NTD Evening News Full Broadcast (March 21)

Welcome to NTD Evening News. Our top story tonight, New York AG Leticia James prepared to move on former President Trump's property. As the deadline to pay a massive bond approaches, James eyes Trump's golf course and private estate. How Trump's team responds, Arlene Richards reports. President Biden's campaign calling former President Trump broke after he lags in fundraising. Could Trump get a financial lifeline through Truth Social? Iris Tao in D.C. President Biden canceling another round of student loans totaling about $6 billion. Find out which group qualifies this time. Congressional leaders unveil the second batch of spending bills for fiscal year 2024. Will the lawmakers meet the midnight Friday deadline? Luis Martinez on Capitol Hill. Republican Senators again trying to pass the Lincoln-Riley Act, named after a nursing student killed in Georgia. How they're now attempting to pass the law and what Democrats are proposing instead. This is NTD Evening News. Live from our NTD Global Headquarters in New York City, here is Tiffany Meyer. Good evening and thank you for joining us tonight. The deadline is looming for former President Trump to pay an enormous bond in the New York civil fraud case. And the state is preparing to seize his properties. NTD Legal Correspondent Arlene Richards has more. In just four days, former President Trump could lose control over his New York and Westchester properties if he doesn't pay the massive civil fraud judgment plus interest. Attorney General Letitia James is eyeing Trump's Westchester golf course and private estate called Seven Springs. Since March 6, just one week after Judge Arthur Angoran made his $454 million decision, James has filed judgments with the Westchester County Clerk. Entering a judgment is the first step a creditor would take to attempt to recover property. Additional steps include putting liens on assets or moving to foreclose on properties. Taking other actions in court would follow if the asset is going to be seized. The Attorney General's move will allow her to more easily secure liens on those properties. Judgments against Trump's New York City properties are automatically entered. James has previously said she's prepared to start seizing Trump's assets if he misses the March 25 deadline. In a filing on Thursday, Trump's attorneys rejected the AG's suggestion on how he could pay the bond. The AG, in her own filing Wednesday, suggested that Trump could put his real estate up as collateral or get lower bond amounts from several surety companies. Trump's attorneys argued that James shouldn't be allowed to challenge their claims. Because she didn't dispute any of their claims, such as that posting a bond of this magnitude would require cash or cash equivalents approaching $1 billion. And that Chubb Insurance Company notified defendants that it could not accept real property as collateral. Meanwhile, Judge Arthur Angoran has expanded the role of the monitor overseeing the Trump organization. In a new order, Angoran gave the monitor additional oversight of Trump's internal financial practices. The Trump monitor also has the authority to review Trump's efforts to obtain bonds. Arlene Richards, NTD News. Congressional leadership unveiling this morning the second set of spending bills to fund the government through fiscal year 2024. Lawmakers are now in a race against time to meet the midnight Friday deadline and avert a partial shutdown. Luis Martinez has more on this story. The second batch of six appropriation bills was published by congressional leaders just before 3 a.m. this morning. Over 1,000 pages detail the spending of $1.2 trillion. House Republican leadership touted the funding bills as the first non-VA, non-defense federal budget cuts in almost a decade. We don't know where we're at. We're going to be whipping the bill sometime today. I think it will give us a better understanding how much support there is for it. But the overall spending, I mean, our goal is always to get the trajectory going the opposite direction. And it appears that these six bills kind of in one package do that. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will put the funding bills to a vote on Friday under suspension of the rules, thus bypassing the House Rules Committee and the conservatives therein. Speaker Johnson will also waive the 72-hour House rules, giving congressmen just about 24 hours to review the documents. The bottom line is that we're continuing to do the very same thing that we criticized the Democrats for, which is throwing together these minibus, omnibus, you know, trillion-dollar funding bills with zero time for us to be able to review. It is expected that House Republican leadership will need the help of Democrats in order to get the funding bills past the House floor. Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky has already alerted the public that he will request amends to the funding bills and thus hold the process in the Senate floor. Senator Mike Lee from Utah indicated he's also reluctant to meet the midnight Friday deadline. On his social media account on X, the senator asked the public to tell their senators, quote, don't vote for a spending bill they've had no chance to review, let alone debate or amend. The government funding process for fiscal year 2024 is five months past its due date, and a government shutdown is still a possibility. