The Headlines - The Who’s Who of Trump’s Staff Picks, and Bitcoin and Stocks Set Records

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Plus, Israel’s cycle of war in North Gaza.   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: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:Trump Expected to Name Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, by Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Edward WongBitcoin and Stocks Set Records as Bullish Bets Continue, by Ravi Mattu and Joe RennisonAttack, Withdraw, Return: Israel’s Bloody Cycle of War in North Gaza, by Jack Nicas, Adam Rasgon and Hiba YazbekSpirit Airlines Plane Hit by Gunfire in Haiti and Forced to Divert, by Frances RoblesChronic Brain Trauma Is Extensive in Navy’s Elite Speedboat Crews, by Dave Philipps

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, November 12th. Here's what we're covering. A flurry of appointments is underway for Donald Trump's second term. The Times has gotten details on who's been picked for what in the last 24 hours. Florida Senator Marco Rubio is expected to be named Secretary of State, though Trump could still change his mind. It's an enemies

to allies storyline for the two men. They famously traded insults when they were both running for president in 2016. Little Marco verse Hare Force One. But the two made up and Rubio went on to become an informal foreign policy advisor for Trump. In terms of what he could bring to the State Department, Rubio has been one of the loudest voices in the Senate calling for a more aggressive stance towards China. And while he used to take a hard line on Russia, he's been increasingly echoing Trump's criticism of funding for Ukraine. I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong and standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war and needs to be brought

to a conclusion because that country is going to be... Another appointment, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York for United Nations Ambassador. Stefanik has little diplomatic experience, but was in the spotlight last year for her viral face-offs with Ivy League presidents over anti-Semitism on college campuses, which led to several of them losing their jobs. She's also accused the United Nations of being plagued by, quote, anti-Semitic rot. And for national security advisor, Trump's chosen Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, a former Green Beret who's taken a hard line on China and Iran.

We need a commander in chief that is strong. But most of all folks, and this is deadly serious, we need a commander in chief that our enemies respect and fear. and fear. America needs... Trump's also made picks for two other key roles. He announced former representative Lee Zeldin of New York will lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a position that's expected to be key to Trump's plan to dismantle climate regulations. And Trump is expected to name Stephen Miller, one of his most influential aides, to be deputy chief of staff. It's not clear yet what all he'd handle, but Miller has spent the last two years working

on detailed plans for mass deportations. Trump's picks so far have been some of his most vocal supporters. He's repeatedly complained that his biggest error in his first term was not being more rigorous about his team, and that he was sold on people back then who turned out to be quote disloyal. Meanwhile on Wall Street. We do get the closing bells here on this Monday afternoon and there is a lot to cheer about here. Stocks are continuing to rally in the wake of Trump's victory. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both set records yesterday, as investors anticipate

business-friendly policies under a second Trump administration, including tax cuts and lighter regulation. Bitcoin also hit a record high yesterday. The cryptocurrency has been booming over the past week with the news that there will be a crypto believer in the White House. Trump and his family have launched their own crypto venture. And while the Biden administration aggressively pursued crypto companies for violating federal securities rules, investors hope Trump may take a softer approach.

In Gaza, the Israeli military is continuing its latest offensive in the north of the territory, where it's been carrying out near-daily bombing for the last month. There's one gruesome image that we have heard repeatedly from people in North Gaza, and that is that there are so many bodies now littering the streets at times that stray dogs are starting to pick at the corpses. Times reporter Jack Nickus has been speaking with residents in the area.

He says the attacks now are some of the most devastating of the entire war, causing the humanitarian crisis there to spiral even further. The aid to the region has been severely restricted. And at this point, many of the aid groups and emergency workers who were there a year ago have now left. One of the main hospitals, Kamal-Adwan Hospital, is really teetering on edge. It is being inundated, of course, with victims of strikes.

And yet it has essentially no surgeons, a real dearth of medical supplies. And Islam Ahmad, a freelance journalist who spoke with us, told us quote, life over the past four weeks, if I can sum it up, is the people being exterminated. Israel is back in North Gaza, where it began the war essentially, because it says Hamas has come back.

And this is really a reflection of Israel's kind of murky strategy in this war. When it withdraws, the Hamas fighters return and then the Israeli forces come back and chase them. And the result, I think, is a bloody carousel of sorts where the Israeli military is coming back again and again and again. In Haiti, a Spirit Airlines flight attempting to land at the Port-au-Prince airport was shot at and had to divert, marking an escalation in the violence that's taken over the country. A JetBlue flight leaving Haiti was also hit by a bullet yesterday.

No passengers were hurt. Gangs have been terrorizing Haiti for over a year. Recently, hundreds of homes around the airport were bulldozed to try and build a safe perimeter for the runway, with fewer places for the gangs to hide out. And Kenya has sent hundreds of police officers to try and help. But the gangs have been escalating their attacks and the country's in chaos. The interim prime minister was fired this week after less than six months on the job.

And finally, I've been talking to a lot of former senior leaders in the Navy's secretive and elite special boat teams about their high-powered boats, which have become so powerful that riding in them over time could eventually cause brain injuries. My colleague Dave Phillips has been reporting on the hidden toll that even routine military training nowhere near a combat zone, can have on soldiers. In his latest investigation, he looked at what's happening to some crew members of the stealth boats that carry Navy SEALs. These are essentially military versions of supercharged racing boats, and they skim over the water at more than 60 miles an hour, which is great if the water's glassy smooth, but most of the time it's not.

And so they're running over rough seas, going off one wave and crashing into the face of another. And what sailors describe to me is that this is like being in repeated car crashes, and there are high rates of injuries. Over time, these whiplash events pile up. And you can think of it a lot like playing contact sports for years. Even if you're never injured and carried off the field, there is damage that slowly accumulates. And what they said is over and over in their peers, when they reached senior levels of

these special boat teams, they started to fall apart with symptoms that are tied to brain injury, things like paranoia, depression, confusion, forgetfulness. For some of these guys who got the most exposure to this wave pounding, their lives really turned into disasters. They became delusional and even psychotic. Many of these guys developed serious substance abuse problems and a number of them died by suicide. I talked to the Defense Department about this and the Navy

and they were pretty tight lipped about it. They said, hey, we know that this is a dangerous job and people can get hurt doing it, but they would not say anything about whether routine driving of boats across the water could eventually cause brain injuries. Those are the headlines today on The Daily, why abortion rights won in the election even as Kamala Harris lost. 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.