2025-12-04
14 分钟Good morning.
It's Thursday, December 4th.
I'm Ximita Basiu.
This is Apple News Today.
On today's show, Texas's bathroom bill has arrived, a look at what it means in practice.
President Trump surprises his own party with a pardon for a Democrat accused of bribery and why AI chatbots find it so hard to tell time.
But first, there's been a drumbeat of headlines about Defense Secretary Pete Hexett this week,
drawing increased attention to new and older scandals.
The latest came yesterday with a Pentagon inspector's verdict on Hexett's now-infamous signal chats.
The watchdog reportedly found that he did violate department regulations when he shared information about planned strikes on Yemen over the app,
and that in turn risked endangering lives.
But on the issue of whether what he was sharing was classified information,
the report points out that Hexeth has the authority to decide which information is classified or not.
It ultimately recommended better training for all department staff on the use of personal devices.
More recently,
Hexeth has of course been at the center of ongoing congressional inquiries over his role in controversial military strikes in the Caribbean.
But despite all the scrutiny,
the White House has stood by Hexeth through these controversies, at least for now.
Michael Gordon is a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal who wrote about what it is about Hexeth that continues to appeal to President Trump,
specifically, as Hexeth himself has put it, his warrior ethos.