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Luis Eduardo Martinez, NTD News. The Lake and Riley Act, named after a Georgia nursing student allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant, Senate Republicans now hope to add it to the government funding bill, but Democrats are already responding with their own version of the law. We're going to try again. Senate Republicans on Thursday said they're launching a second attempt at passing the Lake and Riley Act. The House passed this bill earlier this month with the support of 37 Democrats. Senate Democrats blocked me from passing the Lake and Riley Act in the Senate last week. The bill would require ICE to detain illegal immigrants charged with theft before allegedly killing Riley. Her suspected murder was charged with shoplifting in New York City, but ICE did not detain him. Had New York City put him in jail, that murderer would not have been in Georgia to beat Lake and Riley to death. The law would also allow states to sue the federal government if it doesn't enforce certain aspects of immigration law. Republican senators now want to include the Lake and Riley Act as an amendment to the spending bills they'll vote on this week. Also on Thursday, Democratic and independent senators proposed their own bill, which is similar to the Lake and Riley Act. It would let the federal government request that local authorities detain immigrants who are charged with violent crimes. Such optional detainer requests are exactly what Senate Republicans are advocating against, saying detainers should be mandatory. We believe that this discretion loophole needs to be closed. And lastly, new data shows that judges dismissed 200,000 immigration cases because the Biden administration didn't file paperwork correctly. That's according to an academic group called the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The group says that Homeland Security didn't submit documents to courts after processing illegal immigrants at the border. Sean Marshall, NTD News. Trump may find a financial lifeline in a truth social deal. At the same time, President Biden is expanding his political war chest over Trump by a wide margin. NTD's White House correspondent Iris Tao has more. New campaign filings on Wednesday are showing an increase in cash lead by President Biden over former President Trump. Biden entered February with about $70 million in cash for his campaign. That's more than double the amount that Trump's campaign has, which is about $30 million. A large portion of Trump's donor cash was spent on the Republican primaries. And Trump's been forced to tap into his campaign money to cover his mounting legal bills. In President Biden's campaign, a new statement is calling Trump a broken Don. Adding that if Donald Trump put up these kinds of numbers on The Apprentice, he'd fire himself. Trump, meanwhile, on Thursday is again decrying election interference. Calling the nearly half a billion dollar bond that a New York judge ordered him to pay next week crazy. While that deadline is fast approaching, Trump could get some new opportunities to relieve his financial burden. Trump Media, which owns True Social, could soon go public by merging with a publicly traded shell company. If that merger goes through in a vote this Friday, Trump Media could start trading on the stock market as early as Monday. That will immediately boost Trump's net worth by over $3 billion. But it could also take a while for Trump to actually turn that paper wealth into cash. As he will have to find buyers of his shares and also faces restrictions in how fast he can sell them. So it remains to be seen whether that deal can actually help alleviate Trump's financial burden from his legal cases. Reporting from the White House, I'm Ruth Hao, NTD News. The Biden administration is canceling more student loans nearly $6 billion worth. The latest group includes 78,000 public service workers like teachers, nurses and firefighters. This group qualifies under a program created in 2007 to forgive student debt for those going into public service. The latest move brings the Biden administration's total student debt cancellation to $144 billion for about 4 million Americans. An additional 380,000 borrowers who may be eligible within the next year or two will also be getting emails from Biden. Critics have accused the president of trying to buy votes with debt cancellation. Coming up, Israel reveals startling numbers of how many terrorists they killed at a hospital compound in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, a great-grandmother shares her story on how she came face to face with terrorists on October 7th. Jason Perry has the latest. U.S. military leaders say Israel does not yet have a civilian protection plan for its upcoming Rafah invasion. An estimated 1.4 million people are trapped in the city. In Mississippi, the last of six former officers are sentenced over the torture of two men. The highest-ranking officer in the so-called goon squad gets nearly three decades behind bars. A manhunt ends in Idaho for an inmate and his suspected accomplice. The two men were on the run after a shootout with police at a hospital. That and more when we come back. My dad's name was David. He always talked about getting life insurance and now it's too late. No one was expecting my husband Dave to suffer from a heart attack. We didn't have life insurance. We thought we had more time. Don't be Dave and don't wait until it's too late to get the life insurance coverage you need. And if you don't have enough insurance to cover funeral costs, credit card debt and other expenses, your family is going to get stuck with the bill. Call now to get affordable life insurance. Just call 800-494-1562. If you're over 50, you can't be turned down for this insurance regardless of your health. Plus, there's no medical exam, no health questions. Your rate will never go up. Your coverage will never go down. And rates start as low as $5 a week. Remember, don't be Dave. Call now. Call now. 800-494-1562. I started having lumbar pain and the pain was terrific. I called the number. She was asking me very thorough questions and it was like a done deal. You have a pain on the back and the pain on the back goes towards your hip and then goes to the side of the leg, side of the calf and the foot. And the foot is numb. And he pointed and he says, if we don't correct this now, you will be in pain the rest of your life. Carol was wheeled across the parking lot to the on-campus imaging center for updated MRIs. Immediately after that, left that building, got back over here. He was in there and had the results of that on the screen. We're going to go like this, this, this and this. That is going to get you almost brand new. Okay? All right. Back to my active self. There you go. No pain. No pain. No pain here. No. When I came out of that, they said my whole face, everything was different. I am a new person. Oh, a new person, Dr. Bonati. And you told me I would be. I said, I'm not in pain. I'm in awe. And I'm going home restored. Bonati succeeds where others fail. For more stories like these and the rest of our program, check out American Medicine Today, featuring cutting-edge medical and science innovators, and a medical professional's insight on political and social issues plaguing our nation and health care. American Medicine Today, Saturdays at 6 and Sundays at 9 on NTD Television and other streaming platforms. Welcome back. