Declassifying JFK, RFK, MLK Assassination Docs; Trump Deportations; Hegseth Confirmation; New SoCal Fires; Oscar Noms

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3:16Hi, this is Mo Shwanunu, the Mo for Mo News. You might be familiar with us from our Instagram account or our daily podcast. I'm a longtime TV news producer who launched an independent news brand just a couple of years ago. As you know, Nicole is on maternity leave. So this week, my co-host Jill and I have been guest hosting Money Rehab and sharing fresh episodes each day of Mo News. Today's episode is the last of our week of guest hosting. But if you've liked what you've heard, subscribe to Mo News wherever you get your podcasts. Here's today's episode of Mo News.

3:47Hey, everybody. It is Thursday, January 23rd. You're listening to the Mo News podcast. I'm Moshe Nunu. 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. Jill, with that whole expression that one man's trash is another man's treasure, Fun story I was reading about out of Greece, where somebody apparently threw away a statue, a headless statue that they thought was just, you know, garbage, put in a garbage bag in the city of Asalniki. It turns out a resident was walking by and was like, this might be worth something, this headless statue.

4:27It turns out the statue, 31 inch statue, so just a couple feet tall, is 2000 years old. You got to watch out there, I guess, especially in Greece, if you find something in your backyard or something kind of sitting around. You might be sitting on like ancient treasure, even if it is a headless statue. Apparently, police have an open investigation. They talk to the person who threw it away. They have not been charged with anything. Nonetheless, this is from the Roman era in Greece. So just a heads up, don't quickly. Well, I guess in Greece, this is especially important. But even here in the U.S., you might be sitting on something valuable as you clean out your garage.

5:02I don't think you're at that risk on Long Island as much, but be careful what you throw out, right? Be careful what you throw out. I mean, listen, you're not going to have millennia old stuff in the backyard on Long Island or anywhere else, but you might have something that's really valuable from 100 or a couple hundred years ago, you know, here in American historical terms. My mom loves to throw things out. OK, so she's like the opposite of a hoarder. Mm hmm. And she still lives in my childhood home. And so I was there over the summer and I'm looking at the street where all the garbage is and just like plain, not even wrapped in anything.

5:39Were my favorite cups, like in the shape of an ice cream cone. And I'm like, what are you doing? How can you throw those out? And I grabbed them. I brought them back into the house. And now they're my daughter's favorite cups. You need to go. Well, I don't know what's left there, but you probably should go do inventory ASAP, Jill, before mom gets rid of some more stuff. I was like, please consult me before you clean out the house. All right, to the news here. Let's start as we have all week with politics. We're getting an idea of how Donald Trump plans to end the war in Ukraine. But will it work?

6:10Plus, the White House orders government DEI employees to be placed on leave as a major shift in the federal workplace takes effect. Making a lot of changes very quickly there as his team has been taking over. Another day and tragically another school shooting in America. this time in Nashville, the site of a different school shooting last year. Overseas, the ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas appears to be holding. Negotiations are starting on phase two of the deal ahead of schedule. Prince Harry has settled a lawsuit with Rupert Murdoch's newsgroup newspapers. CNN reportedly laying off hundreds of employees as its post-inauguration transformation begins.

6:52A lot of pain right now at some of the legacy media companies. And Netflix, hiking prices as it adds subscribers and sees wins with its live sports strategy. Made it harder to steal someone's password and raising the price there over at Netflix. And Moshe's on this day in history. Your clue today. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. Okay, let's start with politics. President Trump said during the campaign that he could stop the Russia-Ukraine war in just 24 hours. Well, no one really believed that deadline. Even his own official said they'd probably needed 100 days to get talks in motion.

7:32Nonetheless, on Wednesday, he may have taken the first step toward that goal to end the war. So he called out Vladimir Putin by name, writing on his true social platform that he would impose high levels of sanctions on Russia and tariffs on imports from there if the country did not reach a settlement to end its nearly three-year-old war against Ukraine. He wrote, quote,

8:21Until now, Haddon said how he would end the war, which started in February of 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now, though, looking like he'll be trying to use economic pressure. But the question is whether this will actually be effective. This comes, Jill, as the war is still extremely deadly. Ukraine claiming that Putin's forces suffered nearly 2 ,000 casualties in a single day. It would be the worst casualty total in 24 hours since the war began. There's a lot of estimates going around. In fact, Trump sort of, it appears, has talked about some classified numbers, several hundred thousand Ukrainians and Russians killed in this war.

