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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, July 11th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, new legislation to ban most abortions after six weeks in Iowa, the story of an Afghan man who helped America fight the war, only to fall victim to gun violence here in the United States, and how climate change is transforming baseball.
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But first, a political fight over abortion policy that's affecting the Pentagon's top brass. For the first time in a century, the Marine Corps has no Senate-confirmed leader. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville has been blocking senior military promotions for seven months. It's a protest against the Defense Department's new policy on abortion. DoD will pay travel expenses for troops to get abortions, if they can't get the procedure in their state.
Several former Defense Secretaries who served Democratic and Republican presidents say the holdup could damage U.S. national security. Current Secretary Lloyd Austin talked about the dangers of messing with plans, while there's a war going on in Europe.
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Lloyd Austin: Smooth and timely transitions of confirmed leadership are central to the defense of the United States, and to the full strength of the most powerful fighting force in history.
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Austin says he's confident that the Senate will "meet its responsibilities." But there's no sign Tuberville will budge any time soon. He sits on the Senate committee that oversees the military, and he recently told "POLITICO" he has no plans to stop unless the Pentagon ends the policy, or the Senate holds a vote on the issue.
This whole thing is a bit like the fight over the debt ceiling. It's another example of how legislators can find leverage in arcane Congressional rules. Signing off on promotions is normally an uncontroversial procedural step. Tuberville here is, instead, blocking the usual process to try to get leverage in the fight over abortion policy. Hundreds of service members, and their families, are caught in the middle, generals and admirals unsure about their future, and missing out on raises in pay.
Now that the Commandant of the Marines has retired, the general taking his place can only run the Corps on a temporary basis. Without Senate confirmation, he won't be able to make critical strategic choices. The heads of other services are also retiring in the weeks ahead, meaning there could soon be no top general for the Army, or top admiral for the Navy. And if this battle drags out longer, it could block the transition to the incoming Joint Chiefs Chair, the top uniformed officer of the entire U.S. military.
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Let's stay with the abortion issue, and turn now to "State of the State," our series where we look into how policy debates impact people at the local level. This time, we're in Iowa.
Republican Governor Kim Reynolds is calling lawmakers back to the statehouse today for a rare special session. The only item on the agenda is passing new abortion restrictions.
Reynolds and other Republicans want to ban nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That's before many people even know they're pregnant. Iowa's current limit is 20 weeks. Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the statehouse for the "Des Moines Register." And he told us, this legislation will likely advance quickly.
Stephen Gruber-Miller: Republicans who hold the majorities in the Iowa House and Senate have released a timeline or draft rules that they plan to adopt, that essentially allows for the action to get done within the span of a day.
Voters in Iowa are fairly split on these tighter restrictions. A "Des Moines Register" poll from October shows 49 percent disagreed with a similar six-week ban; 45 percent supported it. But for abortion rights more broadly, Gruber-Miller says there's a pretty clear trend line in the polling.
Gruber-Miller: Support for legal abortion has grown over the last couple of years. 61 percent is sort of the high watermark for where it's been in Iowa. And that's held steady over the past several polls that we've done over the last year or so. Prior to that it was a more closer to an even split, but more people believed abortion should be legal than illegal.
But there's still strong support for the GOP in elections.
Gruber-Miller: The Republican argument is that they've been validated because Republican majorities have repeatedly been elected In Iowa, a Republican governor has been elected in Iowa. Iowans have chosen time and again to support Republicans even though they've passed previous restrictions on abortion.
A similar attempt in 2018 to restrict abortion was blocked in court. If this new measure becomes law as expected, abortion-rights activists say they're ready to challenge it in the courts.
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Now to a story of someone who escaped war, only to become a victim of American gun violence. Nasrat Ahmad Yar came to the United States after nearly 20 years working for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, mainly as an interpreter. Last week, he was shot to death in Washington, DC. He was 31 years old.
After U.S. forces left Afghanistan, he was fortunate enough to get out of the country along with his wife and children. But work was hard to come by in America.
Susan Svrluga: He was working as a Lyft driver, and he went out late at night because he had told a friend that he was behind on rent and needed to keep working to catch up.
That's "Washington Post" reporter Susan Svrluga. She told us, there are more questions than answers about Ahmad Yar's death at this point. A neighbor's camera captured video footage of four young people running down an alleyway after the shooting. Police are still investigating.
Svrluga: I think it says some very troubling things about crime in this country. He'd survived so much, and he had served the United States Army and helped fight against the Taliban, a regime that was very cruel. And with great difficulty, escaped extremely dangerous circumstances there, only to just, as his friend said, just be gunned down here.
Matthew Butler, a retired lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army Special Forces, told "The Post," Ahmad Yar was somewhat of a legend on their base. By the age of 10, he taught himself English and started working with the U.S. military. Butler talked with the Washington "CBS" station about trying to make sense of his death.
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Matthew Butler: You just don't have words to describe how you feel about somebody who's given so much to this country, not even as a citizen, then comes here, experiences some of the worst behavior that our country has to offer.
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Ahmad Yar's wife, Muzhgan doesn't speak English. She's left now to raise their four children. People are donating money online for the family's living expenses. A Gofundme page has raised close to half a million dollars.
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Now to a story where sports meets climate. Last night, Major League Baseball history was made, when Toronto Blue Jays' first baseman Vlad Guerrero, Jr. won the home run derby. Vlad Senior did the same thing in 2007, making them the first-ever father-son winners.
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Unidentified Speaker: Congratulations to Vlad. He and his dad, both home run derby champions.
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So here's the climate connection. As the earth gets hotter, the number of homers goes up. Recent research on a decade of baseball and weather records attributes hundreds of home runs to climate change. Balls can travel a few feet further in hotter temperatures, which is enough to make the difference between a long out, and a home run.
Here's how the physics works. For fans, summer air might feel thick and gross. But on a molecular level, hotter air is actually less dense, making it the ideal condition for a baseball to go sailing out of the park. Tonight, we'll see how many homeruns the players can rack up at the All Star Game.
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You can find all the stories we talked about today on the Apple News app, including coverage of ongoing extreme weather and the intense rain in the Northeast, where millions of people are under flood alerts. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around…
We've got a narrated article coming up next. "Bloomberg Businessweek" has the story of how police in Oklahoma busted a crime ring that stole half a billion dollars’ worth of catalytic converters from cars.
So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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