--:-- Shumita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 30th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, record-setting blazes in the West, why the U.S. gymnastics abuse scandal isn't over, and the 60-year-old Olympian to watch. But first, President Biden is calling for big changes to the Supreme Court.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers laid out in our Constitution. But what's happening now is not consistent with that doctrine of separation of powers. Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court's decisions.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Speaking from Austin, Texas, the president called for legislation that would fundamentally change how the highest court operates, including setting term limits and enforcing a code of ethics.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: Now, this might sound impossible in this political climate. After all, Biden is a lame duck president presiding over an incredibly divided country. But Politico notes there might be more public and political momentum for Supreme Court reform than you might think.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Let's start with term limits. Biden is saying he wants to end lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and set an 18-year term limit. And he points out the United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: In fact, in this country, some justices have served for more than 30 years, including Justice Thomas, who's now served for 32 years and counting. Recent polling from Fox News shows that more than 75 percent of Americans support the idea of 18-year term limits, including a large majority of Republicans.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Biden's suggestion also includes letting future presidents nominate a new justice every two years. That would eliminate the chaos we saw when former President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, only for the Republican-controlled Senate to block his appointment.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: It would also avoid a scenario where a president like Trump can appoint three justices, including one just weeks before losing the election.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Biden's second proposal is to create an enforceable code of ethics for Supreme Court justices. As you'll likely remember, last year, ProPublica revealed that Justice Thomas had accepted gifts and luxury travel from a GOP megadonor without disclosing it as required under federal law.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: Then, a few months ago, the New York Times reported that Justice Samuel Alito flew an inverted American flag outside his house after the 2020 election, and as the court was considering whether to take a case about the election.
--:-- Shumita Basu: The Supreme Court's current ethics code is weak and, even more frightening, voluntary. The court's current code of ethics was only adopted last year, and it's up to the justices to enforce it.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: Changing this is also a pretty popular idea, but the Associated Press notes figuring out how to enforce it would be thorny and complicated.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Biden's third proposal is a constitutional amendment on presidential immunity. It comes after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along partisan lines that presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts while in office, a decision Biden strongly criticized in his speech.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: This nation was founded on the principle there are no kings in America. Each of us is equal before the law. No one is above the law.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Of the three proposals, this is the least likely to go anywhere. That ruling is being used to protect Trump from some of the charges and convictions he's now facing. Plus, it's extremely hard to pass a constitutional amendment. It requires two-thirds of lawmakers in both the House and the Senate to agree, or two-thirds of the states.
--:-- [Audio clip of President Biden speaking]
--:-- President Biden: But it's not impossible. The last one that passed was the 27th Amendment in 1992.
--:-- Shumita Basu: One idea not mentioned, expanding the court, a proposal some Democrats have been pushing for, but Biden has been pretty consistently against.
--:-- [Audio clip of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham speaking]
--:-- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham: They've tried to marginalize the court, destroy the Roberts Court. The Roberts Court has brought constitutional balance back to the court. And the liberals in this country want to pack the court. They want to destroy the court. So their initiatives coming from Biden will be dead on arrival in the Senate.
--:-- Shumita Basu: They have no desire to make the court better. They're just trying to make it more liberal. But as CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes points out, it might not matter if they pass or not.
--:-- [Audio clip of CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes speaking]
--:-- Nancy Cordes: We're in the months before a critical election, and these ideas could resonate with a lot of voters who are disillusioned with the court today. If President Biden is out there on the road pushing for more guardrails when it comes to the Supreme Court, they argue that if the Republican opponents are out there pushing back, then it might look like they are arguing in favor of unethical behavior on the nation's highest court.
--:-- Shumita Basu: So they're happy to have that fight, even if the policy at the end of the day doesn't go anywhere anytime soon.
--:-- [Audio clip of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking]
--:-- Vice President Kamala Harris: Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has endorsed these proposals and says she'll be trying to sell them to voters on the campaign trail.