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Israel Defense Forces are continuing to conduct intense operations at al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, a great-grandmother in Israel shares her story of how she came face-to-face with Hamas terrorists during the massacre on October 7th. NTD's Jason Perry has the war update. In the last 24 hours, Israeli forces reported killing 50 more terrorists at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. This puts the total number of terrorists reportedly killed in this operation in the area of the hospital to around 140. And just the day before, the IDF released a video showing it providing humanitarian aid to that same hospital overnight. Gaza residents were seen gathering some of it the next day. Meanwhile, Hamas on Wednesday released its own edited video, which it says showed them attacking Israeli troops near al-Shifa Hospital. This 90-year-old woman actually came face-to-face with Hamas terrorists when they raided her village on October 7th. She said there was a language barrier, and she told the terrorists she was from Argentina. So he says to me, what is Argentina? So I tell him, do you watch soccer? Then he says to me, yes, yes, I like soccer. So I say to him, I'm from where Messi is from. Then he replies, Messi? I like Messi. He put my hand like this, right here. He gave the revolver to me, the shotgun. He put his hand like this, and they took the picture of us. And, well, then they left. She has two grandchildren who are still being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This comes as Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the Middle East, pushing for a ceasefire to release the more than 100 hostages. He was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, and on Thursday, Blinken met with several Arab foreign ministers in Egypt, including those from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. And he also met with Egypt's foreign minister in Cairo, where he gave an update on the ceasefire talks. Negotiators continue to work. The gaps are narrowing, and we're continuing to push for an agreement in Doha. There's still difficult work to get there, but I continue to believe it's possible. He also said they've seen some improvement in the humanitarian aid situation in the Gaza Strip over the last couple of weeks, but he said it's not enough. Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, more residents are headed south after the recent fighting around al-Shifa Hospital. For the sake of not the adults, but the children. They were scared. I don't know what more to tell you. There is famine. Over there, the situation is very bad, more than you can imagine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to meet with Israeli officials on Friday, as he concludes his sixth trip to the Middle East since the war began between Israel and Hamas. Jason Perry, NTD News. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could address Congress soon. House Speaker Mike Johnson says he will extend an invitation after members of his conference encouraged him to do so. Johnson also revealed he had been invited by Netanyahu to speak at the Knesset. His predecessor Kevin McCarthy addressed the Knesset when he was Speaker. Military leaders say Israel does not yet have a plan in place to protect civilians in Rafah, coming ahead of its planned invasion of the city, which holds around 1.4 million people. NTD's Virginia Gibson has more. I am not aware of their current plans to be able to do the civilian harm mitigation for Rafah. U.S. military leaders have asked Israel how it's going to protect civilians in the city of Rafah, ahead of its upcoming invasion. It is impossible to complete the victory without the IDF entering Rafah. The military leaders told Congress Thursday Israel hasn't yet finalized the plans. General Michael Carrillo says he believes they're working on it. What they've told me is they are not going to take action until they have the ability to protect the civilians and move them out of the area. I think they are very conscious of the civilian harm. We talk about it every time I talk to my counterpart. 1.4 million civilians are trapped in Rafah. Carrillo said an evacuation would take weeks. At the same time, there is no place for the people to go. Before the war, only 280,000 people lived in Rafah. But Israel's invasion pushed over a million into the small city at the farthest edge of Gaza's border. I am not aware of any evidence that they are deliberately targeting civilians. And so contrast that, the high moral and ethical standards of the United States military and our allies in Israel, with Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization, correct? Yes, Congressman. And Hamas does not care about human life, including the civilians in Gaza, correct? Worse, Hamas exploits others' concern for civilian life by placing their capabilities and their fighters protected by human shields. Defense official Celeste Wallander said if Hamas surrendered and returned all the hostages, the war could end today. She affirmed that the Biden administration fully supports destroying Hamas' ability to conduct terrorism. Congressman Mike Walz said he believes the U.S. isn't focused enough on the core problem. We have Hamas being