--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Wednesday, July 17th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: On today's show, the doubts and debates the Democrats are having about President Biden's nomination, a look at how previous assassination attempts on presidents have shifted American gun policy, and the conservative plan to defund the agency that provides free and important weather reports for people across the country.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the immediate days following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the drumbeat of public calls from Democrats for President Biden to exit the race has slowed down. But crucially, they did not disappear.
--:-- Annie Linsky: Yeah, with the Democratic Party right now, there is a huge difference between the public conversation and the private conversation.
--:-- Annie Linsky: That's Annie Linsky, a White House reporter with The Wall Street Journal. The assassination attempt on former President Trump was a moment that just absolutely rattled the country, rattled the Republican Party, rattled the Democratic Party.
--:-- Annie Linsky: And I do think, and our reporting showed, there was a sense of, like, we need a unifying moment here. As Democrats, do we want to be kind of openly in this revolt as the country is processing this awful thing that just happened?
--:-- Annie Linsky: But privately, there's still a lot of concern. The Washington Post spoke with more than a dozen Democratic strategists, members of Congress, and other Biden allies.
--:-- Annie Linsky: Some are worried that Biden isn't being given the full picture of how he's polling by some of his top advisors. And the Post says that Biden and his team are generally skeptical of polls, particularly after the 2022 midterm elections.
--:-- Annie Linsky: Polls then had suggested big Republican victories that didn't materialize. Other reporting speaks to how there is a belief among some advisors that Biden will once again mount a political comeback before November.
--:-- Annie Linsky: Meanwhile, concerns from some congressional Democrats are coming to a head. They want to ditch plans to begin the process of nominating Biden as early as this weekend.
--:-- Annie Linsky: According to multiple reports, a letter has been circulating among House Democrats calling on the party to slow down that process.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: At the same time, Biden himself is on the campaign trail and doing interviews with the hopes that he can still turn things around.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Earlier this week, he sat down with NBC's Lester Holt and pushed back on calls for him to exit the race.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Look, I've been doing this a long time. The idea that I'm the old guy, I am, I'm old. But I'm only three years older than Trump, number one.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And number two, my mental acuity has been pretty damn good. I've gotten more done than any president has in a long, long time in three and a half years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So I'm willing to be judged on that. And yesterday, Biden addressed the NAACP convention, making the case that he's the better choice by citing the record lows for Black unemployment and poverty during his administration.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He's also rolling out new policy ideas, like rent controls. And he's reportedly going to propose big changes for the Supreme Court, including term limits and an enforceable ethics code.
--:-- Annie Linsky: As many Democrats are trying to influence Biden, Linsky says ultimately only a handful of people truly seem to have his ear.
--:-- Annie Linsky: This is you know a very personal decision and not one in which the president is reaching out to very many people.
--:-- Annie Linsky: He does have an inner circle. They know him very intimately. So those people are considered the ones who could go to him and make a case of some sort to him that he should leave if they believe that.
--:-- Annie Linsky: No, the indications we have is they are not doing that. One other Democrat to watch in the days ahead is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
--:-- Annie Linsky: She's reportedly been fielding calls with nervous Democrats, collecting information and polling, which has some wondering if she'll be reaching out to the president soon to offer counsel.
--:-- Annie Linsky: Pelosi, who's now 84, has proved politically resilient for years, and she stepped down from her role as Speaker early last year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the aftermath of that assassination attempt against Trump, the conversation we're not hearing all that much about is gun policy.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Throughout modern American history, attacks on presidents have spurred federal action on gun control.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In 1963, John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, used a military-style weapon that he had bought from a magazine ad to fire on the president's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the days after, citizens and politicians had questioned how it was possible for him to buy a gun so easily.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Here's an ABC report from that time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The assassination of the president with a cheap surplus rifle that cost $12.78 and bought without restrictions has brought renewed attention on the laws that govern the sale of such weapons to the general public.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And they are very few. Pretty quickly, there was a congressional proposal to ban mail-order sales of rifles.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It never made it out of committee, but President Lyndon Johnson continued to push Congress on the issue.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It took a few years and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. But eventually, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: President Johnson called it the most comprehensive gun control law ever signed in the nation's history.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It stops murder by mail order. It bars the interstate sale of all guns and the bullets that load them. It stops the sale of lethal weapons to those too young to bear their terrible responsibility.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Then, in 1981, a gunman shot President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C., puncturing his lung.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Reagan was rushed to surgery and survived. Three others were also hit, including his press secretary, James Brady, who was shot in the head and ultimately paralyzed.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Brady and his wife, both high-profile Republicans and gun owners, then started to campaign for gun safety legislation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The first version of what would become known as the Brady Bill was introduced in 1987.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But it faced tough opposition from the NRA, and it died in committee. A few years later, President Clinton and then-Congressman Chuck Schumer revived it and got it to pass in Congress.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Here's James Brady speaking at the bill signing.
