Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Trump Immigration Crackdown; Battle Over Birthright Citizenship; Record Snow In South; Soup Cough Drops?

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

The Money Rehab guest hosts this week are Mosh Oinounou and Jill Wagner, journalists and cohosts of the independent news podcast Mo News. All week, you'll hear their non-partisan, conversational breakdown of the top news and breaking news stories. Today, they cover: – Welcome to Mo News (00:00) – Threat of Immigration Raid Turns Chicago Hub Into Ghost Town (03:25) – Twenty-Two States Sue to Stop Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order (07:10) – At National Prayer Service, A Plea To Trump: ‘Have Mercy’ (10:45) – Backlash To Trump’s’ January 6th Pardons (13:40) – Historic Snow In Florida, Louisiana and Texas As A Once-In-A-Generation Storm Hits (18:10) – Trump To Announce Up To $500 Billion In Private Sector AI Infrastructure Investment (19:50) – Marco Rubio Confirmed By Senate To Be Next Secretary Of State (23:50) – Hegseth Ex-Sister-in-Law Tells Senators He Was ‘Abusive’ to Second Wife (25:45) – Taliban Releases 2 Americans, Including Ryan Corbett, In Prisoner Swap (27:45) – Progresso Soup Drops Sell Out Fast (29:30) – On This Day (32:00) — Mosheh Oinounou (@mosheh) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. He has 20 years of experience at networks including Fox News, Bloomberg Television and CBS News, where he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and launched the network's 24 hour news channel. He founded the @mosheh Instagram news account in 2020 and the Mo News podcast and newsletter in 2022. Jill Wagner (@jillrwagner) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. She's currently the Managing Editor of the Mo News newsletter and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News, Cheddar News, and News 12. She also co-founded the Need2Know newsletter, and has made it a goal to drop a Seinfeld reference into every Mo News podcast. Follow Mo News on all platforms: Website: www.mo.news Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mosheh/ Daily Newsletter: https://www.mo.news/newsletter Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@monews Twitter: https://twitter.com/mosheh TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mosheh Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MoshehNews Snapchat: https://t.snapchat.com/pO9xpLY9

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I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Hi, this is Moe Schwannunu, the Moe from Moe News. If you're familiar with us on Instagram or our podcast, I'm a long time TV news producer who launched an independent news brand just a few years ago. Mo from Mo News, if you're familiar with us on Instagram or our podcast, I'm a long time TV news producer who launched an independent news brand just a few years ago. As you know, Nicole is on maternity leave. So this week, my co-host Jill and I are guest hosting

Money Rehab. Each day we're gonna be sharing the latest episode of Mo News right here on the Money Rehab feed. So you guys get the news you need to know every day this week. Here's today's episode. ["Money Rehab"] you need to know every day this week. Here's today's episode. Hey everybody, it is Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025. You're listening to the Mo News podcast.

I'm Mo Shwenu. And I'm Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you just the facts. And we read all the news and read between the lines so you don't have to. And Jill, in your household, celebrations continue over the big national championship win in college football. That's right, Ohio State, the national champions,

as we reported on Tuesday, and my husband soaking it all in and enjoying it. Yeah, much productivity in the household in the past 24 hours? Zero. No, just pure celebrations. You first win in like a decade for the Buckeyes, right? Yeah, and it comes after the big loss to Michigan in the regular season. So the lesson, I guess, to take away from it is never give up because who would have

thought that the Ohio State Buckeyes would wind up winning it all? Yeah, it's a cool setup now in college football, a 12-team playoff. So it gives an opportunity to teams that wouldn't typically have gotten a chance to play in the national championship game, specifically this year in Notre Dame and Ohio State. They both made their runs and then Ohio State's just lasted a bit longer. So congrats to all the Buckeye fans, including a couple on our team here at Mo News. And good luck to the Fighting Irish, who they haven't won a championship, Jill,

since the 80s. They'll get it one day. All right, Motion, I think you and I need to start getting used to a different news cycle, because we're busy. Jill, I will note, I was talking to friends in the White House press corps. In the first 48 hours of the, it's not even been 48 hours