funded by Iran. Correct. We have the Houthis being funded by Iran. Correct. We've got all the militias in Iraq. And we now have dead Americans because of the money being going back to Iran. Correct. All roads go back to Iran, but really, it's Chinese money that is fueling Iran, that is fueling terrorism. China buys 90% of Iran's oil, providing it with money to sponsor terrorism. Walz said he believes that the military is too focused on the Middle East and Africa and needs to focus on China. Virginia Gibson, NTD News. In Mississippi, sentencing has concluded for six former officers in relation to the torture of two black men in January 2023. The last two remaining officers received prison sentences today. Former Sheriff's Deputy Brett McAlpin was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison. He was the fourth highest-ranking officer at the Rankin County Sheriff's Office and the oldest among the so-called Goon Squad. Federal prosecutors said McAlpin molded the younger deputies into the goons they became. One of the two victims, Eddie Parker, told investigators that McAlpin was off-duty and not in uniform during the attack. The final member of the group, former Richland Police Officer Joshua Hartfield, was sentenced to roughly 10 years in prison. Four of the six former officers were sentenced earlier this week. Their sentences range from 17 years to 40 years in prison. From carjackings to homicides, Washington D.C. is seeing a dramatic rise in violent crime over the past year, especially in Ward 6, which includes Capitol Hill. NTD's Sam Wong spoke with D.C. residents to find out what they think about the city's public safety. 2023 was a turbulent year for Capitol Hill staffers. In September, I hosted a security briefing where we heard from two staff members who were mugged at gunpoint just down the street. Located at the heart of Washington, D.C., Ward 6 is considered a relatively affluent and safe part of town. This area not only covers federal landmarks like the U.S. Capitol, it's also home to a growing number of residential and commercial buildings. But the safety situation has been eroding in recent years. In 2023, Ward 6 saw an 188 percent increase in homicides, 57 percent increase in carjacking, and 44 percent increase in violent crime. That's according to the chairman of the D.C. Police Union, who testified at a congressional hearing Thursday. He said law enforcement officers are stepping down at a record pace due to anti-police laws and rhetoric coming from the city council. Since the beginning of 2020, the NPD has lost 1,426 officers, more than one-third of the department. 540 of those separations, nearly 40 percent, were resignations. I asked some D.C. residents if they feel safe living in this city. Here's what they said. Crime is pretty much targeted and limited to certain populations that are disadvantaged. The reason why people are not feeling safe is because the crime that's happening is happening near affluent neighborhoods now. Janae is a hairstylist who lives near the capital. She told me someone once tried to break into her home while her teenage daughter was there alone. To Janae, safety has become more than just a see-you-later conversation. It's now a demand. I have a teenage daughter, and as soon as she gets out of school, I'm like, OK, as soon as you get home, call me. This is a relatively safe neighborhood. Supposedly. While many other major cities saw downturns in violent crimes, D.C. saw a 36 percent jump in homicides last year and carjacking nearly doubled. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Sam Wong, NTD News. Over in Idaho, police just found the two men who fled from a hospital following a shooting. The shootout injured three officers while an inmate escaped with his accomplice. NTD's Christina Corona has more on the story. At 2.15 a.m., Idaho Department of Corrections officers were attacked while preparing to transfer Skyler Meade back to prison from St. Alphonsa's Regional Medical Center in Boise on Wednesday. As they readied to transport Meade, Nicholas Umfenhauer, later identified as a suspect, opened fire on the officers. Two officers were shot, one sustaining non-life-threatening injuries, while the other remained stable but in critical condition. Amid the hospital shootout, a Boise police officer fired at an armed individual at the entrance, who was later identified as a corrections department officer. Police say this was a coordinated attack. Christina Corona, NTD News. Coming up, two manufacturing companies operating in the U.S. with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its military. An investigative reporter joins us to share his most recent findings into Gaotian and Cap-Chem. That and more when we return here on NTD News. Presenting the heritage of traditional Chinese martial arts, fostering martial ethics, and reviving the true tradition. The preliminaries for the 2024 NTD International Traditional Martial Arts Competition will be held across New York, Taiwan, and Germany. The grand finals will be broadcast live online worldwide in August 2024. For more information, please call 1-888-477-9228. I am so glad you ladies are here. You each have your own rooms. Thank you. Get settled in. I'll call you for dinner. Adopting teen sisters, it's a lot. Girls, you're gonna be late. You want breakfast? No thanks, we're good. They're always in their own world. Twice the work, twice the surprises. Just try it. But if you think of it that way, they're also twice as fulfilling. I think you should ask her yourself. Is it okay to call you mom? Of course you can. What was the process of actually putting this all together? Many, many hours of finding the right camera angles and watching it. The first trouble started just after 1 o'clock. 