--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, November 13th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shumita Basu: On today's show, what last week's elections tell us about where the Latino vote is heading, why Italian pasta might get more expensive, and the surprising reason why life in South Korea will grind to a halt today. But first, to a dramatic day in D.C., with two major stories emerging from Capitol Hill.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Members of the House rushed back to work to vote on the deal to reopen the government. The final vote was 222 to 209, with nearly every Republican, along with a handful of Democrats, voting for the bill. President Trump signed it last night.
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--:-- President Trump: The country has never been in better shape. We went through this short-term disaster with the Democrats because they thought it would be good politically. And it's an honor now to sign this incredible bill and get our country working again. Thank you.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will now begin their return to work over the coming days, and back pay is expected to arrive soon.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: As lawmakers returned to the Capitol to vote on the package yesterday, they quickly turned to other business. With some House Democrats jumping straight back to one of their key priorities, the push to release more documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Early yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released several emails the committee had obtained as part of their subpoenas. In one, dated 2011, Epstein told his now-convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell that a victim had, quote, spent hours at my house with Trump.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Initially redacted, Republicans on the committee later identified that victim as the late Virginia Giffray. In the same message, Epstein described Trump as, quote, the dog that hasn't barked.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: In another email dated 2019, Epstein told biographer Michael Wolff that Trump, quote, knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Trump has always denied any wrongdoing or that he had any knowledge of Epstein's sex trafficking operation.
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--:-- Caroline Levitt: These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out, because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Jeffrey died by suicide earlier this year. But it's worth noting that in her own memoir, Ghislaine Maxwell recalled meeting Trump only once and said he couldn't have been friendlier, and she never accused him of any wrongdoing.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The initial emails were part of a much larger collection of documents the Oversight Committee obtained from the Epstein estate. Later on Wednesday, more than 20,000 additional documents were published.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Republicans on the Oversight Committee released a statement saying that Democrats were cherry-picking documents to generate clickbait and that they were intentionally withholding records that name officials in their party.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: But there remains a push to release even more documents. Congress finally swore in its newest member, Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, seven weeks after getting elected, the delay that had caused outrage among Democrats and that Speaker Johnson had attributed to the government shutdown.
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--:-- Adelita Grijalva: She promptly gave her support to bipartisan efforts for a vote that would compel the DOJ to make public their files on Epstein. It past time for Congress to restore its role as a check and balance on this administration and fight for we the American people.
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--:-- Adelita Grijalva: That is why I will sign the discharge petition right now to release the Epstein files. Justice cannot wait another day. Adelante mi gente, muchas gracias. Thank you very much. I yield back.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: That petition now has the 218 signatures it needs, thanks to four Republicans who voted with Democrats. CNN revealed the White House held a meeting with one of them, Lauren Boebert, in the Situation Room and had attempted to call another Nancy Mace.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: But with the threshold now reached, Johnson told reporters there would be a vote early next week. Republican Thomas Massey, one of the co-sponsors of the petition, told CNN he believes support from within his party would snowball.
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--:-- Thomas Massey: The deal for Republicans on this vote is that Trump will protect you if you vote the wrong way. In other words, if you vote to cover up for pedophiles, you've got cover in a Republican primary. But I would remind my colleagues that this vote is going to be on your record for longer than Trump is going to be president.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Even if it passes the House, it would need to go to the Senate and then to the president's desk for approval.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: In the days since Democrats' sweeping victories in last week's elections, President Trump has made a renewed effort to talk about the economy and affordability. He's announced or floated a number of potential policies that might help American budgets, including sending people checks using the revenue from tariffs.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Economics aside, the political calculus of Trump's rekindled focus on the cost of living is clear that Trump won in 2024 in part because of voter frustration over inflation, which persisted throughout the Biden administration.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: And some of those who voted for him could flip if they don't see a big turnaround in their weekly spending. A key part of that constituency was Hispanic voters, a group that overwhelmingly backed the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, but split their votes almost 50-50 in 2024, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
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--:-- Sabrina Rodriguez: The fact that so much of Trump's message in the last election relied on affordability and bringing down prices, Democrats really wanted to make that point to Latinos about, look at how he's deporting your neighbors and your family members. Look at how he promised to lower prices and hasn't accomplished that.
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--:-- Sabrina Rodriguez: It's never completely clear why any group of voters votes this way or that way. And Latino voters in the U.S. are a large, diverse group. But last week's results in some key counties suggests a meaningful shift since the presidential election.
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--:-- Sabrina Rodriguez: In New Jersey's Hudson County, for example, whose population is nearly 41 percent Hispanic, Democrat Mikey Sherrill, the state's next governor, won by a margin of 50 percentage points. In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris won there by less than 30 points.
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--:-- Sabrina Rodriguez: Trump carried another heavily Hispanic county in the state, Passaic, in 2024, yet Cheryl won there by double digits this year. In Virginia's Manassas Park, Democrat Abigail Spanberger roughly doubled Harris's margin of victory.