as we record this, in the first 36 hours of the Trump presidency, they believe he has now taken more questions from the media than Biden did in a year. And so just a remarkable amount of news coming out of Washington right now. Right. Whatever your thoughts are on Donald Trump, he is accessible. He's accessible. He's talking about everything. But of course, you know, there are people who vehemently disagree with some of the things that he's doing. Nonetheless, he is talking and explaining why he's doing what he's doing. And so we'll try to get to some of the headlines made in the last 24 hours here on this podcast. All right. And let's get to those headlines, starting with politics and the first full day of the second Trump term, his plans to crack down on illegal immigration, specifically in Chicago, and pushback

on his order to end birthright citizenship 22 states have already filed suit. Also some pushback on Trump's sweeping pardons of everyone charged in the January 6th storming of the Capitol. In other Trump news, a massive investment in AI and his first cabinet pick Marco Rubio for Secretary of State now confirmed to the weather where there's historic snow in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Most it's being called a once in a generation storm. Jill we had to look twice outside Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. What you thought were streets full of powdered sugar, totally understandable, actual snow there down in Nola. In a prisoner swap, the Taliban has released

two American citizens, and in much lighter news, chicken noodle soup, but make it a sucking candy. We'll explain. We haven't got a chance to try these, we will admit. And Moche has on this day in history. Jill, we'll tell you about the most famous Super Bowl commercial of all time here as we near this year's Super Bowl. OK, starting with all the news related to illegal immigration.

Trump's incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has been telling Chicagoans that the largest deportation operation in history was set to start on Tuesday. However, as of Tuesday night, it was uncertain whether these Chicago raids will actually begin as planned, given the extremely cold temperatures and leaks about the operation. Areas in Chicago with big Latino populations were pretty empty during most of the day Tuesday.

Federal authorities are planning to go after several hundred people in this country illegally with criminal records. Jill, there is talk that all the leaks about the depredations beginning might have made things more challenging for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. So it appears while they had planned to be in Chicago there, the heads up didn't make life easy for federal authorities. And so they're reconsidering right now how they're going to do this to ensure that all the places they plan on going don't leak out in the media in advance.

It comes as Trump signed a number of executive orders related to the issue in just his first 24 hours in office. That includes him calling for the State Department to start the process of designating certain cartels as global terrorists and foreign terrorist organizations. and foreign terrorist organizations. So the reason for this is because it would give his administration more power to impose economic penalties, travel restrictions and potentially even take military action inside of foreign nations. In the executive order he issued on Monday, Trump named two gangs in particular that operate inside of the United States, the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran MS-13, which is very active here on Long Island.

Using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the government could take additional steps to disrupt the financial networks of the gangs. Trump was asked about whether this means the U.S. military will move inside of Mexico and other countries. Take a listen to this exchange from inside of the Oval Office as journalists asked him questions on Monday night. Cartels are now going to be seen as foreign terror organizations. Would you think about ordering US Special Forces into Mexico to take them out? Could happen. Stranger things have happened.

So it's interesting here, Jill, naming the drug cartels as terror groups and what that opens up to the US military here, what it means to US-Mexico relations, and other side of this, asylum seekers. You can now make a claim in the US that you live in an area controlled by a terrorist group and make a claim that you should have a right to seek asylum here in the US. There have been some people internally within the Trump administration who were pushing back on the idea of making drug cartels terror groups, especially with asylum seekers in

mind that there's a downside here to naming the drug cartels as terror groups. Nonetheless, significant move here putting an MS-13 and other cartels at the rank of an Al Qaeda or Hamas or ISIS or any other terror group around the world here. It comes as there was just a slew of Trump executive orders in the past day here, including some that involve US procedures here in the country. You mentioned the potential deportation rates in Chicago. Well, there are now new directives from the Trump administration on where raids can happen. For years now, going back to the Obama years, federal immigration authorities had policies they would not do raids in areas like churches and schools, what they call sensitive areas.

Well, according to Trump, criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest. The idea before was they didn't want to stoke fear in immigrant communities that would keep children from going to school, stop people from going to hospitals. Nonetheless, it appears those directives have changed. One of the immigration moves getting the most attention and now the most lawsuits. Monday, President Trump signed an executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship. Now a group of 18 Democratic state attorneys general joined the legal fight to block the move describing it as unconstitutional. Democratic state

attorneys general from New Jersey to California signed on to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Massachusetts. The city of San Francisco and Washington DC are also suing. The case could end up becoming the first major Supreme Court showdown for Trump's second term agenda. In short, Trump is trying to end the fact that any baby born in America is automatically a citizen. The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, says that all persons quote born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are

automatically citizens. So this language was crafted and added to the Constitution to establish full citizenship rights for black Americans, but since then it has been interpreted for more than a century by courts as also granting rights to all children born on US soil and this is regardless of their parents immigration status. In his executive order, however, Trump interpreted the amendment's language as excluding babies born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully present or who have lawful but temporary status.