--:-- [James Brady speaks]
--:-- Gideon Resnick: What we are witnessing today is more than a bill signing is the end of unchecked madness and the commencement of a heartfelt crusade for a safer and saner country.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Brady Bill banned people convicted of domestic violence and those dishonorably discharged from the military from owning guns.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It also established the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, which requires federally licensed gun dealers to run a check on someone before selling them a gun.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And one year later, the Bradys also pushed for the federal assault weapons ban.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That ban later expired, but it would have applied to the type of weapon that was used by the shooter in Pennsylvania this past weekend.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Fox argues it seems unlikely that Saturday's shooting will lead to meaningful change in gun policy in this current political climate.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But history shows us horrific events can, and sometimes do, spur change.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now let's turn to reporting from The Washington Post on a trend in higher education.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Over the last year, since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in admissions, a growing number of universities have applied the principles of that ruling to financial aid.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Which means more and more universities are pausing, reshaping, or eliminating race-conscious grants and scholarships worth tens of millions of dollars.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But I suspect it's far more than that. That's higher ed reporter Danielle Douglas-Gabriel.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: The Post found at least $45 million of grant and scholarship money at stake across nearly 50 schools.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: A lot of this is being driven by Republican-led state leaders, particularly attorneys general, where they're really starting to use a really broad interpretation of the court's ruling in order to apply it to other areas and realms of higher education.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: At Duke University, a scholarship that's been around for nearly half a century was shut down.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: It covered tuition and housing for Black undergrads. The University of Iowa changed the criteria for an aid program for students from underrepresented groups.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: And at a number of schools in the University of Missouri system, race will no longer be considered in scholarship applications.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: The Supreme Court's ruling did not specifically mention financial aid, but conservative legal thinkers argued that universities should broadly eliminate any race-based policies.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: In Missouri, the attorney general almost immediately told schools to do this for scholarships.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: As one NYU law professor put it to the Post, with the court's ruling, these schools really don't have a legal foot to stand on to fight for these scholarships.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: And advocates worry the impact will be huge. Lots of Black and Hispanic students simply don't have the financial resources in order to afford school.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: And even though there is a broad belief that minority students receive the most scholarships and aid, federal data does not back that up.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: They do not receive as much as their white counterparts and nor have they ever.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Post also notes that doing away with race-conscious scholarships could actually have a more profound impact on higher ed than changes in admissions.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Far more schools offer these types of scholarships to reach diversity goals compared to the number that use affirmative action for admissions.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some schools are now changing the terms of their scholarships to achieve the diversity they want to see without making them the target of lawsuits.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There are moves to shift to giving scholarships to first-generation college students, for example.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Another idea is to focus not on applicants' race, but on their commitment to equity and inclusion.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But with the Supreme Court ruling hanging over the entire situation, any workaround could be challenged, so universities will have to tread carefully.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Finally, to a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app that are worth checking out.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was convicted on all charges in a broad federal corruption case.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Prosecutors said he used his political influence to covertly help the government of Egypt, among other crimes.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He's the first sitting senator to be convicted of conspiring to act as a foreign agent.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Politico looks at what comes next for the senator.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: He can try to stay in Congress, though he may be expelled. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already called for his resignation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Menendez will be allowed to continue his current run for re-election as an independent.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But under New Jersey law, he won't be able to vote if he's sentenced to prison before Election Day.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And right now, that sentencing is set for late October.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A new article from The Atlantic looks at how a future Trump administration might target weather reports that many Americans rely on.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's part of Project 2025, a policy blueprint that we've talked about on the show before.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's put together by a number of people who worked in Trump's administration.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Atlantic highlights how it would all but dissolve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That includes severely cutting back the National Weather Service.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The NWS issues critical alerts about things like hurricanes and flash floods, predictions about dangerous heat, and a whole lot more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Project 2025 calls for privatizing forecasting.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Atlantic points out the NWS only costs taxpayers roughly $4 per person per year, and that it's an important source of information at a time when we're dealing with heat waves, tornadoes, and an active hurricane season.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, on a related topic, CNN explains new research that says climate change is making our days longer.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Melting polar ice caps are changing the shape of our planet, and that slows down the Earth's rotation.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This is happening on a very, very small scale. We're talking about days adding roughly one millisecond over the course of a century.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So it's not something that humans will notice, but our technology will.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: These tiny changes are big enough to impact our navigation and communication systems.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can read those stories in full in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you are already listening in the News app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next from Vogue that looks at an important influencer in Biden's circle.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The magazine spent time with Dr. Jill Biden. The First Lady is one of the president's key advisors and closest confidants.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: She spoke to Vogue about the race and some of the most pressing issues that America faces.
--:-- 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.
