The Headlines - Former W.W.E. Boss Tapped to Run Education, and Trans Rights on Capitol Hill
Episode Date: November 20, 2024Plus, this musical wants France to love it back. Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available... to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: theheadlines@nytimes.com. On Today’s Episode:Trump Chooses Longtime Ally Linda McMahon to Run Education Dept., by Zach Montague and Ana SwansonTracking Trump’s Cabinet and Staff Nominations, by June Kim, Karen Yourish and Jasmine C. LeeHouse Republicans Target McBride With Capitol Bathroom Bill, by Annie KarniNetanyahu Offers $5 Million for Each Hostage Freed in Gaza, by Ephrat LivniDelhi Trudges Through Another Air Pollution Nightmare With No Answers, by Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar‘Les Misérables’ Returns Home, by Laura Cappelle
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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.
I'm Tracy Mumford.
Today's Wednesday, November 20th.
Here's what we're covering.
Donald Trump has made another unconventional pick for his cabinet, choosing Linda McMahon,
who has almost no background in education, for secretary of education.
McMahon is a former wrestling executive who led WWE.
She's also a close personal friend of Trump's who served during his first term
running the Small Business Administration.
Trump has repeatedly talked about getting rid of the Department of Education all
together, but that would require congressional action.
Instead, McMahon, if
confirmed, is expected to upend the department from the inside, at Trump's request.
Like many conservatives, President-elect Donald Trump believes that the Department of Education
has inserted itself into issues that it shouldn't be a part of, such as race, gender, that it delivers edicts on what students should be taught
and how, and ultimately has taken power away from parents.
Times reporter Erica Green spent over a decade
covering education.
She says there are some clues
about where McMahon might start.
She's the chair of the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think
tank that's called for a drastic overhaul of education policy. That includes stopping
schools from, quote, promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts about institutionalized
racism and expanding voucher programs that direct public funds to homeschooling, online
classes or private
or religious schools.
All of this is expected to happen when schools are combating a series of crises.
Student test scores are among the lowest they've ever been.
Colleges are facing enrollment crises, and both K-12 and college campuses are struggling to climb back to the levels of
performance that they were at before the pandemic. And as the nation's schools and colleges have
struggled to recover from a lot of the damage they have experienced in recent years,
education advocates fear that Trump's plans for the department could set them back even
further.
Also yesterday, Trump continued his trend of selecting television personalities to lead
federal agencies.
He said he plans to nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz, best known as TV's Dr. Oz, to run the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees health insurance programs for more
than 150 million Americans.
And Trump tapped the Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick to be Commerce Secretary.
It's increasingly one of the most powerful economic positions in the government.
The primary responsibility is advocating for U.S. business interests overseas, which could
put Lutnick at the center of discussions on tariffs and trade wars.
In Congress, the fight over transgender rights has taken a personal turn.
This week, Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina said she plans to call
for a ban on transgender women using women's restrooms on Capitol Hill.
Is this effort in response to Congresswoman McBride coming to Congress?
Yes, and absolutely, and then some.
I'm not going to stand.
Mace has been explicit that she's specifically
targeting Sarah McBride, a newly elected Democratic
representative from Delaware who's the first openly trans
member of Congress.
House Republicans have spent the last few years
routinely proposing national anti-trans legislation,
and now some are signaling they'll support this measure in their own workplace.
Meanwhile, Democrats on the Hill reacted to the proposal with outrage, calling it disgusting
and cruel.
For the moment, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has been noncommittal about how far
the measure will get.
A man is a man, and a woman is a woman.
And a man cannot become a woman.
But I also believe that we treat everybody with dignity.
And so we can do and believe all those things
at the same time.
And I wanted to make that clear for everybody
because there's lots of questions.
In a statement, McBride herself wrote, quote,
everyday Americans go to work with people
who have life journeys different than their own
and engage with them respectfully.
I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a reward yesterday, $5 million to
anyone who returns one of the hostages still being held in Gaza.
The hostages were taken over a year ago during Hamas's attack on Israel.
About 100 are still being held, though several dozen of them are believed to be dead.
Many Israelis, including the hostages' families, have accused Netanyahu of not prioritizing
the hostages' release. They say he's resisted making a ceasefire deal to free them, and
instead prolonged the war for his own political gain. The prime minister made the reward announcement
while in the Gaza Strip, where he was visiting Israeli troops. He said that anyone who returns a hostage will also receive safe passage out of Gaza
for themselves and their family.
So this week started with a Monday that was, by some counts, the absolute worst air pollution
there's been over Delhi for about
eight years.
It felt like we got bombed with pea soup kind of fog or smog over the whole city.
You could not see the sun in the middle of the day.
And most of us can feel it also in your lungs, in your eyes.
Maybe you got headachy.
Maybe you get tired.
My colleague Alex Trevely is a correspondent based in India's capital, New Delhi, where
the air quality index soared to more than 1,700 this week. Anything above 300 is considered
hazardous. He says that while this particular stretch has been brutal, the city is caught
in a cycle where thick, smothering air pollution settles
on Delhi every November.
As the temperature drops on this part of the Indian plains, backed up against the Himalaya
mountain range, it becomes impossible for air to refresh itself. Wind patterns change
and all of the ordinary pollutants hangs over us in a great choking haze. There are a lot of contributing
factors. There's vehicle pollution, a large part of the vehicular fleet is diesel. There's
fields that have been cleared for harvest. Farmers burned down the stubble around this
time of year to clear it for the next crop. There are firecrackers on Diwali. Depending
on where you stand in society, you might have a very different experience
of this kind of pollution.
What you might call upper middle class or wealthy households,
many now have air purifiers.
But that's proportionally a really tiny part
of the population.
Most people are left to fend for themselves,
whether at home or out in the open.
You see a lot of people tying big pieces of fabric
up around their face, or maybe they have some N95 type masks left over from the pandemic. But it's
got so bad that this one very prominent member of parliament wrote, perhaps mockingly, that
if the air is unbreathable, if the city is unlivable from November to January each year,
should it even be the capital? Should India's capital be moved to some other place?
And finally.
Do you hear the people sing,
singing the song of angry men?
Les Mis is one of the most famous musicals in the world.
It's been performed in 22 languages, seen by over 100 million people.
But ironically, the tale of uprising and rebellion has never been a hit in France, despite being
set in France, adapted from a French novel, and with two Frenchmen as the show's creators.
It's only been performed in Paris twice since it debuted in the 1980s, which means more
musical theater kids in Kansas know the words than anyone in France.
Some of it's because musicals were just not cool in the country for a while.
But it's more than that.
One French journalist called the play, deplorably foolish and vulgar.
The Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway film adaptation didn't change that.
But a new stage production opening today in Paris is trying to win the people over.
The show's original creators are heavily involved, and the production has gone all
in reworking the lyrics, modernizing the production, and featuring a more diverse cast.
This time, France appears to be ready to embrace its musical offspring.
The initial run is nearly sold out, and plans are underway to have it tour France outside
Paris, which would be the first time ever in the musical's history.
Those are the headlines.
Today on The Daily, Why breast reduction surgeries are
becoming more popular among young women in the US. That's next in the New York
Times audio app or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy
Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.