The Headlines - Trump Orders an Investigation Into Biden and a Travel Ban on 12 Countries

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Plus, these birds are getting clever.On Today’s Episode:‘We Don’t Want Them’: Trump Signs Travel Ban on Citizens From 12 Countries, by Hamed AleazizTrump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides, by Chris CameronU.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Demanding Immediate Gaza Cease-Fire, by Farnaz FassihiIsraeli-Backed Aid Sites in Gaza Close Temporarily After Deadly Shootings, by Aaron BoxermanShould We Test Babies for Incurable Diseases?, by Emily Baumgaertner NunnClever Cockatoos Have Figured Out How to Drink From Water Fountains, by Gemma ConroyTune 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].

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, June 5th. Here's what we're covering. Today I am signing a new executive order placing travel restrictions on countries including Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Libya, and numerous others. President Trump has revived a controversial policy from his first term, a travel ban. It will go into effect Monday and prohibit citizens from 12 countries, mainly in the

Middle East and Africa, from entering the U.S. It also limits travel from seven other countries. The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. We don't want them. In a speech announcing the plan, the president linked it to Sunday's attack in Boulder, in which a man from Egypt was arrested and charged with a hate crime

for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at a group that was honoring Israeli hostages. Egypt is not currently on the list of banned countries, but Trump said new ones could be added. And nothing will stop us from keeping America safe. Thank you very much. This marks yet another moment in President Trump's crackdown on immigration. My colleague Hamid Al-Aziz covers immigration. He says Trump's first travel ban in 2017, which blocked travel from several majority Muslim countries,

kicked off mass protests, chaos at airports, and several legal battles. Critics called it discriminatory, though the Supreme Court ultimately permitted a rewritten version of it to take effect. Legal experts think this new ban may hold up to any challenges in light of that ruling. This ban has some important exceptions. There are people who are not going to be affected by this ban, and those people include green card holders, dual nationals, people who are seeking visas through US citizen family that they have,

including spouses, children, and parents of US citizens. They will be exempted from this ban. Hamed says the Trump administration also put in a specific exemption for athletes who are coming to compete in the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, both of which will be held in the U.S. In another major move yesterday, President Trump ordered his White House counsel to investigate President Joe Biden and his staff to see whether Biden's actions while in office, like pardons and proclamations, were legally valid.

The order is Trump's latest attempt to stoke conspiracy theories about his predecessor, in this case that Biden was mentally incapacitated and that his aides were enacting policies without his knowledge. Over the weekend, Trump shared a social media post claiming that at one point, Biden was replaced with a robotic clone. He's also called out Biden's use of the auto pen system, which reproduces a person's signature for official documents. Trump's new order argues that using the autopen could affect the validity of anything that was signed with it, though Trump has acknowledged his administration uses it too. Biden put out a statement in response to the order, calling the accusations ridiculous

and false and saying, let me be clear, I made the decisions during my presidency. At the United Nations yesterday, The result of the voting is as follows. 14 votes in favor, 1 vote against, 0 abstention. The U.S. was the only country on the Security Council to veto a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The measure called for a stop to the fighting, the release of all hostages, and the resumption of full-scale humanitarian aid in the territory. The acting U.S. ambassador to the UN called the resolution a non-starter. The United States has been clear.

We would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza. The vote underscored how the US continues to support Israel unconditionally. This is now the fourth ceasefire measure it's vetoed since the war began, leading many other countries to voice frustrations both in public and in private about America's stance. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the U.S. can block any measures with just a single vote. Meanwhile, the new U.S.-Israeli-backed effort to distribute a limited amount of aid in Gaza

was suspended yesterday, after a week of chaos and deadly violence. On two occasions, Israeli soldiers opened fire while groups of Palestinians approached one of the new sites. The Israeli military said it fired warning shots at, quote, suspects who had approached soldiers. The Gazan Health Ministry reported that more than 47 people were killed in the two incidents, many of them children. The sites are supposed to reopen today,

and the organization running them, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, now has a new leader. Johnny Moore, a public relations executive who used to attend prayer meetings with Trump in the Oval Office, was appointed born in the U.S. undergoes the same ritual at the hospital when they're just a day old. A nurse pricks their heel, and tiny drops of blood are sent off for a standard screening panel. It checks for biomarkers that may indicate rare but treatable diseases like sickle cell

anemia or cystic fibrosis. But what if that same test could reveal a baby's chance of developing certain conditions later in life? What if it could tell parents their child is likely to be diagnosed with autism, or that they're likely to develop certain cancers as an adult? As genetic testing becomes cheaper and easier to do, those scenarios are no longer hypothetical, and the advancements have kicked off an ethical debate. Experts have different opinions about where to draw the line.

What types of conditions should we sequence for? Should we look at every condition we possibly can, or should we really limit it to some specific ones? Emily Baumgartner-Nunn covers health at The Times. People who are very supportive of widespread genome sequencing for a vast array of genes, basically their position is that knowledge is power. And proponents of this, specifically bioethicists and geneticists,

they believe that parents can handle this kind of information, even incomplete information, predictive information that may not come to pass. They believe that we should be equipping families and giving them the ability to act upon this information if they want to. But there are just as many experts in these fields who really encourage caution in how we apply this technology.

For example, some researchers believe it's completely out of the question that we should ever reveal an adult-onset condition in a child. For example, genes that code for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, some conditions like those. Other researchers feel very strongly about testing only for conditions that are treatable and that are treatable right now. They believe that if we don't have a medication that can essentially cure the condition, we shouldn't be testing for it. We shouldn't be bombarding parents with really despairing predictions

for conditions that if their child has it, there's nothing they're going to be able to do about it anyway. Emily says that there's one thing people on all sides of the issue agree on, and that is that the technology is coming and fast, which is forcing the conversation. Tens of thousands of American parents have already enrolled in research projects that examine their infant's genome. And finally, birds should not be underestimated. Magpies can remember up to 30 different human faces. Crows can use tools. And now, sulfur-crested cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, have learned to operate

the water fountain. A behavioral ecologist who co-authored a new study that published this week said she first spotted a cockatoo on a fountain a few years ago. She watched as the mohawked bird grabbed the spring-loaded handle with one foot and twisted until the water came out. She and her colleagues then set up cameras at more fountains to see if there were other little finely feathered overachievers. Over about 40 days, they recorded multiple cockatoos making over 500 attempts to turn

on different fountains and take a drink. About half were successful, suggesting that some were still getting the hang of it. It's unclear why they're doing it, though, when there's a lot of other water sources readily available that don't require a complex sequence of motor skills. One theory? It might just be fun for them. Notably, the same research team previously found that the cockatoos in the area had also figured out how to flip open garbage bins.

That earned them the nickname trash parrots, which just feels a little harsh. Maybe now they could be fountain flyers or water wings or cockah H2Os. Okay, I'm done. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times congressional correspondent Katie Edmondson walks through the battle on Capitol Hill over President Trump's big, beautiful bill. That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your

podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.