Trump called birthright citizenship ridiculous, claiming that we are the only country that does it. However, dozens of other nations, including Canada, Brazil and Mexico, also have forms of birthright citizenship that are comparable to the United States. On Monday, there was a second legal action against this. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking Trump's order. The executive director there saying, denying citizenship to U.S. born children is not only unconstitutional, it is also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values. This is an experiment.

Trump administration, even conservative legal scholars, even those who are sympathetic to Trump, who agree with him overall on the issue, know that this is an uphill fight in the courts. Trump is effectively trying to overturn a constitutional amendment, the 14th Amendment, with a simple executive order. I was watching an appearance by the former Trumpeter and General Bill Barr from his first term over on Fox News, who was like, listen, the executive order sounds great, but it doesn't have that much authority. You do need at least Congress to pass a law here, but you potentially need a constitutional

amendment given how many cases the courts have faced related to the 14th amendment over the course of more than a century here, years of precedent. And if you were born here, regardless of your parents' legal status, you are an American. And so that is the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. And you can't just sign an order. Otherwise, you do need Congress to get involved or even again further an amendment to the constitution that revises the 14th Amendment. However, at the same time, the Trump order here gets the ball rolling on a national conversation.

This is one of his goals about birthright citizenship that could lead to an eventual constitutional amendment here. Now amending the constitution, we've only done it a few times in American history. It's incredibly challenging. You need a majority of states to sign on. You need Congress to go through it. That's an option. And so this will be difficult. And Trump sort of acknowledged it in the Oval Office as he was asked about it, as he was going through all of his executive orders. And he had media in the room. And they're like, well, what about this one? What about this one? He's like, we'll see about this one, you know?

One of the many things he signed related to immigration. Jill, before we leave the issue, a remarkable moment yesterday in Washington as part of inauguration festivities, there's a prayer breakfast at the National Cathedral. Trump and Vance and their families, among a number of officials, were there on Tuesday. And that's where there were a number of religious officials who spoke, including a bishop. This is the right Reverend Marion Edgar Buddy. And she made a point with the president in the room of speaking directly to him, speaking critically of him. We should note that Buddy has been critical of Trump in the past. And so she's a bishop

there. And she took the opportunity to say, it's incumbent upon us to speak the truth. And I want you, Mr. President, to show mercy to Americans who are scared right now. Those include LGBTQ Americans. She included illegal immigrants in there. Here, take a listen to a bit of what she had to say. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants

and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, wadara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Jill, pretty remarkable that this bishop was like, you know what, I'm going to go for it here in the ceremony. A lot of people, if you read the comments, we posted the clip over on

Instagram where you see the side by side of Trump staring at her in one camera while she speaks. People who are big advocates of hers being like, yeah, you know, I'm so glad she spoke to him. Others who are like she was completely out of line. That was not something she should have been doing at the prayer breakfast. You know, she was very policy oriented here at a time where she had just been praying for the country. Trump nonetheless was asked about it afterwards and told the media as he was walking on White House grounds, he didn't like the service. They need to do better over there at the church.

Yeah, they thought this was the easy part, right? You just got to show up. You're not going to really have to deal with politics at all. Well, yeah, you know, he's in a prayer breakfast. He thought it was just like being, you know, like we're going to pray for the country. We're going to pray for the president, etc. And the bishop here was like, no, I have thoughts for you. And I want to talk to you about how some people are feeling about your presidency.

