Transcript

8.13.26 · Washington Post

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the reading of the Washington Post for Thursday,
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Speaker 1: August thirteenth, twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is
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Speaker 1: a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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Speaker 1: have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Speaker 1: Your reader for today is Greta. Today's front page headlines
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Speaker 1: for The Washington Post are first DC surge a mixed bag.
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Speaker 1: One year later, Trump says lawlessness has plummeted. It's not
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Speaker 1: that simple, analysis shows. Next, Trump digs in as High
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Speaker 1: Court blocks policies. He looks for ways to sidestep rulings,
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Speaker 1: new moves on FED and tariffs, and birthright citizenship. Next,
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Speaker 1: ex ice agent's nonprofit lands a one hundred eight fifty
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Speaker 1: eight million dollar contract. His work was featured in a film.
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Speaker 1: His group will represent migrant miners. Next, a right flank
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Speaker 1: against data in Texas. A preference for free markets has
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Speaker 1: faded amid the massive projects and last Trump's secret flight
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Speaker 1: spurs questions. Democrats want briefing on last month's ruse to
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Speaker 1: avoid an Iranian threat. For our first article, a year
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Speaker 1: after d C takeover, Trump says crime has plummeted. It's
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Speaker 1: not that simple. The Posts analysis of thousands of arrest
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Speaker 1: records found the president's remarks overstate the federal intervention's impact
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Speaker 1: by Ben Connarch, John D. Hardin, Juan Ben Junior, and
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Speaker 1: Jasmine Golden. In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has asserted
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Speaker 1: on social media and at news conferences that his administration
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Speaker 1: has stopped crime in Washington. On July tenth, he posted
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Speaker 1: on truth Social Washington, d C. Went from high crime
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Speaker 1: to no crime. Thank you, President Trump. On August third,
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Speaker 1: the President told reporters in the Oval Office that crime
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Speaker 1: in d C had dropped by ninety two percent and
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Speaker 1: maybe more. This was the crime capital, frankly, of the world.
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Speaker 1: He said, it was the most unsafe capital in any
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Speaker 1: country in the world. Now it's one of the safest,
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Speaker 1: and it's one of the safest places in the United States.
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Speaker 1: To better understand Trump's impact, the Washington Post analyzed thousands
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Speaker 1: of records of arrests that have occurred in the city
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Speaker 1: since August eleventh, twenty twenty five, when the President declared
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Speaker 1: a crime emergency and signed the DC Safe and Beautiful
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Speaker 1: Executive Order, which deployed a task force of federal law
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Speaker 1: enforcement agents to partner with local police and brought out
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Speaker 1: of State National Guard members to the city. The analysis
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Speaker 1: and interviews with crime data experts show that the president's
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Speaker 1: remarks oversimplify and overstate the impact of the federal intervention.
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Speaker 1: The Post's analysis scrutinized more than sixteen thousand arrest reports,
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Speaker 1: sifting for keywords that either directly referenced or hinted at
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Speaker 1: federal partnerships to identify and quantify task force activity. Included
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Speaker 1: here in the article is a graphic titled Federal role
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Speaker 1: in DC arrests climbed in twenty twenty six. The fourteen
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Speaker 1: day rolling average of arrests involving federal authorities rose in
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Speaker 1: the spring and remained near its highest level through the summer.
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Speaker 1: The graphic shows a line that is described as the
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Speaker 1: fourteen day rolling average of daily arrests on a scale
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Speaker 1: of zero to twenty, running from October first, twenty twenty
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Speaker 1: five to July first, twenty twenty six. It varies anywhere
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Speaker 1: between thirteen point eight six at the beginning. At its
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Speaker 1: lowest is eight point one four February seventh, twenty twenty six,
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Speaker 1: and then ends at eighteen point nine three on August fourth,
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. It also has arrows pointing to various
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Speaker 1: date on the graphic, the first one saying the order
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Speaker 1: federalizing control of the MPD expires but is extended into
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, and that's pointing at September twelfth, twenty
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Speaker 1: twenty five, where the line is at sixteen point zero seven.
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Speaker 1: Then the March twenty twenty six no King's protests take
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Speaker 1: place across the country, including d C on March thirty first,
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty six is at eleven point nine to three,
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Speaker 1: and America two fifty on July third, twenty twenty six
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Speaker 1: is at eighteen point twoy one. Roughly three out of
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Speaker 1: ten arrest reports analyzed by The Post mentioned federal partners.
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Speaker 1: Over the last year, Trump and White House officials have
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Speaker 1: referenced in eighty eight or ninety two percent drop in
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Speaker 1: crime in the district. When pressed to explain the numbers,
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Speaker 1: white House officials identified decreases in rates of arson, of
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Speaker 1: which there was one this year compared with four last
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Speaker 1: year according to d C Police statistics. White House officials
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Speaker 1: also pointed to a double digit percentage in the homicide rate,
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Speaker 1: which mirrors similar decreases across the country. In the face
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Speaker 1: of Trump's claims critics have noted the slight uptick in
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Speaker 1: overall violent crime about three percent year over year, driven
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Speaker 1: largely by a forty one percent increase in incidents of
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Speaker 1: assault with a dangerous weapon, a category that was at
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Speaker 1: the center of a crime misclassification scandal, rendering year over
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Speaker 1: year comparisons fraught. Crime policy experts have also pointed out
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Speaker 1: that many categories of crime were dropping in Washington well
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Speaker 1: before the president took office. Even when narrowing the scope
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Speaker 1: on the thirty day Crime emergency that saturated the district
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Speaker 1: with National Guard members and federal law enforcement, it would
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Speaker 1: be difficult, they said, to untangle the effect of that
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Speaker 1: surge on top of trends that were already underway in
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Speaker 1: DPE and elsewhere. If you want to argue that there
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Speaker 1: was an additional decline on top of that due to
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Speaker 1: all of these interventions, you could plausibly make that argument,
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Speaker 1: said Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst, pointing out that
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Speaker 1: rates of violent crime have been falling across the country
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Speaker 1: since a peak in twenty twenty three, But you can't
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Speaker 1: make the argument that the intervention caused that decline or
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Speaker 1: even was a major factor in those trends. Turning over.
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Speaker 1: The factors driving increases and decreases in gun violence, Asher
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Speaker 1: added are so complex that researchers are still struggling to
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Speaker 1: understand why rates a violent crime dropped in the nineteen nineties.
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Speaker 1: This is what happens with crime data, he said. It's
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Speaker 1: the ultimate failure is an orphan success has many fathers.
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Speaker 1: Issue next the federal footprint this article or the Washington
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Speaker 1: Monument obelisk. Both men are in uniform, one whose chest
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Speaker 1: protection on the back reads police and the others whose
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Speaker 1: reads DEA. They both have guns and other things in
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Speaker 1: their holsters. The President's emergency declaration a year ago resulted
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Speaker 1: in three separate tracks for an increased law enforcement presence
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Speaker 1: in Washington, a wave of National Guard troops patrolling the streets,
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Speaker 1: ramped up immigration enforcement, and a surge of federal law
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Speaker 1: enforcement agents partnering with local police. National Guard troops don't
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Speaker 1: have law enforcement powers, and the impact of their presence
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Speaker 1: on deterring crime is difficult to parse. Similarly, many immigration
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Speaker 1: detainments and arrests happen in ways that are hard to scrutinize.
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Speaker 1: Zeroing in on the federal partnership with the DC Police Department,
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Speaker 1: the Post analyzed court documents spanning August twenty twenty five
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Speaker 1: through this month. Of the roughly thirty percent of the
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Speaker 1: arrests that mentioned federal partners. At least half occurred in
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Speaker 1: wards six seven and eight. Nearly a quarter were for
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Speaker 1: violent offenses, thirteen percent involved weapons, fourteen percent involved drug,
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Speaker 1: twenty one percent were property crimes, and eighteen percent were
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Speaker 1: traffic related. According to the analysis of the arrest reports examined,
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Speaker 1: about sixteen percent explicitly referenced to the Safe and Beautiful
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Speaker 1: Executive Order or Task Force. The order was meant to
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Speaker 1: last only thirty days, but the joint patrols pairing police
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Speaker 1: and federal agents have continued. Donald J. Mahalik, a retired
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Speaker 1: senior U S Secret Service agent and the executive vice
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Speaker 1: president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Foundation, said the
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Speaker 1: POSTS analysis shows that federal officers have exercised restraint in
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Speaker 1: patrolling Washington. Early on, it was being painted as this aggressive, disruptive,
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Speaker 1: cowboy atmosphere, but those numbers dispute that. Mahalick says. It
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Speaker 1: showed that federal officers are fighting crime in a lawful
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Speaker 1: and smart way and being judicious about the arrests. They made.
