--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Tuesday, December 14th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. Shemitah Basu is off. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them. There's a lot of focus right now in the debate over President Biden's Build Back Better spending bill. But for all the fuss over social spending, there's this one bill that just sailed through the House on an overwhelming bipartisan margin.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I'm talking about the U.S. defense budget. And for perspective, lawmakers actually juiced up Biden's original request of $753 billion. Congress comes in and they increase that amount by $25 billion.
--:-- Fred Kaplan: These kind of spending hikes haven't happened since the Cold War. And overall, this is the largest military spending bill since World War II, even adjusted for inflation.
--:-- Fred Kaplan: The past several years, increases in the defense budget have been 2%, 3% over the previous year. 5% is enormous. But it's not just a hefty price tag. I argue that Republicans and Democrats, they aren't looking closely enough at where all that money is going.
--:-- Fred Kaplan: And that's a change. It used to be they would do real analysis of every single line item, thousands of them. You know, we're holding this money back until there are tests which show that this weapon works, or we're doing this, we're holding this pending up.
--:-- Fred Kaplan: There was none of that in this budget. More funding may be needed to counter potential new threats from Russia and China. But I say just throwing money around without serious debate over what America's military really needs is a big problem.
--:-- Fred Kaplan: If this trend continues, at this rate, you know, we going to have to be spending a trillion dollars on the defense budget within some time in the next five or 10 years. I mean, our budget can really sustain this. So choices have to be made.
--:-- Fred Kaplan: And just throwing money the way that Congress is doing here discourages this necessary process from happening.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The panel investigating the January 6th insurrection recommends holding Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. He was Trump's White House chief of staff.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This vote came on a day of big revelations from the select committee that's investigating the riot. CNBC has a summary of the new developments.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Newly revealed text messages show Meadows heard from a lot of prominent people while rioters tore through the Capitol. The committee said, Donald Trump Jr. sent repeated messages to Meadows. He's got to condemn this, Trump Jr. wrote. I'm pushing it hard. I agree, Meadows wrote back.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Several Fox News hosts also texted the president's chief of staff. Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade. These were some of the network's biggest stars and the administration's biggest supporters.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: They asked Meadows to get Trump to make a strong statement telling people to leave the Capitol. Ingram wrote, this is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Select committee member Liz Cheney pointed out, Trump didn't take action until 187 minutes after the attack began.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The next step for Meadows is a vote in the full house on the contempt charge, which would then go to the Justice Department.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At first, he was helpful to the committee. He handed over thousands of records, but later he refused to fully cooperate, citing Trump assertion that Meadows testimony is protected by executive privilege.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A federal appeals panel recently rejected Trump attempt to block the committee from getting some White House records.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The House already voted to hold former White House senior advisor Steve Bannon in contempt. He's pleaded not guilty. Bannon faces up to a year in jail. His trial is set for the summer.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: California plans to go after guns in a very unusual way. The state's going to use Texas's controversial abortion ban as a model.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Just as the Texas law effectively bans most abortions by allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers, California's governor, Gavin Newsom, says he's going to push to allow lawsuits against people who make or sell assault weapons or ghost guns.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Those are weapons made from kits that can't easily be traced. The Texas law was designed to make it harder to challenge in court.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Already, states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Ohio have introduced copycat abortion bans. Now, there was talk that states led by Democrats could follow the same playbook, only not for abortions, for guns.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: California would be the first one to try it. Vox explains, Not a whole lot is known yet about the way Newsom's proposed legislation would work, but his office suggests it could operate pretty much the same as the Texas law does.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The proposed new approach comes after a federal judge overturned California's longtime ban on assault weapons in June. The governor's proposed new law would attempt to control guns in a way that's protected from court challenges, but it's not clear how well it would hold up in court.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Okay, so you know how around this time of year as you agonizing over what gifts to buy your loved ones people say, "Don't worry, it's the thought that counts." Well, they're wrong. They're wrong. They're wrong. Or at least that what some psychologists told the Washington Post.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You may think people want to be surprised, but research shows people generally prefer getting the gifts they asked for. Just look at gift cards or cash, right?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some people think giving them is impersonal or lazy. But according to a professor who studied gift giving, people who get them love the flexibility.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Sometimes psychological research just tells us the obvious, right? People just want to buy what they want.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Also, people often say millennials value experiences over material gifts. Research shows it's really a thing. And not just for millennials.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: When people get concert tickets or restaurant gift certificates, they feel closer, more connected to the gift giver than when they get a material gift.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And how you receive a gift plays a big role in how the giver feels. As one psychologist tells the Post, accepting presents is a skill.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So next time you get something you don't like, smile. Don't be rude. You can always re-gift a bad present later on.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And check out our latest audio story from WNBA superstar Asia Wilson.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She wrote a personal essay for the Players' Tribune, and she narrated it for us. It's called Dear Black Girls. This is for all the girls with an apostrophe in their name.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is for all the girls who are too loud or too emotional. This is for all the girls who are constantly asked, "Oh, what did you do with your hair? That's new."
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is for my black girls. You can hear Asia Wilson's powerful essay with an Apple News Plus subscription.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