--:-- Shumita Basu: There's a fire raging so big and so intensely that you can see the smoke clearly from space. I'm talking about the Park Fire in California, one of the largest wildfires in the state's history.
--:-- [Audio clip of a local CBS station in Sacramento]
--:-- Local CBS Station in Sacramento: And then I saw smoke come up from underneath the car, and I see flames sort of lick up on the passenger side of the car. And it started spreading fast.
--:-- Shumita Basu: For a sense of scale, it's burning roughly 4,000 football fields an hour. And part of that has to do with weather conditions. California has gotten more rain over the last two years than usual, and it saw fewer wildfires, so more vegetation was able to grow.
--:-- [Audio clip of Jen Robbins speaking]
--:-- Jen Robbins: I don't know how I was able to drive here but I was shaking so hard and just crying. When I arrived here I just got out of the vehicle and collapsed and was throwing up.
--:-- Shumita Basu: She said it comes with a lot of complicated emotions. Not knowing if the home we built is existing, not knowing if my livelihood of these farm animals, if they're even alive, you know, I mean, there's a lot of guilt. There's a lot of pain.
--:-- Shumita Basu: As we know by now, climate change is supercharging wildfires. In a study released last year, researchers looked at data from 1971 to 2021, and they learned that human actions contributing to climate change are making California wildfires bigger, deadlier, and more destructive.
--:-- [Audio clip of a Washington Post reporter speaking]
--:-- Washington Post Reporter: Today, as many Americans will be cheering on the U.S. women's gymnastics team at the Olympics, behind the scenes, USA Gymnastics is still reeling from a toxic and abusive culture it hasn't been able to shake.
--:-- Shumita Basu: A few years ago, more than 100 gymnasts accused Larry Nassar, the team's former doctor, of sexual abuse going back years. After he was convicted, Congress created an independent group to investigate misconduct across Olympic sports called the U.S. Center for Safe Sport.
--:-- [Audio clip of Molly Hensley Clancy speaking]
--:-- Molly Hensley Clancy: They've made meaningful progress around preventing and reporting sexual abuse. But the Washington Post found safe sport is still leaving hundreds of young gymnasts vulnerable to working with coaches who've been accused of other serious misconduct.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Over and over again, these allegations of physical and emotional abuse, nothing happened. That's Washington Post reporter Molly Hensley Clancy.
--:-- [Audio clip of Molly Hensley Clancy speaking]
--:-- Molly Hensley Clancy: The Post interviewed dozens of gymnasts, parents, and gymnastics officials for this investigation and reviewed court records, police reports, and medical records. One coach she told us about is Arthur Okopian.
--:-- Shumita Basu: He was a longtime coach for the USA Women's National Team, and he's coached several Olympians, including gold medalist Michaela Maroney. Ten former gymnasts told The Post that Okopian emotionally and physically abused them or their teammates when they were kids.
--:-- [Audio clip of Sydney Frieden speaking]
--:-- Sydney Frieden: She was sort of describing being a nine-year-old girl in this gym. You're there for six hours a day, five or six days a week. And she said, just imagine going in and your coach does something to hurt you. He throws you. He grabs you. He pinches you. And then you have five more hours where you are in this room with him. You cannot leave. You have to do everything he says. You're terrified of doing this move on the balance beam that you might fall on, and you have no choice.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Okopian declined to comment to the post and has denied all the allegations against him, and he's still coaching today.
--:-- [Audio clip of Molly Hensley Clancy speaking]
--:-- Molly Hensley Clancy: SafeSport has investigated at least six coaches of recent U.S. Olympians or alternates over allegations of emotional and physical abuse, as well as several other coaches of elite gymnasts. But cases stay open for years. There are a lot of reasons that SafeSport has fallen short. I think they understaffed. They don't necessarily have the funding. And sometimes these emotional and physical abuse allegations are very difficult to go back and investigate.
--:-- 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. ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine teamed up to tell the story of a father sentenced to prison for allegedly harming his baby, even though what's known as shaken baby syndrome has mostly been debunked.
--:-- 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.
