--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 16th. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, another major legal victory for Trump, extreme heat at the southern border, and lingering questions about the safety of the Seine ahead of the Olympics. But first, former President Donald Trump selected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate yesterday.
--:-- [Audio clip of convention]
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The announcement came on the first day of the Republican National convention, just hours before delegates officially nominated Trump for president. 2,387 votes for President Donald J. Trump. Let's make it official. Accordingly, the chair announces that President Donald J. Trump, having received a majority of the votes entitled to be cast at the convention, has been selected as the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The delegates also celebrated Vance's nomination, with the crowd chanting his name as it was made official. Ohio's Governor Mike DeWine explained his excitement to CNN.
--:-- Mike DeWine: Ohio truly is the heart of it all, as we say. And now we have the vice presidential candidate, and we hope the next vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Later in the day, Trump himself made an appearance at the convention with Vance, a bandage covering his ear just two days after an assassination attempt.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Wall Street Journal has some details on how Trump came to this choice out of a dozen or so leading contenders that included names like Senator Tim Scott, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and Senator Marco Rubio.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Vance is a former Marine, a Yale Law School graduate, and the author of the book Hillbilly Elegy, which documented his upbringing in a steel mill community in Ohio.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Journal reports that Trump felt he had the best chemistry with Vance, and that Vance most embodies Trump's platform of America-first populism.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: For example, he's critical of U.S. aid to Ukraine. He's praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, seen by many as an authoritarian. Vance was originally extremely hardline against abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, a position he has since moderated.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And he proudly echoes Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. This is how Vance characterized the election to the Columbus Dispatch back in 2022.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The thing that I've always said here, and I'll repeat to you, is, was the election in 2020 free and fair? Was it above board? And my answer is no. I really don't think that it was.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Vance recently told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that former Vice President Mike Pence was wrong for certifying the election results, and that he would have made a different choice.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Would you have certified the election results had you been vice president? If I had been vice president I would have told the states like Pennsylvania Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U Congress should have fought over it from there
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Vance hasn't always been a Trump supporter. In fact, his never-Trumper stance from 2016 is well documented. He even called Trump reprehensible in a now-deleted Twitter post.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A few weeks ago, as he's been auditioning for this role, he was questioned about his change in position by Brett Baier on Fox News.
--:-- Brett Baier: You've said, I've never, I'm a never-Trump guy, never liked him. Terrible candidate. Idiot if you voted for him. Might be America's Hitler. Might be a cynical a-hole. Cultural heroine. Noxious and reprehensible.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Those are things that the left is going to come after you. And they're probably going to be put in ads should you be chosen as the VP pick. How do you deal with them now?
--:-- Brett Baier: I think the simple answer is you've got to respect the American people enough to just level with them. Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn't think he was going to be a good president, Brett. But he was a great president, and it's one of the reasons why I'm working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Vance's age could have also played a role in his selection. If Trump is elected, Vance, soon to be 40, would be one of the youngest VPs in history and could be well-positioned to lead the party in 2028 and beyond.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Let's stick with politics and turn now to one of the legal cases against Trump. Yesterday, he was handed a huge victory by federal judge Eileen Cannon.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: She threw out the entire classified documents case, saying that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case, was improper. The special counsel says he plans to appeal.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This is a situation where the allegations against Trump are fairly straightforward. The evidence is there. Trump faced 37 charges for storing dozens of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago after his term ended and allegedly obstructing justice by refusing to return them to the FBI and the National Archives when asked.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And that included more than 30 violations of the Espionage Act. Prosecutors went even further in the indictment, alleging that Trump personally played a role in packing up the documents. and CNN uncovered an audio recording of him bragging about having the documents to a staffer.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Trump was charged along with two co-defendants who also had their cases thrown out. Many legal experts have long believed that this case was the strongest and the most straightforward of the four criminal trials that Trump had faced, but it's been held up by procedural delays and seemed like a foregone conclusion that it wouldn't be heard before the election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Then came this stunning decision by Judge Cannon yesterday to dismiss the case altogether.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The decision has brought new scrutiny to Judge Cannon, who is a Trump appointee. Critics have gone after both her credentials and her allegiances. In fact, the New York Times reported just last week that when she was first assigned the case, two judges who sit on the same court urged her to recuse herself.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: According to the Times sources, they were concerned about bias. The legal reaction to this decision has been similar to what we seen to a lot of Eileen Cannon decisions before which is a little bit of bafflement from law professors and outside legal experts Again and again she issued rulings that surprise people She has slowed things down She had long hearings on things She's entertained arguments that judges don't tend to entertain.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So again and again, she's issued rulings or made decisions that are beneficial to Trump, whatever the motivation is. Trump celebrated the ruling on social media and called for his other cases to be thrown out as well.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This is his second major legal victory in less than a month. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court said in a historic decision that presidents are fully immune from prosecution for official acts taken in office.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Trump's legal team is trying to vacate his conviction in New York based on that Supreme Court ruling. And Cannon's decision comes at a remarkable time in Trump's campaign, just hours before he was officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate and less than 48 hours after surviving an assassination attempt.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Justice Department will try to bring this classified documents case again. But even if they're successful, Graham told us time may be running out.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As we know, if Trump is elected in November, he's likely to quash the cases against him. So each of these delays matters to whether or not there's ever actually a trial in this case.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to some on the ground reporting from NPR about how extreme heat can hurt vulnerable populations.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The number of migrant deaths at the U.S. Mexico border has increased in recent years NPR recently spent time in a small border city in New Mexico called Sutherland Park
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The captain of the fire department, Abraham Garcia, says they're responding to more and more heat emergencies as temperatures rise due to climate change.
