Understanding America’s big electricity problem

Good morning! It's Thursday, September 8th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.

If you got an alert on your phone asking you to turn off any unnecessary electronics in your home, would you jump and do it? That's what people across California were asked to do this week, and many of them stepped up and unplugged. It's a big reason why the power has managed to stay on, even with the system straining to deliver enough energy as the state braced for rolling blackouts.

We saw between 2000 to 2500 megawatt of load reduction, which helped restore our operating reserves and ultimately enabled us to avoid a call for rotating outages. That made an enormous difference in our efforts to keep the power flowing and I cannot thank public enough for that response.

That response literally kept hundreds of thousands of people out of the dark. But personal conservation is not gonna be enough on its own, not in the long term. There's an energy problem that goes beyond supply and demand. "Bloomberg" explains how America has major issues with its grid, which can drive blackouts and even make it harder to use more renewable energy.

it's practically the Saudi Arabia of solar power. But no matter how many panels soak up the sunlight, it's all lost if power lines don't get energy to places that need it. As power experts explain it to "Bloomberg," all the new wind and solar farms won't help unless America makes a serious investment in its energy transmission lines.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, dozens of abortion clinics across the country have shut down. But in College Park, Maryland one new abortion clinic is opening. It'll be just one of a handful of clinics in the country that will provide abortions into the third trimester.

As the women who run this clinic tell me, bans like this don't stop abortion, they just push abortion later into pregnancy and they make the people seeking abortions travel farther and farther, and have to overcome hurdles to get to the clinics that would perform an abortion.

Third-trimester abortions are rare. Most are done at or before 13 weeks. Block explains why someone might seek out the procedure later…

Could be a pregnancy that has been determined to have serious health impacts on the pregnant person, it could be someone who has discovered that their fetus has really severe anomalies that are often only discovered later in pregnancy, or, more and more these days, it could be someone who sought an abortion earlier in pregnancy, but because there are so many states that have enacted bans or restrictions, their pregnancy has been pushed later into gestation.

The people behind this clinic chose to set up in Maryland because the state has liberal abortion laws and has recently expanded abortion access. The location could serve people in states where access is now cut off.

The partners who've opened the clinic in Maryland expect it to be one of the southernmost places you can go, outside of a hospital setting, to obtain a later-in-pregnancy abortion, and they expect to be seeing patients coming largely from the South for whom Maryland is the closest point where they can obtain an abortion later in pregnancy.

The NFL is back. The 2022 season kicks off tonight with the defending champs, the LA Rams, hosting potential championship rivals the Buffalo Bills. Shaker Samman is a sports editor for Apple News, and he's with me now to talk about the season ahead and maybe even make some low-stakes predictions. So, Shaker, thanks for being here.

Hey. My pleasure.

Tell us, what's the story of this season? Like, what are some of the big themes that you're watching for?

For me, the really big thing is players who are of such a high caliber and such a high skill level that they typically don't change teams that often, we had a lot of them in a new places this year. We have a lot of big-name players changing teams: Russell Wilson, Super Bowl-winning quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks traded to Denver, signs a big extension after a fall out with Seattle, Devonte Adams, maybe the best wide receiver in the sport, leaving Aaron Rogers and the Packers to go to Las Vegas in a trade, Khalil Mac, former defensive player of the year, is traded from Chicago to the Los Angeles Chargers, now he's gonna anchor that defense as they try to make a playoff push. Like, there's so many players that you have been so accustomed to seeing in these old teams and in these uniforms that are now just somewhere totally new, and it really shook up the landscape of the league.

Mm. A lot of mixups.

Yeah.

Another thing that was a big whiplash, I think, for a lot of people: obviously Tom Brady retired, unretired. [CHUCKLES] So he is now, of course, playing. Can people expect him to still be the GOAT? I mean, he's getting pretty old by NFL standards. He's 45 years old.

He retired, I swear it was a thing that happened. Like, we all saw it, and then 40 days later he's like "Actually, never mind." But the fact of the matter is, even with Rob Gronkowski not coming back with him this time, he's the best player in football until proven otherwise, right? Like, his arm strength might not be there, but he still makes those decisions, he still puts his teams in a position to win every single time.

And do you have any predictions you wanna share? Any teams that you think could make it all the way to the Super Bowl?

The Buffalo Bills are everyone's really hot pick this year. Josh Allen is one of the best passers in football, they added Von Miller on their defense, every single part of their team is just at the highest caliber, and they could finally do it. It's just a matter of if they can pull it off, because Buffalo football is synonymous with heartbreak. They lost four straight Super Bowls in the early nineties and then they went 17 years without making the playoffs.

Shaker Samman, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks for having me. We've got lots of stories for you about the NFL kickoff on the "Apple News" app.

no more snow days. If there's a big snowstorm, schools will just switch to remote learning for the day. Here's Schools Chancellor David Banks speaking on New York's "Fox" station…

With the new technology that we have, that's one of the good things that came out of COVID, if a snow day comes down, we want to make sure that our kids are continuing to learn. So, sorry kids! No more snow days, but it's gonna be good for you!

Oh, come on! [CHUCKLES]

"snow day." School is out. License to play. That is true happiness. Now, it's not just New York that's doing this, by the way. School districts in other states have decided to get rid of snow days too. Although, even among educators, there's a lot of disagreement over this. Earlier this year, a principal in Chicago told the local "Fox" affiliate there's definitely something to be gained when kids get a snow day.

I think there's value in these moments of just reckless, joyful abandon where you're flopping in the snow or meeting neighbors out on the street shoveling.

He says it's that serendipitous human connection that makes a snow day something special.

You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.