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Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 17th.
I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
On today's show, humanitarian conditions in Gaza more than 100 days into the war,
how a small fish could upend the power of federal agencies,
And why tennis balls are serving up controversy among pro players.
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First, to the Middle East, where the United States struck
Houthi targets in Yemen again.
The U.S. has been targeting the Iran-backed rebel group
for attacking commercial ships.
And the Biden administration is reportedly planning to put the Houthis
back on its list of designated terrorist groups.
Also, Iran has launched attacks inside Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria,
all while Israel wages war on Hamas in Gaza.
The new wave of violence has analysts worried
about the Gaza conflict spreading into a broader regional war.
Meanwhile, Qatar says it and France have struck a deal between Israel
and Hamas that would allow more medicine
and humanitarian aid to be delivered to the people of Gaza,
in exchange for medication being given to the hostages held by Hamas.
This deal comes as the UN has called on Israel to allow in more aid.
They say more than a quarter of Gaza's population is starving.
That's over half a million people.
About half of Gaza's population is children.
Marwan Al-Ghoul, a journalist in Gaza, told "CBS" that conditions were already,
quote, "Miserable before the war, and they've gotten much worse."
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Marwan Al-Ghoul: Not enough water, not enough food, no place to sleep.
It's very difficult to describe.
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Resnick, Narrating: Dr. Paul Spiegel worked in Cairo with a UN agency to support
the public health response in Gaza.
And he told "CBS," survival needs are barely being met.
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Dr. Speigel: It's completely insufficient.
And therefore, the ability in the humanitarian space to respond
is not possible.
The health care services, the hospitals and many health centers
are being actively attacked and bombed.
And therefore, the amount of care that is available is reducing
on a continuous basis.
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Resnick, Narrating: With no immediate end in sight to the war, families in Gaza are caught
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in the middle, trying to feed their children
when food is scarce and help is falling short.
Now let's take a quick look at some other stories
that are in the news.
Brutally cold weather is sweeping across America.
There are more than a dozen deaths blamed on the Arctic blast.
Many are in Oregon, where power outages are making it hard to deal
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with freezing temperatures.
Portland's "Fox" station talked to a resident about trees knocked over
in the storm.
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Unidentified Speaker 2: We had three oaks come down in the backyard,
big ones that did damage to the roof.
We had two fir trees come down in the front yards that took down
power lines and everything.
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Resnick, Narrating: Across the country, there are school closures
and travel disruptions, with thousands of flights canceled
or delayed.
Nashville got more snow in a day than it typically gets in a year.
And in Texas, the power grid operators asked people to conserve electricity
to avoid outages.
It looks as though things are holding up.
Grid failures in a Texas winter storm in 2021 killed hundreds of people.
In legal news, the man who shot and killed five people at an LGBTQ plus nightclub
in Colorado last year is agreeing to plead guilty to federal hate crime
and gun charges.
The federal government will not seek the death penalty in the Club Q shooting.
Court filings say the plea agreement will result in multiple sentences
totaling 190 years.
And the Supreme Court is not going to hear a case involving students
and bathroom access.
Last year, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a transgender middle school
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student who wanted to use the restroom matching his gender identity.
With the high court declining to step in, that ruling will stand.
Staying with the Supreme Court, today it's hearing arguments in a pair
of cases that are technically about rules around commercial fishing.
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But the impact could go far beyond questions about catching herring.
The court could deliver a ruling that blows away decades of precedent,
and weakens the ability of federal agencies to regulate
the environment, financial markets, workplaces, healthcare, and more.
These cases were brought by fishing companies,
and they're backed by conservative legal groups.
They believe a government mandate requiring them to pay people to monitor
their boats is unreasonable.
But as Washington Post Supreme Court correspondent Ann Marimow told us,
these arguments are really about the fate of a landmark case that involved Chevron.
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Ann Marimow: And that case set up a framework that judges have used now
since 1984 to evaluate regulations that federal agencies
have put into effect and whether the agencies
made a reasonable interpretation of statutes set by Congress.
And that may sound like a boring academic exercise, but it's really important.
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Resnick, Narrating: The case was enormously influential.
It created what judges and lawyers now call Chevron deference.
In short, it requires courts to defer to federal agencies
when it comes to turning laws passed by Congress into actual regulations.
If Congress was not explicit about something,
courts have to trust how agencies interpret it,
as long as they're reasonable.
Critics of Chevron deference say that it has given federal agencies
too much power in recent decades and resulted in too much red tape.
And those critics think they have a shot at big changes
with this conservative Supreme Court.
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Marimow: Chevron is being heard by a court that has really been remade
with the addition of three justices nominated by former President Trump,
whose administration put a premium on recruiting judges who were skeptical
of federal power and what they refer to as the administrative state.
They think that unaccountable bureaucrats should not have this much power
and that it should really be up to judges to use their independent judgment
when looking at these, what they consider, burdensome regulations.
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Resnick, Narrating: If the fishing companies win here, Chevron deference could fall
or be scaled back.
And these aren't the only cases this term that will test the power
of the federal government.
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Marimow: There's one challenging the in-house administrative judges
at the Securities and Exchange Commission
that looks to limit fraud in the financial markets.
And there's another case challenging the funding for the CFPB,
that's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
So this one being heard today about Chevron deference is just one
of a series going after really the power of the administrative state.
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Resnick, Narrating: The Supreme Court's upcoming cases on abortion and Trump's election
eligibility may be getting more attention.
But these other cases, starting with today's arguments,
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could fundamentally change how much power
the federal government has when it comes to regulating
the important issues of our time.
The Australian Open, the tennis world's first major
of the year, is underway.
And right now, the sport has some controversy
involving the highlighter yellow-greenish
balls, with some players saying they're causing injuries.
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So they say the balls are inconsistent across tournaments.
Sometimes they're heavier or fluffier.
And some balls, they say they have to hit a lot harder.
One top player said playing with some of these balls
are like hitting a grapefruit,
forcing players into 30-shot rallies because they can't hit winning shots.
Different tennis ball brands are used at different tournaments,
and players say the lack of consistency is actually dangerous.
Novak Djokovic spoke about this in November during the Davis Cup.
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Novak Djokovic: There's been a lot of discussions on the effect of the different balls,
basically every week, on the joints and the wrists and the shoulders
and the elbows.
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Resnick, Narrating: He and other top players say professional tennis should standardize
ball designs so that all manufacturers can stick
to common specifications and players will know what to expect
at different tournaments.
In response, the governing bodies for men's and women's professional tennis
are now conducting a "strategic review" of tennis balls.
They say they'll aim for more consistency without disrupting
the money-making sponsorship deals
with the companies that make the balls in question.
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For now, at least one player says he's actually planning his tournament
schedule for the year based on the kind of balls being used.
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, stick around.
We've got a Narrated Article coming up next
from "The Atlantic" that aims to answer a question that American parents,
prospective parents,
and observers around the world can't seem to figure out.
Why is it so difficult to raise a child in the U.S., the world's richest country?
Congress may have a bipartisan deal that would expand the child tax credit
for families, but the U.S. still provides far less support for families
than other wealthy countries do.
"The Atlantic" argues having a family in America really shouldn't be so hard.
If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News+ Narrated
to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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