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Speaker 1: It's unclear to what extent federal agents were involved in
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Speaker 1: DC police arrests before Trump's executive order. A DC Police
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Speaker 1: spokesperson declined to comment on whether thirty percent of arrests
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Speaker 1: happening in conjunction with federal partners would be an increase
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Speaker 1: on top of the status quo, saying that department does
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Speaker 1: not track federal involvement in department arrests. But The Post
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Speaker 1: analyzed about thirteen hundred additional arrest reports from the two
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Speaker 1: months before the executive order and found that federal agents
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Speaker 1: were referenced in roughly eleven percent of them. The vast
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Speaker 1: majority of the sixteen thousand arrest reports do not mention
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Speaker 1: the race of the defendant, but of the three thy
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Speaker 1: one hundred ninety one that do, some ninety percent of
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Speaker 1: those arrested were black. That reflects a continuation of trends
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Speaker 1: first reported by The Post shortly after the surge began.
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Speaker 1: Some DC officials continue to push back on the administration's
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Speaker 1: influx of federal agents and their continued presence d C
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Speaker 1: Council members. Brooke Pinto, a Democrat for Ward II, chairwoman
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Speaker 1: of the council's Public Safety Committee, said in a recent statement,
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Speaker 1: we unfortunately continue to experience an alarming and obstructive surge
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Speaker 1: in federal law enforcement officers conducting patrols in DC, and
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Speaker 1: it must end. Mayor Muriel E. Bauer, Democrat, recently released
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Speaker 1: a statement about Trump's unprecedented federal intervention that brought national
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Speaker 1: attention to DC's lack of statehood and autonomy. At the time,
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Speaker 1: we were in the midst of driving down crime to
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Speaker 1: a thirty year low following a post COVID crime spike,
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Speaker 1: Bowser said in the statement. Since then, we've continued that
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Speaker 1: progress next the ripple Effect. The section is accompanied by
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Speaker 1: a photo captioned A Capitol Police officer arrests a man
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Speaker 1: outside Union Station in Washington on August twenty fourth, twenty
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Speaker 1: twenty five. Photo by Tassis Topotis Forgetty Images. The photo
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Speaker 1: shows on the left from behind, a person in uniform
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Speaker 1: whose armor reads US Capitol Police, holding the arm of
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Speaker 1: someone in a T shirt and slacks with handcuffed arms
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Speaker 1: behind his back. Looking at the past year. US Attorney
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Speaker 1: Jeanine Piro announced in a statement Monday that prosecutions in
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Speaker 1: DC Superior Court have increased sixty seven percent. Piero attributed
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Speaker 1: that in part to prosecutors moving forward with charges at
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Speaker 1: a higher rate than previous administrations, and said the work
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Speaker 1: has restored a sense of safety in neighborhoods across the district.
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Speaker 1: Doug Buchanan, a spokesman for DC Superior Court, said in
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Speaker 1: a statement that the influx of criminal cases has brought
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Speaker 1: the underfunded court system to its breaking point. The truth
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Speaker 1: of the matter is that federal prosecutors are moving forward
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Speaker 1: with more cases rather than declining them, pushing more workload
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Speaker 1: into an area overloaded system. Youu caan and said in
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Speaker 1: a statement, every filing requires personnel, courtroom staff, case processors, interpreters,
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Speaker 1: court reporters, juvenile probation officers, IT specialists, and security officers.
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Speaker 1: Without these roles, cases simply cannot be heard. Defense attorneys
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Speaker 1: and others have described having their time in the courtroom
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Speaker 1: stretched past eleven PM, prompting arraignment court in June to
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Speaker 1: start earlier in the day at eleven a m instead
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Speaker 1: of one thirty PM. Charles Murder, a retired attorney who
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Speaker 1: stands in for clients' initial appearances in arraignment court, said
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Speaker 1: that in the past, the U S Attorney's Office had
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Speaker 1: operated with more scrutiny in screening cases to decide which
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Speaker 1: arrests warranted prosecution. For the past year, they are exercising
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Speaker 1: less discretion, he said. The clog in the system also
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Speaker 1: hurts victims of crime, said Misty C. Thomas Celeski, executive
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Speaker 1: director of the Council for Court Excellence, a nonprofit that
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Speaker 1: advocates for a more just local legal system. Victims are
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Speaker 1: waiting longer periods of time to know what justice is
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Speaker 1: going to look like in their matter. She said. The
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Speaker 1: increase in arrests, prosecutions, and case loads is a threat
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Speaker 1: to curbing crime and keeping residents safe. Zeleski added public
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Speaker 1: safety isn't promised with just an arrest. Public safety depends
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Speaker 1: on the full continuum of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense, court
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Speaker 1: staff and judges, corrections and treatment providers, all working together
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Speaker 1: and having capacity to do their job. She said. This
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Speaker 1: is what keeps our community safe, our prevention, accountability and
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Speaker 1: re entry all working together, and right now there's been
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Speaker 1: such a myopic focus on only one piece of that puzzle.
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Speaker 1: Ivon Edwards still has not finished cleaning out the apartment
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Speaker 1: where her daughter Raven Edwards lived in Glover Park and
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Speaker 1: was killed by an ex boyfriend in February, yard to
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Speaker 1: therapy a month ago. She said under recent session helped
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Speaker 1: her recognize the extent of the loss's impact, not only emotionally,
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Speaker 1: but physiologically as well. I didn't even realize I was
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Speaker 1: walking around holding my breath, Edward's age fifty five, said
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Speaker 1: Monday in an interview with The Post. In the six
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Speaker 1: months since Raven was fatally shot, Edward said she's seen
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Speaker 1: and heard stories of others who have been killed by
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Speaker 1: gun violence, despite Trump's repeated claims that crime has non existed.
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Speaker 1: In Washington. Last month, Edward said her daughter's childhood friend
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Speaker 1: lost the father of her child when he was killed
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Speaker 1: by a stray bullet in broad daylight, not far from
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Speaker 1: the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, where National Guard troops
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Speaker 1: regularly patrol. Since Trump took to the podium to announce
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Speaker 1: the federal law enforcement surge and declare a crime emergency
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Speaker 1: in the city, there have been ninety seven homicides in
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Speaker 1: the district. DC Police data shows next, who gets the
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Speaker 1: credit second is companied by a photo captioned National Guard
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Speaker 1: members in DC last year. Photo by Craig Hudson for
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Speaker 1: the Washington Post. It shows seven National Guard members in
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Speaker 1: uniform standing on the steps in front of the Joint
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Speaker 1: Force Headquarters of the District of Columbia. Something Guard. It's
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Speaker 1: obscured behind the National Guard numbers. Crime data experts have
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Speaker 1: questioned Trump's messaging on what has driven the decrease in
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Speaker 1: DC crime. Thomas Abt, a gun violence expert and director
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Speaker 1: of the University of Maryland's Violence Reduction Center, so the
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Speaker 1: federal intervention is too recent to have produced any peer
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Speaker 1: reviewed studies, but three working papers attempting to quantify it
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Speaker 1: are various shades of skeptical. The first problem, he said,
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Speaker 1: is that crime was already falling in most cities where
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Speaker 1: those interventions took place, including in Memphis, where apt's Violence
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Speaker 1: Reduction Center works closely with city officials. The second major
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Speaker 1: problem is that crime continued to fall all around the country,
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Speaker 1: and in a very substantial amount. Abd said. Thaddeus Johnson,
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Speaker 1: an assistant professor at Georgia State University and a senior
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Speaker 1: fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, said he built
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Speaker 1: a predictive model that measured the decline of crime trends
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Speaker 1: in DC and attempted to gauge the federal intervention's impact
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Speaker 1: on that downward slope. Johnson said his analysis revealed that
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Speaker 1: the surge of law enforcement and National Guard troops pushed
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Speaker 1: property crimes and auto thefts below the expected benchmark, but
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Speaker 1: violent crime was more mixed. Johnson found homicide was notably
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Speaker 1: below expected during and after the surge, although we're more
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Speaker 1: cautious with that finding because the numbers are relatively small.
