On today’s show: House Speaker Mike Johnson introduced a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown scheduled for Friday. NBC News reports that Trump is on board but that it’s unclear if Republicans have the votes to pass the bill in either chamber. Sanne Wass, a reporter in Denmark for Bloomberg, joins to discuss how Trump’s comments about taking over Greenland have shaken up the territory’s upcoming elections. The Wall Street Journal’s Kristina Peterson explains the push to eliminate soda from SNAP benefits. Plus, the measles outbreak in Texas gets worse, violence in Syria has killed more than 1,300 in just a few days, and Canada’s Liberal Party chooses Trudeau’s successor. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What are the key issues in this week's government funding bill?
Good morning. It's Monday, March 10th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, Greenland votes on the future of the island. Should food stamps pay for soda? And Canada's Liberal Party selects Trudeau's successor. But first, a big week for lawmakers in Washington as a partial government shutdown is set to begin Friday.
Over the weekend, Speaker Mike Johnson introduced a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government funded through September. Included in the bill is a slight increase in defense spending, totaling around $892 billion, and a small cut to non-defense spending, totaling around $708 billion.
The bill also adds an additional $485 million for ICE, a $20 billion cut to IRS enforcement, and an additional half billion dollars for WIC, the federal program that provides grocery assistance for low-income women and children. Here's Speaker Johnson talking to reporters in the halls of Capitol Hill about the bill.
I believe we'll pass it along to party lines, but I think every Democrat should vote for the CR. It is a fundamental responsibility we have to fund the government, and a clean CR with a few minor anomalies is not something that they should vote against, so we'll see what they do.
Chapter 2: Why are Democrats opposing the current spending bill?
Democrats came out quickly against the bill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a statement with party leadership, criticized it for not explicitly protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called the domestic cuts in the bill a power grab by Trump and Elon Musk.
Here she is speaking to MSNBC yesterday.
It's a blank check to Elon Musk and to President Trump. And it allows them what I call, this is stealing. This is stealing taxpayers' dollars.
Chapter 3: What is President Trump's stance on the spending bill?
President Trump voiced his support for the proposed spending bill, posting on social media that all Republicans should vote yes and that, quote, we have to remain united, no dissent. That's, of course, because Republicans have only two votes to spare in the House. But a number of Republicans who in the past were against these types of stopgap measures are now saying they will support it.
Typically, I am not for a continued resolution because we ought to pass our appropriation bills in time.
That's Representative Ralph Norman, a Republican from South Carolina and member of the Conservative House Freedom Caucus, speaking to Fox News.
I think that having a government shutdown now is not the proper thing.
He went on to say what's different now is the work that Doge is doing, which he agrees with. NPR has been reviewing the claims made by the Doge team and comparing them with federal contract data and has so far found that the Trump administration is overstating the estimated savings totals by billions of dollars.
If some of this to-the-brink spending negotiating sounds familiar, it's because it is. Late last year, heavy pressure and threats from Trump and Elon Musk torpedoed a bipartisan agreement in favor of the smaller current spending resolution that's set to expire on Friday.
The New York Times reports this time around, bipartisan talks had been underway to find a way to pass a bill and wrestle some control back from President Trump on spending issues. But Republicans ran out of time and are hoping to instead push through what they can on party line votes. Speaker Johnson says he'll bring the bill to the floor tomorrow.
President Trump has threatened for weeks now that he wants America to take Greenland, a large island in the Arctic Ocean with a population of 56,000 people. In fact, he specifically called out his intentions in last week's joint address to Congress.
We need it really for international world security. And I think we're going to get it. One way or the other, we're going to get it.
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Chapter 4: Why is President Trump interested in Greenland?
That's Bloomberg reporter Sana Vass, based in Denmark.
It will really define the future for Greenland, of course, but it will ultimately also impact a lot of other things, geopolitics and potentially the whole path of Greenland's independence and future partners.
In tomorrow's parliamentary elections, Greenlanders will be deciding whether to support politicians who have called for independence from Denmark, which colonized Greenland 300 years ago. It was a Danish colony until 1953. Today, Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark that receives annual funding from Copenhagen to fund its police, judiciary and defense, among other things.
But with Trump now vying to take control, it's given voters there more to think about. Some believe it's even more important to be independent. Others argue that separating from Denmark could make it far more vulnerable to the threat of American colonization. Vass told us a few reasons why Trump sees Greenland as valuable. Aside from it already being home to a U.S.
Chapter 5: How are Greenland's elections influenced by international politics?
military base that monitors space and missile threats, the island has a vast amount of natural resources, including rare earth minerals that are critical to high-tech industries.
And they are now becoming more accessible as the vast ice sheets in Greenland are melting because of climate change. And at the same time, climate change is also expected to kind of expand the Arctic shipping routes. And that will give Greenland potentially a very important role in global trade in the future. So there are a lot of things about Greenland that make it potentially valuable to Trump.
85% of Greenlanders oppose joining the United States. And for those who support independence, Trump's interest in the island has buoyed their cause.
It's almost as if Trump's comments have made them realize that they can. They're worth much more than they thought they were. And they have potential partners outside of Denmark. And so the big question for future lawmakers that get elected this week is when are they ready to become independent? And who might they collaborate with in the future?
Chapter 6: What are the implications of Greenland's independence?
Recently, Donald Trump Jr. visited the territory, followed by the Nelk Boys, a group of Gen Z right-leaning influencers on YouTube who handed out $100 bills telling locals, welcome to America. One father whose son came home with a $100 bill told Bloomberg he found it, quote, disgusting and that it crossed a line. However, tomorrow's vote plays out.
One former chief analyst at the Danish Defense Intelligence Service told Bloomberg that it could have a far-reaching impact on Europe's security. Let's turn now to a political battle involving soda. President Trump is a big fan. He reportedly has several Diet Cokes a day. But Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
calls it poison and wants to make it so Americans can't spend their food aid benefits on it. Wall Street Journal reporter Christina Peterson told us about the efforts to modify SNAP. That's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
There have been lawmakers and states from the Republican Party, Democratic Party for years who have been discussing whether the government should be subsidizing these purchases. And they believe that it could boost the sort of overall nutritional impact of the food aid program if you said we're not going to let people use these benefits to buy sugary desserts or sugary drinks.
Lawmakers in New York, Minnesota and Arkansas have advocated for restricting less healthy items from the SNAP program. But for more than 20 years, the USDA has rejected these types of requests, saying that it would be too logistically challenging to implement.
That's been a longstanding argument that this is going to place a burden on retailers. It's going to be hard to go through every item and decide which has to be restricted and which can be included in the program. Are cashiers going to have to play interference?
Proponents of these restrictions say those questions are less relevant in the digital age.
There's also an argument you hear from Democrats and anti-hunger groups that say people on the food aid program have the same dignity as everyone else. We shouldn't be telling them what they can and can't eat. We don't tell anyone else what they can and can't eat.
Lobbyists for major soda companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have made similar arguments.
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