Trump asks Supreme Court to pause TikTok ban | The Excerpt
On Saturday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to pause a TikTok ban, arguing he can find a way to "save" the platform without compromising national security or Americans' free speech rights. A debate picks up steam between Trump supporters over the role of immigrant labor and American workers. Paste BN Breaking News Reporter Christopher Cann has the latest after the suspect in a New York City subway killing was indicted on murder and arson charges. Sportscaster Greg Gumbel has died at 78. Paste BN Democracy Reporter Erin Mansfield talks about the bald eagle finally becoming America's national bird.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Saturday, December 28th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Trump has urged the Supreme Court to pause a TikTok ban, plus the man accused of killing a woman after setting her on fire aboard a New York subway has been charged, and the bald eagle has been recognized as our national bird.
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President-elect Donald Trump wants the Supreme Court to pause a law that could ban TikTok in the US next month, arguing he can find a way to save the platform without compromising national security or Americans' free speech rights. In defense of the law, the outgoing Biden administration warns that unless TikTok is divested from ByteDance, its Chinese-based parent company, China can gather data on Americans or manipulate the content on TikTok to shape US opinion. Opponents of the law, which passed congress this year with wide bipartisan support, say federal judges so far have given too much deference to the US government's national security concerns and not enough considerations to freedom of expression.
TikTok will be banned in the country on January 19th unless its sold. TikTok has already asked the Supreme Court to pause enforcement of that requirement while the company continues to make their case for why the law is unconstitutional. But the high court this month said they won't decide whether to keep the deadline until after the justices debate the merits of the law during oral arguments scheduled for January 10th. Trump's filing yesterday was part of a slew of written briefs filed before those arguments.
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Taylor Wilson:
A debate is brewing pitting some of President-elect Donald Trump's biggest supporters against each other in recent days. At issue, whether his incoming administration should allow more highly skilled immigrant labor to come to the country at what some see as the expense of American workers.
On one side are Elon Musk, the world's richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who's worth an estimated billion dollars. The two and some venture capitalists say in recent social media posts, mostly on Musk's X platform, that America needs more highly skilled workers to come to the US under what's known as the H-1B program. They argue an expansion of the temporary work visa program is desperately needed to attract global talent for innovation and competitiveness in technology sectors.
On the other side are some of Trump's more traditional, hard line conservative backers, who say such a reliance on bringing in foreign workers to the country is a slap in the face to American citizens after immigration served as a critical campaign plank that helped Trump win the White House last month.
You can read more about some of these tensions this week with a link in today's show notes.
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Taylor Wilson:
The man accused of setting a woman on fire at a New York City subway car last week has been indicted on murder and arson charges. I spoke with Paste BN Breaking News reporter Christopher Cann to learn more about this disturbing incident.
Chris, hello, and thank you for making some time on this today.
Christopher Cann:
Yeah, no problem. Thank you.
Taylor Wilson:
So for folks who are maybe just a little bit out of the loop over the last few days, what happened here during this incident in New York on Sunday?
Christopher Cann:
Police and prosecutors say the suspect, who they've now identified as 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, and the victim [inaudible 00:03:24] riding on an F train subway car headed toward Coney Island in Brooklyn around 7:30 AM, Sunday morning. And as the train pulled into the station, the suspect walked up to the woman with a lighter, ignited her clothes on fire, and the woman pretty much became engulfed in flames. So then he appears to sit on a bench on the subway platform as the woman continued to burn.
There were several onlookers who seemed to not have intervened immediately, and that includes an NYPD officer, who was kind of seen walking back and forth on the platform just feet away from her. The woman was pronounced dead. And then the following day on Monday, Zapeta was arrested in Manhattan after a group of teenagers saw him in the subway and called 911.
Zapeta is a Guatemalan immigrant. He was in the country illegally, and he had previously been deported in June of 2018, and it's not exactly clear when he had reentered the country.
Taylor Wilson:
Do we know anything about the victim at this point, Chris?
Christopher Cann:
We don't really know anything about the victim at this point. Officials haven't publicly identified her. And on Friday, the Brooklyn District Attorney said they were still working to find out who exactly she was and where she was going when she was on the subway.
Taylor Wilson:
So you mentioned the suspect. What charges does he now face and how is he responding?
Christopher Cann:
He now faces charges of first and second-degree murder and a charge of first-degree arson. The Brooklyn District Attorney announced Friday that he was indicted by a grand jury, so he has not entered a plea at this point. And at a hearing earlier in the week, prosecutors had identified himself in images related to the attack, but also that he had denied knowing anything about the incident.
And then as far as his personal life, his last known address was a Brooklyn homeless shelter for people struggling with substance abuse.
Taylor Wilson:
So just in terms of the legal proceedings there, what happens next in the case?
Christopher Cann:
Yeah. So there's going to be a hearing on January 7th. That's when the indictment against him will be unsealed and we should learn more at that point about the incident and what investigators have found so far. He's also expected to enter a plea during that hearing and also hopefully by then we have the name of the victim and know more about her.
