Biden Hits Back on Autopen Claims, and Public Media Braces for Cuts

0:28Hey, what's up guys? It's Hayley Bailey. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, July 14th. Here's what we're covering.

0:43In a new interview with the New York Times, former President Joe Biden is aggressively pushing back against claims that he wasn't the one making decisions at the end of his presidency. President Trump and other Republicans have been targeting the pardons and commutations that Biden granted in his final weeks in office, calling their validity into question by claiming Biden's cognitive state was impaired and that he wasn't aware of what was happening when they were signed. Now, the White House, the Justice Department, and Congress have all launched investigations into it. In response, Biden told the Times, quote, I made every decision.

1:20Some of the pardons were preemptive pardons for prominent people Biden considered potential targets for Trump, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the House committee that investigated the January 6th riot. He also reduced the sentences of almost 4 ,000 federal convicts and pardoned his son, Hunter Biden. All of those documents, except Hunter's pardon, were signed by Autopen, a device that can replicate the president's signature. Biden told the Times that was done because of the volume of documents, and he called Trump and other Republicans liars for claiming that his aides used the autopen without his knowledge.

1:56The Times has reviewed White House emails from that time period that appear to show Biden's staffers had a process for confirming that the president had made a verbal decision before the autopen was used. Other presidents, including Trump himself, have used an autopen. For more from Biden's interview, go to nytimes.com.

2:21Now, a few things to watch for in Washington this week. The country's public broadcasters are bracing for major cuts as Congress faces a deadline to vote on a proposal to slash their funding. There's a strong possibility that by Friday, Congress will pull back more than$500 million a year that supports the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by extension, PBS and NPR. The cuts could have a serious impact on many local public radio and TV stations that rely on the funding. Some of them might be forced to close as soon as this fall. Also at the White House. Putin really surprised a lot of people.

3:03He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening. So there's a little bit of a problem there. I don't like it. President Trump is expected to formally announce a new plan to support Ukraine as soon as today, as he continues to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin. As we send equipment, they're going to reimburse us for that equipment. Doesn't that sound good? Under the arrangement, designed by NATO, the U.S. would sell weapons to allies in Europe, who would then pass them along to Ukraine. That would let Trump keep an arm's length distance from the war and could benefit the U.S. financially.

3:38Trump has also said he's very strongly considering backing a Senate bill that could turn up U.S. sanctions aimed at Russia's oil industry. Together, the moves suggest Trump's skepticism about supporting Ukraine is fading and he's increasingly open to confronting Putin. And at the Department of Homeland Security. This response was by far the best response we've seen out of FEMA, the best response we've seen out of the federal government in many, many years. Secretary Kristi Noem is continuing to play defense as the administration faces sharp questions about its response to the deadly flooding in Texas earlier this month.

4:17Current and former officials at FEMA, which is part of DHS, have told the Times that the agency was slow to deploy teams that coordinate search and rescue efforts. And the Times also found that thousands of flood survivors couldn't get through to a FEMA hotline to ask for emergency financial support because the agency had fired contractors at call centers the day after the floods. Noam called those reports fake news. The future of FEMA itself is unclear. Trump had previously criticized the agency as inefficient and bloated and said he wanted it to, quote, go away. Noam suggested yesterday that it might just be reorganized instead.

5:02In Gaza this weekend, at least 20 people were killed as Israeli forces carried out broad attacks on the territory. At least 10 of those, including some children, died after a strike near a water distribution point, where people without access to running water had been gathering each morning. The Israeli military said it had been targeting a militant and that a technical error had caused the strike to land where it did. For people across Gaza, accessing basic necessities has become increasingly dangerous and chaotic. Desperate crowds have been rushing trucks carrying flour and other goods moments after they cross into the territory.

5:39And witnesses have reported Israeli troops opening fire on people who've approached aid hubs. The Israeli military has said it's fired, quote, warning shots. Meanwhile, the negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a potential truce appear to have stalled out again. There were expectations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington last week might lead to a breakthrough, but he left on Friday without announcing any agreement.

6:10The company UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest health care companies in the country, has been under intense scrutiny for years. It's faced complaints about its billing practices, as well as accusations of Medicare fraud and wrongly denying patients' claims. Now, the Times has found it's making a major new push to quiet its critics. It's not uncommon for companies to use legal threats and occasionally lawsuits when they're unhappy with what people are saying or writing online. What I found in the case of UnitedHealth, though, was something much more ambitious and, I think, aggressive than what I've seen in the past.

6:49David Enrich is an editor on the Times Investigations Desk. He found that the company has set out on a wide-ranging campaign to get critical posts and other content taken down, including by invoking the murder of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of its health insurance division, who was killed last year on the street in Midtown Manhattan. They tried to get a doctor in Texas to remove a TikTok video that she had posted complaining about her interactions with the company. They sued the Guardian newspaper for an article they didn't like and got the Guardian to postpone, possibly permanently, publication of another investigation.

7:26and they convinced Amazon and Vimeo to remove a documentary about the company and about its practices, which is a move that I have not previously seen a major American company try to pursue. And the company has said in some of the letters it's written and court filings it's made that Thompson's murder shows that there is a real risk that intense criticism of the company can translate at times into real world violence. The company, at the same time, has a lot at stake. Its stock price has been getting hammered, and it's become the poster boy in a lot of ways in recent years for all that's wrong in the American healthcare system.

8:09And the company really perceives the negative publicity that it's been receiving as exacerbating those problems, which is why it says it's really important for them to be aggressively trying to stop it. The people on the receiving end of these threats and these legal actions, however, see this as a really direct effort to constrain their ability to speak freely and critically about a major and very powerful American company.

8:37And finally... Oh! Unbelievable! Wimbledon came to a close yesterday with Yannick Sinner and Iga Sviatek taking the men's and women's titles, both for the first time. Their triumphs came despite an unexpected distraction. the pop of champagne bottles, which repeatedly interrupted the legendary tennis tournament. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, if you could avoid opening bottles of champagne when the players are about to serve. There's supposed to be near total silence during gameplay, but fans in the stands just kept popping, despite multiple pleas from officials who asked the crowd to time their corking more strategically.

9:17It's the most Wimbledon warning you've ever heard. By the finals, things nearly reached a breaking point. There goes a champagne cork, just right by Yannick Sinner. A cork flew from the stands during yesterday's men's final, landing right at Sinner's feet as he was about to serve. For a tournament known for its decorum, this was discourteous, uncouth even. How was it having to avoid a champagne cork that came onto the court? Have you ever had to do that before? No, only here in Wimbledon, but that's exactly why we love playing here. Sinner brushed off the distraction. Obviously didn't faze him too much since he won in the end.

9:59It's not the only flying disturbance Wimbledon officials have had to contend with. For years, they've brought in a hawk named Rufus to scare off the flocks of pigeons that gather near the courts and above the stands. No word yet on whether Rufus can be trained to catch a cork.

10:17Those are the headlines today on The Daily. A family doctor in rural North Carolina on what the changes to Medicaid outlined in Trump's new sweeping domestic policy law will mean for her patients. 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.