--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 21st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, Trump's busy first day in office, remembering Cecile Richards, a champion of women's health care, and Prince Harry goes to court. Let's start in Washington, where President Donald Trump promised in his inaugural speech a packed day of executive actions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. Trump began signing executive orders within hours of retaking office, choosing to sign a number of them on a stage in front of a crowd of his supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda, and others. When he wrapped up there, he headed to the Oval Office to sign more orders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Among them, pardoning hundreds of people charged with crimes related to the January 6th mob, withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, delaying the ban of TikTok, and issuing a series of measures on immigration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, his Republican colleagues in the Senate also went straight to work. They approved Marco Rubio to be our next Secretary of State, and a committee advanced Pete Hegseth's nomination for Defense Secretary for a full vote.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is lots to talk about and lots of questions about whether these orders will stand or be challenged in courts. But for now, just for today, let's look at three of Trump's executive orders, what he wants to do, and the immediate reaction we're seeing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Starting with the January 6th pardons. Trump granted broad pardons to more than 1,500 people charged with crimes related to January 6th and commuted the sentences of several others.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The decision appears to apply to both nonviolent and violent offenders, people like former Proud Boys leader Henry Enrique Tarrio, who prosecutors described as helping plan the insurrection and who was sentenced to 22 years for sedition, the longest sentence handed down in connection with January 6th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's CNN's chief legal affairs correspondent, Paula Reid.
--:-- Paula Reid: Remember, Trump and Vice President Pence had suggested that they were not going to give clemency to people who were violent offenders. But the group that got pardons includes individuals like Julian Cater, who assaulted a U.S. police officer, Brian Sicknick, and later pled guilty to assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon.
--:-- Paula Reid: Devlin Thompson, who hit a police officer with a metal baton, and Robert Palmer, he's the Florida man, who attacked police with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank, and a pole.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NBC News captured the reaction of one rioter, Gabriel Augustin Garcia, who was convicted of two felony charges for obstructing an official proceeding and obstructing law enforcement that day.
--:-- Gabriel Augustin Garcia: I feel justice was prevailing and like I kept saying from the very beginning it was a two justice system under the Biden administration. He pardoned his own son. I just walked in the Capitol to peacefully protest. I'm not charged with violence. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't destroy property.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who was Speaker of the House during the attack, called Trump's order an outrageous insult to our justice system and a betrayal of the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol that day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On to the second issue, the border. Trump signed a few executive orders to do with the border. Some of them revived policies from his first administration, like forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they wait for a hearing in U.S. immigration court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Minutes after Trump was sworn in, the app introduced by the Biden administration to assign appointment slots to migrants seeking to enter the U.S. legally disappeared, and so did people's appointments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post spoke with migrants waiting in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and captured the moment that some found out the appointment they had been waiting months for had suddenly been canceled.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One person told the Post, if only I had had the appointment for three hours earlier.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump also rescinded a Biden executive order that created a task force that reunited 800 children with their parents who were separated under the first Trump administration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Trump rolled back another Biden executive order to rebuild the U.S. refugee program. His team also fired several top immigration officials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the third issue we'll touch on today is related to immigration. That is Trump's call to end birthright citizenship.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This one is perhaps his biggest attempt at reshaping immigration in America by saying children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants should no longer be granted automatic citizenship.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This order in particular will likely be challenged in court as birthright citizenship is protected in the Constitution.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While he was signing the order in the Oval Office, Trump said he thinks that won't matter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know. And it's just absolutely ridiculous.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But, you know, we'll see. We think we have very good grounds. People have wanted to do this for decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are, in fact, dozens of other countries that have some form of birthright citizenship, including Canada and Brazil.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Democrats have decried this first wave of actions. But Republicans and Trump supporters hailed Trump's first day in office as a moment that ushered in hope.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's how Fox host Jesse Waters described Trump's inaugural speech.
