Donald Trump rejects bipartisan plan to avoid a government shutdown | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President-elect Donald Trump is throwing a new wrinkle into the fight to avoid a government shutdown. Paste BN Pentagon Correspondent Tom Vanden Brook breaks down the Pentagon's response to drones on military bases. The Fed lowers its key interest rate by another quarter point, but foresees just two cuts in 2025. The announcement spooked investors. Paste BN Investigative Reporter Nick Penzenstadler explains how delayed rape cases from an untested kit backlog can mean lower sentences. Amazon workers will strike at multiple U.S. warehouses.
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 Thursday, December 19th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Trump rejects a plan to avoid a government shutdown. Plus how the Pentagon is responding to drones near military bases and how rapists draw lighter sentences when DNA test backlogs delay prosecution.
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President-elect Donald Trump has come out against Congress's plan to fund the government through March and called on lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling. The move introduces a surprising last minute complication with a serious shutdown looming at the end of the week.
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance wrote in a joint statement yesterday, "Republicans must get smart and tough, if Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then call their bluff." Trump later threatened Republican lawmakers who ignore his priorities on the government funding fight with primary opposition next election. Trump's comments come after lawmakers reached a bipartisan agreement Tuesday on a continuing resolution, a stopgap measure to prevent a government shutdown and furloughs for thousands of federal employees over the holidays. Current government funding expires tomorrow night. But the bill has been met with criticism mainly from conservatives, upset over the breadth of add-ons within the funding package, which range from disaster relief to pay raises for lawmakers.
Drones have been swarming military bases. Is the Pentagon worried? I spoke with USA Today Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook to learn more. Howdy, Tom.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Hello, Taylor. Good to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
Good to have you as always, Tom. So would you just tell us about some of the drone sightings people have reported at or around military installations? Just what have folks really been seeing?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, a couple of different things going on here, Taylor. There's been, in recent weeks, most of our listeners will know that there have been thousands of reported drone sightings on the East Coast. Turns out that most of those, according to federal authorities from the FBI, FAA, and the Pentagon are explained by either being commercial drones or more likely to be aircraft that are seen at night manned aircraft. And in some cases people are just seeing literally stars and confusing them for drones. So there has been no determination in any of these sightings that there's any sort of ill intent, but people are looking in the sky more because they're concerned about it, right?
Now it's a bit of a different situation with the military and in some of these sightings on the East Coast, there were a few instances where there were drones sighted over military facilities in New Jersey, including the Picatinny Army Arsenal. But more broadly speaking about the military, that's a big concern of theirs. That in some of the more sparsely populated areas where many of these big military bases are, that there have been hundreds and probably thousands of drone incursions, sources tell us.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So how is the military responding, Tom? What do we know?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, there's a couple issues here that are preventing a real robust response. One is that base commanders are authorized to take some of these drones down. And in fact, we've learned they have done it a few times, but those drones have to be over the airspace of the base when they're taken down. They can't shoot them down when they've darted outside the airspace. So that's a real issue. And the military and FBI, FAA, others are looking for expanded authorities to deal with this and they need those authorities from Congress to do so.
Taylor Wilson:
What exactly does that conversation look like going forward in terms of what lawmakers need to accomplish for this?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, they need to figure out... First of all, you have to identify what the drone is. In many cases, there are a million privately owned drones in the country. We use them at USA Today, right? To collect information and to show our readers and others what's going on in various parts of the country. So there are lots of legitimate reasons that people fly drones. So the first thing to do is to be able to identify them when they don't have legitimate intent. So that's got to be one of the first things they have to do. And then they have to figure out what's the best way to intercept these things because if you shoot something down, there's going to be debris. And if it's over a populated area, that's a problem, right? Though there's some of just a few of the issues that are being discussed right now.
Taylor Wilson:
And really just Tom, broadly speaking, I mean, why is the drone issue of such importance to the military and lawmakers? What's at stake here?
Tom Vanden Brook:
For military, a lot can be learned from flying a drone in or around a military base. You can learn, we're told by sources about troop movements, about when ammunition might be moved from an arsenal to a port because we need it somewhere abroad. There are aircraft that can be observed, stealth aircraft on the ground that could be observed from a drone and things could be learned about them that our adversaries want to know but have been unable to learn without a drone. So there are lots of different things that could be learned from drone surveillance that has the military really concerned.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, great breakdown for us as always. Tom Vanden Brook covers the Pentagon for USA Today. Thank you, Tom.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Federal Reserve lowered its key interest rate by another quarter percentage point yesterday, but forecast a significantly slower pace of rate cuts next year following a recent inflation pickup and strong economic growth. Officials now foresee only two rate cuts in 2025 down from the four they forecast in September. The forecast for just two rate cuts next year was less than the three many economists expected and it rattled investors. US stocks dipped with all three major indexes posting their biggest daily declines in months.