8:58We're waiting on confirmation on that. Nonetheless, Trump, not surprisingly, taking a very different approach from Biden here. Direct engagement of Vladimir Putin. That's something Biden was not up to. He says he actually wants to meet with Vladimir Putin here. And as you mentioned, he took a harder line there, saying, we're going to, you know, we can do this hard, Vlad. He had said earlier in the week that Zelensky appeared to be more open to a deal than Putin. So he's pushing back on Putin here. The significant change, though, is that as far as the Biden administration was concerned, it was about Ukraine winning, even if it was totally unrealistic that they would win.

9:30They've been basically along the same battle lines for three years now. But the West and the U.S., the strategy was to basically bleed Russia out. And in talking to NATO officials, they found that to be extremely successful, that this has really been a suck for Putin, that he's reliant on some technologies and weapons from the 1950s, on the Iranians, on the North Koreans. Nonetheless, the Trump approach is different, not to basically have this war go on in perpetuity here, but to end it. He sees himself as a dealmaker looking for talks here between Zelensky and Putin. Now, what's unclear is what sort of deal he can come to here.

10:07Remember, Putin claims that all of Ukraine is his. He occupies 20 % of Ukraine. He's reluctant to walk back on any of that territory, in particular, these regions he's taken over that are very Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. And then you have Zelensky, who doesn't want to give up an inch of territory here, but is probably willing to if he gets security guarantees, like he gets to be part of NATO, which means in the future, if Putin tries to invade Ukraine again and take even more territory, NATO would come to bail him out because he'd be part of the alliance. Now, that's not something Trump is keen to do either and certainly not something Putin would allow.

10:43So what is going to be the magic deal here? What's going to be the compromise here as he tries to apply pressure on both the Ukrainians by giving them less in the way of weaponry and aid, but then also put pressure on the Russians by promising tariffs, sanctions and other threats? What is rhetoric here? What's the final deal going to look like? In terms of these economic sanctions on Russia, particularly tariffs, in the first 11 months of last year, the U.S. imported less than$3 billion worth of Russian goods. That's one-tenth of one percent of U.S. imports coming from Russia. Now, that has done significantly over the last couple of years since Russia first invaded Ukraine.

11:22So it's not clear how much of an impact tariffs and these other measures would have on Russia here. Now, remember, Putin and Trump have a unique relationship, interesting relationship. According to Bob Woodward reporting, they spoke a number of times while Trump was out of office here. Putin has congratulated Trump for his victory. He says he wants long-term peace, but what are the terms? And so ultimately, we'll see what goes down here. Zelensky spoke with reporters recently. Trump spoke with Zelensky. Trump says, again, Zelensky appears to be more open in negotiations here, but it takes two to tango.

12:02Hence the message for Putin. And now to a major change when it comes to the federal workplace. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, all federal officials overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI efforts, were placed on paid administrative leave. Department and agency heads were given the instructions on Tuesday evening, saying that they should prepare for workforce reductions by the end of January. Agencies were also ordered to remove DEI-related language and advertisements, shut down DEI offices, and question employees about any remaining DEI efforts in disguise through coded language. They went so far as to tell federal employees to report on colleagues who defy orders to a special email account.

12:46So Trump's broader stance on DEI initiatives is that they restrict and divide people by race and actually discriminate against white people rather than promote opportunities, which is different from former President Biden's policies where he was looking to expand representation, trying to lift up groups that have faced systemic barriers. Biden expanded DEI protections to include broader groups such as pregnant women, military spouses, rural communities, and caregivers. Tuesday's memo from the White House Office of Personnel Management claimed that DEI policies undermine our national unity by discrediting traditional American values like hard work and individual achievement.

13:28And it goes beyond just federal agencies and directs the Attorney General within 120 days to submit recommendations for enforcing federal civil rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI? Yeah. In particular, the focus there, Jill, beyond the government is going to be higher education because remember, student loan programs, there's a lot of funding that comes to education at all levels, but in particular, higher education through the federal government. So they're looking to hit institutions that have endowments of over a billion dollars for compliance here.

14:06And so they have a couple months to figure it out, identify state and local educational institutions that receive federal funds and grants who participate in the student loan program here. So that's going to be a focus here. This comes all in that aftermath of that 2023 Supreme Court ruling we told you about that overturned affirmative action in college admissions. And that has been interpreted, extrapolated out by a number of organizations that potentially have more far-reaching ramifications for any race-based program, race-based hiring program. And you have seen companies in the last year, Meta, McDonald's, Walmart, all ending their DEI programs here, partially due to their legal concerns about that Supreme Court ruling.

