No survivors after catastrophic submersible implosion, NBA Draft recap: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: No survivors found after catastrophic submersible implosion

No survivors were found after a catastrophic submersible implosion, victims of the sub disaster included the mission company's CEO and a teenager, USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze puts a decision on Navajo water in context, Victor Wembanyama highlights the 2023 NBA Draft class, and American South Reporter Danielle Dreilinger looks at how Mississippi women are faring amid a near-total abortion ban.

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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 5 Things you need to know Friday, the 23rd of June 2023. Today, the devastating truth about what happened to the missing Titan submersible. Plus, the Supreme Court decides a major water case involving the Navajo Nation, and we go to Mississippi to hear how an abortion ban there is playing out.

♦

All five passengers on the missing Titan submersible are dead. Debris from the doomed sub was found yesterday near the Titanic wreckage and officials say it imploded. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said debris found was consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.

Rear Admiral John Mauger:

An ROV, or remote operated vehicle, from the vessel Horizon Arctic, discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor.

Taylor Wilson:

The submersible, which aimed to visit the Titanic wreck, went missing on Sunday less than two hours into its dive in the North Atlantic. It was said to have around four days of oxygen supply if the sub remained intact. That would've run out yesterday morning. But it increasingly appears the sub may have imploded early Sunday. A senior US Navy official said last night that after the Titan was reported missing, the Navy went back and analyzed acoustic data. It found an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general area where the vessel was operating and where communication was lost. It'll be difficult to determine at exactly what depth the sub became overwhelmed. Experts say that even at higher depth than where debris was found, any defect would've allowed it to be crushed in milliseconds due to extreme pressure.

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The five men who perished in the sub included Stockton Rush, the CEO of the missions company, OceanGate. British billionaire explorer, Hamish Harding, was also on board. He was the chairman of a global sales company in aviation and held three Guinness World Records related to explorations by plane and into the deep ocean. French Maritime and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet also perished. He had successfully visited the Titanic wreck in a submersible 37 times previously. And a father and son from one of Pakistan's most prominent families, Shahzada Dawood and 19-year-old Suleman Dawood, were also killed.

♦

The Supreme Court rejected a claim from the Navajo Nation yesterday that the US had an obligation to determine the tribe's water needs, and to secure supplies to meet those needs. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze, to learn more. Welcome back to the show, John.

John Fritze:

Thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

John, what's that issue in this Navajo water case and what did the High Court decide?

John Fritze:

So this goes back to 1868, actually prior to 1868, but 1868 was the big action when the United States government placed the Navajo on a reservation. It runs from Arizona to New Mexico to Utah. And as part of the treaty that was signed by both sides, there was a promise that the Navajo would've access to water rights. The issue here is what exactly that means, and certainly when the treaty was negotiated, it couldn't really foresee what would be happening in the modern American West where water, of course, is a very scarce resource and fought over among the states and the tribes. The issue here was really whether the Navajo are entitled to some sort of action on behalf of the federal government to assess what their rights are. It's not clear exactly what it means that the United States granted the Navajo water rights. And so what the Navajo argued was like, Look, there should be some sort of an assessment here of what we're entitled to, and then if the federal government is not meeting that requirement, there should be some sort of remediation taken to address that.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that that was wrong, and they sided with the Biden administration and against the Navajo and argued that look, what the treaty said was that the Navajo could have access to water on the reservation and that's it. In other words, that the government couldn't do anything to impede their access to the water, but that they also didn't have to do any affirmative steps to help get the water to the tribe through piping or whatever. And so the bottom line here is that it's a pretty major loss for the tribe. A 5-4 decision with the conservatives lined up on one side, on the dissent is Justice Gorsuch, who is probably the Court's best... knows Native American law better than pretty much any of them probably, and three liberal Justices.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, and John, what's next for the water fight in the American southwest in the courts, after this decision?

John Fritze:

That's hard to say. I think that this doesn't completely foreclose the tribe's ability to raise these claims. Justice Gorsuch and his dissent talks about, look, it's not a complete shuttering of the door for the tribes to bring some of these claims. Of course, there is also a large dispute going on between the states over access to the Colorado River, the Biden administration is taking some steps on that, and I think we'll hear more about that this summer. So there is some potential places for the tribe to stake out some legal claims here, but I think this is a pretty major loss for them. This is something that Gorsuch notes that they have been fighting for a long time. In fact, he has a line in his dissent that this has been something they have been fighting since Elvis was on The Ed Sullivan Show. And so this has been a long time coming and what seems to be happening is that the Court is increasingly closing doors to the tribe to get some of these questions answered about what these treaties meant.

Taylor Wilson:

And John, what other cases are you eyeing as the Court gets set to wrap up for the summer?

John Fritze:

The Court has now issued most of its opinions for the term. However, a lot of the most important big opinions have not come out yet. There's about 13, 14 opinions outstanding, and there's six or seven of them that are really major, including the Harvard affirmative action case, the student loan cases. It's interesting to me, usually we get these spread out a little bit more. It seems like they're being condensed. The Court tries to get this work done by the end of June. It's certainly approaching that deadline quickly. I think what that suggests is that we're going to have probably some really intense days over the next couple of weeks as they roll out many of these opinions. Beginning with today, they will start rolling out more opinions and try to wrap it up by the end of next week.

Taylor Wilson:

USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze. Thanks as always.