45 pages, here it is right here. Donald Trump has been indicted. Somber day for the country. This all happened before President Trump's speech was over. The founder of the Oath Keepers Militia Group is headed to prison for more than 18 years. His lawyers didn't have this video. The video we're watching right now, his own lawyers did not have. There was a big question of what did the people do who actually did enter the building. This is where we picked it up with the security footage that is new. At this point, the story dramatically changes. The New Jersey man who assaulted a Capitol Police officer on January 6th has been sentenced. So this was withheld. This was not shown to the defense. That could be considered exculpatory evidence. This doesn't seem like what a lot of the media is showing. It's going to change narratives no matter what your political perspective is. What we're after is the truth. I'm Jason Perry in New York City and we are NTD News. Welcome back. If you're just joining us now, here are some of today's top headlines. New York Attorney General Letitia James started preparing to seize former President Trump's golf course and private estate in Westchester County, known as Seven Springs. Trump has just four more days to pay the $464 million penalty in the New York civil fraud trial. The Biden administration announced it will cancel roughly $6 billion in federal student loans. The latest group includes 78,000 former students who went on to become public service workers like teachers, nurses and firefighters. Congressional leaders unveiled the second set of spending bills to fund the government through fiscal year 2024. Lawmakers have to pass a $1.2 trillion package by midnight Friday to avert partial shutdown. Senate Republicans said they want to pass the Lake and Riley Act as an amendment to government funding bills. The bill would require ICE to detain illegal immigrants charged with theft. It would also allow states to sue the federal government if it doesn't enforce certain aspects of immigration law. Is the Chinese Communist Party using underhanded means to pressure other countries and their economies to become dependent on the regime? Lawmakers on Capitol Hill investigated the subject at a hearing today. NTD's Jack Bradley has more. The Chinese regime's economic coercion coupled with its expanding surveillance is causing increasing concern among America and its allies. At a hearing today by the Foreign Affairs Committee, members of Congress examined the economic threat of China's hold on critical minerals to produce semiconductors, something highly important to the American economy and military. They are an adversary in not only the Indochina Sea but throughout the Pacific. And they obviously are aligned with Russia in the Ukrainian war and continue to make threats toward Taiwan. I believe that trade is important as long as it's conditioned on human rights respect. I chair the China Commission. We focused on this horrific practice of forced organ harvesting. It's my third hearing on that. We have a bill that passed bipartisan, sitting over in the Senate since March 28th of last year. Only two people in the whole House voted against it to really rein in on an egregious practice. Everywhere you look, name the human rights abuse, Xi Jinping is excelling in it, and of course he's threatening Taiwan. Over 300,000 Chinese national students are at our top universities with unfettered access. As their scientists have been admitting to American technologies and AI and hypersonic development, things that can be used and weaponized against us, some of the most transformative technologies we've ever seen in human history, are being stolen from us. Some members of Congress blame the economic woes on the Biden administration's policies, bringing up the recent pause on new American liquefied natural gas exports. The president's recent decision to ban LNG export permits is a perfect example of a policy that harms U.S. business interests and U.S. foreign policy. The war on fossil fuel is real, and it's costing us, every American family, dollars at the pump. And it's going up. This fantasy executive order, a rule that wants to make a huge percentage of our cars electric by 2032, it's fantasy. The grid won't handle it. As the U.S. works to counter the Chinese Communist Party's economic influence, it's clear that most officials here agree that more needs to be done. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Jack Bradley, NTD News. Companies with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military are quietly expanding in the U.S. Philip Lenczicki, investigative reporter at The Daily Caller, joins us to share his recent investigations into two companies. Philip Lenczicki, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you on the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Now, Chinese battery company Gaotian is suing Michigan. That's for blocking the construction of an EV production site there. You've covered Gaotian in the past. What were some of the concerns that led to this project being blocked? Yeah, great question. There's been a number of really concerning items that have been dug up with regard to Gaotian Hitech, the Chinese parent company of Gaotian Inc. And specifically, we found that Gaotian Hitech employs 923 members of the Chinese Communist Party, according to its own ESG report from 2022. We also found that not only are there so many members of the CCP in the firm's employ, but one of those individuals happens to be the chairman of the company, an individual named Li Jian. Additionally, we found that the company goes to great lengths to promote the CCP's ideology among its employees. The company has taken the employees on several occasions to conduct red tourism, basically to visit CCP shrines to martyrs and whatnot. And during these trips, the individuals were wearing basically 1960s Chinese military uniforms, so Red Army uniforms. And during these events, they also took many of the employees and had them pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party, more or less induct themselves into the Chinese Communist Party. So that's just the beginning, but really their ties are manifold. They have joint ventures that have ties to the Chinese military. They have also worked with other companies in China that are dealing with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corporation, a sanctioned Chinese paramilitary organization that is more or less responsible for the execution of the genocide in China's Xinjiang province, etc. And Goshen Inc., the U.S.