A date has been set for Trump's first criminal trial

Good morning. It's Thursday, February 15th. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Coming up on today's show: a really busy week for former President Trump's legal cases, a humanitarian crisis in Sudan after 10 months of civil war… and Beyoncé goes country.

But first, let's take a quick look at some major stories that are in the news. A day of celebration in Kansas City yesterday turned into a nightmare for the community after one person was killed and nearly two dozen injured in a shooting shortly after the parade for the new Super Bowl champs. Many of the victims were children and teenagers. An eyewitness told "CBS" when the shooting started, the packed streets full of thousands of fans quickly turned chaotic.

Once the celebration was over, I mean, there was still a good amount of fans still around, and they were still trying to file out of the area. It's a very heavily crowded area. And then all of a sudden chaos started to break out. We see people running away from certain areas of where fans were. And you could see people were very shaken up. We've seen multiple people leave on stretchers in this situation.

Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves said at least three people had been arrested in connection with the shooting, and they are still investigating the motive.

I'm angry… at what happened today. The people who came to this celebration should expect a safe environment. We had over 800 law enforcement officers, Kansas City and other agencies, at the location to keep everyone safe.

In Gaza, Israeli forces entered Nasser Hospital today, the largest medical facility still operating. The Israeli military ordered displaced people sheltering there to leave yesterday, but thousands are still said to be inside the hospital, including patients and medical staff. Israel's military claims Hamas is operating from the hospital, which the group has denied.

The trip is designed to be kind of a scouting mission before NASA plans to send a crewed mission to the moon in late 2026. This is a huge week in legal news for former President Donald Trump…

…with hearings that might determine the course of the next year. He faces 91 total counts in four different criminal cases. With other civil suits and impending Supreme Court decisions as well, there is so much to keep track of, even for Justice Department reporters like Perry Stein at "The Washington Post" assigned to cover his cases.

My colleague who I cover most of these with, we have a big calendar right by our desk where we are color coding and handwriting all of the important dates.

And today, their calendar is quite colorful. There are two crucial hearings. One is in New York, where a judge is expected to decide whether the case regarding alleged hush money payments to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, will begin next month. If that happens, it would be the first of Trump's four criminal trials and the first time that an American president stands trial. I started our conversation by asking Perry if the trial could conclude before the presidential election.

It's absolutely possible, particularly if it goes to trial around March 25th. No reason why it shouldn't be resolved by the summer, let's say.

I want to also talk about the criminal case in Georgia, where Trump has been accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in that state. There's a hearing today for the district attorney prosecuting the case, Fani Willis. It has to do with this romantic relationship she had with a lawyer who she hired to work on the case. Why is this important? And what could the consequences be, potentially, of her being removed?

Yeah, this whole thing is messy is how I would put it. What the allegations are that she has had an improper relationship with this prosecutor who she hired to work on the case and that she financially benefited from it because he allegedly paid for her travels. Now, one of the defendants in the case, and a lot more, including Trump, have signed on as this has gained steam, have said the entire case should be dismissed because of this improper relationship.

Mm-hm. And I also want to talk about yet another case here. This is the civil one that's in New York. We're expecting a ruling there that could come as soon as Friday. What is the potential impact here for Trump and his businesses?

The impact on this one is financial, right? The allegations from the New York attorney general is that Trump and his business associates inflated their real estate values to get some financial benefits out of that. We know that Letitia James wants hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, and it's up to this judge to decide how much will Trump need to pay.

Right. So those are some of the state cases, but let's talk about one of the federal ones here. This one is about the classified documents Trump allegedly kept at Mar-a-Lago. Walk us through some of the developments in that case from this week.

Definitely. So what we're seeing in Florida, this is the classified document case where Trump is alleged to have retained documents related to national defense information and then thwarted and obstructed government officials attempts to retrieve them. So those are the allegations. Those are serious charges that he faces there. What we saw this week is Trump has said he wants more classified information

And so big picture here, what could Trump's calendar actually look like if you had to chart it out, going forward, once this week is done?

I mean, once this week is done, we will have a perhaps better sense in some of the cases what it could look like. I mean, at least, you know, when his first trial would be, which, I think we'll have more answers at the end of the month, but perhaps not all of the answers.

Well, Perry, I'm really grateful for your time. I sincerely appreciate it. And I hope you have all of the color coordinating things for the calendar at hand going forward.

Thank you.

In Sudan, 10 months of civil war has led to one of the largest displacements of people on the planet.

The Sudanese military and paramilitary forces are fighting each other for power. And the war has been brutal for civilians. At least 7.5 million people have been forced from their homes, about half of them children, according to the UN. In one medical camp in North Darfur, one child dies every two hours, according to Doctors Without Borders. James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, recently returned from a visit to the border of Sudan and Chad, where many refugees have gone.

Could be a rural area or a neighborhood, like a middle-class neighborhood, and it's empty. It's just absolutely silent. You can only hear underfoot, you hear the crunching of glass under your feet and you look and it's buildings are pockmarked and clothes and things, everything's been burnt and looted and there is no one.

Elder says it's impossible to understate the misery the war has caused. People have endured sexual violence from fighters on both sides, according to the U.S. State Department. Some have been physically tortured or beaten to death. Those that survive scramble for safety. Elder says people are now starving and in need of the most basic human services, shelter, clean water, food and health care. Neighboring countries like Chad and South Sudan are taking in refugees.

Already you're seeing a lot of migration there in that part of Africa, going across to West Africa, going across into Europe. And when you meet these people, you are reminded so much that they want to live in their community. I don't think I spoke to a single young person, this is university age, who didn't want to keep doing their studies and do something in Sudan.

UN officials have appealed to member nations for at least $4 billion in funding for Sudan and neighboring countries that are taking in refugees. They say the money is needed urgently. About 3.5 million children in Sudan face malnutrition this year, and hundreds of thousands could die.

A recent dust-up with a country radio station in Oklahoma is reigniting conversation around Black artists' reception in the genre.

If you missed all of this, we can explain. A fan requested that a local station play the new Beyoncé song, "Texas Hold 'em."

At first, the station responded saying, they're a country network, and they don't play Beyoncé. But they simply didn't know about the new songs that were released just this past Sunday. The misunderstanding, though, brought back memories for fans about a previous time when Beyoncé released a country song. In 2016, on her hit album Lemonade, there was a track called Daddy Lessons, which she performed at the Country Music Awards with the band The Chicks.

The performance got a famously chilly reception from country music fans on social media. The song was also rejected for consideration in the country category for the Grammys, and "Billboard" put it on the R&B and hip-hop charts. Rapper Lil Nas X ran into a similar issue a few years later, when "Billboard" initially removed his hit, Old Town Road, from the country charts, sparking a debate and pushback about who can make country music and who it's really for.

The general manager of the station told "CBS News," "We actually wish that artists wouldn't get boxed into certain genres or formats… If it's good music, it's good music." You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next. "New York Magazine" looks at Democratic billionaire Bill Ackman's war against President Biden, Harvard, and other elite institutions.