--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, November 12th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, with Trump returning to office, global climate leaders aren't sure what to make of U.S. commitments. Biden attempts to Trump-proof his legacy. And Harriet Tubman gets honored for her military service 160 years late. But first, one week after President-elect Donald Trump's victory, his team is beginning to plan for the transition back into the White House and weighing appointments for his cabinet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's already made his first picks. Campaign manager Susie Wiles will be chief of staff. And Stephen Miller was tapped to be her deputy. He was a top advisor to Trump on immigration issues in his first term.
--:-- [Audio of a conversation plays in the background]
--:-- Shamita Basu: We caught up with Vivian Salama, a national politics reporter at The Wall Street Journal, who told us that for Wiles, it was her command over the Trump campaign that led Trump to pick her so quickly.
--:-- Vivian Salama: She's a very low-key person, very unassuming and shy. She's an older woman, a grandmother who often talks about her grandkids, a different vibe than a lot of the people who Trump tends to surround himself with. But she's also a straight talker and tends to tell Trump what she thinks. And if he needs some tough love, then she gives it to him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Trump has really grown to appreciate that.
--:-- Vivian Salama: Trump also says that he will nominate New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik as U.N. ambassador and Lee Zeldin, another New York Congress member, to run the EPA. And he wants former ICE director Tom Homan to come back as his, quote, borders are.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That means Homan will be in charge of carrying out Trump's plans for mass deportations. Homan oversaw ICE during the Trump administration's zero-tolerance border policy that led to more than 5,000 children being separated from their parents.
--:-- Vivian Salama: The ACLU estimates anywhere from 500 to 1,000 families still haven't been reunited.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When Homan was on CBS's 60 Minutes two weeks ago, he was asked how mass deportations would work and whether there's a way to do it without causing more family separations.
--:-- Vivian Salama: Of course there is. Families can be deported together.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also, over the weekend, Trump made it clear who he would not be making room for in his cabinet. Mike Pompeo, who served as Secretary of State and CIA Director in Trump's first term, and Nikki Haley, his previous UN ambassador, and his primary challenger for the Republican nomination in this election.
--:-- Vivian Salama: Both Republicans have been critical of Trump in the past.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Salama told us one priority for Trump's transition team is making sure that the kinds of people appointed are faithful to Trump and not what they have called fake Republicans.
--:-- Vivian Salama: This is something that I even heard from Don Jr., President Trump's son, who happens to be one of the honorary co-chairs of the transition team, where he told me, you know, my job is to weed out the fake R's from the real R's and make sure that people are loyal to the president and want to see his vision through.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are also questions about other people in Trump's orbit who might serve some kind of role, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump has said he would appoint to some kind of health position and Elon Musk who has reportedly been spotted with Trump at Mar many times in the past week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to CNN Musk has even been weighing in on the president-elect's staffing decisions. Trump has said Musk will advise him on spending cuts and government efficiency.
--:-- Shamita Basu: No matter who ends up working with Trump this time, the Journal reports his transition team is more prepared than they were for his first term and is anticipating smooth confirmation processes with a Republican-controlled Senate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to COP29, the U.N.'s annual global climate summit underway right now. This year, it's being hosted in Azerbaijan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Grist staff writer Jake Biddle is there, and he told us so far no one can stop talking about Trump's re-election and the potential repercussions for the fight against climate change.
--:-- Jake Biddle: The U.S. is the largest economy in the world and the second largest emitter. And having them completely pull out of the fight against climate change is huge and it's sort of an irreplaceable effort, to say the least.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The United States pulls out of the Paris Agreement. It's probably impossible for the world's countries to achieve the 1.5 degree Celsius goal, which was set out in the Paris Agreement.
--:-- Jake Biddle: So it's probably impossible to hold warming to the level that scientists think is sort of the last chance to prevent serious catastrophe around the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Remember, Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement in his first term, marking the only time a participating nation has walked away from that deal.
--:-- Jake Biddle: President Biden re-entered it when he was in office. And a spokesperson for Trump's campaign says Trump plans to withdraw from it again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Biddle told us the political situation in the United States isn't the only uncertain element at the COP29 conference.
--:-- Jake Biddle: Germany's governing coalition just fell apart. Japan just held snap elections. The Canadian government is in trouble as well.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And there's been persistently high inflation around the world, which is only now coming down.
--:-- Jake Biddle: Inflation has strained government budgets, in some cases distracting them from climate action.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So one of the main goals for the negotiators at COP29 is to agree on how much money wealthier nations should contribute to poorer countries to help them adapt to climate change and decarbonize their economies.
--:-- Jake Biddle: Biddle says there are a lot of questions they'll need to answer to pinpoint that spending goal.
--:-- Jake Biddle: How much of this money is going to come through loans, which have interest rates for the countries that are receiving them? And how much is going to come through sort of no-strings-attached grants?
--:-- Shamita Basu: How much of this is going to go toward disaster response versus mitigation like solar panels, and who's going to get most of this money.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So that's a bunch of stuff. They describe this as the hardest negotiations since the Paris Agreement and potentially the most significant.
--:-- Jake Biddle: The U.S. and Europe want to see countries like Saudi Arabia and China contribute to this fund.