Taylor Wilson:
You know, there's this widely circulated video of this horrific incident that seems to show a New York police officer kind of walk by past the burning woman. That's what the video shows, at least. How are police defending the actions of that officer and their actions overall on that day?
Christopher Cann:
So regarding that officer in particular, police officials have come out defending his actions, basically by saying that he was trying to control the crime scene as he awaited other officers to bring fire extinguishers and as well as Metropolitan Transit Authority employees, who eventually had worked with the NYPD to extinguish the flames. So basically he was just clearing the scene.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay. And in terms of just New York public transit going forward, Chris, I mean, are there any changes expected to safety protocols?
Christopher Cann:
Yeah. So the incident was shocking, and so it's raised a lot of concern over generally safety on the New York City subway system. This week, New York governor Kathy Hochul said an additional 250 National Guard members will be deployed to the city to generally bolster safety. And the MTA has also announced that more than 15,000 security cameras had been installed in the mass transit system.
Taylor Wilson:
Christopher Cann covers breaking news for Paste BN. Thank you so much, Chris.
Christopher Cann:
Yeah. Thank you.
Taylor Wilson:
Sports broadcaster Greg Gumbel has died. The legendary broadcaster spent much of his career with CBS, first starting there in 1989, where he worked as an NFL play-by-play announcer and studio host for college basketball including the iconic NCAA tournament.
Gumbel, the older brother of fellow broadcaster Bryant Gumbel, was born in 1946 in New Orleans and grew up in Chicago. He left a medical sales job after his brother informed him of an open sportscaster position in Chicago. Greg Gumbel died after a fight with cancer. He was 78.
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Taylor Wilson:
The bald eagle has been officially recognized as America's national bird. I spoke with Paste BN Democracy reporter, Erin Mansfield for more.
Hello, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Hi. How are you?
Taylor Wilson:
I'm good. Happy holidays. Thanks for hopping on today.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So let's just start with this, Erin. What's the history of the bald eagle in this country? How did it become such an American symbol?
Erin Mansfield:
The great seal, which is the symbol that we see on the rugs, when you see the president come out and give an address, the seals that are on the placards of the president's podium, that came around during the Revolutionary War, late 1700s, and it's really always been around, right? We can always remember the eagle with the arrows and whatnot.
But it actually wasn't the national bird. We actually didn't have a national bird, and now we do, and it's the bald eagle. Maybe it's a technicality, maybe it's a long time coming, but it is now final and that eagle is not going anywhere.
Taylor Wilson:
So in terms of getting to this point, Erin, I mean, was this a bipartisan agreement? Was there any tension here? How did we get here?
Erin Mansfield:
No, this was a bill that passed unanimously. And, of course, it's the kind of thing that one of the reasons it's news is that I think a lot of people probably already thought the bald eagle was the national bird.
But Senator Amy Klobuchar, she's a Democrat from Minnesota, she was the lead sponsor on the bill, and she said, "You know, in Minnesota, we know a thing or two about eagles." She said her state is the home to one of the largest populations of bald eagles in the country, and the National Eagle Center, which advocated for this is also based in Minnesota. So fitting that she was able to champion it.
There are over 300,000 bald eagles in the United States. And from 2016 to 2020, it did increase, which is quite a different situation from when we were kids and we were hearing about this endangered species.
Taylor Wilson:
Erin, does this functionally mean anything? Or is it really mostly a symbolic gesture?
Erin Mansfield:
It's mostly a symbolic gesture. However, there are folks who have been working for many, many years to save the bald eagle. You know, it used to be an endangered species. It was on the endangered list until about 2007, and they were actually able to kind of bring it back. So there are people with, for example, the National Eagle Center in Minnesota and other people who were those types of environmental activists who, for them, it's very, very important.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned some other national symbols that we have in America, Erin. You want to talk through some of those? I know the bald eagle isn't the only one, right?
Erin Mansfield:
So what happened was President Joe Biden signed a bill that added a national bird to a statute that already had a national tree, a national flower, a national mammal.
So our national tree is the oak tree. Our national floral emblem, is the technical term, is the rose, and then the national mammal is the bison. And then there are other parts of the law that designate the national anthem, Star-Spangled Banner, the national march by John Philip Sousa.
So this really just has codified what, for a lot of people, they might've assumed was already the national bird. It's really codified it into the law, into American culture.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. One of the last actions for President Biden in office. Erin Mansfield covers democracy for Paste BN. Thanks, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
The AI doom loop is real for many folks, but can we harness its strength to our advantage? Tune in tomorrow to hear my colleague Dana Taylor chat with bestselling author and life coach Jim Frawley about how to not only embrace change, but master it in one of our favorite episodes of the year, originally from August. You can find it right here on this feed tomorrow.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt.
I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back Monday with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.