Jeffries slams House GOP debt limit plan, Trump's legal concerns: 5 Things podcast

On Today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Democrats continue to blast a House GOP debt limit plan that includes trillions in cuts. Plus, USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen recaps another busy week for former President Donald Trump's legal concerns, the Federal Reserve releases a report about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Colorado's governor signs bills aimed at fighting gun violence. And USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub explains what new DNA analysis can tell us about mammals, including humans.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is five things you need to know, Saturday the 29th of April, 2023. Today, the latest from Capitol Hill as the clock ticks for Congress to act on the debt limit, plus another busy legal week for former President, Donald Trump, and what new DNA analysis can tell us about mammals.

Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told reporters yesterday that President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats will not settle for anything less than a clean debt ceiling increase.

Hakeem Jeffries:

President Biden has produced a budget. House Republicans produced a ransom note.

Taylor Wilson:

The house GOP plan outlined this week includes 4.5 trillion dollars in spending cuts. The bill has been slammed by most Democrats who are following Biden's refusal to negotiate with house Republicans on tying budget cuts to the debt limit. The clock is ticking for Congress to raise the debt ceiling with the US set to run out of cash to pay its obligations at some point in June.

It was another busy week for former President, Donald Trump's, legal headaches as he juggled developments in five cases simmering against him. USA Today Justice Department correspondent, Bart Jansen, has the latest. Bart, thanks for hopping on the podcast.

Bart Jansen:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

Former Vice President, Mike Pence, testified in the January 6th probe. What do we know about his testimony?

Bart Jansen:

Well, he's been considered a key figure because he was at the center of Trump's strategy to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. As Vice President, he also served as President of the Senate so that when they were counting electoral college votes on January 6th, 2021, he was the guy in the chair in the Senate. And the strategy that Trump's lawyers had adopted was try to have Pence single-handedly reject electors from seven states, flip them from President Joe Biden to Trump, and in that way overturn the results.

So he was pressured repeatedly by Trump's allies and then by Trump himself, called Pence the morning of January 6th. We don't know yet what happened during that conversation, but Pence's aids have testified in the house that he came back from receiving the call steely and grim, but Pence refused to go along with the scheme, and so his views will be presumably pretty crucial to the grand jury that's studying what happened on January 6th.

Taylor Wilson:

And there are all kinds of other investigations and legal questions surrounding Trump. Let's get to the classified documents probe. What's the latest here, Bart?

Bart Jansen:

Both the January 6th investigation and the classified documents are being investigated by a Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith, and he's been moving along what appears fairly briskly. They don't really reveal what happens in a grand jury investigation, but we can see from subpoenas that they've been moving to increasingly higher level witnesses. In the classified documents case, they've been subpoenaing Trump's lawyers and winning. The lawyers tried to resist based on attorney-client privilege, but you can't have attorney-client privilege while discussing potentially criminal acts. Those lawyers have also been ordered to testify, and so it appears that we are moving briskly to decisions, not necessarily charges, but decisions in whether Trump or anybody else might be charged in these two federal investigations.

Taylor Wilson:

And E. Jean Carroll testified this week in her defamation lawsuit over her allegation that Trump raped her back in the nineties. What did she say, Bart, and what's next for that trial?

Bart Jansen:

She testified that he raped her in a Manhattan clothing store in 1996. She didn't report it at the time, and so Trump's lawyers challenged her on that, "Why didn't you report it? Are you just after him politically now or for a payoff?" So she said that what happened was she did not report it because she thought that he would attack her, diminish her back at the time. She later wrote a memoir, and as the memoir came out, he started criticizing her reputation, her appearance, and denied that the incident had even happened. And so she is now suing him for defamation. Her testimony was pretty vivid this week. Trump has not yet attended the case, but he posted on social media, he called it a hoax and said that it's a false accusation. But the judge in the case scolded his attorney saying, "Hey, he cannot be posting this stuff during the trial." And so, those are the developments this week. And we, as with these other cases, it looks like at least we're finally getting close to a decision.

Taylor Wilson:

And Trump was criminally charged earlier this year in the Hush-Money case. Anything new to report on this front part?

Bart Jansen:

Yeah, Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, filed a motion Monday seeking to limit Trump's access to evidence in that case. Some of the materials we're talking about is like grand jury testimony, the kind of stuff that isn't typically released publicly unless they want to use a piece of the grand jury testimony actually at the trial. Then it's public, then everybody can talk about it. While it's still just confidential testimony at this point, Bragg is saying that he wants Trump to only be able to review that sort of material in the company of his lawyers and not take notes on it, not photograph it, not take transcriptions. And then he'd like the judge to order something that would limit social media posts about the stuff that he looks at.

