Taylor WilsonUSA TODAY
On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Julian Assangewill be freed after pleading guilty to breaking U.S. espionage law. Texas' anti-abortion heartbeat law aimed to save babies.But more infants died. USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe discusses the high court's move to take ongender-affirming carefor minors. The U.S. surgeon general wants to issuewarnings on gunslike cigarettes. USA TODAY National Political Correspondent David Jackson takes a look at former President Donald Trump'sstrategy ahead of Thursday's debate.
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 Tuesday, June 25th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Julian Assange will be free after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law. Plus, the Supreme Court will weigh in on gender-affirming care for minors. And we take a look at Trump's strategy for Thursday's debate.
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act, according to Federal Court records. He has fought extradition for years to avoid facing charges for releasing classified information about US military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under the terms of the plea with US prosecutors, Assange will get no more detention time than the 62 months he has already served in the United Kingdom. Assange is set to be released to Australia, his country of citizenship, after a court proceeding is over today, according to federal records.
Assange gained worldwide attention in 2010 after revealing the biggest security breach of its kind in US military history. WikiLeaks released more than 90,000 documents related to Afghanistan and later published more than 400,000 documents from the war in Iraq. The documents included information about civilian deaths, the hunt for al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and Iran's backing of militants in Iraq. He's argued that he was a journalist, and that WikiLeaks published secret documents as major American newspapers routinely do. His critics argue he was not a journalist because he didn't write stories or interview anyone or provide sufficient context to explain the raw classified documents and data that he released.
Still, some journalism advocates lamented the plea agreement. Jameel Jaffer, Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said the agreement ratified Assange spending five years in prison for activities journalists engage in every day. He has fought extradition, initially taking refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid charges in Sweden, which have since been dropped, because he feared Sweden would extradite him to the US. Assange has been jailed for years in a London prison, first for jumping bail on the Swedish charge, and later because he was considered a flight risk during his extradition fight.
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Texas lawmakers touted their heartbeat law as an effort to save lives. But the state's near-total ban on abortion appears to have led to an increase in infant deaths, according to a new study published yesterday. The findings in JAMA Pediatrics show that infant deaths rose after Texas's Senate Bill 8, which banned all abortion after about six weeks from conception. SB8 became Texas law in September of 2021, and the US Supreme Court overturned the Constitutional right to abortion just over nine months later in June of 2022. The High Court ruling in the Dobbs case prompted more than a dozen states to issue near-total bans on abortion. Observers speculate that evidence will also show increases in infant deaths in those states, similar to what Texas has seen, according to the study. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Are bans on gender-affirming care for minors Constitutional? The Supreme Court will weigh in. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court correspondent, Maureen Groppe for more.
Maureen, thanks for hopping on.
Maureen Groppe:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So, what's at issue in this case, and what has the High Court really agreed to take on here?
Maureen Groppe:
The case is about the bans on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender people under the age of 18 that Tennessee and many other states have passed. The issue that the court is going to be deciding is whether these bans discriminate on the basis of sex.
Taylor Wilson:
And what led up to this moment in the courts?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, since 2022, the number of states taking steps to limit access to gender-affirming care for minors has grown from four to 25. Many of these bans have been subject to litigation, including Tennessee's. An Appeals Court said a challenge to Tennessee's ban that was brought by the families of transgender teens was unlikely to be successful, and let the ban go into effect while that litigation continued. The families appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Biden administration also asked the Supreme Court to get involved. They said that this litigation across the country is creating profound uncertainty for transgender adolescents.
Taylor Wilson:
And Maureen, how does this relate to the Supreme Court's decision from April on an Idaho state ban? And can you just remind us what that ban centered on?
Maureen Groppe:
Yeah, it's a similar ban. It wasn't so much a decision. It wasn't a decision in the case in the sense that the court took a full briefing on this issue. They were asked whether Idaho could enforce its ban while it was being challenged, and the court said for the most part that it could, but they didn't get into the underlying Constitutional questions. That's what they're going to be doing with this Tennessee case.
Taylor Wilson:
And what have we really seen in recent years around states seeking to limit access to gender-affirming care for minors? And how has the Supreme Court weighed in generally?
Maureen Groppe:
There's been a lot of interest from Republican-led states, both on gender-affirming care bans, as well as on other issues such as restricting the bathrooms that transgender students can use and what sports teams they can join. The Supreme Court has been largely silent so far. Last year, the High Court sided with a 12-year-old transgender girl who was challenging a West Virginia ban on transgender athletes joining girl sports teams. They temporarily blocked the state from enforcing that prohibition, but they did so without resolving the underlying questions in the case. In January, the court declined to decide whether schools can bar students from using a bathroom that reflects their gender identity. That left in place a Lower Court ruling that allowed a transgender middle school boy in Indiana to use the boys' bathroom.
Taylor Wilson:
Maureen, this is, of course, an election year. How is this part of a broader conversation on these issues in this election year, and how have Biden and Trump approached them?
Maureen Groppe:
Both campaigns have been talking about transgender issues. Biden has boasted about steps that he's taken to strengthen transgender rights. Trump has said if he returns to the White House, he will press Congress to pass a law banning gender-affirming care for minors, and he will cut federal funding for schools pushing what he calls transgender insanity.
Taylor Wilson:
And so going forward, what's the timeline look like for a decision in this case?
