On today’s show: Israel and Hamas have agreed to pause fighting in Gaza but the deal is already under threat. The Wall Street Journal explains. Biden bid Americans farewell from the Oval Office last night, and Reuters’ Andrea Shalal told us why he’s leaving with such low public approval. The Trace’s Samantha Storey explains what 10 years of shooting data reveals about the state of America’s gun-violence epidemic. Plus, a controversial Trump ally is sailing through confirmation hearings to serve in his Cabinet, what to know about the FDA’s new ban on red dye No. 3, and Starbucks says if you want to hang out in its stores, you’ll now have to pay up. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Gaza ceasefire deal?
This is Apple News Today. On today's show, Biden gives his final address from the Oval Office. What a decade of data reveals about the gun violence epidemic in America. And what to know about the FDA's new ban on red food dye. But first, to the Gaza ceasefire deal, and news this morning that it might be under threat.
Yesterday, Hamas leadership confirmed it had reached a deal with Israel, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the agreement and urged the Israeli government to accept it. But The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accusing Hamas of reneging on parts of the agreement, which Hamas denies.
The Israeli cabinet has postponed their meeting to approve the deal, which was supposed to take effect on Sunday, initiating a six-week pause in fighting. Israel launched more airstrikes in the Gaza Strip overnight, where health authorities have reported at least 70 fatalities in the last 24 hours. A senior Hamas official said early today that Hamas is still committed to the agreement.
According to a draft of that agreement reviewed by the journal, during the first phase of the ceasefire, Israeli forces said they would withdraw from populated areas and 33 hostages were set to be released from Gaza. That included women, children, people with severe injuries. people over the age of 50, and two American hostages.
Hamas had also agreed to return the bodies of hostages who died, and Israeli negotiators had agreed to release hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. And they were going to return to negotiations after a couple of weeks to discuss the possibility of a permanent ceasefire.
The journal reports that the terms of this ceasefire agreement weren't substantially different from the offers put forward months ago, when more hostages were still alive and before thousands of Palestinians lost their lives. More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed, roughly one out of every 50 residents of Gaza.
Last night, before news that the deal might be jeopardized, President Biden spoke from the Oval Office, saying his team had worked hard to secure a deal and that they'd involved Trump's team to make sure all would go smoothly with Trump taking office next week. But now, as this dispute between Israel and Hamas plays out, the U.S. transition of power is far from the top concern.
This is a fast-changing story this morning. You can follow along for the latest in the Apple News app. Let's turn to what else President Biden said in that speech last night, a farewell address in which he said goodbye to the country and to his five-decade career in public office.
This will be my final address to you from the American people from the Oval Office, from this desk as president. And I've been thinking a lot about who we are and maybe more importantly, who we should be.
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Chapter 2: What did Biden say in his farewell address?
Biden touted his accomplishments from boosting manufacturing in the United States through legislation, investing in infrastructure, and guiding the country through the pandemic. And he told the American people as he leaves office he is most concerned about the consolidation of power among America's most wealthy, particularly in the tech sector. And he called for tax reforms for the ultra-wealthy.
An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
He also spoke about the risks of allowing artificial intelligence to continue being developed without regulatory guardrails.
Unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy. how we work and how we protect our nation.
Polls show Biden is leaving at a low point when it comes to public support. A majority of people are dissatisfied with his performance. A new CNN survey found just 36% of Americans approve of the job Biden did as president. And Biden's approval numbers are especially poor on immigration and the economy. So what went wrong for Biden on domestic issues?
He did sign some major pieces of legislation, especially early in his presidency. But many of the benefits of those bills will take a long time for Americans to feel in their daily lives, something Biden himself acknowledged in a recent interview with USA Today. Andrea Shalal, White House correspondent for Reuters, spoke with us about that.
For most Americans, the bridges, the roads, the factory down the road, those things matter, but they matter in a very diffuse and not tangible way. And what they felt was the price of eggs, the price of gasoline, the price of housing.
On the border, meanwhile, the increase in illegal crossings overwhelmed many states and cities. The Biden administration and Congress haggled over how to respond, only for Trump to kill a deal Biden reached with Senate Republicans. Biden responded by taking executive actions to restrict asylum requests, a move Republicans said he should have done all along.
Shalal told us Biden also is seen to have fallen short on police reform. Biden came into office shortly after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. It took two years before he signed an executive order aimed at preventing police misconduct. And then, of course, probably the most consequential bucket of issues to voters, the economy.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Biden face during his presidency?
They talked about the importance of ensuring that people can afford child care and housing. And coming out of COVID, we saw that so many caregivers in the economy either don't get paid at all or get paid very little. And many, many working Americans are struggling to have the resources. Their incomes don't cover the cost, really high cost of childcare, high cost of housing.
