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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, July 23rd.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. In Washington, the Epstein drama is not going away. And President Trump and Republican lawmakers are pulling out new tactics to try and shut down the conversation.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the Capitol. What we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats' political games. This is a serious matter. We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram.
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--:-- Speaker Mike Johnson: What we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats' political games. This is a serious matter. We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Speaker Mike Johnson announced yesterday that he's sending lawmakers home early, cutting the session short, even though they were still considering legislation.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: He explicitly said he's doing it to avoid votes calling for the release of more files related to the government's investigation of Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking allegations.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Democrats have been trying to push the issue to a vote, but Johnson's abrupt move spared Republicans from having to take a public stance on the issue.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Recently, they've been caught between President Trump, who's been telling people to move on from the Epstein case, and some of their constituents, particularly from the hard right, who've been outraged about what they see as a lack of transparency from the administration.
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--:-- President Trump: The woodshot that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama Absolutely cold.
--:-- President Trump: President Trump made his own new and dramatic push to deflect from the Epstein story by accusing former President Barack Obama of trying to lead a coup with Hillary Clinton.
--:-- President Trump: It's there. He's guilty. They, this was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump administration has recently rolled out a series of reports reaching back to the 2016 presidential election that claimed the Obama administration tried to undermine Trump's campaign.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The new reports contradict years-long investigations into the election by U.S. intelligence agencies and bipartisan Senate committees.
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--:-- Spokesman for President Obama: In a rare statement responding to Trump's allegation, a spokesman for President Obama called the claim bizarre and ridiculous.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now, two other quick updates on the Trump administration.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has learned that the Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan that would end the federal government's ability to fight climate change.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The plan centers on a crucial rule from 2009, in which the EPA officially established that greenhouse gases endanger human lives.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: That gave the government the authority to regulate emissions from vehicles and power plants and other sources that are dangerously heating the planet.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: According to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans, they're now moving to eliminate that rule, which would erase all current federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
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--:-- President Trump: And we worked on it long and hard and it's a great deal for everybody. I always say it has to be great for everybody. It's a great deal.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, President Trump announced he struck a trade deal with Japan, backing down from some of the highest tariffs that he'd threatened the country with.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The U.S. is currently negotiating with dozens of countries to try and reach deals after the president upended global trade with his sweeping tariff plan.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And in some corners of the economy, the toll of those tariffs is becoming clear.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, two of the biggest automakers in the U.S. both announced major losses.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: General Motors said the tariffs cost the company more than a billion dollars.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, also said its revenue fell significantly, in part because of the surcharges.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Los Angeles yesterday, one of the country's oldest and largest clinics providing care to transgender youth shut its doors.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a letter to staff, officials from Children's Hospital Los Angeles had said they didn't want to close the clinic, but they felt they had no choice under pressure from the Trump administration, which had threatened to strip the hospital of its federal funding.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: I've been talking to patients and their parents, as well as a few clinicians here in California. And what I've been hearing is that everyone felt like they were supported.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: These patients, these kids were happy. And now even in California, they're afraid that they're no longer going to be able to access essential medical care.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Jill Cowan covers California for The Times. She says what happened in L.A. is happening across the country, as similar clinics from Chicago to D.C. to Pittsburgh limit the care they offer or close altogether.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: Many families have been caught by surprise. They thought seeking care in blue cities or blue states would shield them from the administration's crackdown on gender care for minors.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: The White House has said it's trying to prevent children from making potentially irreversible medical decisions, though Jill says that many of the families and medical experts she interviewed see the care as critical for trans kids.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: Families are scrambling to find new doctors, get backup appointments at other institutions where this care is still offered.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: So much of transition treatment is time Puberty blockers have to be administered on the right timeline Doctors need to be able to carefully monitor how patients are doing.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: And these moves by these hospitals are really throwing people into uncertainty.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: As one 16-year-old transgender girl told me, she has been able to access puberty blocker injections, which last for several months.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: She had an appointment to get an implant, which lasts for more than a year, and that appointment was canceled.
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--:-- Jill Cowan: And she feels like, right now, the prospect of experiencing male puberty, feeling her body changing to be further away from her perception of herself, made her feel like her own body was a ticking time bomb.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, an executive order signed by President Trump earlier this year aimed at banning transgender women from sports led the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to quietly change its rules this week.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The organization now says that transgender women will not be able to compete in any Olympic women's sports for Team USA.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: That decision had previously been left up to the governing body of each sport.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: In Iran, every day for more than two weeks, fires have been breaking out at apartment complexes, oil refineries, a road outside a major airport, even a shoe factory.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: In public, Iranian officials have tried to brush off the incidents as accidents or aging infrastructure.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: But in private, multiple Iranian officials tell The Times they believe these are acts of sabotage.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The country's been on edge since its 12-day war with Israel last month.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And though there's now a ceasefire, tensions are still high.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Officials suspect the fires could be a secret campaign by Israel, though they did not provide any evidence.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Israeli officials declined to comment, but the two countries have waged covert attacks on each other for years, and Israel's intelligence agency recently said it would continue with that effort in Iran.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Just last month, the head of the agency promised, quote, we will be there just as we have been up to now.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, Ozzy Osbourne, who helped invent heavy metal music and transformed reality TV, died yesterday at 76.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Born in Birmingham England he had some false starts He worked in a slaughterhouse and then had a brief stint as a burglar before he joined the band that would become Black Sabbath in 1968
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The volume was ear-splitting, the tempo was grinding, and Osborne screamed and yowled about doom. Critics hated it, but Black Sabbath's early albums went platinum, unleashing anthem after anthem for young people angry at the world.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As he grew famous, Osborne's behavior reached extremes. He said in his autobiography he did more drugs than he could even list, and he was eventually fired from Black Sabbath for sleeping through a concert.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But he went on to become a bigger star than ever as a solo act.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On stage, he dialed up the satanic imagery, and his behavior was wild, sometimes violent.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He pelted audiences with raw meat and bit the head off a dead bat during a concert in Des Moines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He once told The Times, though, that all of that craziness was an act, and he had a very different life at home, saying, quote, I am not the Antichrist. I am a family man.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Go to school right now. OK. Go to school.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The world got to see that for itself in 2002 when the reality show The Osbournes premiered, showing the loving but often bleeped out family home life of Ozzy, his wife Sharon, and their teenage kids.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm begging of you, Sharon. I'm begging you. No more animals. Please, boo.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It was the most popular TV show MTV had ever aired, and it inspired dozens of other celebrities to open up their homes to cameras and launch their own shows.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the years, Osborne dealt with a growing list of health issues, and he was diagnosed with a variant of Parkinson's.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But just a few weeks ago, he rallied to perform a final concert.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He reunited with Black Sabbath in his hometown of Birmingham.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And he sat on stage in a black throne as people screamed and cheered.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Before his death, Osborne said he knew exactly how he would be remembered. Ozzy Osborne, born 1948, died whenever.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: He bit the head off a bat. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily. I've come forward because the Trump administration has put civil servants in this impossible position of fealty to the president and the agenda or fealty to uphold the rule of law.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: A former employee at the Justice Department who became a whistleblower explains why he's speaking out.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in The New York Times audio app where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
