--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Thursday, May 22nd. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At approximately 9 or 8 p.m. tonight, we received multiple calls for a shooting in the area of 3rd Street and F Street Northwest. Officials in Washington, D.C. say that two people who worked at the Israeli embassy were shot and killed last night outside an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We believe the shooting was committed by a single suspect who is now in custody. Prior to the shooting, the suspect was observed pacing back and forth outside of the museum.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: According to law enforcement, a suspect was detained shortly after the shooting. He told police where the gun was and shouted pro-Palestinian slogans.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The suspect chanted, free, free Palestine, while in custody. The suspect has been tentatively identified as Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, Illinois.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The event at the museum was a gathering for young Jewish professionals. The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. said the victims were a couple who were about to get engaged next week in Jerusalem.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Israeli embassy, where the victims worked, has been a particular focus of protests amid heightened tensions over Israel's military campaign in Gaza after the October 7th attack by Hamas.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: What I do know is that the horrific incident is going to frighten a lot of people. And I want to be clear that we will not tolerate this violence or hate in our city.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: D.C.'s Mayor Muriel Bowser denounced the shooting as terrorism and said the community would stand together against anti-Semitism.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump also posted on social media, quote, hatred and radicalism have no place in the USA.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In response to the shooting, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ordered increased security for Israeli diplomatic missions around the world.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the White House yesterday, we're going to be discussing some of the things that are taking place in South Africa and see if we can help.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump hosted the president of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa for a meeting that started cordially.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ramaphosa brought two prominent South African golfers along with him, a nod to Trump's favorite sport, and said he hoped to talk trade, among other things.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But hanging over his visit were Trump's recent repeated claims that white farmers are being discriminated against in South Africa.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump's even fast-tracked allowing some Afrikaners to enter the U.S. as refugees. The president has insisted that there are mass killings of Afrikaner farmers in South Africa and that the government is seizing their land.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Both of those claims are not supported by any evidence that President Trump has presented, but he has insisted on those over and over.
--:-- John Eligo: My colleague John Eligo covers South Africa and was in the Oval Office for the meeting.
--:-- John Eligo: He says Ramaphosa tried to refute Trump's claims of white genocide.
--:-- John Eligo: And then right after that is when sort of like things completely changed.
--:-- John Eligo: We have thousands of stories talking about it. And we have documentaries. We have news stories.
--:-- John Eligo: Is Natalie here? Somebody here to turn that?
--:-- John Eligo: I could show you a couple of things.
--:-- John Eligo: President Trump said, turn down the lights.
--:-- John Eligo: And I looked over my shoulder and there was a White House aide. She was opening up a laptop right there and about to cue something up.
--:-- John Eligo: The lights dim and all of a sudden you hear the TV start to play. Two, two, three, two.
--:-- John Eligo: A video mashup then played in the Oval Office, including footage of people calling for violence against white farmers.
--:-- John Eligo: One of the clips showed a row of white crosses that Trump said, incorrectly, was a burial site for white farmers.
--:-- John Eligo: So it was a very provocative video.
--:-- John Eligo: And then after the video went off, Trump had a stack of papers next to him.
--:-- John Eligo: And he said, look, all of these news articles are about people who were killed recently.
--:-- John Eligo: And he kept on saying, you know, this one is recent. It's death, death, death.
--:-- John Eligo: But in fact, when you look closely at those articles, a lot of them were not about farmers or Afrikaners who were killed.
--:-- John Eligo: They were just news stories about them in general.
--:-- John Eligo: And at that point, you can see Ramaphosa, he has sort of like a very exasperated look on his face.
--:-- John Eligo: He's trying to interject, but Trump is sort of speaking over him.
--:-- John Eligo: Trump is now completely controlling the meeting.
--:-- John Eligo: So it was just an extraordinary session and a spectacle that I certainly did not expect.
--:-- John Eligo: After Trump comments, Ramaphosa did acknowledge his country has a crime problem.
--:-- John Eligo: And there have been killings of white South Africans.
--:-- John Eligo: But police statistics show they're not more vulnerable to violence there than other people.
--:-- John Eligo: Overall, the meeting underscored Trump's selective concern about human rights in other countries.
--:-- John Eligo: On his recent tour of the Middle East, he met with the leaders of several repressive regimes, but said he would not lecture them about how they treat their citizens.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, three other updates on the Trump administration.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Early this morning, after days of intense negotiations and pressure from President Trump himself, the House of Representatives passed what President Trump has called the Big Beautiful Bill, the legislation that's key to fulfilling many of his campaign promises.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The vote was 215 to 214. Two Republicans voted against it. Another Republican voted present as a protest vote.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Still, the bill, which includes increased spending on the military and on immigration enforcement, along with tax cuts, has a long and challenging road ahead.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's expected to face substantial changes in the Senate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Also, they're giving the United States Air Force a jet, OK? And it's a great thing.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump and the Pentagon said yesterday that the U.S. has officially accepted a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar that will be turned into a new Air Force One.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump has made clear that he wants the civilian jet retrofitted as soon as possible, an upgrade that could cost a billion dollars.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns about the plane, saying it could pose a security risk.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: For example, it could have secret listening devices installed, and that Qatar might have gifted the plane to try and influence the president.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the Justice Department is stepping back from its efforts to reform nearly two dozen police departments across the country that have been accused of civil rights violations.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those efforts, known as consent decrees, came in the wake of high-profile police killings and set requirements for how police should be trained and disciplined.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division now says the agreements are ineffectual and a, quote, injustice against the police.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The decision to roll them back was announced nearly five years to the day after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Minneapolis, residents and activists called the news a slap in the face.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They see it as a sign that the Trump administration is not interested in the kind of changes and reforms that people clamored for during big protests just years ago.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Ernesto Londoño is based in Minnesota, where the DOJ has been working on a consent decree with the Minneapolis Police Department after a federal report found officers there routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people and used deadly force without justification.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: So where this leaves us now is that the city says it remains committed to the changes outlined in the Department of Justice agreement.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But there's no question that as the Department of Justice takes a step back, there's one less lever hovering over the city of Minneapolis to make sure that it does, in fact, continue the hard, expensive, and labor-intensive work of reforming a police department.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, every morning across the country, nearly a third of kids eat cereal for breakfast.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: What's that? They're new Fruit Loops Super Loopers.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's actually the most commonly consumed food product for children age 5 to 12.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But a new study has found that breakfast cereals have been getting less and less healthy.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Researchers studied 1,200 new and reformulated cereals that were launched between 2010 and 2023 and found that their average fat, sodium, and sugar content increased significantly over that time.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The findings were published yesterday in the journal JAMA Open Network.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of the study's authors told The Times he was surprised by what they found, since consumers have become increasingly health-conscious and more aware of the links between eating too much sugar, salt, and fat and serious health conditions like diabetes and cancer.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He said, quote, The healthy claims made on the front of these products and the nutritional facts on the back are actually going in the opposite direction.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
