Aria Bendix, health reporter for NBC News, discusses the impact of cuts and changes at the Department of Health and Human Services. The Washington Post examines the overall impact on public health of Trump’s first 100 days in office. Gerry Shih, Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post, joins to talk about Israel’s plans to occupy more of Gaza and fully control distribution of aid there. Trump has threatened massive tariffs on movies produced overseas. Meg James, senior entertainment-industry reporter for the Los Angeles Times, discusses the studios’ response. Plus, the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, the issues plaguing Newark’s airport, and what to know about the Real ID deadline. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What are the key topics discussed in this episode?
Good morning. It's Tuesday, May 6th. I'm Shemita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, Israel's plans to take more control of the Gaza Strip, how Trump's tariffs could impact your favorite movies, and what to know about today's real ID deadline.
Chapter 2: How is RFK Jr. impacting the Department of Health and Human Services?
But first, attorneys general from 19 Democratic states plus Washington, D.C., are suing the Trump administration over efforts to overhaul the Department of Health and Human Services. So far, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has eliminated 20,000 full-time positions at HHS and has canceled funding for a number of longstanding research programs that support millions of Americans.
One is the Diabetes Prevention Program, which has been tracking people with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes for three decades, and it also works to better understand associated diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. Around 38 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and the CDC estimates that one in five people don't know that they have it.
NBC News health reporter Aria Bendix told us about the impact of canceling this program.
Chapter 3: What programs have been cut from HHS and what are the implications?
Columbia University was one of the sites participating in the study, and it handled the bulk of the funding. So the researchers now say they can't do blood work, brain scans, urine samples, all the things that are necessary to study patient outcomes. And they're also really worried about the ability to preserve the data sets that they've already collected.
These cuts come as Kennedy says that tackling chronic disease is a cornerstone of his Make America Healthy Again agenda. Another long-running program HHS terminated, an advisory committee that makes recommendations on how to test newborns and children for genetic disorders. HHS says it's part of the administration's broader goal of reducing the size of the federal government, but...
Advocates say this was a low-cost, high-reward effort that won't make much of a dent in the federal budget.
Genetic screenings detect potentially life-threatening or life-altering conditions for roughly 14,000 babies every year. Again, Bendix told us it's hard to square this with RFK's larger goals.
These are really severe and debilitating childhood diseases that often don't result in survival beyond the teen years unless a child has access to early treatment. So it's unclear why something like this would be cut.
The administration also eliminated funding for a program that helps new parents learn more about sleep-related infant deaths and how to prevent them. It's been credited with saving thousands of babies' lives since 1994. And HHS has made or is considering a number of cuts that impact the LGBTQ plus population, a community that nearly 10 percent of American adults are part of.
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Chapter 4: How are LGBTQ+ health programs being affected by the new administration?
Hundreds of grants focused on improving health outcomes for LGBTQ people have been cut, including one that works toward preventing HIV in adolescents and young adults. The Washington Post also reports that the administration is considering eliminating the national suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth.
According to a New York Times estimate, more than $800 million in grants for this population were canceled as of early May.
A lot of the grants were terminated on the grounds that they don't align with the new administration's priorities.
Next week, Kennedy is expected to appear before a Senate committee to testify about his overhaul of HHS. His budget will ultimately need Congress's approval. Now to Gaza, where Israel plans to expand its military operations and seize even more territory from Palestinians.
There have been many voices in the Israeli political establishment, particularly on Israel's far right, who would like to see the military eventually control the entire Gaza Strip.
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Chapter 5: What are Israel's plans for Gaza?
Jerry Shee is the Jerusalem bureau chief for The Washington Post.
Now, the military leadership has so far resisted that idea, saying that this is completely infeasible. The amount of manpower required would be tens of thousands sort of upward or exceeding 60,000 reservists.
So we've sort of arrived at this kind of middle solution where what the Israeli military will do is eventually, gradually over the course of the coming weeks and months, take more and more and more of Gaza and stay there indefinitely.
A senior Hamas official said this week, given Israel's intensified military plans, the group is no longer interested in peace talks. Since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, the IDF has declared more than 70 percent of Gaza either a military red zone or an evacuation zone. It has displaced more than 420,000 people, according to the U.N. That's roughly a fifth of Gaza's population.
And in this plan approved by Israel's security cabinet over the weekend, thousands more Palestinians would be forcibly displaced. Israel would also take control of humanitarian aid distribution. Since March 2nd, Israel has allowed no food, medicine or other supplies to enter Gaza. It's the longest total blockade ever imposed.
The UN says hunger is widespread and nine out of 10 Palestinians do not have access to safe drinking water.
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Chapter 6: How is humanitarian aid being affected in Gaza?
From what we can tell, aid has reached basically a non-existent level.
Israel says the current blockade on aid is meant to force Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages. And Israel says taking full control of aid distribution is the only way it will consider lifting the blockade, according to officials who spoke with The Post. It also plans to move Gaza's entire food supply to a military-guarded area in the south under the protection of U.S.
security contractors, forcing people in northern Gaza to travel there. But the challenges would be immense. There would be only 4 to 10 aid distribution hubs, serving a population of over 2 million people. And many people are too weak or injured to make the journey.
This has obviously raised serious concerns from many of the international organizations who say that this would violate a lot of the principles governing international humanitarian activities. For one thing, their rules often require impartiality when it comes to distributing aid, that aid should arrive in conflict zones unfettered and be given to anybody who needs it.
She told us Israeli officials are saying they will use facial recognition technology to screen people seeking aid to prevent members of Hamas from receiving it.
That raises the question of who exactly is Hamas. Israel has been known to sort of implement a very wide net when it comes to describing people who have worked for the civilian government in Gaza as being affiliated with Hamas.
NPR spoke to a former U.S. official who said Israel tried to implement a version of this aid plan while former President Joe Biden was in office, but his administration rejected it. The Trump administration didn't offer any immediate comment on Israel's plan on Monday, but Trump does plan to visit the region next week. Let's turn now to the latest tariff threat from the White House.
On Sunday night, President Trump said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on movies produced outside of the United States, saying that international production amounts to a national security threat. Then, just hours later, the White House said no final decisions had been made, and Trump said that he would meet with industry officials to make sure that they liked the plan.
None of the major studio executives I talked to were expecting this. They were all caught very much off guard.
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