Trump not one to enjoy, you know, being effectively lectured from the pulpit. OK, now let's talk about presidential pardons, both President Trump and President Biden coming under fire for broadly using their unique power to make comprehensive pardons. So we reported on this yesterday, but we wanna talk about some of the reaction here. On Monday, then President Biden preemptively pardoned

people that he thought would be targeted by the incoming Justice Department, including five of his family members. The concern even from some Democrats, is that this was a massive overreach and sends a very bad precedent for future presidents going forward. Jill, media was running around Capitol Hill yesterday

trying to ask Democrats about it. And the repeated phrase from Chuck Schumer and others was, we're focused on the future. We're focused on the future. We're focused on the future. They did not want to talk about it. Hours later, President Trump entered the Oval Office and pardoned approximately 1,500 individuals convicted for their involvement in the January 6th, 2021

U.S. Capitol attack. So he commuted the sentences of 14 others and directed the Justice Department to dismiss all pending cases related to January 6th. The bottom line, all January 6th defendants had their slate wiped clean by Trump. Trump said that he was going to pardon the January 6th rioters. So that wasn't a huge surprise, but it wasn't clear if he would pardon all of them. The thinking was that maybe he would pardon the ones that were charged with nonviolent crimes. But no, this was a blanket pardon for everyone charged with their actions that day, including those who committed violence. So looking here at who got pardoned, more than 100 were

convicted of assaulting officers, including Patrick McKayhee, who was found guilty during a bench trial of assaulting a Metropolitan police officer with a dangerous weapon. Robert Scott Palmer, a Florida man who admitted to assaulting officers with a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher. Daniel Caldwell, he pleaded guilty to spraying officers who were guarding the Capitol with pepper spray. The two longest sentences were handed to former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. He was sentenced to 22 years and Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes, who was serving 18 years. Both are currently free. Tarrio was not actually in Washington on January 6th, but he was convicted of directing the

attack remotely. Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for assembling $20,000 worth of assault weaponry that was intended to be used at the Capitol. Again, both of those men currently out of prison. Pretty remarkable move here. Again, not a surprise. I think the surprise for a number of Republicans at Capitol Hill was they were hoping that some of these guys, literally there's video of them assaulting police officers, beating

them up with their own shields. And the hope was that they would distinguish between all of them. But it appeared the priority at the Trump White House was all about just doing this as quickly as possible. And it would have taken a lot of time to go through the various cases, I guess. They didn't do it in advance of his presidency. So they decided to go with this blanket pardon, despite the fact that Trump, you know, talks about, you know, protect the blue, protecting police officers here.

And so Trump was actually asked about this during one of his many media appearances in the first 36 hours here, saying, hey, how does this jive with the fact that you're all about defending police officers? And he's just like, these people have served their time. There's other people out there who do worse things. You don't get prison time. It sort of made it a sort of a what about argument. But nonetheless, he's like, these people have served their time. I have no issue with this. This needed to happen. Nonetheless, media running around Capitol Hill, yesterday talking to Republicans, a number of Republican senators disappointed

in the lack of discernment here between those who were pardoned for nonviolent offenses and those who were pardoned for violent offenses, basically just wiping them all clean. Lisa Murkowski, Republican senator from Alaska, said, I was disappointed to see this. I do fear the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us. Speaking of police officers, you also had Bill Castee.

He's a Republican Senator from Louisiana. He said it's wrong to assault anybody, certainly a police officer. I'm a big back the blue guy. He was disappointed. Josh Hawley, Republican, big Trump guy from Missouri, said that if he were president, he would not have offered pardons to individuals who committed violence. But nonetheless, this was what Trump campaigned on. I could go on here, Tom Taylor, Republican from North Carolina, Susan

Collins, Republican from Maine. All of them said, Yeah, don't love this. But then they were quick to say, well, remember the Biden pardons of his family? Can we talk about that right now? Many of them just want to look forward here, but a major move among all the various moves Trump is making right now. You should love your hair, but that can be hard to do if you're dealing with shedding or thinning. Luckily, Nutrifol is here to help.

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Coast amid dangerous cold as a once in a generation winter storm wreaks havoc on travel in a region wholly unaccustomed to winter weather. On Tuesday, snow fell from southeast Texas to Louisiana and into parts of Mississippi and Alabama, creating treacherous conditions. An area stretching from Houston into southern Louisiana has already recorded widespread one to three inches of snow, a few areas topped six inches. A record amount of snow also hit New Orleans and other cities along the Gulf Coast. Most incredible pictures of people cross-country skiing on Bourbon Street. There were attempts for urban skiing along Bourbon Street, a priest and nuns snowball fight outside a church down there, snowboarding

behind a golf cart, sledding down these snow-covered Mississippi River levees on kayaks, cardboard boxes, inflatable alligators, people enjoying themselves with snow in places where they never see this sort of thing. The first ever blizzard warning issued for parts of the Gulf Coast, including Southeast Texas, Southern Louisiana, Mid-City New Orleans recorded nearly 10 inches of snow as of this recording. Areas of Baton Rouge in New Orleans also got five inches of snow. They saw a blanket of snow in places like Houston with 20 degree weather. Schools and airports were closed. They're not equipped down there at Bush International like they would be at O'Hare, LaGuardia, or

JFK. The governor of Georgia warning people to stay off the roads because of the onset of snow and ice. Again, it's the South. They're not really prepared for snow and ice. So everyone there, be careful as this thing melts. From Fox Business, President Trump unveiled a massive artificial intelligence infrastructure project from the private sector on his first full day of his second term in office Tuesday.

