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Signs that the Trump investigations are intensifying · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, September 13th. 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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  There are major new developments in the legal cases involving Donald Trump. First, new reporting shows the Justice Department has issued dozens of subpoenas to top Trump officials in the investigation into January 6th. CNN reports that the recent subpoenas went to high-level people who were in Trump's fundraising and campaign operations. It's a sign that the criminal investigation is intensifying and could be getting deeper into Trump's inner circle.
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  Some of these subpoenas are especially broad in scope. They're seeking information on the fake elector scheme, Trump's fundraising, the organizing of his rally on January 6th, and communications with people who tried to overturn the 2020 election results.
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  There's also news in another investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents. "Politico" reports that the Justice Department and Trump are close to a deal on Trump's request to have a third party review the records seized from Mar-a-Lago. His legal team wants a special master to look through the documents to see if they contain information covered by executive or attorney-client privilege. Now, the DOJ is saying they do not object to one of the special-master candidates proposed by Trump's team, but there are still other areas where they disagree with Trump on how to move forward.
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  The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi is not over. A few weeks ago, when the water system in the city failed, residents were left with no running water for days. We called up Kobee Vance from Mississippi Public Broadcasting to see where things stand.
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  Kobee Vance: Residents in Jackson do have water now, people can turn on their taps and at least rely on the fact that water's gonna come out. Now, that water is not drinkable at the current time.
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  Social media videos show dark brown water coming out of some faucets. Residents are on their second month of being told to boil tap water before using it to cook or drink. Vance explains Jackson residents are used to living with "boil water" advisories like this. Decades of underfunding led to a system riddled with problems…
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  Vance: This especially began to take place around the time of desegregation in schools, so back in around the sixties in Mississippi. And so as more Black residents moved into the city of Jackson, more white residents that had money moved out of the city, that left a tax base that was supporting infrastructure in the city completely gone.
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  Today, about 80% of Jackson's residents are Black. Around a quarter of the population live below the poverty line. Vance says some families spend $100 a week buying bottled water for safe cooking, cleaning, and drinking. At this point, they pretty much bank on Jackson's water system failing.
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  Vance: It's not a matter of if it's gonna fail again in its current state, it's a matter of when will it fail again in its current state.
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  Some residents feel state and local authorities have failed them and they need federal help. The EPA flagged problems with the city's water system back in 2020. The agency has now sent investigators back to Jackson to review the current crisis.
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  Our next story takes us to Joaquin Miller Park. It's 500 acres of wildlife, what Oakland, California calls "a jewel in the redwoods." In a rare move, the city of Oakland is planning to hand over land rights for a small slice of that park to Indigenous people. The city will still legally own the land, but the Sogorea Te' Land Trust will get full and permanent control. Natalie Orenstein, reporter for "The Oaklandside," told us about their plans.
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  Natalie Orenstein: What the Land Trust says they envision there is kind of a multipurpose site. They're talking about an educational history center, they're talking about a site for periodic Native ceremonies. They're also just talking about opening the space up to visitors and volunteers, not just members of the Indigenous culture and community in Oakland.
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  This comes amid broader calls for reparations for Indigenous people across the country. The Land Trust co-director Corrina Gould calls this "the beginning of a healing process" and hopefully a blueprint for others to win land rights.
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  "America has a rabid raccoon problem." That headline was definitely odd enough to get our attention, but the story gets weirder when you see what the government has been doing about it. It involves fly-over vaccinations, delivered by planes and choppers.
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  "The Atlantic" explains how the raccoon-rabies problem goes back decades. A rabies outbreak in the 1950s spread from Florida to the mid-Atlantic. The former head of the CDC's rabies program described it this way: the East Coast was "one solid belt of raccoon rabies." Now, hunting them down was not an answer because, as it turns out, some people are really attached to raccoons. One Florida community was feeding them hundreds of pounds of dog food a month.
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  Instead, the government settled on this elaborate and complicated answer: a mass vaccination program. But you can't exactly invite a bunch of wild animals to schedule a rabies shot at Walgreens. They needed a way to deliver the vaccine orally, through some kind of enticing food. They considered eggs, sausages, even Slim Jims like you get at the gas station. The breakthrough came when they heard public complaints about raccoons stealing fish bait, so they settled on two winning flavors, fish and vanilla.
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  Now, these vaccines get dropped from the air in the countryside or placed by hand in urban areas, and the packaging is specially designed so that raccoons, with their skillful little hands, can get them, but not cats or skunks. There's a lot of work left ahead, but the goal is to get raccoons rabies-free by 2063, one tasty vaccine at a time.
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. There's also special coverage of the Emmys, where big winners include "Succession," "Ted Lasso," "The White Lotus," and "Squid Game." I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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