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Speaker 1: He said. Robbery and broader community violence also moved lower,
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Speaker 1: while assault with a dangerous weapon did not show the
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Speaker 1: same clear city wide pattern. Johnson added that while the
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Speaker 1: surge may have been temporarily effective, he questioned whether the
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Speaker 1: deterrent effect of an increased law enforcement presence would be
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Speaker 1: a long term solution to combating gun violence. One would
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Speaker 1: be hard pressed to say that it didn't play a role,
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Speaker 1: he said, but you would also be hard pressed to
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Speaker 1: say it was the only or primary reason why we've
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Speaker 1: seen reductions. For our next article, Trump refuses to back
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Speaker 1: down as Supreme Court blocks major policies. The president is
17:27
Speaker 1: seeking ways around rulings on tariffs, birthright citizenship, and the FED.
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Speaker 1: Experts say the moves don't signal outright defiance, but they
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Speaker 1: push the Court's limits by Julian Mark. Over the past
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Speaker 1: few weeks, President Donald Trump has made it clear that
17:44
Speaker 1: he will not take the Supreme Court decisions as the
17:47
Speaker 1: final word on some of his most cherished priorities. The
17:50
Speaker 1: president has introduced new tariffs, renewed efforts to fire Federal
17:55
Speaker 1: Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and issued new executive orders to
17:58
Speaker 1: limit birthright citizenship. While experts said the moves do not
18:03
Speaker 1: signal outright defiance of the High Court, they nonetheless push
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Speaker 1: the limits of the rulings that Trump lost earlier this summer.
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Speaker 1: Without question, President Trump is challenging the bounds of the
18:13
Speaker 1: Court's opinions, particularly regarding Cook's firing and birthright citizenship, said
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Speaker 1: Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard University. The High
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Speaker 1: Court's opinion affirming that nearly everyone born in the United
18:27
Speaker 1: States is a citizen does not allow Trump to create
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Speaker 1: exceptions like some set out in his recent executive orders,
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Speaker 1: Lazarus said. Those orders say children are ineligible for birthright
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Speaker 1: citizenship if born to alien enemies, foreign terrorists, foreign lobbyists,
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Speaker 1: or people who fraudul fraudulently request tourist visas in order
18:48
Speaker 1: to give birth in the US. In signing the orders,
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Speaker 1: Trump referred to the Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship,
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Speaker 1: saying we're ending it a different way. The Trump administer
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Speaker 1: stration has always followed court orders, said White House spokeswoman
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Speaker 1: Lauren Biss. All actions taken by the President since the
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Speaker 1: recent Supreme Court rulings are consistent with the holdings and
19:11
Speaker 1: analysis set forth by the court, she said. As for Cook,
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Speaker 1: the Justice is ruled that she deserved notice and a
19:18
Speaker 1: chance to respond before being fired, and Trump's latest move
19:22
Speaker 1: seeks to provide that. The White House sent a letter
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Speaker 1: to Cook last week renewing the threat to fire her,
19:28
Speaker 1: giving her twenty one days to respond, and directing her
19:31
Speaker 1: to submit any response to the White House by August
19:34
Speaker 1: twenty sixth. The Supreme Court's ruling on the Cook case
19:37
Speaker 1: required notice and an opportunity for a hearing in considering
19:41
Speaker 1: whether the president should take certain adverse employment actions. This added,
19:46
Speaker 1: the President's notice sent to Federal Governor Cook offers exactly
19:49
Speaker 1: that within the precise structure enunciated by the court. Still
19:54
Speaker 1: Trump's underlying rationale for dismissing Cook that she engaged in
19:58
Speaker 1: mortgage fraud. It means unproved, and she has not been charged.
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Speaker 1: While the renewed push to fire her does not repudiate
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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's opinion, Lazarus said, it certainly confronts it
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Speaker 1: by challenging its limits. Trump is not the first president
20:13
Speaker 1: to look for ways around adverse Supreme Court rulings, most recently,
20:17
Speaker 1: when President Joe Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt
20:20
Speaker 1: was struck down by the Supreme Court, Biden within hours
20:24
Speaker 1: announced a separate plan to forgive the debt. Two decades earlier,
20:28
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush wrestled with the Court over procedures
20:31
Speaker 1: for detainees seeking freedom from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Speaker 1: But such instances appear to be historical exceptions rather than
20:41
Speaker 1: the rule, said David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law.
20:45
Speaker 1: Most presidents treated Supreme Court rulings as dispositive of the
20:50
Speaker 1: issues involved, rather than as technical documents to be evaded.
20:54
Speaker 1: Super said that includes an earlier version of Trump during
20:58
Speaker 1: his first term. The present cuident was more willing to
21:01
Speaker 1: accept losses at the Supreme Court and move on. Super
21:04
Speaker 1: said he cited rulings against Trump's efforts to end the
21:08
Speaker 1: deferred action for childhood arrivals DACA program, and to add
21:12
Speaker 1: a question on citizenship status to the twenty twenty census.
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Speaker 1: The second term President Trump appears to have much less
21:20
Speaker 1: regard for other branches of federal government than the first
21:23
Speaker 1: term one, died Super said similarly, the Trump administration last
21:27
Speaker 1: month imposed new tariffs on US imports from sixty economies
21:32
Speaker 1: under an authority different from the one the Supreme Court
21:34
Speaker 1: rejected in February. The new duties, imposed under section three
21:39
Speaker 1: oh one of the Trade Act of nineteen seventy four,
21:42
Speaker 1: purport to penalize countries that failed to curb imports produced
21:46
Speaker 1: by forced labor. That does not directly go against the
21:49
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's decision, but critics call the force labor rationale
21:53
Speaker 1: a pretext for reimposing the sweeping tariffs struck down by
21:56
Speaker 1: the Court, and small businesses have sued to block them
21:59
Speaker 1: for that reason. Some experts say Trump, far from challenging
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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, is working within the bounds of the
22:07
Speaker 1: Justice's rulings. The Court ruled against Trump in these three
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Speaker 1: big cases, and all of them sort of left openings
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Speaker 1: to do something else, And in all three cases he
22:17
Speaker 1: did something else, said Josh Blackman, a law professor at
22:21
Speaker 1: South Texas College of Law at Houston. Trump is more
22:24
Speaker 1: aggressive because he views rulings as political. Blackman added, he's
22:29
Speaker 1: willing to push back, especially with conservative judges, three of
22:32
Speaker 1: whom he appointed. Still, Trump has added to the sense
22:36
Speaker 1: that he is challenging the Court by using heated rhetoric
22:38
Speaker 1: against it. After the Court overturned his terif regime in February,
22:43
Speaker 1: the president called the conservative justices who ruled against him
22:47
Speaker 1: fools and lapdogs. Last week, when Trump introduced his new
22:51
Speaker 1: birthright measure, he called the Court's decision a bad decision,
22:55
Speaker 1: very unfair decision, seeing the country suffers because of it.
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Speaker 1: President Barack Obama criticized the Court in his twenty ten
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Speaker 1: State of Union address, although he did so in a
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Speaker 1: more genteel manner with all due deference to the separation
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Speaker 1: of powers, Obama said in criticizing the Citizen's United decision,
23:13
Speaker 1: which lifted limits on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions,
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Speaker 1: the Court has reversed a century of law that I
23:21
Speaker 1: believe will open the floodgates for special interests. The Trump
23:25
Speaker 1: administration has also had a tense relationship with the federal judiciary.
