The Trump administration’s drive to dismantle inclusion policies is undercutting federal funding for scientific-research grants. The 19th looks into some of the fallout. CNN reports on how special elections for two House seats in Florida this week have Republican leaders worried about their razor-thin majority. A preliminary report from South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission acknowledges that the government failed to protect the rights of adoptees. The Washington Post has the details. PBS spoke to adoptees about falsified records and swapped identities. Plus, Trump expressed anger at Putin, rescue efforts in Myanmar continued, and all four No. 1 seeds made it to the men’s NCAA basketball Final Four. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What are the special elections happening in Florida?
Good morning. It's Monday, March 31st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, what happens to health research when studies that use the word women are cut? South Korea's dark history of adoptions. And in men's college basketball, it's an all number one seed final four. But first, there are a couple of important special elections this week that we're following.
Tomorrow we'll break down a crucial contest in Wisconsin for a state Supreme Court vacancy that's attracted the attention of Elon Musk. Today we're going to look at two House seats up for grabs in Florida that are making Republicans nervous about their slim majority.
One of those races in Florida's 6th congressional district is to replace Mike Waltz, President Trump's national security advisor, who's been in the headlines over the Signal Group chat, where he and several other top officials discussed military strike plans in Yemen. Running to replace Waltz is Republican State Senator Randy Fine.
Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was asked about the contest.
I will tell you this. Regardless of the outcome in that, it's going to be a way under performance from what I won that district by in 22 and what President won it by in November. That is not a reflection of President Trump. It's a reflection of the specific candidate running in that race.
Fein's opponent, Democrat Josh Wheal, has out-fundraised Fein by 10 to 1. And according to CNN, those figures sent shockwaves from Florida all the way to Washington. CNN also reports senior GOP leadership intervened, calling Fein and saying he needs to step up his efforts in the race. One poll showed Fein's lead within the margin of error.
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Chapter 2: Why are Florida's special elections important for Republicans?
Another pollster also found Fein's lead a lot tighter than expected. Meanwhile, in Florida's other congressional race, Democrat Gay Valamont also outraised Trump's endorsed candidate, Jimmy Petronas, about 7-1. That race is to replace former Congressman Matt Gaetz. Republicans have a 218-213 edge over Democrats in the House, so every seat and every vote matters.
NBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki broke down the race on the network and said it's a big ask for Democrats to flip these seats, given just how Republican these districts are. But these are the exact types of elections where they have a shot.
Chapter 3: How do special elections differ in voter turnout?
in the last couple of years, in special elections for the House and in lower turnout elections, not like presidential elections where everybody votes, that's where the Democrats have had an advantage. That's where they've overperformed. They've done well. Why?
Because it seems that the Democratic base for elections that do not have Donald Trump on the ballot seems more motivated than the Republican base. That was the story going right into the 24 election. Didn't turn out to be a thing in November, but it may still very much be a thing in special elections. That's something we could find out on Tuesday.
The president has acknowledged the importance of holding on to these and other Republican seats. It's the reason he gave reporters last week for pulling the nomination of loyalist and New York representative Elise Stefanik for U.N. ambassador.
And I said, Lise, would you do me a favor? We cannot take a chance. We have a slim margin. We don't want to take any chances. We don't want to experiment.
Most observers think these seats will likely remain with the GOP. And the campaign arm of House Republicans called talk about it, quote, noise. Democrats have said if their candidates overperform in these races, which minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said shouldn't even be on the radar, it's a sign some attitudes might be shifting.
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Chapter 4: What is the Trump administration's impact on science funding?
Trump, who won both districts by 30 points, spent part of these final days in teletown halls for both candidates, shoring up support. Let's turn now to recent actions the Trump administration has taken that are impacting science and research.
The administration has ordered major cuts to the workforce and funding at the National Institutes of Health and huge reductions of NIH grants to universities. These are institutions that lead research on a huge array of diseases and conditions, everything from pediatric brain cancer to heart disease and asthma.
And because of Trump's crackdown on DEI, NIH employees are being told not to approve grants that include words such as women, trans, or diversity. Shefali Luthra is a reproductive health reporter for The 19th who's been talking to researchers about the fallout.
They had been in the works of running clinical trials or analyzing data and suddenly were told they could no longer do that. And some of them were able to find stopgap funding from other sources. Some of them are figuring out if they will have to shut down their studies entirely.
They're seeing if their universities will appeal these cuts and hoping that they will be able to restore some of that funding.
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Chapter 5: How are DEI policies affecting research on women's health?
And Luther says if they can't get that funding back, it'll be a waste of, in some cases, years of research.
We simply won't get the answers to questions that we had already paid to ask and in turn aren't going to be able to reap the health benefits.
One of the gaps in health care that these kinds of studies seek to address is our understanding of conditions that impact women. Research on women's health already lags far behind men.
That's in part because for a long time, the FDA actively discouraged researchers from including women who could become pregnant in clinical trials, which means we have less reliable data when it comes to how a lot of medications might impact women or for women-specific conditions. Luthra told us the story of one researcher at Columbia University.
She studies uterine fibroids, which are these tissue growths. They are quite common and they cause severe pain. They can cause bleeding. They can cause infertility. They are under-researched. They have a heightened impact for Black women in particular. And we don't know much about them, let alone how to treat them.
This researcher says she recently got a call from her advisor that her federal funding had suddenly been cut.
And she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what this would mean for her research in the long term, whether she would be able to do her research, which she views as a piece of the puzzle of trying to understand fibroids, and also what it means for our ability as a society to improve this condition and ultimately improve the health of people. neglected by our ecosystem.
Luther told us that the opposition to funding research on women is rooted in the culture wars we're seeing play out, but also in a misunderstanding of the research.
a lot of this sort of comes from this anti-trans rhetoric and this idea that, as the president said in his recent joint address, so we're funding research in transgender mice, which was a really inaccurate mischaracterization of how this research was actually being done. It was looking at
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