--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Thursday, May 23rd. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Coming up on today's show, the controversies around Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, checking in on Hollywood writers after their strike, and what all that change you leave at airport security adds up to. But first, a brief look at some other stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Justice Department and several states are suing Live Nation. The allegations are that the entertainment company has used its dominance over ticket selling to suppress competition, following its acquisition of Ticketmaster in 2010.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The company has been criticized for high prices, poor customer service, and a botched presale of Taylor Swift tickets, which helped put a spotlight onto the DOJ probe.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the past, Live Nation said it's not a monopoly, and that ticket prices are set by artists and sports teams.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In other news, families of those killed in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are settling a lawsuit with the city for $2 million.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Two years ago tomorrow, 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: CBS spoke to Kimberly Monta Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed.
--:-- Kimberly Monta Rubio: This isn't justice, but it's the city's step toward promoting healing in our community. And this is Lexi's community. This is my community.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The families are also taking new legal action against officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the local school district.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The district didn't comment to CNN about specifics of the case. And the State Department of Public Safety and DPS Officers Association did not immediately respond.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In Michigan, a dairy worker has bird flu. That's the second human case in the U.S. in under two months.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Federal officials still say public risk is low, but they're encouraging more testing of cattle and speeding up vaccine plans in case the virus becomes more widespread among people.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And the Washington Post has new reporting on the controversy over a chat GPT voice.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Scarlett Johansson says OpenAI copied her voice after she turned down their offer to record.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Post got documents recordings and talked to the agent of a voice actress who did do the recordings for OpenAI.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The agent says the casting process didn't mention Johansson, and OpenAI said the other actress was already hired before they reached out to Johansson.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Experts The Post spoke with say that Johansson may still have a strong case against OpenAI if she can demonstrate the company used an impersonator.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are growing calls from Democratic lawmakers and some legal experts for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases related to January 6th.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A photo released last week by the New York Times shows that his family flew the U.S. flag upside down outside of their home in the weeks after the attack in 2021.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Inverted flags were being used at the time by the Stop the Steal movement, which spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And the Times has new reporting that last summer, an appeal-to-heaven flag flew at Alito's vacation house.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That's also a flag attackers waved as they stormed the U.S. Capitol.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are questions now around whether Alito violated the code of ethics for the court.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: 45 House Democrats sent Alito a letter earlier this week urging him to recuse himself, questioning whether he could possibly be impartial.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And even some Republican lawmakers, including Senators Lindsey Graham and John Thune, criticized Alito for displaying the inverted flag.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Alito blamed his wife, telling the Times that she raised it in response to a political dispute with neighbors.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But that could still cross a line in Supreme Court rules, according to experts.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: There is a section of the new code of ethics which says the justices have to refrain from partisan displays.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: And some judicial ethics people think that what Alito did is in direct violation of that section, and he should recuse himself.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: But there's a catch. The issue with the new ethics code is it doesn't really have any enforcement mechanisms, so it's really up to the justices to follow it themselves.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: As you might remember, this code of conduct for the court came about in response to concerns about Justice Clarence Thomas.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: at the urging of Congress and the public.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: Recent polling has shown that public trust in the court is near an all-time low.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: And I think the flag questions around Alito could be another hit on the court reputation.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: I think it's going to probably cause some people to question whether the court is going to be impartial on cases involving the election in January 6th
--:-- Justin Juvenal: Alito did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter from lawmakers requesting Alito's recusal.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: That letter, by the way, also calls on Thomas to recuse himself from January 6th in election interference cases.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: The lawmakers say he cannot be impartial because his wife pressed Trump White House officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
--:-- Justin Juvenal: But so far, Thomas has chosen to participate in nearly all of these cases.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This time last year, Hollywood writers were on strike to demand higher wages, higher residual payments for streaming, and more restrictions around the use of artificial intelligence.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They picketed for months, eventually walking away with a historic deal for the WGA.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And there was this feeling across Hollywood that business was back.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But that hasn't happened.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In fact, there's definitely been a slowdown in the greenlining of new scripts and new production.
--:-- Stacey Perman: Everyone said they or their colleagues have had a tough time finding work.
--:-- Stacey Perman: That includes industry veterans like Ted Sullivan, who has credits on shows like Riverdale and Star Trek Discovery.
--:-- Ted Sullivan: I haven't worked in a real writer's room since the strike began.
--:-- Ted Sullivan: I'm generally spending seven to eight hours a day writing without pay, which is something called development, preparing in the hopes that a Hollywood studio will buy one of my projects.
--:-- Ted Sullivan: I made this remark that I feel like I'm in the worst Twilight Zone ever, where I'm 20 years old again and writing spec scripts for free in my apartment.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And it's kind of a funny way to frame it, but it's a sentiment that, you know, we heard from a lot of writers at different levels in their career.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The slowdown in work opportunities for writers started long before the strike last year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The boom era of peak TV and the so-called streaming wars, when hundreds of new scripted series launched every year, may never return permanently.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As the industry consolidates, writers have fewer buyers for their work and studios have slowed down the number of projects they're approving.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the first quarter of this year, production activity for film, TV, and commercials was more than 20% lower than the five-year average.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Younger writers and writers from underrepresented groups are especially feeling the impact of the slowdown.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Several people we spoke to said they're concerned for themselves, but they're also concerned for the future of this profession.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Nowadays, some writers have a phrase, "survive to 25."
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The idea is if they can make it through this lean year, the opportunities will be better soon.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Memorial Day is Monday, and it kicks off the annual summer travel season.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're going through airport security over the weekend, you will probably hear the sound.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's a familiar experience. You're rushing, the flight is boarding in like 25 minutes, and you have to dump out that loose change to get through security.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And all of those lint-covered nickels add up.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: TSA data from 2023 shows that air travelers left nearly $1 million in small change at checkpoints.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The airport in Vegas accounts for a large amount of that money.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Apparently, a lot of slot machine winnings are just getting left behind.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the media outlet The Conversation, a public policy professor says this data is important to consider in the ongoing debate over whether coins are outdated now that people can use cards and smartphones to pay.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There have been calls to stop making them because of their expense.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But this professor says the airport security data shows that people appear to be carrying coins at about the same rate they did over 10 years ago.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He says that's a sign that we should hold off on getting rid of small coins.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So if you are one of those people carrying around change, just don't forget to grab it on your way to the gate.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The New Yorker goes behind the scenes of the hit Netflix dating show, Love is Blind.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Former cast members are suing, saying they experienced false imprisonment and abuse.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's a look at just how little protection there is for reality TV stars.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
