--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, October 16th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Maeve Reston: On today's show, a closer look at Kamala Harris's immigration assignment as vice president, that DNA you gave 23andMe might soon be for sale, and Georgia breaks a voting record. But first, a Trump campaign town hall in Pennsylvania on Monday night took a turn for the bizarre. Two attendees needed medical attention, which briefly interrupted the event. But then the former president decided to keep requesting music instead of taking questions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's not do any more questions. Let's just listen to music. Let's make it into music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right? He ended up swaying on stage to music for 39 minutes.
--:-- Maeve Reston: This comes as Trump has been using increasingly violent and apocalyptic rhetoric, delivering winding and confusing speeches. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris has been on the campaign trail, calling attention to all of this and calling Trump unhinged and unable to lead the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Harris campaign's theory of the case is that Americans are not seeing this more free-flowing side of Trump that exists at the rallies. They don't hear the long rants that he does at his rallies because the networks are no longer carrying that live. So they are looking to show the public more of these kind of unscripted moments.
--:-- Maeve Reston: In fact, during one of Harris's events, also in Pennsylvania on Monday, she played clips of Trump for the audience, including a moment from a recent Fox News interview where Trump suggested using the military against his political opponents and critics.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the best. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by national guard or if really necessary by the military.
--:-- Maeve Reston: In addition to highlighting Trump's own words, the Harris campaign has been eager to bring Trump's age back into the discussion. Trump is 78 years old and would be the oldest president by the end of his term if elected. This week, more than 200 health care professionals, most of whom are backing Kamala Harris, put out a letter calling on Trump to release his medical records. Recently, Harris released hers. Trump still has not done so.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Reston said it's become more and more common that candidates withhold this type of information, but that health details from Trump have been particularly scarce. In fact, even after the assassination attempt on Trump's life, the New York Times reports his campaign did not release hospital records or accounts from the emergency physicians who treated him.
--:-- Maeve Reston: This is my sixth presidential campaign and every cycle it seems like we gotten less and less medical information from the candidates on both sides. Trump is a somewhat unusual case because he has these very unusual doctors who have put out letters about his health that kind of sound like a press release, you know, saying that he's like in amazing shape and it's just not what you would normally expect to read from a doctor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Trump campaign has defended their candidate, saying the town hall was full of joy. On social media, Trump tried to shift the concern to Harris, her cognition, and her allergies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Staying with politics, let's take a closer look at Kamala Harris's record on the border. For months now, she has been cast by Republicans as the, quote, border czar, the person put in charge by the Biden administration of securing the southern border. But The Wall Street Journal recently looked into what her assignment actually was and how she fared.
--:-- Michelle Hackman: It was right around the time that the border was sort of exploding, that illegal crossings were skyrocketing. And so people understandably were like, oh, he's giving her the border, you know, rather than this one piece of the border. And that's how it really quickly turned into, he's handing her the border, she's the borders are, she's responsible for the border.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In her actual assignment, Harris recruited nonprofits and private companies to invest billions of dollars in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The thinking being, if education and employment opportunities improve in people's home countries, they'll be more incentivized to stay there.
--:-- Michelle Hackman: It's a strategy both Democratic and Republican administrations have invested in. That private investment ranges from companies like Columbia Sportswear that makes a lot of sports gear, opening new factories, to sort of more intangible investments. Like there were a lot of companies saying, we're going to train small business owners in financial literacy or help them create mobile payment systems, things like that.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since 2021, there has been a steep drop in migrants arriving from these countries. But it's also hard to say if that is directly due to Harris's work, changing leadership in some of the countries themselves, or maybe the fact that so many people had already left.
--:-- Michelle Hackman: Economists think the answer could be as simple as they kind of ran out of people who wanted to leave. The people who left are sending enough money to prop up their family members and that they've changed the labor markets. There far fewer people competing for jobs that maybe it actually a better work environment for those who have stayed behind.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It fair to criticize a vice president for border policies enacted by the administration they served But on this subject, it's important to understand how Harris's exact assignment is being misconstrued by her political opponents.
--:-- Kristen V. Brown: 23andMe was one of the first genetic testing companies out there to offer at-home DNA testing. Since the early 2000s, millions of people signed up to have their DNA analyzed. People really thought that hidden in our DNA were all of the secrets, really like everything we needed to know to make us healthy, to create new drugs, to prevent disease.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 23andMe was doing something really interesting, which was taking that technology and making it accessible to the average person by bringing the price point so far down that, you know, you could buy a 23andMe kit for your mom for Mother's Day or Christmas.
--:-- Kristen V. Brown: These days, 23andMe is facing quite a bit of uncertainty. Its shares are worth pennies, a huge decline from its $6 billion peak in 2021. The stock is on the edge of being delisted. Almost the entire board resigned last month, and the company has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs and the closure of its drug development branch.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The company's CEO and co-founder said she would consider selling it, which means customers' DNA would be up for grabs, too. 23andMe's trove of genetic data is one of its most valuable assets. and it's not clear what will happen to it.
--:-- Kristen V. Brown: If you have spit in a tube with 23andMe, you can take your DNA away from the company right now. But if you don't do that, they could change the terms in the future in a way that you might not like. Even if you do try to reclaim your DNA now, SFGate says completely deleting yourself from the company's record isn't easy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a clause in the privacy statement that allows the company to still hold on to some information due to their relationship with various labs. Plus, there's so much DNA out there now, Brown says, our genetic makeup is getting increasingly hard to protect.
--:-- Kristen V. Brown: I did a story a couple of years ago where I gave my de-identified, anonymized genetic data to a genetic genealogist who gave it to a genetic genealogist friend of hers and asked her to identify me. And she was able to identify me from my anonymous DNA data in three hours just using the internet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she was able to do that because it turned out my aunt had uploaded her own DNA to an open source genealogy website, right? And that could have happened in the same way with a third cousin that I'm not in contact with. You know, there really no way to completely secure your genetic information because it's not just your information.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app. The first day of early voting in Georgia set a new record for turnout. More than a quarter million ballots were cast yesterday, nearly doubling the first day of early voting in 2020, which also set a record in the state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Georgia Secretary of State's office said on X, spectacular turnout. We are running out of adjectives for this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other election news tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris will sit for an interview with Fox News' Brett Baer in Pennsylvania. It marks her first ever interview with the network that was never visited once by President Biden while he's been in office.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Former President Trump criticized Fox News for doing the interview with Harris in a social media post he called the network weak. Meanwhile, he sat for a Fox town hall in Georgia last night that will air this morning, and he's set to tape a town hall with Univision today, after Harris did one last week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In foreign policy news, the United States is putting new pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza within 30 days or risk having some U.S. military assistance cut off. It comes as Israel has launched a new offensive in North Gaza, resulting in more civilian casualties.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The BBC says the letter from the U.S. is being taken seriously by Israeli officials and amounts to the strongest known written warning from the U.S. to Israel since the war began.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, last night, the Victoria's Secret fashion show returned after a years-long hiatus. The company paused the show in 2019 after poor ratings and a series of controversies over allegations of abuse, a culture of misogyny, and lack of inclusivity.
--:-- Bridget Malcolm: After spending three months eating nothing but protein shakes and steamed vegetables and exercising, I don't feel sexy. I mean, I don't even know what that feels like at this point, but I wanted to see myself walk down the runway in that show.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the podcast up until a few years ago, Victoria's Secret sold a third of all underwear bought by women in America.
--:-- Shamita 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. The Atlantic reports on a pretty shocking trend. Professors at elite colleges say a lot of their students have never read a book cover to cover.
--:-- Shamita 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.
