--:-- Traci Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Thursday, June 5th.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Here's what we're covering. Today I am signing a new executive order placing travel restrictions on countries including Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Libya, and numerous others.
--:-- Traci Mumford: President Trump has revived a controversial policy from his first term, a travel ban. It will go into effect Monday and prohibit citizens from 12 countries, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, from entering the U.S. It also limits travel from seven other countries.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas.
--:-- Traci Mumford: We don't want them. In a speech announcing the plan, the president linked it to Sunday's attack in Boulder, in which a man from Egypt was arrested and charged with a hate crime for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at a group that was honoring Israeli hostages.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Egypt is not currently on the list of banned countries, but Trump said new ones could be added. And nothing will stop us from keeping America safe.
--:-- Traci Mumford: This marks yet another moment in President Trump's crackdown on immigration.
--:-- Hamad Ali Aziz: My colleague Hamad Ali Aziz covers immigration. He says Trump's first travel ban in 2017, which blocked travel from several majority Muslim countries, kicked off mass protests, chaos at airports, and several legal battles.
--:-- Hamad Ali Aziz: Critics called it discriminatory, though the Supreme Court ultimately permitted a rewritten version of it to take effect.
--:-- Hamad Ali Aziz: Legal experts think this new ban may hold up to any challenges in light of that ruling.
--:-- Hamad Ali Aziz: This ban has some important exceptions. There are people who are not going to be affected by this ban, and those people include green card holders, dual nationals, people who are seeking visas through U.S. citizen family that they have, including spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens.
--:-- Hamad Ali Aziz: They will be exempted from this ban. Hamed says the Trump administration also put in a specific exemption for athletes who are coming to compete in the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics both of which will be held in the U.S.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In another major move yesterday, President Trump ordered his White House counsel to investigate President Joe Biden and his staff to see whether Biden's actions while in office, like pardons and proclamations, were legally valid.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The order is Trump's latest attempt to stoke conspiracy theories about his predecessor, in this case that Biden was mentally incapacitated and that his aides were enacting policies without his knowledge.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Over the weekend, Trump shared a social media post claiming that at one point, Biden was replaced with a robotic clone.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He's also called out Biden's use of the auto-pen system, which reproduces a person's signature for official documents.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Trump's new order argues that using the auto-pen could affect the validity of anything that was signed with it, though Trump has acknowledged his administration uses it too.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Biden put out a statement in response to the order, calling the accusations ridiculous and false and saying, let me be clear, I made the decisions during my presidency.
--:-- Traci Mumford: At the United Nations yesterday. The result of the voting is as follows. 14 votes in favor, one vote against, Zero abstention.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The U.S. was the only country on the Security Council to veto a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The measure called for a stop to the fighting, the release of all hostages, and the resumption of full-scale humanitarian aid in the territory.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N. called the resolution a non-starter.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The United States has been clear. We would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The vote underscored how the U.S. continues to support Israel unconditionally.
--:-- Traci Mumford: This is now the fourth ceasefire measure it's vetoed since the war began, leading many other countries to voice frustrations both in public and in private about America's stance.
--:-- Traci Mumford: As a permanent member of the Security Council, the U.S. can block any measures with just a single vote.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Meanwhile, the new U.S.-Israeli-backed effort to distribute a limited amount of aid in Gaza was suspended yesterday after a week of chaos and deadly violence.
--:-- Traci Mumford: On two occasions, Israeli soldiers opened fire while groups of Palestinians approached one of the new sites The Israeli military said it fired warning shots at quote suspects who had approached soldiers
--:-- Traci Mumford: The Gazan Health Ministry reported that more than 47 people were killed in the two incidents many of them children.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The sites are supposed to reopen today, and the organization running them, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, now has a new leader.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Johnny Moore, a public relations executive who used to attend prayer meetings with Trump in the Oval Office, was appointed chairman after the last leader quit.
--:-- Traci Mumford: These days, nearly every baby born in the U.S. undergoes the same ritual at the hospital when they're just a day old.
--:-- Traci Mumford: A nurse pricks their heel, and tiny drops of blood are sent off for a standard screening panel.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It checks for biomarkers that may indicate rare but treatable diseases like sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But what if that same test could reveal a baby's chance of developing certain conditions later in life?
--:-- Traci Mumford: What if it could tell parents their child is likely to be diagnosed with autism, or that they're likely to develop certain cancers as an adult?
--:-- Traci Mumford: As genetic testing becomes cheaper and easier to do, those scenarios are no longer hypothetical,
--:-- Traci Mumford: And the advancements have kicked off an ethical debate.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Experts have different opinions about where to draw the line.
--:-- Traci Mumford: What types of conditions should we sequence for?
--:-- Traci Mumford: Should we look at every condition we possibly can, or should we really limit it to some specific ones?
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: Emily Baumgartner-Nunn covers health at The Times.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: People who are very supportive of widespread genome sequencing for a vast array of genes, basically their position is that knowledge is power.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: And proponents of this, specifically bioethicists and geneticists, they believe that parents can handle this kind of information, even incomplete information, predictive information that may not come to pass.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: They believe that we should be equipping families and giving them the ability to act upon this information if they want to.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: But there are just as many experts in these fields who really encourage caution in how we apply this technology.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: For example, some researchers believe it's completely out of the question that we should ever reveal an adult onset condition in a child.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: For example, genes that code for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, some conditions like those.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: Other researchers feel very strongly about testing only for conditions that are treatable and that are treatable right now
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: They believe that if we don't have a medication that can essentially cure the condition we shouldn't be testing for it
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: We shouldn't be bombarding parents with really despairing predictions for conditions that if their child has it, there's nothing they're going to be able to do about it anyway.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: Emily says that there's one thing people on all sides of the issue agree on, and that is that the technology is coming and fast, fast, which is forcing the conversation.
--:-- Emily Baumgartner-Nunn: Tens of thousands of American parents have already enrolled in research projects that examine their infant's genome.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And finally, birds should not be underestimated.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Magpies can remember up to 30 different human faces.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Crows can use tools.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And now, sulfur-crested cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, have learned to operate the water fountain.
--:-- Traci Mumford: A behavioral ecologist who co-authored a new study that published this week said she first spotted a cockatoo on a fountain a few years ago.
--:-- Traci Mumford: She watched as the mohawked bird grabbed the spring-loaded handle with one foot and twisted until the water came out.
--:-- Traci Mumford: She and her colleagues then set up cameras at more fountains to see if there were other little finely feathered overachievers.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Over about 40 days, they recorded multiple cockatoos making over 500 attempts to turn on different fountains and take a drink.
--:-- Traci Mumford: About half were successful, suggesting that some were still getting the hang of it.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's unclear why they're doing it, though, when there's a lot of other water sources readily available that don't require a complex sequence of motor skills.
--:-- Traci Mumford: One theory? It might just be fun for them.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Notably, the same research team previously found that the cockatoos in the area had also figured out how to flip open garbage bins.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That earned them the nickname trash parrots, which just feels a little harsh.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Maybe now they could be fountain flyers, or water wings, or caca H2Os.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Okay, I'm done. Those are the headlines.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Today on The Daily, Times congressional correspondent Katie Edmondson walks through the battle on Capitol Hill over President Trump's big, beautiful bill.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That's next in The New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Traci Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