14:48And as you mentioned, completely different philosophy from the Biden administration. They came in looking to reverse decades of systemic inequity, make the federal government look more like America. Trump says this socially engineers race and gender into public life. We're hearing from people, Jill, who were involved in planning Black History Month events and other events in the coming months here who are canceling those or fear that they have to cancel those because of what it might mean for their jobs. A lot of these DEI programs came out of the Black Lives Matter movement, the killing of George Floyd.

15:19And there is acknowledgement both in the corporate sector and the government sector that some of these DEI programs, not as effective as some had hoped, that some had gone too far, that some of the companies that are brought in here to do DEI are not really accomplishing their goals. At the same time, there is a feeling among some that some aspect of this is a necessity, but it really goes down to boils down to the debate that's being had societally in this election in the government about equity and equality. Those who advocate for equality, which is equal treatment of everyone versus those who believe in DEI equity, equity as in elevating the needs of minorities to get to equality.

16:01So an equity versus equality fight continues here. We did see that Trump signed an executive order that we mentioned declaring there are only two genders. That has its own ramifications here. But when it goes to all the things Trump is up to, this has been key as he looks to remake the workforce here and knock out a lot of the priorities and programming that has been implemented over the course of the past few years under Biden. And quickly, another change coming to the federal workplace. Donald Trump requiring millions of federal employees to return to the office. He issued an order on Monday instructing all U.S.

16:40government departments and agencies in the executive branch to end remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work on a full time basis. Department heads can give some workers exemptions, but there is likely to be a lot of pushback from federal unions, some of which have remote work written into their contract. A lot here, Jill, both the DEI stuff that we were talking about, this stuff, there's going to be a lot of lawsuits here back and forth when it comes to these changes and what they mean. And so look for a variety of those cases. They're probably already being filed as we record this.

17:15Time for the speed read. Let's start with a school shooting in Nashville from CNN. A female student has died and another student was wounded in a shooting Wednesday morning at Antioch High School in Nashville. The male shooter then killed himself after killing that female student and wounding the two students. A police spokesperson says a 17-year-old that was armed with a pistol fired multiple shots in a school cafeteria at around 11.09 a.m. Vanderbilt University Medical Center confirms that one of the females had died in the shooting. Another female is in stable condition with what's being described as a graze wound to the arm.

17:54And then a male with a facial injury was also wounded, but not shot. This is a pretty large high school, Antioch High School, home to approximately 2 ,000 students from grades 9 through 12 there. About 10 miles southeast of downtown there in Nashville. It definitely brought back memories of that Covenant school shooting that took place less than two years ago, where three nine-year-old children and three adults were killed at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville. Led to a huge debate in regards to guns in the state. Notably, one of the most prominent people in that debate, one of the three state reps that became controversial, one of whom was booted, Justin Jones.

18:33His district includes parts of Nashville. He says the fear reverberating around the Antioch and Nashville communities today is a chilling reminder of the human cost of inaction and the senseless tragedy of gun violence. Gun violence perpetuated by leaders who have prioritized firearms and the profits of the gun industry over the lives of our students. A reminder that Republicans there in Tennessee have a supermajority in the state legislature. So not much has been done when it comes to gun reform efforts in the state. But this certainly will revive the debate there. Internationally, a quick update on the ceasefire hostage deal in the Middle East.

19:13From the Times of Israel, top officials from the U.S., Israel and Egypt were reportedly already moving on the second stage of the Gaza hostage ceasefire deal on Wednesday, about two weeks ahead of the scheduled date for the discussions to begin. Remember, the discussions were supposed to start 16 days after phase one began. The report comes as the prime minister of Qatar said that he was ready to start mediating talks on the second stage of the three phase deal as soon as possible. The U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said he is committed to reaching the second phase. As we've talked about here on this podcast, there's been a lot of concern that the first phase was actually the easy part and that this deal wouldn't make it past that initial six week ceasefire, which would see the release of 33 hostages, but would leave more than 60 others still in Gaza.