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Speaker 1: More broadly, a Washington Post analysis last year found that
23:34
Speaker 1: Trump and his appointees were accused of flouting the courts
23:37
Speaker 1: in more than a third of the one hundred sixty
23:39
Speaker 1: plus lawsuits against the administration in which a judge had
23:43
Speaker 1: issued a substantive ruling. The administration has also sparred with
23:47
Speaker 1: the judiciary over Trump's picks to lead federal prosecutor's offices.
23:52
Speaker 1: But Mike Fragoso, a former chief council to Senator Mitch McConnell,
23:56
Speaker 1: Republican of Kentucky, said Trump's responses to the Supreme Court's
24:00
Speaker 1: most recent decisions do not appear out of the norm. Instead,
24:04
Speaker 1: particularly with regard to the new birthright Order, Trump appears
24:08
Speaker 1: to be adopting the longtime conservative view that a Supreme
24:11
Speaker 1: Court decision binds the president only to the specific case
24:14
Speaker 1: at issue, not necessarily to its broader reasoning, he said. Fragoso,
24:20
Speaker 1: now an attorney it toward in law, pointed to President
24:23
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln's rejection of the Supreme Court's logic in its
24:26
Speaker 1: infamous eighteen fifty seven decision dread Scott for Sandford, which
24:31
Speaker 1: held that African Americans were not citizens on birthright. It's
24:36
Speaker 1: a question testing the limits of what the Supreme Court said,
24:40
Speaker 1: while not being inconsistent with the opinion, for Goso said,
24:43
Speaker 1: adding that Trump's actions could be described as Linconian. For
24:50
Speaker 1: our next article, x ice agent's group awarded one hundred
24:54
Speaker 1: fifty eight million dollars to represent migrant children. The Trump
24:59
Speaker 1: administration gave the contract to Our Rescue, which Tim Ballard,
25:03
Speaker 1: the former agent, left in twenty twenty three before being
25:07
Speaker 1: accused of sex trafficking by Ted Hessen and Liam Bowman.
25:12
Speaker 1: The Trump administration has awarded a one hundred fifty eight
25:15
Speaker 1: million dollar contract to represent unaccompanied migrant children to a
25:19
Speaker 1: nonprofit group founded by a former immigration agent who inspired
25:23
Speaker 1: the film Sound of Freedom. A federal contracting database shows
25:29
Speaker 1: a notice of the award to the Minneapolis based group
25:32
Speaker 1: Our Rescue, which combat's child trafficking, was posted online late Friday.
25:38
Speaker 1: The contract is with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which
25:41
Speaker 1: oversees the care of miners who crossed the border without
25:44
Speaker 1: authorization and without a parent or guardian. The award could
25:48
Speaker 1: increase up to two hundred forty four million dollars. The
25:51
Speaker 1: contract notice showed President Donald Trump's administration in recent weeks
25:56
Speaker 1: has pivoted away from working with advocacy groups that previously
25:59
Speaker 1: read presented the miners. Last week, a small Texas law
26:03
Speaker 1: firm with ties to the administration was awarded a one
26:06
Speaker 1: hundred fifty million dollars no bid contract to represent unaccompanied
26:10
Speaker 1: miners in immigration court proceedings. That firm, Burke Law Group,
26:15
Speaker 1: is headed by Marcella Burke, a former Trump appointee. Immigration
26:20
Speaker 1: advocates criticized the contract and the administration's decision to cut
26:25
Speaker 1: ties with groups that had two decades of experience in
26:27
Speaker 1: legally representing miners. Our Rescue was founded in twenty thirteen
26:33
Speaker 1: by Tim Ballard, a former US Immigration and Customs enforcement
26:37
Speaker 1: agent who quit his job and embarked on efforts to
26:39
Speaker 1: rescue children from sex trafficking rings in countries such as Columbia, Haiti, Mexico,
26:44
Speaker 1: and Thailand. His work was loosely fictionalized in Sound of Freedom,
26:49
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty three film starring Jim Caviezol that drew
26:54
Speaker 1: a claim from conservatives. Others, however, said the movie catered
26:59
Speaker 1: to conspiracy theories, including those peddled by the far right
27:02
Speaker 1: group q Anon. During Trump's first term, Ballard was appointed
27:07
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen as a co chair of a council
27:09
Speaker 1: tasked with making anti trafficking recommendations to the White House.
27:15
Speaker 1: Ballard abruptly left Our Rescue in July twenty twenty, three,
27:18
Speaker 1: days before Sound of Freedom was screened at Trump's private
27:22
Speaker 1: club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Three months later, a group
27:26
Speaker 1: of five women filed a lawsuit in Utah alleging Ballard
27:29
Speaker 1: had coerced them into sexual acts as part of his
27:32
Speaker 1: trafficking rescue missions tied to the organization, then known as
27:36
Speaker 1: Operation Underground Railroad. A separate federal lawsuit in twenty twenty
27:41
Speaker 1: four accused him of sex trafficking and forced labour. Both
27:45
Speaker 1: lawsuits remain active. The Office of Refugee Resettlement and Ballard's
27:50
Speaker 1: attorney did not respond to requests for comment. Our Rescue's
27:55
Speaker 1: website states that it works with law enforcement and other
27:57
Speaker 1: partners around the world to provide services to people who
28:00
Speaker 1: are vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. It is not clear
28:04
Speaker 1: whether the organization employs immigration attorneys with expertise in providing
28:08
Speaker 1: legal counsel to miners. Derek Benner, the organization's chief executive,
28:14
Speaker 1: said in a statement that ensuring unaccompanied miners have acces
28:17
Speaker 1: to support and are protected from exploitation aligns with his
28:21
Speaker 1: group's mission. These are among the most vulnerable children in
28:24
Speaker 1: the world, and they deserve nothing less than the full
28:27
Speaker 1: weight of our experience, said Benner, who is also a
28:30
Speaker 1: former ICE agent. We welcome this responsibility and are working
28:34
Speaker 1: on their behalf. Michael Luken's, executive director of the AMICA
28:40
Speaker 1: Center for Immigrant Rights, which provides legal representation to children
28:44
Speaker 1: in the Washington area, accused the Trump administration of seeking
28:48
Speaker 1: to ramp up deportations of miners by going after their
28:51
Speaker 1: legal representation. The administration is trying to make sure that
28:55
Speaker 1: the kids have an attorney on paper, but are not
28:58
Speaker 1: actually providing meaningful legal adbasvocacy, Luken's said. Luken said his
29:02
Speaker 1: organization has not received notice from the government about transferring
29:06
Speaker 1: the immigration cases of miners to the new contract holders.
29:10
Speaker 1: He said his group continues to represent unaccompanied children in
29:13
Speaker 1: cases where it has been retained. For our next article,
29:18
Speaker 1: Rural Texas conservatives love free markets, but not when it
29:21
Speaker 1: comes to data centers. A preference for small government has
29:25
Speaker 1: faded as Republican voters press leaders to block the massive
29:29
Speaker 1: projects by Molly Hennessy Fisk. This article is accompanied by
29:33
Speaker 1: a photo captioned Patrick Williams Harvest Hay in Centreville, Texas.
29:38
Speaker 1: He and his brother Stephen are concerned about the environmental
29:41
Speaker 1: and economic impacts data centers will have on the area.
29:45
Speaker 1: The photo is by Entranic Tavidian for The Washington Post
29:50
Speaker 1: and shows a man with a beard and a very
29:55
Speaker 1: dirty ball cap operating a tractor with that's pulling something
30:01
Speaker 1: behind it in a field from Centreville, Texas. Nicki Meeter
30:07
Speaker 1: grew up here in East Texas. She's a lifelong Conservative
30:10
Speaker 1: and three time Trump voter. Unaccustomed to activism. That's mostly
30:15
Speaker 1: because there's never been much to protest in rural Leon County.
30:19
Speaker 1: That changed when the nurse practitioner her data centers were coming.