John Fritze:

Sure. Thanks for having me.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

The NBA Draft is in the books. And as expected, French 7-foot-4 19-year-old Victor Wembanyama was selected first overall by the San Antonio Spurs. Wembanyama is considered basketball's hottest prospect since LeBron James in 2003. ESPN analyst Jay Bilas has described him as a 6-foot-2 guard in a 7-foot body. And USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt, here on the show, said Wemby is a generational talent.

Jeff Zillgitt:

With his size at over 7 foot, he's got the kind of game that if you potentially combine Kevin Durant with Giannis Antetokounmpo, you have that same kind of size, someone who's good outside and someone who is good inside. He's got the skill set of a guard and a big man.

Taylor Wilson:

Following Wembanyama last night, the Charlotte Hornets selected Alabama's Brandon Miller second overall, and Scoot Henderson out of the NBA's G League went third to the Portland Trail Blazers. For a full list of picks and more, head to USA TODAY Sports.

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It's projected that 5000 more babies will be born in Mississippi this year as a direct result of the state's restrictive abortion ban, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Many of these babies will be born in rural areas of Mississippi where the maternal healthcare system is already stretched to the limit. So how is this affecting the state's female residents? For the next episode of States of America, a documentary series streaming on USA TODAY'S digital channel, USA TODAY partnered with The Tennessean to find out how the near total abortion ban in Mississippi is playing out on the ground. To find out more, I sat down with Danielle Dreilinger, the American South reporter at The Tennessean who collaborated on this eye-opening investigation. Thanks for hopping on 5 Things, Danielle.

Danielle Dreilinger:

Yes, thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So your story focuses on Mississippi, a state with notable maternal care deserts. You also say that babies are more likely to die in Mississippi than in any other state. Just how tough are things there for mothers?

Danielle Dreilinger:

Just about everybody we talk to knew somebody who had been through that experience. They love their children, they're excited to have children, but there's also a real fear that is not what you see in places with more resources.

Taylor Wilson:

And Danielle, a lot can go wrong with birth scenarios, with low income mothers. They also tend to have high risk pregnancies. What kinds of things can and do go wrong?

Danielle Dreilinger:

So there is an interlacing network of problems that compound each other. A lot of women have problems with preeclampsia and eclampsia, that's dangerously high blood pressure in pregnancy. And you can have a stroke, and if it goes to full eclampsia, it can be fatal. It can kill mothers, parents, after the baby is born. It's a really dangerous condition. There were also a lot discussions of women who had hemorrhaged, and then there were these women who had babies who died and they didn't know why. It's understandable when you look at everything that connects, mostly having to do with poverty and with depopulation of rural areas and lack of resources. Because you have women who are having to travel really far to get to a prenatal visit and they have to work a lot because they're working low wage jobs.

Taylor Wilson:

So this is known as the Bible Belt, or at least part of the Bible Belt. Danielle, what role does religion play in the conversations that you had on abortion in Mississippi?

Danielle Dreilinger:

A lot of the conversations that we were having were about abortions that were not elective. Because Mississippi's abortion law - and this is true of a bunch of the abortion laws around the country, and especially in the South - it's written with an exception for the life of the mother. But there's no exception for when the baby isn't going to survive. Some of them told us that they really felt like the decision to have an abortion should be between a person and God and their doctor, and it shouldn't be a question of the government making a decision. So I thought that was really striking. It's possible to think that abortion is morally wrong, but also to see that there are times when it might be necessary, or what someone would consider the lesser of evils. And you can think that abortion is morally wrong, some of these women did, without thinking that it should be illegal under all circumstances. So I thought that was an important piece of the puzzle that maybe doesn't always get looked at.

We wrote a second piece about pregnancy resource centers. Crisis pregnancy centers and these other Christian, anti-abortion centers, pregnancy resource centers which are Christian, anti-abortion help centers that, what do they do now that they don't have to spend as much effort talking women out of having abortions because abortions are so hard to come by? And they saw themselves as very much needed to stand in the gap now and help women with the babies that they are now having that maybe they would've had abortions before.

Taylor Wilson:

And for women living in this region, what's the solution here, Danielle?

Danielle Dreilinger:

The good news is that there are a lot of people working on solutions. The health department has increased home visits for women who are on Medicaid. They're working for postpartum visits, because this is one of the problems is that women often aren't monitored postpartum. And you can die from pregnancy impacts three months after you give birth. The state also extended postpartum Medicaid to basically a full year. Women can now have these postpartum visits. It also gives them time to do things like set up birth control, like focus on their reproductive health and their health more generally.

There's a whole bunch of women who are becoming doulas and midwives, especially Black women. They're working, without a ton of success so far to change the laws to make it easier to practice; working on, pushing on getting insurance coverage, again, this is a work in progress, but trying to fill in the gap since there aren't enough obstetricians, and having this more often holistic model. Because even the really great obstetricians, they're having to see so many patients, they just can't spend a lot of time with each one. And then even things like, there's a group called Plan A, they are training emergency room personnel what to do if a woman shows up in your ER pregnant and in crisis.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Danielle, thanks for your time and your reporting on this, and for coming on the show and talking about it. Really appreciate it.

Danielle Dreilinger:

Yeah, thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Credit also to Mona Iskander and Andrea Kramar for their work on this story. The full episode of States of America exploring the impact of Mississippi's restrictive abortion ban premieres tonight at 8:00 and 10:00 PM Eastern on USA TODAY Network's streaming channel. For a full list of platforms offering our free streaming channel, follow the link in our show description. The episode can also be found on USA TODAY'S YouTube channel.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Special thanks to Cherie Saunders, Alexis Gustin and Mark Sovel. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with another episode of 5 Things.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No survivors after submersible implosion, NBA Draft recap: 5 Things podcast