-based arm of Goshen Hitech, we found that they, several years ago, had established within their California headquarters a so-called overseas talent workstation, which has some ties apparently to the Thousand Talents Plan in order to conduct technology transfer for the Chinese government. This was established by a visiting delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials. So there are really just very, very many very concerning ties. When it comes to those concerning ties to the Chinese Communist Party, you actually have a new report out titled Firm tie to China's military-industrial complex plans to roll out massive battery chemical plants in the U.S. Tell us about that. Where are they setting up shop? Yeah, so we wrote an article recently about a company called CapChem. And CapChem is an American company, and they are aiming to establish several chemical production facilities for electric vehicles, one in Ohio, the other in Louisiana. And what we found was that the parent company behind CapChem USA, a company called Shenzhen CapChem, has been apparently working with the Chinese military for many years, since apparently at least 2012. We found that on the website of Shenzhen CapChem that they had been listing their products as being used in, quote-unquote, high-end military equipment, and also being used in the, quote-unquote, military and aerospace industries. In 2012, a Guangdong Provincial Ministry of Industry and Information Technology branch had selected Shenzhen CapChem to participate in a program for the military aerospace sector. And this was a part of the overarching Chinese government's military-civil fusion program. Military-civil fusion is a program which aims to more or less appropriate technologies developed in the private sector for the purposes of China's military. And specifically, the State Department has flagged the aerospace industry as one that is specifically targeted under this military-civil fusion program. Now, in your report, you mentioned how the plants in Ohio and Louisiana are also planning to expand. What has been the response to this? Are lawmakers trying to stop this? Well, I can tell you that there have been a number of lawmakers with whom we've communicated recently, especially since the article came out, that have expressed a lot of concern. And we are looking forward to continuing to share our findings in the future here soon. And I'd love to come back and discuss those with you because it only, unfortunately, gets worse. And on that note, what are the lawmakers concerned about? Well, they're concerned about the military-civil fusion ties that are apparent. And they are concerned, additionally, with just generally, I suppose, the relationship that the corporation has with the Chinese government. Now, again, the firm initially denied having received any government subsidies. But that statement even was inconsistent with the facts, which show that even as recently as their most recent 2023 midterm report, they had listed receiving a new amount, as much as $10 million from the Chinese government. Quite concerning, indeed. Philip Lensiki, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. Coming up, the Supreme Court has to decide, did the Biden administration pressure social media companies to censor content? The attorney for the plaintiffs in this case joins us to analyze the various arguments. A blockbuster lawsuit against Apple, why the Department of Justice and a dozen states accused the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly on smartphones. And in college basketball, March Madness is here. As the first round of NCAA tournament begins, Dave Martin joins us with an update on the action when we come back. This is a tough fight. I would like to see the kids fight like they did in Ohio. What was good, for many years, we were able to fight and the bad kids died. But now, what has changed and is even worse, this is because the government has taken even more action. Because of war and conflicts, we have to leave our homes and all our belongings. We don't even have food. That's why we need your help. Millions of children are fighting to survive due to inequality, conflict, poverty and the climate crisis. Save the Children is working alongside communities to provide a better life for children. And there's a way you can help. Please call or go online to give just $10 a month, only 33 cents a day. We urgently need 1,000 new monthly donors in the next 30 days to help the children we support around the world. You can help provide food, medicine, care and protection, plus so much more that a child needs, by calling right now and giving just $10 a month. You can help the children survive, and stop the children from dying of hunger. All we need are 1,000 monthly donors in the next 30 days. Please call or go online now with your monthly gift of just $10. Thanks to generous government grants, every dollar you give can have up to 10 times the impact. And when you call with your credit card, we will send you this Save the Children tote bag as a thank you for your support. Your small monthly donation of just $10 could be the reason a child in crisis survives. Please call or go online to Hungerstopsnow.org to help save lives today. Are you ready to help your family get prepared for the unexpected? Everyone in? Here we go! Ladybug and Cat Noir know how important it is to be ready. Because you never know when Hawk Moth is going to strike, or a disaster will hit. And you don't need miraculous powers, just put those planning skills you already have to good use. Know who to call, decide on a safe meeting location, and create an emergency preparedness kit. Make a plan that will help you and your family be ready when emergencies happen. Ready Kids can help. I'm coming to fix! Get started at ready.gov slash kids. Welcome back, I'm Tiffany Meyer. The Supreme Court is considering a high-profile case about alleged government censorship on social media. Joining us now to break down the various arguments coming from all sides is Janine Yunus. She is an attorney for the plaintiffs in this case and litigation counsel at New Civil Liberties Alliance. Janine Yunus, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for having me back. