one-day jail sentence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Beef has never been more expensive. While egg prices are returning to normal after an avian flu outbreak drove them up earlier this year, experts say beef likely won't stabilize that quickly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The supply chain is suffering. Widespread droughts are driving up the cost of feed, shrinking herd sizes. The country's total number of farms and ranches is falling, too. And beef imported from places like Australia and Brazil isn't enough to offset the country's increasing demand.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New federal data says the average pound of ground beef costs $6.12 in June, up 12% from nearly a year ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, a recent study found that the odds of giving birth to a baby girl or boy is not quite 50-50 as it may seem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Researchers say it's more like flipping a coin unique to a particular family, weighted to individual factors like maternal age, genes, and the sex of older siblings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For example, one of the study's authors told the Washington Post that a family with multiple girls who might be hoping for a boy are more likely than not to have another girl.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's just one study, but the researcher said it provides a window into how different families are working with different odds.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New York Magazine examines our relationship with our neighbor to the north, Canada, and how this administration's tariff policies and talks of annexation have united Canadians in anger at us.
--:-- 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.