30:23
Speaker 1: We are the people who built this community, and we
30:25
Speaker 1: intend to pass it down to our children. We deserve protection,
30:29
Speaker 1: not to be sacrificed for outside investment. Industrialization is irreversible,
30:34
Speaker 1: said Meter forty three. Meeter, wearing a camo green T
30:39
Speaker 1: shirt bearing the state's unofficial motto come and Take It,
30:43
Speaker 1: was among several dozen attending the County Commissioner's regular meeting
30:46
Speaker 1: on a recent Monday, We're asking you to consider the
30:49
Speaker 1: long term cost to taxpayers, the environmental and safety risks,
30:54
Speaker 1: the permanent loss of what makes this place home, she said.
30:57
Speaker 1: Texas conservatives love free markets, the energy industry, development, and
31:02
Speaker 1: small government, but in scores of deep red Texas communities
31:06
Speaker 1: such as Leon County, longtime Republican voters are setting aside
31:09
Speaker 1: these principles to battle an onslaught of data center projects
31:13
Speaker 1: that pro business. GOP leaders additionally welcomed. Opposition to data
31:18
Speaker 1: centers has been notably bipartisan in communities across the country,
31:23
Speaker 1: but the fearce pushback from conservatives in Texas has required
31:26
Speaker 1: no help from liberal groups, and it has been felt everywhere,
31:30
Speaker 1: from the state's GOP new party platform to the campaigns
31:34
Speaker 1: of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott, were
31:38
Speaker 1: Republicans who now support varying degrees of increased data center regulation.
31:43
Speaker 1: At the GOP convention in June, the platform included a
31:47
Speaker 1: new plank that would require data centers to disclose and
31:50
Speaker 1: finance infrastructure needs without shifting costs to residents, prioritize the
31:55
Speaker 1: use of reclaimed water, and protect aquifers and the state's
31:58
Speaker 1: electrical grid. Patrick, a staunch Trump ally, has made AI
32:04
Speaker 1: regulation a priority for the next legislative session in January.
32:08
Speaker 1: On the campaign trail, Abbot and other elected officials speak
32:11
Speaker 1: openly about restraining data centers. On August third, Abbott announced
32:16
Speaker 1: he is requiring audits of every data center seeking power
32:19
Speaker 1: from the Texas grid before they can connect. On Thursday
32:23
Speaker 1: and Friday, he announced that several data center companies had
32:25
Speaker 1: agreed to state audits. I established clearguard rails to ensure
32:30
Speaker 1: data centers protect our electric grid, conserve our water, respect
32:34
Speaker 1: our neighborhoods, and pay their own way, Abbot said in
32:37
Speaker 1: a Monday post on x, noting open AI had agreed
32:40
Speaker 1: to comply with the new Texas standards, they must not
32:44
Speaker 1: pass costs down to Texas families or interfere with their
32:47
Speaker 1: quality of life. Still, Meter said Abbot has not done
32:51
Speaker 1: enough to stop data centers. He's just trying to scramble
32:54
Speaker 1: because he realizes he's basically making world Texas mad, and
32:58
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of his votes come from, she said,
33:01
Speaker 1: dismissing the governor's audits as very vague. Meeter said she
33:05
Speaker 1: won't vote for Abbott and instead might vote for a
33:07
Speaker 1: Democrat for the first time, Ginainajosa, a state representative from
33:12
Speaker 1: Austin and South Texas, because she's against data centers in
33:16
Speaker 1: rural areas. In Leon County population seventeen thousand, where eighty
33:21
Speaker 1: eight percent of voters like meter chose Donald Trump last election,
33:25
Speaker 1: residents have been frustrated to learn how little their local
33:28
Speaker 1: GOP elected officials can do to stop projects being proposed.
33:33
Speaker 1: Until now, the largest industries Leon County had were oil
33:36
Speaker 1: and gas, a steel plant, and chicken farms, which drew
33:40
Speaker 1: much less opposition. Last month, commissioners refused an application from
33:45
Speaker 1: Crusoe Technologies for tax breaks for its proposed eight hundred acre,
33:49
Speaker 1: thirty four billion dollar data center, citing an incomplete submission.
33:55
Speaker 1: But Crusoe can reapply or build without the tax breaks,
33:58
Speaker 1: and commissioners said they'll be helpless to block the project
34:01
Speaker 1: because the county, unlike many cities, has only narrow zoning
34:05
Speaker 1: authority to regulate places like landfills, liquor and adult video stores.
34:10
Speaker 1: Commissioners attempted to reassure residents that they too were troubled
34:14
Speaker 1: by the Crusoe project, which is expected to break ground
34:17
Speaker 1: within a year and cost the county four to five
34:19
Speaker 1: million dollars in added services. Commissioner Thomas Jefferson TJ. Foley
34:25
Speaker 1: noted that he is responsible for the volunteer fire department,
34:29
Speaker 1: lives within six hundred feet of one of the proposed
34:31
Speaker 1: power plants expected to fuel the data center, and worries
34:34
Speaker 1: about how the county will cope with their increased demand
34:37
Speaker 1: for resources and services, especially if there's a disaster at
34:40
Speaker 1: the massive sites Leon County and no rural county is
34:44
Speaker 1: prepared to handle this, he said. Until there's a catastrophe
34:48
Speaker 1: and one of these things blows up, there's probably nothing
34:50
Speaker 1: we can say. That's not very comforting, a man shouted
34:55
Speaker 1: from the audience. A photo is inserted here captioned resid
35:00
Speaker 1: listen during a town hall meeting about data centers at
35:02
Speaker 1: the Jewett Civic Center in Leon County last month. Photo
35:07
Speaker 1: by Entranic Tavidian for The Washington Post. The photo looks
35:10
Speaker 1: like it's taken through a keyhole and shows a room
35:14
Speaker 1: full of people listening raptly to a speaker who is
35:17
Speaker 1: off camera. Leon County GOP chair Karen Carol Milder is
35:24
Speaker 1: emblematic of the shift among conservatives when it comes to
35:27
Speaker 1: opposition to data centers. The retired real estate appraiser's father
35:32
Speaker 1: worked on an oil rig. Growing up in Houston, she
35:35
Speaker 1: saw the oil and gas industry build the middle class,
35:39
Speaker 1: but attending a panel on data centers at the state
35:42
Speaker 1: GOP convention in June in Houston awakened her to the
35:45
Speaker 1: differences between the industries. Panel experts, including her neighbor Michael Rice,
35:51
Speaker 1: forty six, who used to work at an Austin data center,
35:54
Speaker 1: explained that unlike oil rigs and refineries, data centers bring
35:58
Speaker 1: few jobsty proposed so far in Leon County, and even
36:02
Speaker 1: those are often staffed by workers from elsewhere. Milder and
36:07
Speaker 1: others at the commissioner's meeting said they resented paying taxes
36:10
Speaker 1: only to see data centers initially get tax exemptions effectively
36:14
Speaker 1: subsidized by residents the way manufacturing and solar industries have been.
36:19
Speaker 1: She told the commissioners were being held hostage for the
36:21
Speaker 1: money for them to build. We're trying to be as
36:24
Speaker 1: prepared as we can, said Commissioner Kyle Workman, a construction consultant.
