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How the DOJ’s Jan. 6 probe may be getting closer to Trump · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, July 27th. I'm Shumita 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.
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  New reporting from "The Washington Post" says the Justice Department is asking very specific questions about Trump's actions around January 6th. And it seized phone records of senior aides to Trump. Other news outlets are also reporting on this. Together, it's a sign that DOJ's investigation into the Capitol attack is getting more serious and potentially getting closer to Trump himself.
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  Sources familiar with the Justice Department's January 6th investigation tell "The Post" that prosecutors have asked former top staffers for Mike Pence about conversations with Trump, his lawyers and others close to him. Some questions reportedly focus on the Trump campaign's plan to try to steal the election by using fake pro-Trump electors to undermine the results in states Biden won. That could be considered fraud. "The Post" explains that another track of the investigation involves potential seditious conspiracy, that is, planning to overthrow the government.
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  It's important to understand that asking about the president's actions is not the same as opening a criminal investigation into him personally. That would be an explosive move. After "The Washington Post" story came out, there was new focus on an earlier interview that "NBC's" Lester Holt did with Attorney General Merrick Garland. When asked about a potential indictment of Trump, Garland didn't rule it out.
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  Merrick Garland: We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6th, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable. That's what we do. We don't pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.
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  Lester Holt: So, if Donald Trump were to become a candidate for president again, that would not change your schedule, or how you move forward, or don't move forward?
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  Garland: I'll say again that we will hold accountable anyone who is criminally responsible.
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  Spokespeople for the Justice Department and Trump did not comment to "The Post" about the story. But Trump himself wasn't totally quiet yesterday. He made his first speech in Washington since leaving office last year, and he stuck to familiar themes: false claims of fraud in the election he lost and not-so-subtle hints that he'll run again in 2024.
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  This is a big week for economic news. Today, the Fed is expected to deliver another major interest-rate hike. And tomorrow, we'll get a number that plays a leading role in the way that we talk about the state of the U.S. economy: GDP.
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  Gross Domestic Product. It tells us whether America's economy is growing or shrinking. It has enormous influence on Wall Street trading and Washington policymaking. But some economists worry that it has too much influence. "NPR's" "Planet Money" explains the danger of expecting one number to tell the story of the entire economy.
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  In fact, the economist who basically invented GDP, Simon Kuznets, he worried about this exact thing. Historian Zachary Karabell explains.
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  Zachary Karabell: Kuznets himself said look, the fetishization of numbers and the use of this number as a proxy for everything is what politicians do, it's what people do. I would never have recommended that. And it's the easy way out, avoiding hard discussions, and it can be easily abused.
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  Kuznets worried that too much focus on the GDP would overshadow something that was equally important to understand: inequality. Who is benefiting from economic growth, and who's missing out? So now, a new generation of economists is trying to fix that blind spot in GDP.
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  They're out with a new tool that tracks inequality in real-time. They've run it on pandemic recession data, and they found that the bottom half of income earners in America took about twice as long as the top half to get back to their pre-pandemic income. But in recent months, lower-income Americans have made gains, as a tight labor market made it easier to get a raise. These economists hope that when GDP numbers make headlines, that more people will stop to think about the humans behind those numbers, and who's actually winning or losing as the economy changes.
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  After decades of declines, the homicide rate in the United States rose in 2020 and 2021. There's no single, clear reason why, but criminologists have several possible explanations. Gun sales surged during the pandemic, daily life as we knew it was disrupted, social services were paused.
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  "ProPublica's" Alec MacGillis is covering this in collaboration with "The Atlantic." And his reporting points to another critical factor at play. The criminal justice system slowed down, and the delays from pandemic lockdowns means that many courts are still not operating at full capacity.
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  Alec MacGillis: Basically, as courts close and you end up with these huge backlogs in various districts, various cities, you have prosecutors who, perhaps, become less likely to charge certain cases because they just know that everything is so backed up already. And perhaps, in some of those cases, some of the people who they've chosen not to charge end up committing more serious crimes.
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  Serious crimes including murder. And the longer these cases take to work their way through the courts, the harder it is to prosecute them.
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  MacGillis: You have witnesses and victims who become less willing to testify. That's an issue in a lot of cities, of course, that people are often unwilling to testify. And the longer things drag out, that dynamic sort of only increases, or they simply forget things too.
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  MacGillis explains an important concept in criminal justice. The system deters crimes when the consequences are "Swift, Certain, and Fair." The pandemic delays meant that criminals didn't think that they would actually pay the price. So, the theory goes, that may have pushed more people toward crime.
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  We were drawn to this piece because it illustrates the real-world consequences of delayed justice. MacGillis tells the story of a man in Albuquerque, Leon Casiquito. He spent months in jail waiting for trial because the courts were backed up. But Leon's day in court never came.
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  MacGillis: Things are really just kind of getting out of control in the jail. And people are in constant lockdown in their cells, not able to leave their cells. He's stuck in a cell with a younger man who suffered from schizophrenia. And one day, this younger man just completely snaps and beats Leon, the 40-year-old, to death. And it was just this very, kind of, bleak, direct result of things having gotten just so completely shut down.
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  This piece also looks at another city that took a different approach. Wichita pushed to reopen courts quickly, figuring out ways to keep things moving while minimizing the spread of COVID. And it did get things on track. As a judge put it, "It's important for the community to see the courts functioning."
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  There have been a couple of recent shark attacks in New York. Now, it's easy to hear these stories and feel kinda worry about going to the beach. So, we appreciated this story from "Curbed" because it gives you the reassurance that you maybe already know, but sometimes it's nice to hear someone else say it. And it also talks to a marine life expert who explains how the news about sharks right now, it's actually good news.
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  First, the context. The chance of being killed by a shark is one in 4.3 million. Car crash fatalities are literally millions of times more likely. And that shark expert, he says all the reports of more shark activity mean conservation efforts are working. Shark populations are in decline globally. But, in waters around New York, rules against fishing for sharks and work to support the fish that sharks eat are succeeding.
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  Here's something the expert said that's supposed to be reassuring. If sharks wanted to eat us humans, they would attack more often. The shark expert says he still goes to the beach. And the article has some commonsense tips from him if you want to feel safer next time you swim. You can read the full piece, along with all the stories that we mentioned, in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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