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The fight over Israel’s plans to limit its Supreme Court · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Monday, July 24th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show: The fight over Israel's future, a conservation success story for the American buffalo, and what the U.S. team is up against this week at the Women's World Cup.
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  Let's start in Israel today, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political coalition is expected to pass a law that will limit the power of the country's Supreme Court. It's a plan that'll remove an important check on the Prime Minister's influence. But more broadly, it's come to represent a bigger battle over the future of the country, between those wanting a more secular and pluralist society versus those who want a religious, nationalist one.
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  This is why tens of thousands of people marched into Jerusalem over the weekend, packing the streets outside of parliament, a culmination of many months of anti-government protests.
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  [CAR HORNS]
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  "The Wall Street Journal" has a solid explainer on the conflict over Israel's identity and why many in the ultra-Orthodox community are in favor of limiting the power of the courts.
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  The way the "Journal" puts it, since Israel's founding, mandatory military service for Jewish Israelis has largely been seen as a unifying force in a divided society. But many ultra-Orthodox men don't do it. They say they're serving the country in a different way, by studying holy texts and preserving religious tradition. Twice now, the country's Supreme Court has struck down legislation that would exempt ultra-Orthodox Jews from mandatory military service, saying that would be unfair and unequal. This is one reason why many would like to see the Supreme Court's power shrink.
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  And Netanyahu needs their support. Right now, his coalition relies on backing from two ultra-Orthodox political parties. Without them, he wouldn't have the seats in government to pass laws like judicial overhaul. Already, though, he's losing support within the military. Over the past few weeks, more than one thousand reservists have said they'll refuse to show up for voluntary duty if legislative changes are pushed through, and more than one hundred air force personnel said they'll stop their service in protest.
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  Aside from the military service part, many secular Israelis are critical of subsidies, exemptions, and political capital granted to the ultra-Orthodox community. About half of ultra-Orthodox men don't work, living off a combination of their wives’ salaries, charity, and government subsidies. The community has a higher birthrate than the general population. According to the Israeli central bureau of statistics, ultra-Orthodox Israelis are on pace to be nearly one-third of country's population by 2065. Today's reforms represent another big shift in the government toward a more religious society.
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  Now to some other big stories from the weekend.
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  In Greece, wildfires forced the largest-ever evacuation in the country's history. Tens of thousands of tourists and residents were forced to flee the island of Rhodes. Firefighters have been battling raging blazes there for nearly a week. "CNN" spoke with travelers at the airport who were trying to make their way home.
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  Helen Pickering: It was chaos. Absolutely. The surges towards, you know, the two or three busses that arrived, and everyone screaming and shouting and crying because people couldn't even get on their flights yesterday and were desperate to get home.
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  In addition to the fires, Greece is dealing with extremely high temperatures, as are several other European countries. There are record highs across parts of the continent. Officials in Greece, Italy and Spain are encouraging both residents and tourists to take precautions, like staying out of direct sun during the hottest parts of the day.
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  And the extreme heat in the United States is showing no signs of letting up either. The heat wave that started in the spring is expected to expand into the central and eastern parts of the country over the next week. And federal forecasters have issued excessive heat warnings and heat advisories for several states, including California, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon.
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  And in box office news, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" smashed expectations in their debut weekend. "Barbie" earned $155 million and the title of biggest opening weekend of the year. "Oppenheimer" pulled in $80 million. A lot of people leaned into the "Barbenheimer" hype, seeing both films back-to-back, and turning what could have been a box office battle into a box office partnership, with hundreds of thousands of ticket-buyers choosing same-day viewings. It was the fourth-biggest weekend in cinema history, or, as industry experts told "Variety," an "unequivocally great weekend for movie-going."
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  This summer in Montana, National Geographic got a special invitation to photograph an important conservation success story. Buffalo are being released back into the wild in America by Blackfeet tribal members who've worked hard to restore the population and reintroduce them to their original habitat, on Blackfeet Nation tribal lands.
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  Lailani Upham: Our identity and where we come from is really all around the bison or the eenie.
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  Basu, Narrating: Journalist Lailani Upham is a member of the Blackfeet Nation. She told us, the buffalo are central to their culture and their history. And she described for us the moment that the buffalo were reunited with the land.
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  Upham: The sound of the thunder of them just going and heading out toward Chief Mountain was like, the most remarkable feeling and witnessing that, that our ancestors were home and that they were free, and they were where they were supposed to be.
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  Basu, Narrating: There used to be millions of American buffalo, but as colonizers pushed westward, the species was brought to the edge of extinction. Just 300 were alive by the end of the 19th century.
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  Bringing the buffalo back has been a project years in the making. Conservationists brought them down from Canada in 2016 and raised them to be released into the wild.
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  Upham: This particular herd has the pure DNA of the original herd that was here within our Nititawahsi lands.
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  Basu, Narrating: Upham told us, the experience has been healing for the Blackfeet Nation. This was the lifetime goal of their honorary chief, who died in 2021.
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  Upham: And it kind of bothered me at one point that he wasn't here to see it, but I know he was with the rest of the ancestors, so maybe he was supposed to be on that other side to be able to see this happen with the old ones, and they're rejoicing in victory.
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  Basu, Narrating: It's National Geographic, so of course they've got some really beautiful, scenic photography that captures the buffalo's return to their homeland. You can see those images in the Apple News app.
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  The U.S. won that match three-nil. And despite huge broadcast competition with Lionel Messi taking the field for the first time in Miami, the U.S. women's match was the second most watched group stage game ever on English language television. At its peak, more than 6.5 million viewers tuned in, according to "Fox Sports."
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  Julie Foudy: I think it's just a very different animal now.
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  That's Julie Foudy. She was part of the 1999 team and is one of the most accomplished women's soccer players ever. She told "After the Whistle" hosts Brendan Hunt and Rebecca Lowe that when she was playing, she couldn't have imagined this kind of support.
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  Julie Foudy: I mean, we were literally trying to like, knock on doors, going, "Hey! You should really come to this World Cup because let me tell you, there's this girl named Mia Hamm, and then this woman named Brandi who likes to get naked and take her shirt off."
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  [REBECCA LAUGHS]
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  Julie Foudy: I mean, we were selling, selling, selling. It was all about butts in seats. Now it's a very different, you know, they're walking in, in their designer suits. I was like, we did not have designer suits when we played. This is fabulous.
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  And Foudy says, with this much support comes high expectations. On Wednesday, the U.S. will face a big test: They play the Netherlands, the two teams faced off in the last World Cup finals.
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  Julie Foudy: It's gonna be a good game, for sure. And I think it's one the U.S. needs to at least get a point. If they can get three outta that, obviously they're sitting pretty and could take that group, and then that road is a lot easier. But yeah, it's a really good team. A very different game than Vietnam and some of the games they've been playing, Wales, Ireland, who play a more compact, like, we're gonna sit back 'cause we know the U.S. is gonna kill us if we don't. So, hopefully you'll see a little bit more of an open game and that suits the U.S. actually better.
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  [END "AFTER THE WHISTLE" ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  [OUTRO THEME]
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  Stick around to hear Julie Foudy's full interview on "After the Whistle." We'll queue that up to play for you next, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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