--:-- Shamita Basu: China is the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to the EPA, accounting for about 30 percent of all carbon emissions.
--:-- Jake Biddle: And Saudi Arabia, as a country whose economy is heavily dependent on the extraction and export of oil, has recently been seen as uncooperative in global efforts to reduce emissions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So far Beijing has resisted calls to contribute to climate finance goals and instead says the U and other industrialized countries should bear more responsibility to fund climate actions.
--:-- Jake Biddle: Ultimately Biddle says negotiators at COP29 realize the conversations they have with officials from the Biden administration over the course of this conference need to be taken with a big grain of salt.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump will be in charge by January. So anything Biden commits to now, Trump could potentially undo.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Besides the environment, there are a number of ways that President-elect Trump is likely to diverge and try to dismantle key policies from the Biden administration.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Biden officials are racing to figure out how to block him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In fact, on the day that Joe Biden dropped out of the race, he gathered a group of advisers to talk about how to protect his legacy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think that the Biden administration started thinking about this very early for the simple reason that Trump has made his time in office and his campaigns focused on dismantling some of the norms of the federal government.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein. She told us it's not uncommon that a new president would come in, executive powers blazing, wanting to change things up quickly.
--:-- Betsy Klein: Biden's first hours on the job were spent erasing some of Trump's achievements. We saw him rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. He signed a number of new executive orders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We should expect Trump to do the very same thing in January.
--:-- Betsy Klein: Klein told us about what Biden is most concerned about preserving.
--:-- Betsy Klein: His legislative wins are the most durable feature of his time in office. Laws that put trillions of dollars of funding and federal resources toward rebuilding infrastructure, protections for the environment, expanding clean tech and ramping up domestic chip production.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So what they have tried to do is to get as much of that money out the door as quickly as possible.
--:-- Betsy Klein: Klein noted it may be hard for Trump to convince other Republicans to get on board with repealing certain initiatives, like those funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Biden's signature $750 billion health care tax and climate bill.
--:-- Betsy Klein: Just remember that most of the private investments from the bill are being made for things like new EV factories and wind and solar farms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Most of that is going to Republican districts, and that may make those lawmakers a little more hesitant to vote for a repeal of that law if it's benefiting their constituents.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As for Biden's foreign policy legacy, Politico reports his administration is planning to rush billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine out the door before Inauguration Day, knowing that Trump has been critical of aid to Ukraine, and whatever's left of the $61 billion in funding passed by Congress earlier this year could be clawed back.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The U.S. has provided more than $50 billion in security assistance since Russia invaded in early 2022.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Beyond policy concerns, there's also personnel concerns. On the campaign trail, Trump talked about firing federal employees who aren't loyal to him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Earlier this year, the Biden administration passed a rule that would protect federal employees from political firings, but that's no guarantee.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump could certainly roll that back, but it would take some time through the lengthy rulemaking process.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And our sources in the Biden administration essentially say there's not much more they can do to bolster those protections, but it does buy those federal employees some time to find a new job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A New York judge will decide today whether President-elect Donald Trump's criminal conviction on charges involving falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star should be overturned in light of the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The judge in this case originally planned to issue a decision in September but postponed, citing concerns of appearing to sway the election.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If the judge upholds the verdict, the case will move ahead to sentencing later this month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But even if it reaches sentencing, some legal experts say it's very unlikely that a judge would actually impose a sentence on someone who's about to be sworn in as president.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One of America's most famous civil rights heroes, Harriet Tubman, is now officially recognized as a one-star general.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Tubman is best known for guiding people out of slavery through the Underground Railroad after escaping from slavery herself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But once the Civil War started, she also served in the Union Army as a spy, scout, nurse, and cook.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And NBC reports many historians also believe she was the first woman in American history to lead a combat regiment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the Maryland native never got an official rank in the military.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So Democratic Governor Wes Moore changed that yesterday, promoting Tubman posthumously to Brigadier General in Maryland's Army National Guard.
--:-- Shamita Basu: General Tubman continues to mark our path towards greater connectivity and community and compassion and love.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She continues to be our North Star towards justice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She continues to do as was said in Psalm 61 to help us to find a rock that is higher than I.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And today, we honor that legacy with an honor that puts on paper what we've always known in our hearts, that our leader in acts deserved a star on her shoulder the whole time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, let's turn to a story out of South Carolina where 43 monkeys escaped from a research laboratory.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is a lab that breeds and uses thousands of monkeys for biomedical testing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At least half of the monkeys have been recaptured.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The lab says the rest don't pose a risk to the public.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're somewhat small monkeys, about the size of a cat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, there's an interesting read in Vox.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a piece written by two experts in animal law who ask if the remaining monkeys still at large have a legal claim to freedom.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They argue we as a society are starting to rethink the way we have governed over animals.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Zoos are being seriously rethought from an animal ethics perspective. So are circuses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Research on chimpanzees is no longer allowed in the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These authors argue maybe the best outcome would be, if any of these monkeys turn up, sending them to a sanctuary to enjoy their freedom.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New York Magazine looks at how climate activists are using polarizing stunts to force the public into picking sides between the environment or the status quo.
--:-- 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.