During a speech at the White House, he announced that SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle have joined forces for a project called Stargate to build data centers in the United States for powering AI. The CEO of all three tech firms, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison and SoftBank's Masa San joined Trump from the Roosevelt Room at the White House for the announcement. The initial investment for the project will be $100 billion with plans to expand to $500 billion over the next four years. The first data center built under the initiative will be in Texas and it will eventually expand

to other states. Other investors are expected to join the venture, but it was not immediately clear which ones. Yeah, so AI is our future. It's going to require an incredible amount of power and an incredible amount of data infrastructure. And Trump is looking to own that in the future. We're in this race against China when it comes to all things AI.

Trump has now secured a trillion dollars in private investment for a variety of projects. That includes this project, along with some other stuff. Altman, who I happened to see, but he was on the phone the whole time. I was at this party in DC over the weekend. Has been meeting with investors across DC, really looking to get plugged in here

as the new administration prioritizes AI. He had actually been looking at various places for data centers across the Middle East, as well as in Asia. American officials caught wind of that. They expressed concerns about a US company like OpenAI, which owns Chet-GPT. It was trying to build vital technology in the Middle East. So, it said, listen, you need to focus on doing this here in the United States. So Texas, first spot,

we'll have more of these coming up here. But a huge priority as we continue here is gonna be all things AI, including regulating it, right? How we're gonna utilize it, but first building that backbone for it. So most of my dad actually called me on Tuesday afternoon and he was like, are you watching this? You gotta put on the TV. And I on Tuesday afternoon and he was like, are you watching this?

You got to put on the TV. And I didn't know what he was talking about. And he was talking about the AI announcement because Larry Ellison, who's the Oracle CEO, he was going into all of the potential health benefits of the project. And he was talking about all of the diseases that would potentially be able to get cured through AI. He said, we'll be amazed at how quickly we're curing this cancer and that one and heart disease.

He said, little fragments of those cancer tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. And if you could do it using AI, you could do it with a blood test and have the AI look at the blood test, basically then gene sequence the cancer tumor and vaccinate the person.

So basically design a vaccine for every individual person which would vaccinate them against the cancer. This is what Larry Ellison was trying to explain. And obviously we're still years away from that. But the potential here is really incredible. Yeah. I mean, the thing about AI is it can do the power of many, many, many, many humans. You give it various tasks to do analysis, and it's doing data analysis at a speed that

we can't even comprehend. So when it comes to some of these very large tasks, and you mentioned there with cancer, the future with cancer and medicine writ large is customization. We won't all just be in an ideal world in 20 years, not all be assigned the same medication when something happens. We'll be customizing it to your genes and your experience. And that level of customization will only be possible

utilizing stuff like AI. So I don't wanna digress here, but there's some very exciting things in the offing here. And part of what this is, is just, again, building the backbone for AI to be able to operate. Yes. And it was not what I was expecting when my dad was like, turn on the TV. I thought I was going to see like a giraffe standing on its head. And instead of- Warren Wagner, you know, tracking the news. The Mo News team, we enlist the whole family here.

All right. From ABC News, the Senate unanimously confirmed Marco Rubio as Secretary of State with a decisive 99 to zero vote, marking the first cabinet appointment in the president's administration. Rubio is the first Latino and the first Cuban American to hold the position. He is known for strong stances on China and his support for U.S.-India relations. His confirmation was praised across party lines with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledging Rubio's qualifications despite some policy disagreements. See, that's the thing. You know, the Senate has this advise and consent role. But as long as the person is qualified, you typically get most

Democrats on board as well. You're going to have some very party line votes coming up here. Pete Hegseth is one of them. I'll mention that in a second. But ultimately, Rubio, he comes from the Senate. All the senators know him. Even with different issues, they understand that he is the president's choice. They feel he's qualified. And so they have sent him off now to be the Secretary of State. You mentioned his Cuban American heritage. He's particularly hardline around Venezuela, Cuba, et cetera. So we'll see what comes of the policies there, specifically in Latin America. But he's got a tall order, right? We're talking about continuing the Gaza ceasefire deal, things related to Iran, various terror issues globally.