36:29
Speaker 1: He said that unlike in Texas cities, the unincorporated communities
36:33
Speaker 1: limited government, which many in the audience historically favored, left
36:37
Speaker 1: commissioners with few tools to block the data centers. Leon
36:41
Speaker 1: County has kept government down over the years. Workmen said,
36:44
Speaker 1: there's limits to what we can do. Residents said they
36:48
Speaker 1: thought that was precisely why data center companies were targeting
36:51
Speaker 1: rural areas. Of the nearly two hundred and forty eight
36:55
Speaker 1: data center projects proposed statewide, nearly half are in unincorporated
37:00
Speaker 1: rural areas, where zoning and other restrictions cannot be used
37:03
Speaker 1: to block them. Residents worried that any state legislation that
37:08
Speaker 1: might help defend against the projects would not pass until
37:11
Speaker 1: late next year, too late to block the data center
37:14
Speaker 1: proposed by Crusoe and others expected to follow. Belltown Power
37:19
Speaker 1: has proposed building a nine hundred acre data center in
37:22
Speaker 1: Leon County, and Black Mountain, another North Texas based company,
37:27
Speaker 1: bought property and announced plans to build a massive power
37:30
Speaker 1: plant there. Milder said she alerted an advisor to the
37:33
Speaker 1: governor this year about growing local opposition in counties such
37:37
Speaker 1: as Leon. She reminded him that a majority of the
37:40
Speaker 1: state's two hundred and fifty four counties are rural and
37:43
Speaker 1: that they are a key part of Abbott and the
37:45
Speaker 1: GOP's conservative base. Texas has read because of rural Texans
37:50
Speaker 1: and we need to be listened to. Milder told him,
37:53
Speaker 1: you need to be concerned with what concerns us, and
37:56
Speaker 1: we're being raped and pillaged. Texas is poised to overtake
38:00
Speaker 1: Virginia as the nation's top data center hub by twenty thirty.
38:04
Speaker 1: A recent poll found fifty four or fifty six percent
38:08
Speaker 1: of Texans opposed data centers being built in their communities.
38:13
Speaker 1: They love our farmland because it's flat, it's clear, there's
38:16
Speaker 1: water and electricity there, and they can just come in
38:18
Speaker 1: and start building, GOP Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said at
38:23
Speaker 1: an anti data center protest outside the state capitol in Austin. Recently,
38:28
Speaker 1: the small crowd chanted special session now. After hailing Texas
38:33
Speaker 1: as the epicenter of AI development last fall, Abbott recently
38:37
Speaker 1: reversed course as he campaigns for reelection to a record
38:40
Speaker 1: fourth term, urging state lawmakers to repeal the centre's sales
38:44
Speaker 1: tax exemptions and regulate where they can be built. Last month,
38:49
Speaker 1: he ordered the state Public Utility Commission and Council managing
38:52
Speaker 1: the electro grid that covers most of the state to
38:55
Speaker 1: enforce restrictions on data centers, including requiring them to fully
38:59
Speaker 1: fund the callsts of electric infrastructure. We must prohibit them
39:03
Speaker 1: from building AI data centers and rural Texas neighborhoods Abbot
39:07
Speaker 1: said at a campaign step about ninety miles north of
39:09
Speaker 1: Centreville on June thirtieth. By the end of July, the
39:14
Speaker 1: governor announced that the state had begun sweeping changes to
39:16
Speaker 1: how data centers pay for the infrastructure needed to serve them,
39:20
Speaker 1: ensuring data centers do not shift those costs onto everyday
39:23
Speaker 1: Texans or place unnecessary strain on our state's resources. But
39:28
Speaker 1: Miller and Leon County conservatives said those stepduck regulations are
39:32
Speaker 1: not enough. They want Abbot to call a special legislative session,
39:36
Speaker 1: as he has done in recent years for conservative priorities
39:39
Speaker 1: such as school vouchers, congressional redistricting, and property tax cuts,
39:44
Speaker 1: to pause data center development and increase regulations in oversight.
39:49
Speaker 1: A spokesman for the governor declined to comment about whether
39:52
Speaker 1: Abbot will call for a special session on data centers.
39:55
Speaker 1: Governor Abbot has been clear that data centers cannot come
39:58
Speaker 1: before Texas Families. Spokesman Andrew Mahalaris said in a statement,
40:04
Speaker 1: noting that the state regulator's new requirements protect Texans from
40:09
Speaker 1: higher costs and negative impacts on their communities. Andrew Schmidt,
40:14
Speaker 1: a spokesman for Crusoe, said, Crusoe is committed to protecting
40:17
Speaker 1: the natural resources and character of every community where we operate,
40:21
Speaker 1: while ensuring local families benefit from our economic investment for
40:25
Speaker 1: generations to come. We are working closely with local leaders
40:28
Speaker 1: as we evaluate development in Leon County to address community
40:32
Speaker 1: needs and deliver jobs for local workers, along with significant
40:36
Speaker 1: new tax revenue for schools, public safety, and infrastructure. Daniel mccoslin,
40:41
Speaker 1: forty eight, is a retired railroad engineer who fought with
40:45
Speaker 1: the Marines in Iraq. He ranches land that's been in
40:48
Speaker 1: his family since the eighteen hundreds and that abuts the
40:52
Speaker 1: proposed Belltown data center site. A relative's ranch borders the
40:57
Speaker 1: Crusoe site. That's why mccauslin, allow libertarian who voted for
41:01
Speaker 1: Trump three times, organized a local anti data center group
41:05
Speaker 1: to educate neighbors. Mccauslin dismissed Abbott's recent data center regulations
41:10
Speaker 1: as pandering. In November, he plans to vote for a
41:13
Speaker 1: Democrat for the first time in his life. Clayton Tucker,
41:17
Speaker 1: a rancher running for Agriculture Commissioner as the anti data
41:20
Speaker 1: center candidate, has called for a data center moratorium. When
41:25
Speaker 1: data center companies started offering neighbors up to fifty thousand
41:28
Speaker 1: dollars an acre, life changing money. Mccauslin recalls talk at
41:33
Speaker 1: the feed store turning to whether folks would take the millions.
41:37
Speaker 1: Mccauslin was adamant he would not. Family means a lot
41:41
Speaker 1: more than money, he said. The evening after the commissioner's meeting,
41:45
Speaker 1: mccauslin helped organize a town hall to update neighbors. The
41:49
Speaker 1: crowd that settled into folding chairs at a local community
41:51
Speaker 1: center included plenty of retirees, at least one of them
41:55
Speaker 1: in a maga hat. There were also workers, some in
41:59
Speaker 1: volunteer firefighter T shirts, others instraw cowboy hats and boots
42:03
Speaker 1: with spurs. Organizers used a projector to display maps of
42:07
Speaker 1: the proposed data centers and power plant, and fielded questions
42:11
Speaker 1: about potential environmental and economic effects. How many jobs will
42:15
Speaker 1: they bring and for whom? While they pollute the ground
42:19
Speaker 1: and water, are they expected to decrease property values? Can
42:23
Speaker 1: they be stopped. Organizers displayed phone numbers and emails for
42:27
Speaker 1: Abbott and other state and local GOP lawmakers. They urged
42:31
Speaker 1: residents to contact the officials with data center concerns. We'll
42:36
Speaker 1: be calling, said Mandy Williams forty six, as she left
42:39
Speaker 1: the meeting with her husband and towheaded four year old daughter,
42:43
Speaker 1: Violet in a Cowgirl Forever t shirt. The couple live
42:47
Speaker 1: on the eastern side of the county on a cattle
42:49
Speaker 1: ranch of more than two hundred acres. Stephen William's ancestors
42:53
Speaker 1: settled the land when Texas gained independence from Mexico in
42:56
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, nine years before it became a state.
