--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Michael Simon-Johnson, in for Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, June 23rd. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: The Middle East is on edge this morning with fears of a dangerously escalating conflict after the U.S. attacked Iran over the weekend. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: In a speech on Saturday night, President Trump said the U.S. had joined Israel's attacks on the country and claimed the U.S. military had, quote, totally obliterated multiple facilities that were part of Iran's nuclear program. There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Just two days earlier, the White House had said there was a substantial chance of negotiating with Iran over the future of its nuclear program. But the Times has since learned that at that point, Trump had all but made up his mind to launch strikes and military preparations were already underway.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: When President Trump delivered a statement through the White House press secretary last Thursday that he was going to decide what to do about Iran within the next two weeks, mostly it was a misdirection to keep people's focus off the strike.
--:-- Maggie Haberman: That's right. The two-week statement was part of a broader effort to obscure the attack plan and make it seem less certain that it would happen at all.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: [To Maggie Haberman] That effort also included using at least one decoy bomber that headed west across the Pacific as a distraction on Saturday, while a primary group of B-2 bombers headed east toward Iran.
--:-- Maggie Haberman: After 17 hours of nonstop flying, that group, escorted by fighter jets, entered Iranian airspace. They then dropped more than a dozen 30,000-pound bombs on the site of an underground nuclear facility, while a nearby U.S. submarine launched cruise missiles at other sites.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: The full extent of damage to the facilities or any casualties is still unclear. Now, administration officials have framed this as a one-off event and suggested that it can remain that way if Iran comes to the table to discuss curtailing its nuclear program.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: However, the president, late Sunday in the afternoon, suggested he was curious about how regime change, something his administration officials had strongly insisted this was not about, might play.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Meanwhile in Tehran, officials are publicly moving to project a sense of normalcy and try to downplay the damage on the nuclear sites. But in my conversations with officials, the mood internally is pretty grim. And there's a lot of divisions within the government about how to respond.
--:-- Guest (Iran expert): For an aspacy, he covers Iran for The Times. She says that while Iran has retaliated forcefully to Israel's ongoing attacks, hitting back at the U.S., including the 40,000 troops and civilians working for the Pentagon in the Middle East, could be riskier.
--:-- Guest (Iran expert): You know, the U.S. has toppled governments in Iraq and Afghanistan right next door to Iran's east and west. So the stakes are much higher for Iran in deciding to escalate with the U.S.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: So we're hearing a range of views. You know, hardliners were calling for not just attacking American military bases in the region, but Iran disrupting the flow of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and specifically closing the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran controls.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Then there were calls for restraint, saying this is a really critical moment and we need to act with wisdom and not have a knee-jerk reaction that could make things worse.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: We won't really know what Iran is going to do until the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issues a statement. But remarkably, Mr. Khamenei is nowhere to be seen or heard. He is hiding in a bunker.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: They've suspended all electronic communication to protect him against assassination. You know, messages between Mr. Khamenei and his commanders is handwritten or carried by a human messenger.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: So in this pivotal time, there is a sense of uncertainty hanging over Iranians right now.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: On today's episode of The Daily, my colleague David Sanger has more details about the American strikes and what could come next in the conflict.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestine activist, has been released on bail after a federal judge had determined that his arrest was likely unconstitutional.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: In his first interview since his release, Khalil told The Times that his arrest back in March by plainclothes immigration officers, quote, felt like a kidnapping.
--:-- Mahmoud Khalil: I was not doing anything anti-Semitic, I was literally advocating for an end of a genocide.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: His three-month stint at a Louisiana detention center meant that he missed the birth of his son, and he told the Times that there was, quote, nothing in this world that would compensate me for the time I lost with my family.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Still, Khalil says his commitment to the pro-Palestinian cause is unwavering, and that President Trump's attempts to crack down on protesters had instead, quote, advanced the movement 20 years.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: He said that while he was in prison, he'd received hundreds of letters from people saying that his arrest had inspired them to get involved in the movement.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Despite his release, Khalil's case is still making its way through immigration courts, and the government is still seeking to deport him.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: It's about to get hot around here, and I mean so hot it can kill you. That's not hype. This is serious heat.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Don't exercise when it's really, really hot. Across the central and eastern United States right now, a major heat wave is expanding, threatening millions of people with dangerously high temperatures.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: That heat, which reached around 100 degrees in parts of the Midwest over the weekend, is expected to shift eastward. By midweek, major cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. will be baking, and humidity may well push heat indexes to upwards of 115 degrees in some areas.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Meteorologists say this is being caused by a heat dome A high-pressure system that traps hot air like a lid on a pot.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Nighttime temperatures are also expected to remain high in cities Limiting the body's ability to cool down and increasing health risks.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: In New York City, emergency management officials are sounding the alarm Warning that heat is, quote, the deadliest weather threat we face And noting that over 500 residents die from heat-related causes each year.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Later in the week, a cold front is expected to bring some relief to the northeast, but the mid-Atlantic will likely face above-average temperatures into the weekend.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: And finally, here is our ride One of the first robo rides here in Austin.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Can wait In Austin, Texas, Tesla has launched a test of a self-driving car service it's calling RoboTaxi.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: It's the first step towards CEO Elon Musk's promise of widespread autonomous ride hailing. Here we go. We're pulling in right now.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: For now, the service is invite-only and operates within specific areas of Austin, with safety monitors, i.e. human beings, sitting in the front passenger seat.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Chained up door. There we go. It's giving us a notification. Please exit safely. You can open the trunk with this button.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Tesla isn't the first company to roll out autonomous taxis. Customized Jaguars, owned by the company Waymo, have been cruising the streets of San Francisco and other cities for several years now.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: But Musk's goal is to eventually turn regular Tesla owners into robo-taxi operators, having their cars go out and drive people around on their own while their owners are at work or sleeping.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: That would let Tesla owners earn extra cash, and Musk said it could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue to the company.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Tesla is launching its robo-taxi service at a critical time for the company. Jack Ewing covers Tesla for The Times. He says that the company has been struggling to make up for sales that plummeted after Musk became a controversial figure in President Trump's administration.
--:-- Jack Ewing: And it's trying to make good on his trillion-dollar stock valuation, which is largely based on Musk's promise that self-driving Teslas will soon be all over American streets.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: But Jack says making robo-taxis as commonplace as, say, ordering an Uber is going to be a challenge.
--:-- Jack Ewing: Tesla is attempting something that technologically is much more ambitious than what Waymo is doing. Waymo and the others are restricting their services to carefully mapped areas within certain cities.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Tesla's technology, according to Elon Musk, will be able to operate anywhere, at least anywhere where they can get approval.
--:-- Jack Ewing: But that's much more difficult to achieve technologically. And many critics of the company have questioned whether it's actually safe and whether it can ever be made safe.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: And on Austin's streets, the robo-taxi could be facing even more competition. At least three other companies are testing autonomous vehicles in the city, including Volkswagen and Amazon.
--:-- Michael Simon-Johnson: Those are the headlines. I'm Michael Simon-Johnson. We'll be back tomorrow.