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court hearing your case this week has caused quite a stir among legal experts, particularly comments that Justice Brown Jackson made to an attorney representing plaintiffs in that case. Let's play that sound now. My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods. Janine, what do you make of the justices' comments here? Well, yeah, that comment really made the rounds on Twitter. I mean, the First Amendment literally exists to hamstring the government. That's the point. It's a check on government being able to control the speech of the public. So, you know, that sort of showed a shocking lack of awareness about why we have a First Amendment in the first place. Now, on that note, some legal experts are defending the justices' concerns, saying that in certain situations, coordination and communication between the government and social media is necessary for protecting public and domestic safety. Now, in your mind, when, if ever, is it appropriate for that relationship? Well, that's a good question. And I will say I do think the court got very hung up on that question, and I don't think it needed to. Our clients are, you know, top scientists, Martin Kulldorff, epidemiologist at Harvard, Jay Bhattacharya, epidemiologist at Stanford, who were censored for dissenting views about COVID. They're censored on social media, ultimately at the behest of the government. We know that the government was telling the social media companies to censor people like them. And so they sort of show why we have a First Amendment. Our case is not about national security issues or teens jumping out of windows. That was the hypothetical that Justice Jackson provided. And I think, in a way, the focus on that issue is kind of leading us astray. There may be extreme examples where it's appropriate for the government to get involved. If someone's about to post classified information on Twitter, for example, or has posted it, certain types of speech aren't protected. So direct threats, speech that might cause imminent grave harm. So there are various exceptions that would cover some of the examples the justices gave. And what do you make of the argument that these are merely requests or suggestions from the government, not orders? Well, a couple of things on that. First of all, a lot of it was orders. So there were especially people within the White House who were telling the companies, do this or else, basically. You're going to suffer some serious legal or other consequences if you don't. We know that because they're in emails. And we also know that the companies caved to that pressure because they're internal emails from Meta, where they said explicitly, for instance, they had censored the lab leak theory because they were under pressure from the administration and we shouldn't have done it. So that means they wouldn't have done it otherwise. As some of the speech does appear to be more cooperative. So it looks as though like the CDC is kind of working with the companies, CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also that's housed within DHS. It looks like it's kind of a partnership where they're deciding what kind of speech or misinformation should be taken down. First of all, the government cannot abridge the freedom of speech. That's what the First Amendment says. So anything, any action that results in the diminishing of speech, the abridgment of speech should be considered illegal. It doesn't matter if the companies want to do it. Second, interactions that might appear in a vacuum to be voluntary should be looked at in this broader context where there were quite a few threats and a lot of coercion being applied. So I don't think you can take a specific interaction and say, well, it looks like the companies wanted to do it. Well, all these threats have been made. They knew the companies knew they were under pressure and they knew that they were facing the possibility of negative consequences if they didn't comply. On that note, what is the significance of which way the U.S. Supreme Court rules on this? How could the outcome impact Americans? Well, it will have a pretty huge impact. So what they say about what the standard is for assessing the propriety of the government's relationship with the tech companies in this regard. I mean, it will basically dictate how the companies and the government relate to each other going forward. So if they say the standard is coercion, then these partnerships, which actually result in the censoring of enormous amounts of speech and enormous amounts of protected speech, will be permitted going forward. So I think that would have really, really bad consequences for Americans. I really hope that the court sees that it's not just coercion. Coercion is obviously a First Amendment violation, but it's also these kinds of cooperative partnerships. The government simply cannot be in the business of abridging speech, reducing speech. Any time the government tells the companies to take speech down, that should be considered a First Amendment violation unless it's unprotected for other reasons. Janine Eunice, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me. The Justice Department today announcing a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The company is accused of engineering an illegal smartphone monopoly that stifles competition and innovation. NTD's Don Ma has more. In a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit, the Justice Department and more than a dozen states sued Apple on Thursday. The lawsuit accuses the tech giant of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market, boxing out competitors and stifling innovation. Here's Attorney General Merrick Garland. But as our complaint alleges, Apple has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market, not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits, but by violating federal antitrust law. Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies break the law. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey. It specifically seeks to stop Apple from undermining technologies that compete with its own apps. This includes areas like streaming, messaging and digital payments. We allege that Apple has employed a strategy that relies on exclusionary, anti-competitive conduct that hurts both consumers and developers. For consumers, that has meant fewer choices, higher prices and fees, lower quality smartphones, apps and accessories, and less innovation from Apple and its competitors. Apple has denied the lawsuit's allegations, specifically calling the lawsuit wrong on the facts and the law. The company also said it will vigorously defend against it. The lawsuit is the latest in a wider trend of the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement actions against big tech. Don Ma, NTD News. And now for your sports news, we're joined by NTD's Dave Martin. Dave, a lot of basketball news going on today with the NCAA tournament in full swing. What are the biggest highlights from this afternoon? You know, Tiff, I'm going to be completely honest with you. Although this tournament is usually, you know, totally unpredictable, this afternoon really went according to plan. You know, no big upsets. Now, Morehead State did stay with Illinois for a half and then Illinois pounded the ball inside in the second half. It really blew them away. BYU was somewhat upset by 11C. Duquesne was a minor upset. Ditto for Oregon beating South Carolina another 11 over six. Those are really minor upsets. Now, other than that, you also had Michigan State beating Mississippi State in a battle of evenly matched teams. But Michigan State, if you've ever followed this tournament, Tom Izzo always has his team playing well in this time of year. And today was no exception. Now, other than that, Creighton blew out Akron. Ditto for Arizona over Long Beach State. And North Carolina over Wagner. So if you were looking for a major upset this afternoon, it didn't really happen. Well, what about this evening? If you had to predict an upset, who's a prime suspect? Well, unfortunately, my Kansas Jayhawks are a prime suspect at this point. They've been struggling lately. Their best two players have been injured. In fact, Kevin McCullough is not going to be back for this tournament. And they're really not very deep at all. Meanwhile, they're playing Samford, which is a high-scoring underdog team. This could be a problem for them. Now, other than Kansas, Kentucky plays tonight against Oakland. I mean, I'm picking Kentucky to win, but it would be quite an upset if they lost. Dallas, Tennessee plays St. Peter's tonight. Now, St. Peter's upset Kentucky two years ago made it all the way to the Elite Eight. Now, will we get a repeat of that? I mean, it's unlikely, but, of course, no one predicted that to happen two years ago. Lastly, Iowa State, their two seed, they play South Dakota State in neighboring Nebraska. Maybe the South Dakota State fans flock there to see the game. It could be pretty interesting. So that's another one I'm going to be watching tonight to see if the upset happens. Shifting gears to baseball, Shohei Otani's interpreter and friend, apparently, was fired by the Dodgers yesterday with gambling allegations playing a part of that. What happened there? You know, details of this have been emerging for like the last 24 hours so far. Here's what I've gathered. Sports gambling is legal in most states, but it's not actually in California, where Otani plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Of course, it still happens, and one of those operations was recently under federal investigation. Allegedly, they showed big payments made from Shohei Otani's bank account. Now, it was reported that this was to cover his interpreter's debt. His interpreter's name is Ipe Mutsuraha. Now, the total debt was apparently at around $4.5 million. Now, apparently, this interpreter is actually one of Otani's best friends. He's been his interpreter since 2018. Now, baseball players are allowed to gamble, but not with illegal bookmakers or offshore websites, and this would be an illegal bookmaker. Now, this is where it gets a little bit murky. Reportedly, his interpreter said Otani agreed to help pay off his gambling debt, the interpreter, but Otani's team released a statement saying Otani was the victim of massive theft. Either way, the interpreter has been fired by the Los Angeles Dodgers, so we'll be keeping up with the details on this case as it emerges. Well, this morning, the Dodgers' new $325 million Japanese pitcher made his debut, but it didn't go as planned. Tell us about that. Yeah, that is Yoshinobu Yamamoto. And that $325 million, that was the most ever given to a pitcher, and he'd never even pitched in the major leagues before. It was a very risky contract. Anyway, he did not have a very good first outing. Lasted just one inning, gave out five runs. He really didn't do well in spring training either. Now, of course, it's going to be an adjustment going from Japan-based baseball league to the major leagues here. Plus, I've got to think it's going to be tough to live up to that $325 million contract. I'm sure nerves had some part of it today. Now, plenty of Japanese stars have come over here and struggled, but plenty have come over and thrived, just like Shohei Otani, of course. It's only one game. Now, this Dodgers-Padres series, it's the only regular season games going on right now. It's played over in Korea, so these games are kind of magnified. In any case, the Dodgers ended up losing 15-11. Well, Dave, as always, thanks for joining us. Well, thank you, Tiff. And that's all for today's news. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Good night.