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Delayed rape cases from an untested kit backlog can mean lower sentences. I spoke with USA Today investigative reporter Nick Penzenstadler for more. Nick, thanks for making some time on this.
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Nick, let's start by talking about Dane Mullen and his assault of a college student. What can you tell us about this crime and how does it pertain to untested rape kits?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, this was a continuation of our big project this year on the backlog rape kits and what happened to all of those tests. And this case struck us really early on. It was an assault from almost 20 years ago where the rape kit sat on the shelf, was untested. And then in 2018 it's tested in Duluth, Minnesota and identifies the suspects involved in this rape. And our main project found that that's a rare case that these finally get to a courtroom and get adjudicated. And then in this case, we found that the perpetrator faced the judge, finally faced justice, faced the victim and the victim requested at least six and a half years in prison. And the judge in that case sent him to much less and he ended up serving one year in jail. So this story focused on the relatively low sentences for these backlogged rape kit cases factoring in this passage of time.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, let's try to get some, I guess, firm numbers on this, Nick, if we have them. I mean, how many backlogged sexual assault kits actually get sent for testing? How many cases involving those kits actually result in criminal charges or guilty verdicts?
Nick Penzenstadler:
So our project focused on this one federal effort to inject some money into this testing process and getting justice for victims. So that program has tested about 100,000 of these kits. The number of total backlogged kits was somewhere in the 300, 400,000 range. It really goes down from that 100,000 tested to much fewer that actually had DNA, to much fewer that lead to suspects to about 1500 that lead to a conviction. The national average for rape cases is about 10 years in prison. And we found in our example states, it was closer to like four or five years. So there's a big disparity between the national average and then these backlogged pool of cases that we found much fewer years in prison.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting. So how can this lag time, Nick, really work in the defendant's favor? What does the, I guess, ticking clock mean practically for these cases when it comes to both perpetrators and victims?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, it's a really interesting phenomenon. I mean, we sat in on some of these trials and sentencing hearings where the judges had to weigh, is this person a risk to society? Should they pay the penalty as they would have the first day that this happened? In many cases, we saw the judges discounting the sentences because of this big long passage of time. We saw men who'd turned their lives around and had families and this incident happened years ago. And then the judge says, "We don't need to punish you the same way as we would have then."
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I'm a little bit curious there, Nick, what the judge's arguments are. Do we hear from them, the folks who might be responsible for these lighter sentences? Where do they really stand on these?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, we have, and we press some of the judges on this and their argument is a lot of these convicted rapists maybe wouldn't benefit from a decade in prison where they have turned their life around or stayed out of trouble, they may benefit more from a long probationary period. That's what... You mentioned this Mullen case. He ended up getting thousands of hours of community service and then probation for 15 years in lieu of that long prison sentence.
Taylor Wilson:
Just in terms of where this conversation goes next, Nick, is this a matter of policy? Is this a state level conversation, a federal level conversation? I mean, how to, I guess, close the gap on some of these lags that we've been talking about?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, I mean, the backlogs have largely been tackled as far as the testing. Our story really focused on the prosecutions, the re-investigations and follow through. And we saw some promises for reform to make sure these don't fall through the cracks. And then on the sentencing side, this is really a state issue. Every state sets their minimums and maximums, and it's definitely something that we're going to see judges wrestle with for a long time.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Nick Penzenstadler is an investigative reporter with USA Today. Folks can go check out this full piece with a link in today's show notes. Thank you, Nick.
Nick Penzenstadler:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thousands of Amazon workers will walk off the job today. The move comes after union officials said the retailer failed to come to the bargaining table to negotiate contracts. The strike comes as Amazon rushes to deliver orders in the final days before Christmas next week. But Union represented facilities represent only about 1% of Amazon's hourly workforce. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said unionized workers at facilities in New York City, Skokie, Illinois, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Southern California will join the picket line to see contracts guaranteeing better wages and work conditions. The Teamsters Union has said it represents about 10,000 workers at 10 of the company's US facilities. Workers at seven of those facilities will walk out today according to the Teamsters.
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It's been a year of shifting tides in American sports, from the surge in popularity of women's athletics to an entirely new college sports landscape, and even debates about transgender athletes. Tune in later today, beginning at 4:00 P.M. Eastern Time when I'm joined by USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour and USA Today NFL Insider, Tyler Dragon to look back on the year in sports. You can find that episode right here on this feed.
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And 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 tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.