--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 29th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation hearing for health secretary gets underway. What to know about a new AI from China that's rattled American tech companies and financial markets. And the Mona Lisa is moving.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, President Trump's order to freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending caused widespread confusion on Tuesday. The administration says it's vetting all spending and has promised to cut off money to programs, grants, loans, and anything else that doesn't align with the administration's agenda, in particular what they call woke ideology.
--:-- Caroline Levitt: Social security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits, assistance that is going directly to individuals will not be impacted by this pause.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Despite the temporary halt on Trump's order, there were reports of nonprofits still having trouble accessing funds through federal websites.
--:-- Yolanda Fields: We aren't talking about frivolous spending. We're talking about essential services that people need to live.
--:-- Caitlin McGuire: The uncertainty of it all is what has people on edge. That unknown is so scary for so many people because there are countless individuals who depend on the services that organizations like ours are providing in this region across the state and across the nation.
--:-- Kwame Raul: Congress is given the power to appropriate the funding. The executive branch cannot unilaterally disregard those appropriations passed by a separate and equal House of Government.
--:-- David Jolly: What he has done is illegal. His justification for it is what makes it illegal. So what he said is I'm not going to spend the money because I don't like these policies that are currently in place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And it revealed the cruelty of stopping Medicaid payments and child care payments and all of these other issues. The term being used to describe what the Trump administration is doing here is impoundment.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: In 1974, Congress passed a law limiting the president's ability to claw back funding like this, citing the way Richard Nixon had abused the practice. But some Trump allies say that law is unconstitutional and should be struck down, which means this could all be headed for the Supreme Court, with a potential showdown over who really holds the purse strings in Washington.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation hearing to become the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services starts today. If he's confirmed, Kennedy would be in charge of 18 agencies and would have enormous influence over America's public health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He'd also have a lot of say over how Americans access and are advised on vaccines. In the past, he has spread baseless claims about the safety of vaccines, though he says he is not anti-vaccine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Still, experts worry that childhood vaccination rates, which have already been dropping, could fall even faster under his leadership, potentially leading to a resurgence in diseases that we thought were lost to the history books.
--:-- Paul Offit: The problem is not only that we've largely eliminated these diseases, we've eliminated the memory of these diseases. And for that reason, parents are now more scared of the safety of vaccines, real or imagined, than the diseases that they prevent.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to a poll conducted by the Associated Press and NORC, 40 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats are very concerned about fewer children being vaccinated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, beyond vaccines, Kennedy has long expressed deep distrust in the very institutions he will potentially lead. And in that, he reflects a growing sentiment among Americans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Data shows public trust in federal health agencies plummeted during the pandemic and, crucially, hasn't recovered. According to Gallup polling, for example, the percentage of adults who describe the CDC as excellent or good dropped over 20 percent from 2019 to 2021.
--:-- Rachel Rubine: They will admit that there were kind of communication mistakes made during various points of the pandemic. Specifically around using clear language with the public, saying what's known and what's not known about how the virus spreads.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He believes social media has fueled misinformation and distrust around health. He believes federal agencies are essentially outmatched.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was his quote that I can go toe with social media. This combination of pre doubts in health institutions plus the pandemic is what led us to RFK nomination as health secretary. He's keeping his campaign slogan around, make America healthy again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he's talking about reforms that a lot of Americans are excited about. Things like stripping ultra processed food from school cafeterias or cracking down on food dye.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And some of the food policies have support from Democratic lawmakers and other experts. The same AP Nork poll that I mentioned earlier found that 66 percent of people favor requiring changes to processed foods to remove ingredients like added sugar or dyes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But some other ideas, like removing fluoride from drinking water and lifting restrictions on selling raw milk, have just around 25 percent support from Americans surveyed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post says Kennedy is among Trump's most vulnerable cabinet nominees. Some Republicans have raised concerns around his past support for abortion rights, but some other lawmakers like Pennsylvania's John Fetterman, a Democrat, and independent Senator Bernie Sanders have said they are open to supporting him.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: It sort of took the world by storm and really surprised a lot of people in the West because the sort of popular conception was that U.S. companies were way ahead of China's own AI.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The company's open source model called R1 looks and functions a lot like Chat GPT but DeepSeek claims their chatbot costs far less.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: And that's upended assumptions and sent top AI companies scrambling to rethink what it takes to make a successful AI product.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bloomberg News AI reporter Shireen Ghaffari has been following this story.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: Part of that assumption had to do with the fact that the biggest AI companies, most of which are based in the U.S., believed that only they could afford to make the most advanced AI systems.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Plus, the Biden administration blocked our best AI microprocessors from being sold to China. And there was a widespread belief that better AI came from using more chips, like those made by U.S. chipmaker NVIDIA.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: But DeepSeek claims its model only needed 2,000 chips from NVIDIA to run their chatbot, compared to other top companies which typically use as many as eight times that amount.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ghafari says she has heard some pushback to DeepSeek's claim that their chatbot costs a fraction to operate compared to other competitors.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: That could not be including the total cost. They say that does not include things like what the research cost was prior to this model in terms of other experiments that led up to this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It also doesn't include infrastructure costs, things like data centers.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: So, you know, it's not clear that we're getting an apples-to-apples comparison here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she says there's still a lot we don't know about how exactly DeepSeek created their chatbot and whether it drew on work done by American companies.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: But I wouldn't discount the fact that, you know, China has some really top AI talent working for it who are pushing ahead at the forefront of AI research.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At least some leaders of American AI companies, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have welcomed the competition.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Altman praised DeepSeek on social media writing that it was quote invigorating to have a new challenger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Ghaffari says this will likely light a fire under American companies.
--:-- Shireen Ghaffari: I think that we're just going to hear more and more in the coming weeks about what the U.S. company's strategy is to get ahead and to what extent DeepSeek is potentially a long-term threat versus is this, you know, a one-time thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here are a few other stories that we're watching in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: About two million federal workers have been offered the chance to resign and be paid through September as part of the Trump administration's latest effort to overhaul the federal government.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An administration official told NBC News they expect about 5 to 10 percent of the federal workforce to take the buyout, saving about $100 billion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: An email sent to workers contained a resignation letter for review with the option to reply, resign, if they want to quit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The union that represents the largest share of federal employees warned the move will cause vast unintended consequences that will cause chaos for people who depend on government services.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's unclear whether Elon Musk, who is now in charge of Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency, was involved in this move, but he famously sent a similar email to employees shortly after he took over Twitter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other news, the Mona Lisa is getting moved.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For a long time, she's been hanging in an area of the Louvre in Paris that gets very overcrowded due to her popularity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So now French President Emmanuel Macron announced the piece will get its own room as part of a large renovation of the world's most visited museum.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It'll also be accessible separately from the rest of the museum with its own ticket.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a recent memo, the museum's director said the Louvre has become overrun with crowds and is in need of an overhaul.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Other renovations to the museum will include a grand new entrance near the Seine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, today is Lunar New Year, one of the most important festivals of the year for the more than one billion people who celebrate across many Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, and Korea.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This ushers in the year of the snake, a symbol of renewal, regeneration, and hopefully positive transformation.
--:-- Jonathan H. X. Lee: It's about shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger. This is the year where the kind of growth, personal and macro, internal and external, is very much possible.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all of these stories and more 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Elle profiles Lady Gaga as she gets ready to release her seventh studio album called Mayhem, which the writer describes as a feast.
--:-- 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. Thank you.