And so there were promises made to try to address that.
But, as Shalal told us, efforts to extend the child tax credit during the pandemic or invest in universal pre-K ultimately didn't come to fruition. Prices remained stubbornly high after the pandemic, and in the absence of additional federal assistance, it was much harder for Americans to cope. And all of that translated onto the campaign trail.
Once public concerns about Biden's age and ability to serve came to the foreground, fueled by his disastrous performance in the first debate with Trump, his age and mental fitness became an overwhelming concern for voters and was added to the list of reasons many wanted to change.
The Democrats lost this election, and I think it's just a heavy time for him to be leaving office and to know that much of what he worked for and his administration worked for may be unwound and undone.
Every year, tens of thousands of people lose their lives to gun violence in America. That's according to The Trace, which analyzed 10 years of shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive. And in that analysis, reporters uncovered some surprising trends they say challenge what people think about gun violence in the U.S., First, where gun violence occurs.
According to the Trace's analysis, of the 20 cities and towns with the highest rates of shootings, half of them were not large cities. They were in communities of less than one million people.
We noticed that 13 out of 20 of the cities were located in the South. That's Samantha Story, managing editor at The Trace. Places like Selma, Alabama, Clarksdale, Mississippi, places you wouldn't expect to have a higher shooting rate per capita than, say, Chicago or Philadelphia, which are more typically known for having high rates of shootings.
Even though the numbers tell a different story, that hasn't stopped politicians from pushing the narrative that large Democratic-run cities are overrun with gun violence. According to the Trace's analysis, many of those cities are actually getting safer.
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Chapter 4: How did Biden's approval ratings reflect public sentiment?
A lot of politicians will tend to sort of tell the story of there being terrible crime in all of these like inner cities. It's something that Trump definitely talked a lot about on the campaign trail. And that's just not always the truth of the matter.
The trace analysis found another trend, an alarming frequency of shootings near schools. 188,000 shootings over the last decade occurred within 500 yards of a school. That's to say, not school shootings, but shootings within a few blocks of a school. In 2023 alone, the trace notes that 6 million kids attended a school that had at least one shooting nearby.
So kids, say, in Philadelphia have to walk past crime tape in the morning on their way to and from school. And that to me was really eye-opening because so much of what we hear about in the media about school shootings are school shootings that take place actually in the schools, on the school grounds.
The Trace also noted that road rage gun incidents over the decades surged more than 400 percent. And overall, angry drivers shot more than 3,000 people. And while many states passed laws allowing people to carry firearms in public without a permit or training, which gun rights supporters said would deter shootings, those laws did not have that effect.
16 of the 20 states that passed these types of laws actually saw more shooting deaths. We'll include a link to their full analysis on our show notes page. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following today. As confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet continue, Politico took a closer look at Trump's pick to lead the Department of Justice, Pam Bondi, whose hearing continues today.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Biden's policies on the economy?
She appears to be on track for a smooth confirmation, despite concerns from Democrats about her history as a Trump loyalist. As the former attorney general of Florida, she represented Trump in his first impeachment trial. She also supported his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
But in her confirmation hearings, Politico reports, Senate Democrats don't seem to feel that sinking her nomination is worth the political capital. They alone don't have the votes to do it, for one. And for some of them, Bondi is more palatable than Trump's original choice, Matt Gaetz. Onto an announcement from Starbucks.
The coffee chain says if you want to use their bathrooms and hang around in their stores, you got to pay up. It's a reversal of a policy at most Starbucks locations that their bathrooms were free to the public.
CNN describes it as a move to deter people from using Starbucks as a sort of third place aside from work and home, a hangout spot where you didn't necessarily need to spend money to be there. It's also particularly aimed at unhoused people looking for a safe place to shelter.
And lastly, on to reporting from the Los Angeles Times on the FDA's decision to ban red dye number three and what took so long. Red dye number three has been shown to cause cancer in rats. And for humans, officials banned it in cosmetics and drugs applied to the skin in 1990.
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Chapter 6: How did Biden handle issues related to immigration?
The Times reports the biological process that causes cancer in rats does not occur in humans, which is why it was allowed to be used as a food coloring. But the FDA says they're now going by a more strict law called the Delaney Clause, which states that no color additive can be deemed safe if they're shown to cause cancer in animals or humans.
Companies have two years to reformulate their recipes and eliminate the dye. By the way, just because something is red doesn't mean it necessarily has red 3. Swedish fish, for example, not red 3. Candy corn, surprisingly, contains red 3 dye. If you're not sure, it's best to check the ingredients. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next from The Atlantic. As Americans spend more time alone, it's changing our politics, our personalities, and our relationships. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.