A $7 Billion Opioid Reckoning, and Trump’s Defense of the Saudi Crown Prince

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, November 19th. Here's what we're covering.

0:13First, three quick updates from Washington. On this vote, the yeas are 427. The nays are one. In the House of Representatives yesterday, lawmakers almost unanimously approved a bill directing the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. These women have fought the most horrific fight, and they did it by banding together and never giving up. And that's what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States. In a news conference outside the Capitol, some of Epstein's victims appeared alongside Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the handful of Republicans who spent months defying President Trump's efforts to derail the measure.

1:02Trump ultimately dropped his opposition when it became clear that it would pass overwhelmingly, as more and more GOP lawmakers worried that not supporting it made it look like there was something to hide. The real test will be, will the Department of Justice release the files or will it all remain tied up in investigations? In terms of what happens next, the Senate is now preparing to approve the measure and Trump has said he will sign it. Even once that happens, though, the release of all of the government's files is not guaranteed. The Justice Department, which has an estimated 100 ,000 plus pages of materials related to Epstein, can limit what it makes public based on things like whether the documents could identify a victim or undermine an active investigation.

1:48Also, We have an extremely respected man in the Oval Office today and a friend of mine for a long time. President Trump heaped praise on the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia yesterday as he welcomed Mohammed bin Salman to the White House with a flyover of F-35 jets and military officers on horseback carrying Saudi and American flags. Your Royal Highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. During the visit, bin Salman faced sharp questions about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist by Saudi agents. But Trump rushed to defend the prince.

2:27A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happened. But he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that. The president seems focused on making sure bin Salman's visit goes smoothly. There's almost a trillion dollars of potential Saudi investment in the U.S. at stake. Later today, the two leaders are expected to participate in a U.S.-Saudi investment conference at the Kennedy Center. And. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.

3:01A group of Democratic lawmakers have released a stark video message reminding members of the military and the intelligence community that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders. The American people need you. We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution and who we are as Americans. All six lawmakers either served in the military or in U.S. intelligence themselves. And while they didn't name any specific order or scenario, some of them have previously raised concerns about the legality of the administration's ongoing boat strikes against alleged drug traffickers and Trump's deployment of troops to American cities.

3:40Trump administration officials quickly condemned the video, saying it was encouraging the military to rebel against the commander-in-chief.

3:56Yesterday, a bankruptcy judge signed off on a deal that will dissolve Purdue Pharma, the maker of the notorious painkiller OxyContin that's long been blamed for helping fuel the nation's opioid crisis. For years, Purdue aggressively marketed the drug and promoted it as largely non-addictive, even as opioid use ballooned and overdose deaths surged. As part of the settlement, members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, will have to pay up to$7 billion to states, tribes, hospitals, school districts, and around 150 ,000 individual victims and families who made claims against the company. Purdue itself will be reformed into what's known as a public benefit company that will produce overdose reversal medications and a limited quantity of painkillers.

4:44All profits from that will go to programs addressing the harm caused by opioids. The deal was years in the making. The Sackler family originally said they'd only agree to a settlement that gave them total immunity from future lawsuits, but ultimately had to drop that demand. Payments from the settlement could start being distributed as soon as March.

5:12In a town near the capital city of Nigeria. There's noxious clouds just about everywhere, depending upon which way the wind blows. People complain that black soot is filtering down on their laundry. I visited with a man who is visibly shaking, whose walls were black from the smoke. The Times has found that the frenzied global demand for lead, which is essential for car batteries, has spawned a supply chain that is poisoning people. My colleague Peter Goodman was one of the reporters on the investigation. He says because of the high cost of mining the metal, a lot of companies have turned to recycling it instead.

5:50That can be done cleanly and safely, but it requires millions of dollars in technology and equipment. In Nigeria, which has become one of the fastest-growing sources of recycled lead for U.S. companies, the process looks very different. Over the last year, I've taken two trips to Nigeria, and what I saw was just disturbing. I mean, a layperson can tell that something's really awry. People are using their hands to take lead that they've extracted from spent car batteries they've cracked open, often with machetes. And they take this lead, they put it in these big furnaces, and they cook it down so that they can put it into shipping containers and send around the world.

6:33And the result of this is lead dust, fumes, like pretty much everywhere in these villages that are right next to these smelters. I mean, people are living right in the midst of these factories. We wanted to understand what the public health effects were. So we commissioned a team of local scientists to find volunteers and conduct blood tests. We tested about 70 people. And what we discovered was that roughly 7 out of 10 of them had levels of lead in their blood that were a cause for real medical concern. Every single worker we tested, these are workers at these smelters, had very high levels of lead in their blood.

7:19And the levels were particularly concerning for children. There are lots of kids living around these smelters. There are schools right alongside. And the kids showed high blood levels. And we're talking about potentially irreversible neurological damage as a result of that. Peter says that because the supply chain is complex and opaque, car companies and battery makers are unlikely to know exactly where the recycled lead they use comes from. But the Times found that lead from Nigeria has gone to companies that make batteries for Ford, General Motors, Tesla, and others. Earlier this fall, after the Times started testing lead levels in Nigeria, officials there closed five smelters, including one of the plants that Peter visited.

8:04But days later, they were running again.

8:12And finally, historically, the pews in Orthodox churches across the U.S. have been filled with immigrants from Ukraine, Greece, and other countries with big Orthodox populations. But lately, priests in the small branch of Christianity have been swapping stories about a surge of new converts—conservative young American men. There's been such an influx, One priest told The Times, In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen. My name is Ben, and if you've seen the title, then you know that I've decided to become Orthodox. In terms of what's behind it, a lot of the new adherents have been introduced to it by podcasts.

8:52All of it's ancient, and all of it's liturgical and musical, and there's no propaganda. And it's such a relief. Or they've heard about it from hard-edge online influencers who talk about what they describe as the threats of feminism and homosexuality. It's led to the online shorthand OrthoBros. Some of the converts say that they like how the Orthodox Church affirms their masculinity. Orthodox priests usually sport big beards. They're allowed to marry and they often have big families. And converts say they also like that the Church makes intense demands of them. The weekly worship service is an hours-long affair in which people typically stand the whole time.

9:31And there's strict fasting, too. Some of the online conversations around the Orthodox Church, though, go beyond conservative ideas into openly racist and anti-Semitic messages. In recent years, several far-right figures have converted. But parish priests tell the Times it's their job to show new converts that isn't actually representative of their religion. The boost for the Orthodox Church speaks to a bigger shift that seems to be happening in the U.S. For decades, each generation has been less religious than the last. But a major survey recently found that Christianity is no longer declining in the country.

10:10Instead, it has stabilized, thanks in part to young people.

10:18Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, more about the Republican rebellion that forced President Trump's hand on the Epstein files. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.