43:01
Speaker 1: Like many other Texans, owning land is part of his identity,
43:04
Speaker 1: a birthright he feels a duty to steward. Hopefully we
43:08
Speaker 1: get enough pressure on him, Stephen Williams forty six said
43:12
Speaker 1: of the governor. When commissioners met Monday, they did not
43:15
Speaker 1: take action on the tax breaks and told residents that
43:18
Speaker 1: Crusoe had yet to reapply. Milder said back at his
43:22
Speaker 1: modest ranch house, McCaslin pointed to turn of the century
43:25
Speaker 1: black and white foot portraits of his ancestors taken under
43:28
Speaker 1: the oaks just steps away. At night, you can hear
43:31
Speaker 1: how quiet it is and see so many stars, he said,
43:34
Speaker 1: describing his evening routine of settling outside to smoke a
43:37
Speaker 1: cigar and sip bourbon. His only soundtrack the crickets, frogs,
43:41
Speaker 1: and occasional coyote. We don't want twenty four hour industrial
43:45
Speaker 1: hum and lights destroying the sky. If I wanted that,
43:49
Speaker 1: I'd live in Houston for our next article. Democrats demand
43:55
Speaker 1: briefing on Trump's secret flight from Turkey. Senate Minority Leader
43:59
Speaker 1: Chuck Shah Humor said the White House kept Congress in
44:02
Speaker 1: the dark about last month's ruse to avoid an Iranian
44:05
Speaker 1: threat by kat Zikzewski. Senate Minordy leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat
44:12
Speaker 1: from New York, on Tuesday, demanded that the White House
44:15
Speaker 1: immediately brief Congress on the secret flight that President Donald
44:18
Speaker 1: Trump took out of Turkey last month, a day after
44:22
Speaker 1: The Washington Post first reported that an Iranian assassination threat
44:26
Speaker 1: prompted the White House to conduct an elaborate ruse to
44:28
Speaker 1: conceal the president's travel. It is unacceptable that Congress was
44:32
Speaker 1: kept in the dark and instead learned about this serious
44:35
Speaker 1: threat through press reports. Schumer wrote in a statement, Trump
44:39
Speaker 1: has put America's sons and daughters in harm's way by
44:41
Speaker 1: getting into an unnecessary and reckless war, and this administration
44:45
Speaker 1: has repeatedly refused to provide Congress in the public with
44:48
Speaker 1: the transparency they deserve. On July eighth, Trump flew secretly
44:54
Speaker 1: from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft, while the White
44:58
Speaker 1: House said he was aboard the Old Air Force. After
45:02
Speaker 1: boarding the Old Air Force one in view of cameras,
45:04
Speaker 1: Trump was secretly shuttled to an Air Force C three
45:07
Speaker 1: two A and a catering truck without the knowledge of
45:10
Speaker 1: media and some White House staff aboard the plane. The
45:14
Speaker 1: senator's statement reveals that the White House concealed the operation
45:18
Speaker 1: at least from Democratic members of Congress. In addition to Schumer,
45:22
Speaker 1: Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the
45:25
Speaker 1: Senate Intelligence Committee, was also not briefed on the assassination
45:29
Speaker 1: threat and subsequent ruse, according to a spokesperson for his office,
45:34
Speaker 1: Both are members of the Gang of Eight, the group
45:36
Speaker 1: of leaders from both parties and both houses of Congress
45:39
Speaker 1: who traditionally received top secret briefings from the executive Branch
45:43
Speaker 1: on Intelligence and Sensitive Covert Operations. Representatives for Republican congressional leaders,
45:50
Speaker 1: including Senator John Thune of South Dakota and House Speaker
45:54
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson of Louisiana, did not respond to requests for
45:58
Speaker 1: comment about whether they were aware of the operation. The
46:02
Speaker 1: extraordinary episode has raised questions about the measures the administration
46:05
Speaker 1: took to conceal the president's location from the public and
46:08
Speaker 1: other parts of the US government for hours. No law
46:12
Speaker 1: requires the White House to inform Congress of the president's whereabouts,
46:16
Speaker 1: but past administrations have made extensive efforts to keep the
46:19
Speaker 1: public and lawmakers informed. When presidents have engaged in secret omissions.
46:24
Speaker 1: In the past, they have typically briefed some members of
46:27
Speaker 1: the media and permitted them to share details of the
46:29
Speaker 1: operations with the public once the president was out of danger.
46:33
Speaker 1: Even now, weeks after the fact, the White House is
46:36
Speaker 1: not being forthright with the American people about where the
46:39
Speaker 1: president was, how he traveled, and why, said Ned Price,
46:43
Speaker 1: who served in the Biden administration as deputy to the
46:46
Speaker 1: US Ambassador to the United Nations and as a senior
46:49
Speaker 1: adviser and spokesperson in the State Department. They're continuing to
46:53
Speaker 1: lie to the American people. The White House did not
46:56
Speaker 1: immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump Press Secretary
47:01
Speaker 1: Carolyn Livett and other top administration officials have not publicly
47:05
Speaker 1: addressed the mission since the Post published its report. As
47:09
Speaker 1: he traveled to Ohio on Tuesday afternoon to watch a
47:11
Speaker 1: high school athletic competition called the Patriot Games, Trump boarded
47:16
Speaker 1: his new Qatari supplied Air Force One without speaking to reporters.
47:22
Speaker 1: Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Connecticut, also called for a briefing,
47:28
Speaker 1: saying Monday night on CNN that the revelations of the
47:30
Speaker 1: flight were downright scary. The Secret Service should be credited
47:35
Speaker 1: with an evasive maneuver, or as they call it, a
47:38
Speaker 1: deceptive operation to keep the president safe, Blumenthal said, but
47:43
Speaker 1: remember that there continued to be reporters and staff and
47:46
Speaker 1: military on the Legacy Air Force One, which then flew
47:49
Speaker 1: without the President, and I'd like to know what was
47:52
Speaker 1: done to keep them safe for our next article. It
47:56
Speaker 1: may be possible to catch a daytime meteor shower thanks
47:59
Speaker 1: to a solar eclipse. A total solar eclipse will sweep
48:03
Speaker 1: across parts of Greenland, Iceland, and Spain on Wednesday. Skywatchers
48:08
Speaker 1: can also expect to see the Persed meteor shower by
48:12
Speaker 1: Matthew Capucci. A total solar eclipse will grace the sky's
48:16
Speaker 1: Wednesday in a roughly one hundred eighty mile wide corridor
48:20
Speaker 1: across eastern Greenland, Western Iceland, and Spain, allowing the Sun's
48:25
Speaker 1: shimmering white atmosphere to visibly fan into space. As if
48:29
Speaker 1: the scene wasn't already awe evoking enough, skywatchers may also
48:34
Speaker 1: notice something else, a rogue meteor or two. The Persied
48:38
Speaker 1: meteor shower also peaks on Wednesday night. The Persied Mediate
48:42
Speaker 1: shower will be most active between Tuesday and Thursday. More
48:46
Speaker 1: than seventy five meteears per hour may be visible under clear,
48:49
Speaker 1: dark skies. The Perseeds are widely heralded as the best
48:54
Speaker 1: meteor shower of a year, but what makes this one
48:57
Speaker 1: particularly notable is that there hasn't been a solar eclipse
49:00
Speaker 1: during the shower since August eleventh, nineteen ninety nine. One
49:05
Speaker 1: tracked over France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Romania, Turkey, and Iran.
49:11
Speaker 1: Meteors colloquially known as shooting stars, are usually visible only
49:15
Speaker 1: at night, but the eclipses artificially induced nightfall may make
49:20
Speaker 1: it dark enough to at least momentarily catch a couple
49:23
Speaker 1: of meteors. In the same regions, the eclipse won't spell
49:27
Speaker 1: a full nightfall. Rather, it will be a somnolent twilight.
49:31
Speaker 1: Any fainter meteors will probably be outshined, but the perseads
49:35
Speaker 1: are rich in fireballs meteors brighter than venus. In fact,
49:40
Speaker 1: the perseeds produce more fireballs than any other meteor shower.
49:44
Speaker 1: Especially bright meteors should be visible during totality. If they're
49:48
Speaker 1: favorably timed. It will be random, but someone should get
49:52
Speaker 1: lucky in Greenland, Iceland, Spain, or the Mediterranean. Meteors are
49:57
Speaker 1: small pieces of space born debris burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
50:02
Speaker 1: While it takes only a tiny pebble to spark a meteor,
50:05
Speaker 1: proceeds are the size of a grain of puffed rice.
50:09
Speaker 1: These shooting stars happen to be coming from Comet Swift Tunnel,
50:13
Speaker 1: which last made its closest pass by Earth and the
50:16
Speaker 1: Sun in the early nineteen nineties. Next when do the
50:20
Speaker 1: perseeds occur? This year is particularly lucky for viewing, since
50:25
Speaker 1: there will be no visible moon to outshine the fainter meteors.
50:28
Speaker 1: Because of a new moon phase, the meteors should be
50:31
Speaker 1: easier to view. The timing of the shower on Wednesday
50:35
Speaker 1: also coincides with total solar eclipse visibility in Western Europe.
