Trump Shrugs Off Surging Inflation, and Why a Groundbreaking Social Media Ban Is Floundering

0:00Tony Romm:This podcast is supported by Helen Keller International. This is a moment of growing urgency. Families around the world are facing widening gaps in health care and nutrition, but solutions are within reach. Just 75 cents can provide treatment for neglected tropical diseases, and$2 can help protect a child's sight and health. For a limited time, donations are being matched, helping expand that impact. Learn more at HelenKellerINTL.org slash the headlines.

0:32Jeremy Raff:From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Thursday, June 11th. Here's what we're covering.

0:43Megan Specia:Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning? Could that be a hit win?

0:48Daniel Fetherston:No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why?

0:53Jeremy Raff:In the Oval Office yesterday, President Trump shrugged off new economic data that shows inflation in the U.S. is surging. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall cost of goods in the U.S. is now 4.2 percent higher than a year ago. It is the third straight month that inflation numbers have gone up. The increase has been driven almost entirely by energy prices, which skyrocketed after Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran. But the president has repeatedly brushed aside the issue of rising prices for Americans, calling concerns about affordability a, quote, con job. He has said that the economic pain now is a small price to pay for national security and has insisted that any damage to the economy will only be temporary.

1:41Daniel Fetherston:Inflation will come down between now and November. When the war is over, it's coming down. It's going to come down like a rock.

1:49Megan Specia:Hours later. I just spoke with President Trump, who is currently in the Situation Room. The president tells Fox News that 49 Tomahawk missiles were used to hit targets inside of Iran.

2:02Jeremy Raff:The U.S. launched a new wave of attacks against Iran after President Trump said Iran was taking, quote, too long to negotiate and would have to pay the price. Both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made clear the strikes are meant to try and pressure Iran to agree to a deal on Trump's terms.

2:19Megan Specia:If we need to negotiate with bombs, we'll negotiate with bombs. And we're very good at it. Nobody better in the world.

2:26Jeremy Raff:In response, Iran said it carried out its own series of strikes on U.S. bases across the Middle East. Taken together, the flurry of strikes this week appeared to contradict Trump's repeated claims that the two countries are on the verge of a peace deal.

2:51Jeremy Raff:In Northern Ireland, the city of Belfast is on edge after a graphic video of a brutal stabbing this week set off unrest there. The video captured one man attacking another in the middle of a Belfast street on Monday, and authorities later charged a 30-year-old Sudanese refugee with attempted murder. The footage spread quickly online and led to calls by anti-immigrant activists for protests, with one prominent far-right agitator calling it a, quote, invader attack on our people. On social media, Elon Musk, who has repeatedly boosted far-right messaging in the UK and elsewhere, weighed in too, sharing a list of locations around Northern Ireland for people to gather.

3:34Jeremy Raff:By Tuesday night, crowds of mostly young men, many in masks, took to the streets. Police said while some of them protested peacefully, others targeted immigrants. Firefighters had to escort immigrant families from homes that had been set on fire. One local official said, quote, people were being terrorized simply because of the color of their skin or where they came from. Last night, violence flared again, and police used water cannons to try and disperse crowds who had set small fires and hurled bricks and bottles. The unrest in Northern Ireland comes after another high-profile stabbing in the U.K.

4:10Jeremy Raff:that has also galvanized far-right activists. In that case, police recently released body cam footage of the aftermath of a fatal attack in England. The responding officers initially handcuffed the victim, an 18-year-old white college student, because they didn't realize he was the one who'd been stabbed. They'd been misled by the actual attacker, a British-born Sikh man, who told police he'd been the target of a racist attack. Nigel Farage, the head of Britain's far-right reform party, claimed the police response was evidence of, quote, anti-white prejudice. And Vice President J.D. Vance also called attention to the case, claiming it showed that, quote, European elites had allowed a mass invasion of migrants.

4:57Jeremy Raff:British officials pushed back on Vance's comments sharply, noting that the attacker in that case was not an immigrant. And a spokesman for the U.K.'s prime minister accused Vance of, quote, seeking to stir up division on our streets.