--:-- Jesse Waters: It was probably the most ambitious speech ever given by a human being. We're going to plant the stars and stripes on Mars. We're going to make America healthy again. We're going to seal the border. We're going to beat inflation. We're going to save our cities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And a lot of people watching felt that it was possible today. A lot of the times you hear politicians run their mouths and you're like, all right, this is just another political speech.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This wasn't a political speech. This was a speech made by a hero. This is just the first wave of actions the president says he plans to take.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We be covering the reaction to these policies and what they mean for all of us in the days and weeks to come.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to the legacy of Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood and a longtime activist for reproductive rights who died yesterday at the age of 67 fighting an aggressive form of brain cancer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's how Sarah McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR, described her reputation.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: The people close to her that I've spoken to have just talked about the way that she was unflappable. I think someone used the word indefatigable, the way that she represented for many people in her movement, someone who never stopped fighting and someone who persisted even amidst challenges, even amidst these very significant setbacks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Richards led Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of reproductive health care in the United States, from 2006 to 2018, spanning three presidential administrations, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: During that time, she grew Planned Parenthood's base of supporters and volunteers from 2.5 million people to 11 million, according to The New York Times.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was also a time when Republicans aggressively went after abortion funding and access. Though Richards was able to fend off many such attempts in Republican-controlled state legislatures, she ultimately was not able to overcome the political headwinds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: During her tenure, Trump changed a federal program that assists in family planning, which cut off federal funding to hundreds of clinics. Texas led the charge to defund Planned Parenthood, forcing hundreds of clinics in the state to close.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Ultimately, that's something that people like Cecile Richard and the abortion rights movement were not able to prevent despite many years of efforts to expand access to abortion.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Richard's advocacy work continued after she left Planned Parenthood. After the fall of Roe, she launched an online chatbot to provide confidential information on how people could access abortion care.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And recently, she helped launch a website devoted to sharing stories of people who sought abortions under new restrictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At the Democratic National Convention in 2024, she spoke about how her work had taken on new meaning as her own family grew.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last year, I became a grandmother. And during my daughter's pregnancy, nothing mattered more to me than her health.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One day, our children and grandchildren may ask us, when it was all on the line, what did you do? And the only acceptable answer is everything we could.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that mentality of do everything you can is one that Richards had championed for a long time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She told Rachel Maddow in 2018 why it was a cornerstone of her philosophy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can make change, you can make people's lives different, and you can also find a lot of joy and meet amazing people along the way.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And look, if you're fighting for things that are hard, you're going to lose more than you're going to win. But when you do win, you've got to claim that victory and learn from it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to a few other stories we're following today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Trump's newly launched crypto coins skyrocketed in the days leading up to yesterday's inauguration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The meme coin, simply called Trump with a dollar sign in front of it, launched last Friday. It soared to a market cap of $10 billion by the time Trump was being sworn in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reuters reports that 80% of the currency is owned by Trump's company or a close affiliate, meaning Trump-linked businesses could have gained $8 billion worth of crypto over the weekend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some ethics experts and industry insiders are saying the coin and other tokens created by Trump's family raises significant conflict of interest concerns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has said he wants to reduce regulations for the industry and promote even greater adoption of digital assets.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other Trump news, The Wall Street Journal has a story on how several Trump campaign promises might cause serious slowdowns for major disaster recovery efforts across the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: North Carolina and Florida are still reeling from huge hurricanes. Los Angeles is still battling wildfires. All these places will need to rebuild on a massive scale.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal points out how Trump's pledge to impose tariffs on certain imported goods and to deport undocumented workers could impact construction and rebuilding in these hard-hit areas.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Builders rely on imported steel and lumber, much of which comes from trading partners Trump has threatened with tariffs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And undocumented workers make up about 13 percent of the construction workforce in the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And lastly, to the UK, where opening arguments begin in Prince Harry's case against Rupert Murdoch.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The prince is suing Murdoch's British news division, News UK, alleging the company's journalists and private investigators illegally obtained personal information about him for years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Harry has blamed the tabloids for the strife between him and the rest of the royal family and for creating emotional distress for his wife, Meghan Markle.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the BBC, News UK has paid around $1.5 billion in settlements to people who have sued over the use of their private information, like voicemail messages, health and financial records, and other sensitive materials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Of the 40 original complaints against News UK, Prince Harry is one of only two who have not settled.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The prince is expected to appear in court in the coming weeks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all 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 from Bloomberg Businessweek.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It explores how a deal between Walgreens and a company that makes smart displays for refrigerators went sour.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The idea was to use the doors in the refrigerated and frozen food aisles to advertise to shoppers, but it ended in a $200 million lawsuit.
--:-- 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.