50:41
Speaker 1: To enjoy the meteors, simply find a clear, dark location
50:45
Speaker 1: looking close to midnight. Where you are is best. There's
50:48
Speaker 1: no specific part of the sky on which to train
50:50
Speaker 1: your eyes. Generally, the more ordinary stars you see, the
50:55
Speaker 1: more shooting stars you'll see too. That's why rural areas
50:58
Speaker 1: away from city lights or ideas. Give your eyes a
51:01
Speaker 1: few minutes to adjust to the darkness. Then sit back, relax,
51:05
Speaker 1: and enjoy the show. The perseods occur every August as
51:09
Speaker 1: Earth plows through the same pocket of debris. Imagine if
51:12
Speaker 1: there was a swarm of bugs in your neighborhood that
51:14
Speaker 1: never moved. Each time you drove through them, you'd get
51:17
Speaker 1: a few smears on your windshield. That's why we predictably
51:20
Speaker 1: get the perseods every August as we traverse the debris
51:23
Speaker 1: stream at the same point in our annual orbit. How
51:27
Speaker 1: do meteors work The secret lies in their speed. They
51:31
Speaker 1: burn up in the outer atmosphere while traveling thirty seven
51:34
Speaker 1: miles per second. As the pebbles encounter air resistance, frictional
51:39
Speaker 1: heating makes them scorching hot. The burning of the meteors
51:42
Speaker 1: is mostly responsible for the light we see. Their elemental
51:46
Speaker 1: composition determines their colors. They shine pink, gold, purple, orange,
51:51
Speaker 1: and blue because of nitrogen, oxygen, iron, calcium, sodium, and magnesium, respectively.
51:59
Speaker 1: Sometimes times, the meteors move fast enough to compress a
52:02
Speaker 1: cushion of air ahead of them, heating up and causing
52:05
Speaker 1: the air to momentarily glow. That can lead leave a
52:08
Speaker 1: glowing trail for a few seconds for our next article.
52:14
Speaker 1: Trump officials tout Medicaid financing changes ahead of mid terms.
52:18
Speaker 1: An administration report projects that limiting provider taxes and state
52:22
Speaker 1: directed payments could tamp down cost of growth of health care.
52:27
Speaker 1: Democrats have pledged to reverse the GOP's Medicaid changes. By
52:32
Speaker 1: Dan Diamond, Republican sponsored changes in Medicaid will lower hospital
52:37
Speaker 1: prices and Americans health insurance premiums. The White House contents
52:40
Speaker 1: in a new report aimed at an issue that could
52:43
Speaker 1: be central to this year's midterm elections. The report, which
52:47
Speaker 1: has not yet been released, was authored by senior officials
52:50
Speaker 1: in the Department of Health and Human Services and shared
52:53
Speaker 1: with The Washington Post. It examines the examines the potential
52:57
Speaker 1: impact of two significant changes in how Medicaid is financed
53:01
Speaker 1: that were included in last year's Republican budget bill. The
53:05
Speaker 1: changes could affect tens of billions of dollars in annual
53:08
Speaker 1: federal spending. Last year's legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill,
53:13
Speaker 1: put new restrictions on two financing mechanisms used by states,
53:17
Speaker 1: known as provider taxes and state directed payments to help
53:21
Speaker 1: pay for their safety net healthcare programs. Administration officials and
53:25
Speaker 1: GOP lawmakers say the bill closed loopholes that allow allowed
53:29
Speaker 1: states and health care providers to draw down additional federal
53:33
Speaker 1: funds with too few guardrails, inflate their spending, and wrongly
53:37
Speaker 1: pass costs along to consumers. The administration's report projects that
53:42
Speaker 1: the restrictions could reduce government health care spending by as
53:45
Speaker 1: much as five per cent and help tamp down cost growth,
53:49
Speaker 1: including for people who have private health insurance. The Republican
53:53
Speaker 1: budget bill, which passed using a process known as reconciliation,
53:57
Speaker 1: cut about one trillion dollars from Medicaid and other health
54:00
Speaker 1: care programs. Health care advocates and Democrats have said that
54:04
Speaker 1: the Medicaid financing structures the bill curtailed provide critical funding
54:10
Speaker 1: for states and health care providers. They warned that Trump's
54:13
Speaker 1: new limits could lead to declining Medicaid enrollment, closure of
54:17
Speaker 1: rural hospitals, and other adverse effects. I don't think that
54:21
Speaker 1: there's any merit to the cuts that they have been making,
54:23
Speaker 1: said Jessica Schubell, who served as a senior health official
54:27
Speaker 1: in the Biden White House. This idea that provider taxes
54:31
Speaker 1: or state directed payments are somehow skirting the objectives of
54:34
Speaker 1: Medicaid and are being used improperly, in my opinion, is false.
54:38
Speaker 1: Trump's cuts to Medicaid have also become a major issue
54:41
Speaker 1: in Democrats' congressional campaigns. Protect Our Care, a left leaning
54:46
Speaker 1: advocacy group, last month launched a new national healthcare campaign
54:51
Speaker 1: dubbed Sick of It, which calls for electing Democrats who
54:54
Speaker 1: will reverse the GOP's Medicaid changes. Some Democrats, however, s
55:00
Speaker 1: that provider taxes and state directed payments, while well intentioned,
55:04
Speaker 1: have become problematic and contributed to health care cost inflation.
55:08
Speaker 1: It has been a disaster for the federal budget, and
55:10
Speaker 1: it's been a disaster in terms of a misdirection of
55:13
Speaker 1: Medicaid dollars to hospitals, said Anne Kempsey, a long time
55:17
Speaker 1: health care consultant and Democrat. These had to be rained in.
55:22
Speaker 1: White House officials too, have characterized their new limits on
55:25
Speaker 1: Medicaid financing as a necessary reform. Health Care advocates and
55:30
Speaker 1: Democrats are coming from a perspective of every dollar spent
55:33
Speaker 1: on Medicaid is a good thing, said a White House official.
55:37
Speaker 1: We want to make sure that the resources are being
55:39
Speaker 1: targeted in a way that they're actually reaching what they're
55:41
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, which is providing better care for beneficiaries.
55:46
Speaker 1: Forty nine states in the District of Columbia have provider taxes,
55:50
Speaker 1: which they levy on healthcare providers. Medicaid is financed jointly
55:55
Speaker 1: by states and the federal government, and the provider taxes
55:58
Speaker 1: trigger a flow of a daytional federal funds, with the
56:02
Speaker 1: money going back to providers and also being used for
56:04
Speaker 1: unrelated state priorities. State directed payments have been used to
56:09
Speaker 1: direct additional funds to healthcare providers through Medicaid managed care programs.
56:15
Speaker 1: The new limits on provider taxes and state directed payments
56:18
Speaker 1: were overshadowed last year by some other Medicaid changes in
56:21
Speaker 1: the GOP bill, such as efforts to impose new work
56:25
Speaker 1: requirements on people who get Medicaid coverage. I think the
56:29
Speaker 1: most impactful change of all the Medicaid and ACA changes
56:32
Speaker 1: in the reconciliation bill was the limit on SDPs, said
56:36
Speaker 1: Brian Blasee, a conservative health policy expert who served in
56:40
Speaker 1: the first Trump administration. Blaze's think tank, the Paragon Health Institute,
56:45
Speaker 1: last year urged Congressional Republicans to impose new limits on
56:49
Speaker 1: provider taxes and SDPs. The administration's report on its Medicaid
56:54
Speaker 1: changes relies on projections of their impact and does not
56:57
Speaker 1: draw on empirical evidence. It is authored by senior Health
57:00
Speaker 1: and Human Services officials, including Casey Mulligan, the agency's chief economist,
57:06
Speaker 1: and g Buy, who President Donald Trump has nominated to
57:09
Speaker 1: serve as the agency's Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
57:14
Speaker 1: This concludes the reading of the Washington Post for to Day,
57:17
Speaker 1: August thirteenth, twenty twenty six. Your reader for to Day
57:21
Speaker 1: has been Greta. Thank you for listening, and now please
57:24
Speaker 1: stay tuned for continued programming here on Radio I