5:19Jeremy Raff:Six months ago, Australia began an ambitious experiment. It became the first country in the world to ban social media for everyone under the age of 16. It was an attempt to protect kids from the potential harms of those platforms, like anxiety, bullying, depression, etc. The law requires TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other apps to verify the age of any users and remove young teens' accounts, or face fines of tens of millions of dollars. In terms of how it's going, though…

5:51Chevaz Clarke:Well, if you've met any teenagers recently, they're very tech-savvy, and they've really found a bunch of ways around this. VPN is a popular option. A lot of age verification systems that the apps have put into place have been pretty fallible. So kids have been able to get around it by drawing mustaches on them, using somebody else's face to scan them. And there's also teens who say their accounts never were flagged in the first place and continue to work without a hitch.

6:16Jeremy Raff:Victoria Kim covers Australia for The Times. She's been talking to families about the effectiveness of the ban.

6:22Chevaz Clarke:Something that kept coming up in conversations with parents I've been having about this law is that the real kids that may be benefiting from this are actually the younger kids who are not yet on social media. So kids who are 12 and younger who don't have older siblings and haven't actually been on social media yet. And for parents, they say this law has really given them the confidence and the backing to tell them it's illegal, you can't have it. And that may eventually get to a point where enough of them, a critical mass of them, are off it. And that peer pressure that kids feel from their friends may lessen over time.

6:56Jeremy Raff:Victoria says so far, no social media companies have been fined, despite how many kids are still using their platforms. though there are compliance investigations underway against some of the tech giants. For now, Australia's mixed results haven't stopped other countries from pushing for their own bans. Just this week, lawmakers in Canada and the UK said they are moving forward with similar proposals to keep kids off social media.

7:30Jeremy Raff:And finally, even if you've never heard the name Andres Cantor, you have heard his voice.

7:39Jeremy Raff:The Argentine sports broadcaster became a global sensation back at the 1994 World Cup for his iconic goal call. Please welcome Univision's Andres Cantor. Andres! He made the talk show rounds. He did TV commercials.

7:55Victoria Kim:And for many people, his call has since become the sound of soccer. I want to get to the World Cup as prepared as I can mentally, physically, and obviously with the strongest voice possible, knowing that I have a very hectic schedule. I'm calling a lot of games in a very short amount of time.

8:22Jeremy Raff:The Times recently caught up with Cantor to see how he prepared for this World Cup, which kicks off this afternoon, and where he'll be calling multiple games for Spanish-language broadcasts. He said he has been training, complete with a voice coach.

8:37Daniel Fetherston:When you start pulling up like this,

8:41Daniel Fetherston:emotions can't come out, air can't come out, energy can't come out. and it gets more tired quickly.

8:47Victoria Kim:Before every World Cup, I ask Wendy to get me in shape as much as I can because obviously my voice takes a toll after calling so many emotional games.

9:03Jeremy Raff:At the last World Cup, when his home team of Argentina won the whole thing, his goal call, where he was barely keeping it together, went viral.

9:16Victoria Kim:You know, I was overtaken by emotions. It was something that I had been waiting for as much as all the Argentinian soccer fans for 36 years.

9:25Jeremy Raff:Cantor says at this point, with the games kicking off today, all he can do is try and prepare himself for another round.

9:31Victoria Kim:When the play is nonstop and it's continuous and it's high energy, I put that high energy into the broadcast itself. and sometimes like when the final whistle blows, I'm pretty much as tired as the players are.

9:50Jeremy Raff:Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.

10:02Tony Romm:This podcast is supported by Helen Keller International. This is a moment of growing urgency. families around the world are facing widening gaps in health care and nutrition but solutions are within reach just 75 cents can provide treatment for neglected tropical diseases and two dollars can help protect a child's sight and health for a limited time donations are being matched helping expand that impact learn more at helenkellerintl.org slash the headlines