Maureen Groppe:
The court will hear arguments in this case sometime in the fall. That debate could happen around the time of the election, but we won't get a decision that quickly. Most likely, we won't get a decision in this case until next year.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for USA TODAY. Thanks, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
"The soaring number of children killed by firearms has created an urgent public health crisis worthy of the response the government took to preventing cigarette smoking or car accidents," US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says. In an advisory, he said, "Gun violence demands a public health approach rather than the polarizing political response that has numbed Americans and public officials to enacting change, as gun violence became the leading cause of death in children." "Prior public health campaigns give a playbook for addressing the uniquely American problem of gun violence," he said.
Murthy's approach involves a range of responses, including warning labels on firearms as well as other consumer products, reinstating the ban on assault weapons, and laws on safe gun storage to reduce the risk of homicides and suicides. He also emphasized the increased need for mental health resources for victims of gun violence, including trauma-informed healthcare and school-based services. In 2020, gun violence overtook car accidents as the leading cause of death among children. Firearm deaths among children and adolescents in the US are six times as prevalent than Canada, and happen at more than 10 times the rate in Switzerland.
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Former President Donald Trump hopes to use Thursday's debate to indict President Joe Biden, but also must defend himself against liabilities. I spoke with USA TODAY National Political correspondent, David Jackson, for a look at how Trump could play offense and defense in his first 2024 debate against Biden.
David, thanks for hopping on.
David Jackson:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
What are some of the concerns about former President Donald Trump potentially setting too low a bar for President Joe Biden and the buildup to this debate with some of his comments about Biden's age or competence? And has Trump adjusted his strategy based on any of those concerns?
David Jackson:
Yes, he has. It's been one of the most interesting things that we've seen in the run-up to this debate. For months, really for years, Trump has attacked Biden over his age. He basically says he's an incompetent, that he's a doddering fool, that he has dementia, you name it. In doing so, he's basically set a pretty low bar for Joe Biden at this debate, because the way Trump says it, if Biden just shows up and sounds semi-coherent, he's going to disprove Trump's criticism.
So, what we've seen in recent days is that Trump has gone back and said, "Well, Biden has a lot of experience and he's done a lot of these debates, and he beat Paul Ryan in a vice presidential debate in 2012." So now we're seeing Trump and his team kind of building up Biden, because they realize that they've set a low bar for him.
Taylor Wilson:
David, can you help us understand the rules we should expect on debate night Thursday, and whose strengths or weaknesses might these rules play to?
David Jackson:
Well, that's a really good question, because there's been a lot of arguing about exactly what the rules are, but the most important one is that each candidate's mic will be shut off while the other is talking. And what this means is that Trump won't be able to interrupt Biden the way he did several times during their 2020 debates. So a lot of people think that's a disadvantage for Trump. However, some of the Trump people will say they think it's really kind of an advantage, because if Biden is struggling during an answer, Trump won't be able to hand him a lifeboat by jumping in and being rude to him. That kind of thing happened four years ago, and the public was more sympathetic toward Biden.
So we don't know how it'll exactly play out, but I think the muting of the mics, I think is the most important thing to consider going into this debate. There won't be a studio audience there, so Trump won't be able to play off the emotions of the audience, which is something he likes to do in every political setting. Also, he won't be able to roam the stage like he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. Remember, he would go to the back of the stage and basically stalk Clinton during one of their debates in New York. But he's not going to be able to do that in Atlanta to Biden. So basically, most of the rules would seem to inhibit Trump's performance at the debate and inhibit some of the things he likes to do in these settings.
Taylor Wilson:
How might Trump's criminal convictions factor in on Thursday?
David Jackson:
That's going to be an interesting question too. It's obviously going to be a very big factor. The question is how much Biden emphasizes it. What he's tended to do recently is he and his aides mention the fact that Trump is a convicted felon, and then they go on to attack his proposals for the economy and for prosecuting opponents, and they say he wants to be a dictator, that kind of thing. So they're trying the double-barreled approach, if you will. They say they're trying to aim at Trump's positions and how he would be bad for the country, but they also want to remind voters that, "Hey, Trump's a convicted felon. That's something you should consider too."
Taylor Wilson:
And do we expect Trump himself to lean into those issues, to move away from them? I mean, how is he approaching that?
David Jackson:
It's like his trial recently. He wants to be both a prosecutor and a defense attorney. He wants to prosecute Biden for his record, particularly on the economy and illegal border crossings, and basically go after him. But he also realizes he's going to have to play a lot of defense in this debate, because he knows Biden is going to attack him on some of these things as well. So I would say it's a double-edged approach Trump is taking. He's going to try to go on the attack, but he's also going to be ready to counterattack against Biden's criticisms.
Taylor Wilson:
And David, what are some of the major policy issues that Trump will really lean into on the debate stage this week?
David Jackson:
Inflation and the border. Those are the two things he talks about the most. And that's what his aides are telling us, and that's what he's been saying in interviews and debates. The inflation and cost of living, I think to him, is the biggest political issue out there, followed closely by the problems at the border and all the illegal border crossings. And that's something voters are also very concerned about. So I think those are the two issues you'll hear most about from him.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. David Jackson is a national political correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, David.
David Jackson:
Thank you, sir.
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Taylor Wilson:
And the Florida Panthers are Stanley Cup champions for the first time. They beat the Edmonton Oilers last night after a seven-game series, avoiding a nearly historic collapse after going ahead three games to none and seeing the Oilers storm back to tie up the series. The Oilers fell short in their bid to become the second NHL team, following the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, to overcome a 3-0 series deficit in the Stanley Cup final.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