What do we deal with? Syria, the Ukraine-Russia crisis, managing China. The world is full of challenges right now. And Rubio said that, you know, the Secretary of State, the State Department will be central to that. We shall see how it plays out. Certain administrations give secretaries of state more power. We saw that in the last administration. Some do less. And so we'll see how the relationship also works between Rubio and Trump, Rubio and other national security leaders, as well as some

of the other cabinet appointments as they come aboard here. Now, they could vote on Pete Hegseth as soon as in the next couple days here, but there was some news yesterday. You might have seen this from NBC and the New York Times. An affidavit, a sworn statement, was submitted to senators on Tuesday accusing Hegseth, the latest accusation against Hegseth, of apparently being so abusive towards his second wife, he's now on his third wife, his second wife, his ex-wife, that she once hid in a closet from him and had to use a safe word to call for help if she needed to get away from him.

Now, this is a sworn affidavit from Danielle Hegsef, who happened to be the ex-wife of Hegsef's brother, describing what she said was erratic and aggressive behavior by Pete Hegseth towards, again, his second wife, Samantha. So this is the sister-in-law describing Hegseth's behavior towards an ex-wife here. The affidavit has been obtained by several media outlets, describes him drinking to excess and just abusive behavior. At the same time, the woman at the center of this, the ex-wife, the second ex-wife, Samantha Hegseth, apparently doesn't want to be a part of this.

She's put out a statement saying, there was no physical abuse in my marriage. This is the only statement I will make to you. I've let you know I am not speaking and I will not speak of my marriage to Pete. Please respect this. So she was very specific. She didn't deny everything in there. She just said, you have your information wrong. There was no physical abuse in my marriage.

So that's where things stand. We'll see how much of an impact that has as he's been voted out of committee and now goes to a full Senate floor vote. I am curious to see what the impact is because it seemed like after he had his hearing in front of the committee, that potentially the hard part here was over.

Jodie Ernst backed him. She was seen as a major roadblock potentially. So we'll see if this does it. But I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, there's been a number of allegations against him. I mean, he was on the verge of being forced out, dropping out. They were talking openly about having Ron DeSantis

be the next nominee to be Secretary of Defense. Hegseth fought back, was able to recover his nomination here, but now a new allegation. So something we'll be tracking. From CBS News, two Americans, Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McEntee, have been released by the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of a prisoner exchange for Khan Mohammed, who was imprisoned in the U.S. on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

The exchange was the result of extensive negotiations over two years and occurred just before President Biden's term ended and Donald Trump took office. Corbett had been detained by the Taliban since 2022 during a business trip to Afghanistan. the Taliban since 2022 during a business trip to Afghanistan. Some of his family and friends follow Moe News and sent us notes talking about their gratitude just on cloud nine here that he's finally released here as part of this prisoner exchange, which, again, was mainly negotiated by the Biden team as they were leaving office here. Now, as far as who was traded in exchange for these Americans,

the Justice Department referred to Khan Mohammed at the time they arrested him and were convicting him as a violent shahadist and narcotics trafficker who sought to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan using rockets. He is the first person to be convicted in the U.S. on narco-terrorism laws. So apparently a really bad dude here, but nonetheless a negotiation. And this goes back, I mean, all the way back to Trump 1, when we were negotiating the exit deal from Afghanistan, Trump allowed the release of 1500 Taliban prisoners as part of that deal to get US troops out. So this is not the first deal we've made with them.

They aren't presenting an overt threat right now to the US. They're sort of just managing their own situation in Afghanistan, though. Terrible treatment of women and other matters in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, this deal is done. But two Americans remain detained in Afghanistan right now. Their names are George Glezman and Mahmoud Habibi. And so we'll see if Trump will negotiate for their release. Okay.