--:-- Abraham Garcia: Yeah, it's been tasking on our resources, on our personnel. But, you know, that's just the game that we're in today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In this area, around this time of year, temperatures can reach 120 degrees. The terrain is rough, rocky, and sandy. There are no natural sources of shade.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Garcia says a lot of people they help get lost. They're often malnourished, dehydrated, and need medication.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: 71 migrants died in the area in 2022. That number more than doubled in 2023. And immigration authorities told NPR they're worried the problem will only get worse with time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We've seen here in the sector relating to heat-related illnesses and rescues, is a rise on migrants that are being left behind by human smugglers.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Many Border Patrol agents are certified EMTs, but they're receiving more calls than they're able to handle alone. That's why they're working closely with the local fire department.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: During the two days NPR spent following them, they helped around 10 people. They found a young woman on the ground, leaning against a stop sign, unresponsive.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Senora! Senora! Senora! Yeah. Make her name to Elisa, Elizabeth. They thought she might be pregnant. They wrapped her in a sheet soaked in ice water, poured cold water on her head, and took her to a hospital.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: 359. 359, BGL. BGL 359. She and the others they rescued are in Border Patrol custody so NPR could not verify their identities And it's not clear if any of them managed to recover
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Let's end the show on some other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A motivation for the assassination attempt against former President Trump still has not been identified. The FBI says it's accessed the gunman's phone, but hasn't been able to determine why he opened fire, killing one person and wounding three others, including Trump.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Wall Street Journal reports on how this is the first time an AR-15 has been used to try to assassinate a U.S. president.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The journal calls the weapon a symbol of America's divisiveness and notes how it has the political backing of Trump and other Republicans.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The piece is written by two reporters who co-authored a book about the history of the AR-15. And they told Apple News in conversation about how the gun's popularity skyrocketed.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the early 1990s, there were roughly 400,000 in civilian hands. Then Congress instituted an assault rifle ban in 1994. And this generates interest from people. Now people want to have this gun, right? Because A, you know, it's going to be banned. And B, it's a symbol of your politics.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so what happens after the ban goes into effect is that there are actually more AR-15s made in the next 10 years when it's supposedly banned than there had been made for the 30 prior years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Today, there are more than 20 million in circulation among the public.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, as I'm reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle on why it's about to get a lot harder for students to get into college, The high school graduation class of 2025 is expected to be massive, much larger than recent years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Which means for the next few college application cycles, there will be more total eligible students, making the competition even stiffer.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The surge in students has been attributed to a baby boom in 2007, and the higher-than-usual number of applicants is only expected to last about two years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, to a story from The Athletic about the drama surrounding the Seine River with the Olympics less than two weeks away.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The river still has dangerously high levels of contamination. But Paris officials have said it will be suitable for swimmers for the three triathlon events and marathon swimming races.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They're so confident that the mayor of Paris said in an interview that she will take a swim in the Seine herself sometime this week.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Athletic has all the details on the cleanup efforts and why it had been illegal to swim in the river for over 100 years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find that story and all the others we covered today in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you are listening in the News app, we've got a narrated article coming up next from New York Magazine.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's about how the city has a huge problem with cats. There are hundreds of thousands of feral cats estimated to be roaming around New York, potentially as many as one million.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The magazine spent some time with the volunteers who are doing the hard work of rescuing, neutering, and releasing these cats, but they are struggling to keep up.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