The problems that District Attorney Bragg raises in his motion is that Trump will go on social media. He contends that it is First Amendment right to criticize the people who are investigating him and he says what he thinks is wrong about it, or whatever. And there have been death threats against District Attorney Bragg. There have been all sorts of public outcry against these previous investigators. Bragg is basically trying to put the breaks on that if he can. The judge has not yet ruled in that case, we might get a hearing as early as May 4th on that. And so yeah, Bragg is trying to basically limit what Trump is able to look at and say about that case.

Taylor Wilson:

And finally, in Georgia, do we have any timeframe for the grand jury's decision on criminal charges related to election fraud there?

Bart Jansen:

Yeah. Again, we are sailing toward at least decisions on whether charges will be filed. Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, has been investigating potential election fraud because of the phone call that Trump made to the Secretary of State there on January 2nd, 2021, and also his campaign's recruitment of fake electors to try, again, to replace Biden electors. So it looks like we're getting close to a decision in that investigation as well.

Taylor Wilson:

Lots on Trump's plate. Bart Janssen, thanks so much.

Bart Jansen:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

The Federal Reserve is blaming last month's collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on poor management, watered down regulations and lacks oversight by its own staffers. In the report out yesterday, the Fed also said the industry needs stricter policing on multiple fronts to prevent future bank failures. The Fed was critical of its own role in the bank's failure. It points to cultural issues at the Fed where supervisors were unwilling to be hard on bank management when they saw growing problems. The report concluded that those cultural issues stem from legislation passed in 2018 aimed at lightening regulations for banks with less than 250 billion dollars in assets. The Fed also weakened its own rules the following year.

Colorado's Governor yesterday signed four bills aimed at fighting gun violence. The laws increased the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 and create a three-day waiting period between buying and taking possession of a firearm. One move expands the state's existing red flag law, while another aims to make it easier for victims of gun violence to sue the gun industry. Gun rights groups filed lawsuits yesterday over the new restrictions on waiting periods and minimum purchasing age. The group cite a Supreme Court decision last year that expanded gun rights.

What makes a human human? The largest ever DNA analysis of mammals offers up some clues with insight into evolution, disease and more. USA Today Health Reporter, Karen Weintraub, explains. Howdy, Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Hi, how are you?

Taylor Wilson:

Good, thanks. Thanks for hopping back on the program.

Karen Weintraub:

Of course.

Taylor Wilson:

I want to start by just asking why do this kind of sequencing in the first place?

Karen Weintraub:

So they've got 240 mammals, and the reason to have that number of mammals is so that they can figure out what's changed as these mammals evolved. So from early rodent- like creatures through to primates and us, when they have that many of them, they can figure out exactly what the changes have been in the genes.

Taylor Wilson:

So let's get into some of the most compelling findings of this research. What does it tell us about human disease?

Karen Weintraub:

So I can't tell you that they've cured cancer or anything, but they have found more sites in the genome, in the package of DNA that we carry in every cell, that could be targets for treatments.

Taylor Wilson:

And how can genetic knowledge help save endangered species?

Karen Weintraub:

So with this work, they were able to identify species that seemed to be at highest risk because they had the most dangerous mutations, they had the most precipitous drop off in population. They can calculate that from a single genome and sort of figure out which animals are most at risk. So they took a look, for instance, at three particular species and figured out that the Orca, the killer whale, is at biggest risk. And the reason this is important is that there are a lot of species in the world and a lot at risk, and this will help them prioritize which ones need the most attention.

Taylor Wilson:

And what can we learn from Balto, the Siberian Husky?

Karen Weintraub:

Yeah. So Balto, if you remember your Disney trivia, was the subject of a Disney movie in the mid-nineties. He was a Siberian Husky who led a team of dogs and a couple of humans who brought vaccine to Nome, Alaska, now the Iditarod, which is run now, recreates that race. And this vaccine saved the children of Nome from diptheria. So they managed to get DNA from the carcass, the taxidermy body of Balto, which was at the Cleveland Museum, and they could figure out that Balto was actually quite well adapted to his Alaskan surroundings and probably healthier than today's dogs, which are much more inbred than he was.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Karen Weintraub, thanks as always.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You could find us seven days a week wherever you get your podcast. The Sunday edition is up tomorrow, and I'll see you Monday with more of 5 Things from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jeffries slams House GOP debt limit plan, Trump's legal concerns: 5 Things podcast