And here's something that we could have used last week from USA Today. Progresso unveiled a new innovative way for soup lovers to satisfy their taste buds. And the response was overwhelmingly positive. So last Thursday, the soup company announced the launch of soup drops, a chicken noodle soup flavored hard candy drop that resembles a cough drop. The first batch sold out in under an hour, but Progresso posted on Instagram saying, don't worry, there's a fresh batch of soup you could suck on

coming your way next Thursday. So that is tomorrow at nine a.m. Eastern time at progressosoupdrop.com. Progresso saying there will be additional drops every week on Thursday for the rest of the month. It feels like a Netflix situation. Every Thursday we're going to drop a new episode, we're going to drop some new soup drops. Very trendy there for Progresso.

Apparently the drops taste, we haven't had a chance to try them, Jill. They taste like broth, savory veggies, soft egg noodles with a hint of parsley. According to the company, the drops are packaged in a can that looked like a soup can, of course, naturally, with 20 individually wrapped candies in each can. The idea behind it, Progresso says, when you're sick, nothing is truly more reassuring than chicken noodle soup. So we thought why stop at the soup bowl? Let's take our flavors and make them a fun, savory candy

for a new way to enjoy the taste. Jill, I don't know how I feel about this. I'm open-minded, but you said we gotta use it last week. Jill, we've been sick in this household. One of us has been sick since mid-December. So we've gotta use these for a while. We've gone through our share of both soup and cough drops, but no soup drops.

So TBD. I do feel that the whole point of soup when you're not feeling well is that it kind of like warms you up and loosens up anything you've got going on, but I get it. Either they'll flavor it like the menthol or maybe a citrus flavor. Why not just go for the soup?

Just double down on soup. All forms of soup in drop form, in soup form, in drink form. If anyone works related to progressive here, we'll send us a message and we'll give you our address. Jill and I will try them live on the podcast. Moj, at this rate, one of us will be sick like next week. Yeah, exactly. We need them. Send them over.

The ground dog hasn't even made its appearance yet. Like winter is going to be lasting a while. All right. Now time for On This Day in History in 1984. On this day, 41 years ago. Can that be right, Jill? Was 1984 41 years ago? Not in my book. No, no way. Jill says this was 20 years ago. On this day in 1984, Super Bowl 18 audiences see a commercial that is now widely agreed to be one of the most powerful and effective of all time. This was the commercial directed by Ridley Scott is Apple's

1984 spot featuring a young woman throwing a sledgehammer through a screen on which a big brother like figure is preaching about the unification of thought. It heralded a new age for Apple, one of the most innovative ads of all time for Apple, the Apple 1984 spot. Check it out on YouTube. Still, I think stands the test of time. A bit of politics legal news on this day in history.

Roe v. Wade made history on this day in 1973. The Supreme Court issuing one of its momentous decisions, ruling in Roe v. Wade that a Texas statute criminalizing abortion actually violated a woman's constitutional right of privacy. That of course stood for nearly 50 years, the court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. One of the more iconic magazine covers of all time came out on this day in 1981. This was a month and a half after the shocking assassination of John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, a Rolling Stone magazine's John Lennon tribute issue hit the stands, featuring a naked Lennon curled up in a fetal embrace of Yoko Ono.

It's an iconic Annie Leibovitz portrait. And we end here with a bit of music history on this day, 60 years ago. It's not unusual to be loved by anyone. Tom Jones, on this day, 60 years ago, also on this day. You're a rich girl and you're going too far cause you know it don't matter anyway. She's a rich girl.

Moshe, I think I have mentioned this on the podcast before, but there is a great cover of Rich Girl from Lake Street Dive. Highly recommend for anyone who likes that song. It's not she's a rich girl. You're a rich girl and you've gone too far. Did I say she's a rich girl? No, I said it.

I said it. Because you know it don't matter anyway. Well, but the lyrics mattered. As far as I was concerned, I wanted you guys to know that I will correct myself and hauling oats lyrics Jill finally Adele made some history on this day in 2012 more recently breaking an American chart record that was held previously by the Beatles and Pink Floyd this is when her album 21 Went number one for 16 weeks Hello

You're a rich girl. It's not unusual. Hello. Some iconic songs on this day. And now we need goodbye. Yes, which doesn't have this quite the same. Hello. And I say goodbye. Hey, listen, we had Lenin in the Beatles. All right, guys.

Thank you for listening to the Mo News podcast. If you like what you hear, please share this with your friends. It'll help us grow. Follow us and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And review us in the App Store. See you everyone tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Mo News podcast. Bye!