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--:-- Sabrina Rodriguez: I think something really notable from my conversations with Latino voters in both states is the fact that people just don't like the feeling of chaos. And you know, a lot of folks who I spoke to said whether they voted for Trump or not that they didn't like what they were seeing coming out of Washington, that there was a feeling that Trump was very focused on building his power in Washington and less focused on improving their day-to-day lives.
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--:-- Sabrina Rodriguez: A lot of people thought he's only going to focus on criminals or he's only going to focus on people who have arrived in recent years. And what we see online, what we see in like videos going viral on social media, what people are witnessing firsthand in their communities is seeing community members, people who maybe have lived in their neighborhood for decades, who are their neighbors, who are small business owners.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: It remains to be seen if any of these shifts will persist in next year's midterm elections, and the Democratic Party is still broadly unpopular. Some strategists have said that last week's results represent more of a rejection of the Republican Party than an embrace of Democrats.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: One Congress member whose district is in South Florida called the results a wake-up call for the GOP.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Breakdowns in international diplomacy often arise from matters of war and peace, alliances and disputes. But one particular battle brewing between the U.S. and Italy is over something far more pedestrian, but nonetheless essential.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The combination of the Trump administration's blanket tariffs on exports from EU countries and a separate potential tariff on 13 Italian companies is raising concerns that imported Italian fusilli and macaroni could soon disappear from American shelves.
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--:-- Gavin Bade: That 107 percent is a combination of the 15 percent on EU countries and a whopping 92 percent on 13 specific pasta exporters that's currently being explored by the administration.
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--:-- Gavin Bade: This comes from what's often referred to as an anti-dumping duty. For decades, the Commerce Department has probed these Italian pasta makers and charged that many had previously flooded the U.S. markets with below-market-priced pasta, much cheaper than what they charge back home.
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--:-- Gavin Bade: But Bade said these companies have never seen anything like this. American companies first asked the U.S. government in the 1990s to investigate Italian pasta. And the process is they ask for review every single year.
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--:-- Gavin Bade: So something that has been going on for decades and usually results in tariffs of about 10 to 15 percent has now exploded into this fiasco where we're facing triple-digit tariffs next year.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: At this point, this is a preliminary decision. The White House has stressed that Italian pasta is not disappearing from grocery shelves and that these companies have ample time to participate in the review process.
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--:-- Gavin Bade: But already the companies in question are preparing for a new reality. They're saying if we have to pay triple-digit tariffs, we're simply not going to ship to the United States.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Italian pasta accounts for roughly 12% of the U.S. market now, a number that's been rising. And in addition to the financial relationship Bade reports that this has become a big political issue and even a question of upholding an international reputation with Italy foreign minister assembling a task force to fight the tariff.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The Italians have a lot of pride in their pasta making. This is one of their national products that they're known for all around the world. And they would say there's no way that American pasta is ever going to be as good as Italian pasta.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Just it's the wheat we use. It's the processes we use. It's the culture. It's the terroir. You know, it's everything about that makes Italy. Italy is kind of embodied in pasta for them.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Some popular brands like Barilla make pasta in Italy, but also in the U.S. The company told NBC News that it would be affected by this decision and is evaluating next steps before next year.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. A new report from human rights watch says more than 250 Venezuelan immigrants to the U.S. who were recently sent to El Salvador were subject to torture, abuse, and sexual assault.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The report says conditions at the infamous Sikhot prison violated the U.N.'s minimal rules for how people in prison should be treated, including failing to provide adequate food and denying contact with the outside world.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: And it accuses the Trump administration of being willfully complicit. A White House spokesperson said that the president is committed to, quote, removing dangerous criminal and terrorist illegal aliens who pose a threat to the American public.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The Human Rights Watch report claims approximately half of the group that had been sent to Sikhot had no criminal records, and 3% had been convicted in the U.S. for a violent or potentially violent crime.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: A number of states that don't normally see vivid northern lights in the night skies have gotten a show this week, in some cases as far south as Florida.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Strong geomagnetic storms made the aurora borealis visible in Idaho, Missouri, New York, and Alabama, among several other states. NPR reports auroras are happening more frequently because the sun is reaching the peak of its 11-year cycle and is at solar maximum, which brings more solar particles closer to Earth.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The phenomenon is usually reserved for the Arctic Circle, but the sun's extra-strong activity at the moment is allowing the aurora to be seen in places where it's not typically observed.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: And if you thought that college exams were high stakes here, spare a thought for teenagers in South Korea. Today, the country will briefly come to a standstill to accommodate their infamous college entrance exams.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: The BBC reports that shops are shut, flights are grounded to reduce noise distractions, even the stock market opens late. To help those who might accidentally oversleep, police offer sirened escorts to students who are running late.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: This year, over half a million students will take the tests, which the BBC says can dictate not just their college admissions, but their future earnings and social status.
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--:-- Shumita 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. Time magazine has a story on how surgically implanted chips aren't just science fiction. They're increasingly being used to solve complex medical issues and could be the key to the future of medicine.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: Thanks for listening to Apple News Today.
