--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, September 22nd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Three migrants sent to Martha's Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are now suing him and other Florida officials. They say they were tricked into traveling to Massachusetts with fake promises that food, shelter, money, and work would be available to them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For months, Republican governors in Arizona and Texas have been using state funds to send migrants arriving in their states to cities like New York and Washington, D.C. Governor DeSantis said he couldn't find any migrants in his state to deport, so he funded planes from Texas to Massachusetts last week.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ubaldo Arcaia is one of the dozens of people who arrived on Martha's Vineyard. Here's what he told CNN. He says in Texas, he was promised help if he got on the plane. No idea where he was going. There were three options, he says. Washington, Utah, here in Massachusetts. Whatever was available. The plane left and brought us here.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Miami Herald reporter Bianca Padra Ocasio went to Martha's Vineyard and spoke with some of these migrants. She said they were disturbed by the situation. It was just still a state of shock for a lot of them.
--:-- Bianca Padra Ocasio: The fact that a few hours before, they were in San Antonio, Texas, and they were promised that they would go someplace with jobs and where they would be offered housing, where they would, in some cases, give them free English classes. And obviously when they got there, they found none of this.
--:-- Bianca Padra Ocasio: Some migrants say they were asked to sign documents that were only partially translated into Spanish. Some were told they'd get legal assistance. Many of the people sent on these trips by Republican officials are asylum seekers who are in the country legally while their cases are pending.
--:-- Bianca Padra Ocasio: I think that on top of everything and figuring out where they're going to go next, there's this feeling of that they're being mocked and laughed at for coming into this country trying to seek a better life in the same way that so many others have done. There's this feeling of humiliation and trauma and desperation and hopelessness.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Governor DeSantis has defended his actions and referred to the move as a protest against President Biden's immigration policies. He's promised to use every penny of the $12 million allocated in the state budget to move migrants to other parts of the country.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a new lawsuit to add to the legal battles of former President Donald Trump. This one, a civil suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who says the former president falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The suit accuses Trump, his business, and three of his children of financial fraud. James has been investigating Trump's businesses for years, specifically whether the company lied about the value of its assets in order to secure loans and avoid taxes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: White-collar financial crime is not a victimless crime. When the well-connected break the law, it reduces resources to working people, to regular people, to small businesses, and all taxpayers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since this is a civil lawsuit, Trump will not be indicted. What the attorney general wants is for the Trump Organization to pay $250 million in penalties, and for Trump and his children, that's Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, to be barred from ever running a business in New York again.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's also saying the defendants violated a number of state and federal criminal laws, and she'll be referring her findings to federal prosecutors. The Trump Organization has responded by calling the lawsuit and the attorney general politically motivated.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you want a better handle on all of the legal cases Trump is currently facing, Reuters has an explainer to catch you up to speed on everything from the Mar-a-Lago documents to the criminal tax fraud case set to go to trial in New York next month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The push for police reform in the United States has largely stalled out. But you might be surprised to hear about one group that has been successful at changing the way police departments operate: insurance providers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Because settlements in police misconduct cases are so costly, some insurers are demanding police departments overhaul their tactics or else lose coverage.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's really the bottom line with the insurer, right? It's this is going to bankrupt a city. That gets their attention.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: That gets their attention. That's Kimberly Kindy, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. She reports that over the last 10 years, more than $3.2 billion has been spent covering tens of thousands of claims at some of the nation's largest police and sheriff departments.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: The ability for insurers to step in and say, I'm not just asking you out of the goodness of my heart, I'm telling you you have to or there's going to be a serious financial consequence or your police department's existence will be terminated.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: That's frustrating for activists, but it has been more effective than what they've been able to accomplish in many of these communities where insurers have been able to step in.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: Kendi spent some time with the St. Ann Police Department near St. Louis, Missouri. The department was notorious for high-speed chases for traffic infractions.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: In 2017, a 55-year-old man was permanently disabled after his car got slammed by a van driver being chased by officers. The victim settled with the city for an undisclosed amount.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: Over the prior two years, 11 people were injured in 19 crashes during high-speed police chases. In fact, they had a decades-old motto where they would say, St. Anne will chase you till your wheels fall off.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: They were very proud of the fact that they would chase people for traffic infractions. But their insurer was not happy. They threatened to cancel coverage if the department didn't change their policies.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: The police chief told Kendi he felt like he didn't have a choice. Their premiums would go way up, and he was worried he'd have to lay off officers to cover it. So he agreed to make changes.
--:-- Kimberly Kindy: So now they can no longer chase people if they have a mere traffic infraction or an expired tag. It has to be a serious felony or a violent misdemeanor. People have to really be in jeopardy in order for them to justify the chase.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Activists hope that these changes lead to safer police practices. But they make a difference to taxpayers, too. Ultimately, it's ordinary citizens, you and me, who are on the hook for these police misconduct settlements that can end up costing millions of dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There is a lot of drama right now in the world of professional chess. A few weeks back, in a tournament called the Sinkfield Cup, world champion Magnus Carlsen, arguably one of the best players of all time, was defeated by American Grandmaster Hans Niemann, who's a much lower-rated player.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Carlsen's loss, in and of itself, was surprising. He was on a 53-classical-game undefeated streak. But what happened next stunned the chess world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The next day, Carlsen dropped out of the tournament and gave no explanation why. Instead, he tweeted a video of a soccer manager saying, I prefer really not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This cryptic tweet led many people to assume that Carlsen was accusing Hans Niemann of cheating. Fast forward to this week, things got even more intense.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On Monday, Carlsen was set to play Niemann again in an online match. Except after making just one move, Carlsen resigned.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's the moment it happened, and you can hear how shocked the commentators are on chess.com. The game started, and Magnus has logged off. What has happened? Magnus has resigned. Magnus has resigned the game against Hans Niemann. Wow.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Carlsen's resignation was seen by many in the chess world as a form of protest and a doubling down on his suggestion that Niemann was cheating.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, let's be really clear. Niemann has strongly denied cheating in this tournament, and there's no evidence that he did. But he has admitted to cheating in the past when he was younger and in online games.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One grandmaster, Maurice Ashley, told NPR that this entire saga is calling into question the integrity of the game. Lots of top players are saying similar things on their streaming platforms.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The one person we still really haven't heard from is Carlsen. For many chess fans watching this drama unfold, the next move is his.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