20:03According to the latest numbers, 91 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7th are still in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. So the deal continues this Saturday. Hamas has confirmed that four Israeli female hostages will be freed in exchange for what is likely to be based on the numbers. We've seen more than 100 prisoners that we haven't gotten the hard numbers yet from the Israelis on their side. Now, we don't have the names of the four women who will be released after more than 470 days in captivity. We'll await those details here. Still, this next stage, as you mentioned, Jill, going to be much more challenging as Hamas rashes up the demands on how many prisoners are going to be looking for for every individual hostage that's left.

20:53The hostages that are left are mainly men of fighting age soldiers. So typically, Hamas asks for even more, including senior leaders of the terror group in exchange for them, at least they have in the past. Now, how this is all going to go down and continue is super important to Trump here, though even he's acknowledged that he's not confident that all of this will be upheld. Notably, Jill, there was a conversation in the last 24 hours. The first foreign leader to hold a phone call with Donald Trump, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Now, Trump has expressed a desire here for the Abraham Accords, the deal that was signed between Israel and several Arab countries, creating peace there.

21:33This is Bahrain, UAE, Morocco, several others. He wants to expand that to Saudi Arabia, which is the big prize here. The home of Islam and the home of Judaism can sign a deal here in the Middle East. Now, Salman is looking for certain guarantees for the Palestinians as part of that deal, but still notable that Trump held this conversation. There's a huge military deal probably in the offing here between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as well. The U.S. sells the Saudis a lot of equipment. They're part of an alliance against Iran, even though they've sort of softened their stance against Iran of late.

22:08So we'll see what happens. Things are still pretty precarious in the region. There was a Moroccan national with a U.S. green card, incidentally, who stabbed and wounded four people in a terror attack in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. We also saw in the West Bank, this is the other piece of land the Palestinians have some control over, that they're looking for a future Palestinian state in. A group of Israeli settlers, a group of Israelis who live in the West Bank, rampage through Palestinian villages, targeting homes, businesses and vehicles. There's been a lot of back and forth violence there over the course of the last year and a half.

22:40So we'll continue to watch the region here for how this ceasefire hostage deal unfolds. From Reuters, Prince Harry reached a last minute deal on Wednesday with Rupert Murdoch's UK-based newsgroup newspapers. after suing them for alleged illegal activities by journalists and private investigators working for the newspapers. NGN, the publisher of The Sun, offered a full and unequivocal apology for the serious intrusion into Harry's private life from 1996 to 2011. Harry's attorney read a statement in court emphasizing the tabloid's profound impact on Harry and his family. It is the first time that NGN admitted to any wrongdoing by the son.

23:22The statement also acknowledged the son's intrusion on the life of Harry's mother, the late Princess Diana, including for phone hacking, surveillance, and misuse of private information that impacted his family. Harry, along with co-defendant and former Labor Party member Tom Watson, accused NGN of perjury and cover-ups, including deleting 30 million emails and relevant other records. So this is a pretty big deal, and this has been Harry's life's mission here to reform media practices. I heard him speak about this recently. He was being interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin over there at the New York Times Dealbook Conference in New York just last month.

24:00And he's talked about how passionate he was, how important this was. So the fact that he took a settlement here, not insignificant. The settlement reportedly an eight-figure sum. They weren't specific here, but you can do the math. Somewhere between$10 million and$100 million if we're going with an eight-figure sum here, probably more significant than they would have been made to pay in court. NGN, the news group owned by Murdoch here, has previously settled with 1 ,300 other individuals. Payouts have exceeded$1.2 billion for a variety of things that they were accused of doing. Prince William, Harry's brother, actually privately settled just a few years ago for a seven-figure sum for a few million with NGN.

24:42Now, based on the way the law works in the UK, Harry could have been stuck with a big bill if he didn't win the case. In fact, he would have had to pay the legal bills for Murdoch here. So it appears Harry took the safe bet here, taking the money. He also got a rare apology from the news group for what they did. And again, for Harry, this has been an issue going back to his childhood, what he believes the paparazzi and the media did to his mother, leading to her death, as well as what they've done to him his entire life. This has been a huge thing. Of course, him and Meghan Markle have talked about this as well.

25:16So a pretty significant day for Harry yesterday. Okay, now to some media business news from CNBC. CNN planning to lay off hundreds of employees as it refocuses the business around a global digital audience. The layoff comes as CNN is rearranging its linear TV lineup and building out digital subscription products. The cuts are said to help CNN lower production costs and consolidate teams. Certain shows that are produced in New York or Washington may move to Atlanta, where production can be done more cheaply, according to sources. For the most part, the job cuts won't affect CNN's most recognizable names who are under contract.